The planet is on borrowed time. A gamma ray burst, a dramatic event that ranks as the most powerful explosion in the known universe, has set its sights upon Equis. A mad scramble for salvation ensued. The Equestrian space program kicked into overdrive with a single purpose.
To save ponykind from complete extinction.
The rescue craft, dubbed Friendship One, prepares for departure. With them, the crew carry the hopes and dreams of an entire species. Those who remain behind can only watch and pray for their success as the world they knew turns to ash.
Chapters (14)
Good opening chapter, the line
was a nice hook, defiantly want to see where this go's
I think I will keep an eye on this.
First, the general surface blast sterilises everything approximately 20 light years out, and to Earth, Sirius is only 8.5 light years aay, approximately.
Second, the best model for the literal rocket blast of radiation is converging/diverging spacio magnetic fields, which Dyson has managed to appropiate with extensive marketing. Plasma magnetic field bottles with squeezed ends were used years before?
Trying to find the oldest research Ive seen into refreactive index variations in materials ass how to do even slight variations at high energies. That Sirius defence research again.
Still, they have no time, so its only what they can take. How many miles of material shielding would be required just for a point bunker? Then youre a sitting duck for the stellar masses of outflowing material?
This is an excellent opening with a great hook, as Nova_Wings noted. I expected my interest to falter when you detailed the death of Sigma-225b, but the way you wrote it kept it interesting, and adds some nice context: We've known for a while something was wrong, and now, we have only 10 years to do something about it.
I'll be watching this one. Keep up the good work!
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Thank you! Hope you'll enjoy the rest of the story too.
Portal to another planet, maybe ... have to upsize it bit ...
11086692
Its suprising just how many people move around currently. A single major highway can have 150 thousand vehicles an hour. If only private cars are used, because they are the greatest amount, easiest to eject and overload etc, thenthats approaching a million people an hour if filled. Thats if the portal can be made to large TBM size.
One technomagical solution might only be discoverd a distance away, But currently any ship apparently is going to be sublight, meaning a tail chase. Even if you tried to achieve Tau Quanta low enough to doppler shift the rear gamma to Xray, UV or even visible, then whatever was ahead of you would be getting doppler shifted and temporally compressed up to the gamma range instead, just not a fraction the power. Still, the minimum shielding passively would be a rather impressively sized ice cometary nucleus, as in miles, and the only way I can think of accelerating that is a Rama Stellar Slingshot.
The other story currently running on variation of Destruction Of Equestria, has its own option. Due to hand wavery. This requires careful thought.
Maybe even Pushing Ice.
In honour of those that go before.
The Griffns are going to go totallly spare when, given all that copper and certain space history, ironically given everything else, the plans for the ship being built are by the Griffish Planetary Society?
Unless the second stage is based on Project Deadalus.
This story sounds good, but why can't Discord fix this?
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Maybe, but for how long? And there is a little question on what the burst is going to do to the star you're in orbit of ...
As for the griffons, the king (or one of his advisers) should remember that there is a third method of lying, by telling the complete truth ....
11093024
Some things are beyond even his power, as some things are beyond Celestia's. Plus that's the easy way out and would make for a pretty short story!
Ponies have kind of already perfected long-duration stasis, though. Just ask Discord.
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Yeah but someone needs to stay alive to revive you after hundreds of centuries in stasis!
Dual pole solenoidal field is an ellipsoidal Alcubierre equivalent, given ther speed expected/announced?
The bunkers, if they are crustal,are there so give as much security as a blanky, and for similar reason?
Still trying to think of what magical or combination could be used, As if the atmosphere of the planet isnt protected, doesnt matter how hard the shielding over the Canterlot/Crystal Empire bunker is?
okay that made me cry, thanks for that :D
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Magic egg-timer!
Very dry
Can Twilight (even with 3 princess backup) do her brother's shielding on a planetary level (and hold it for the burst)??
Can we talk about how this fic should definitely get featured multiple times?
well done, I think you portrayed Celestia well here.
I cant wait for the next chapter, it will be interesting to see how the population reacts, we saw how the gryphon king dismissed Celestia, I wonder if there will be others who will think the danger isn't real
The mirror…..can the mirror be used for evacuation or is EQG world too much in the same path like the phase Voyager went through? Or perhaps recalibrated to a different frequency like in Stargate to refract? There’s so much consider and speculate over here.
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No, and the reason is the plot depends on it, same reason we haven't heard anything from discord.
My theory is those things either no longer or never existed in this alternate universe.
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They can certainly try their hardest!
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Discord exists but the mirror doesn't as it links Equestria to a more technologically advanced world in the show, whereas in this story they have already equaled or surpassed modern earth anyway, thus making it a bit redundant. Discord has been mentioned already and the reason he's not getting involved is that some things are beyond even his power, as some things are beyond Celestia's.
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Earth tech wouldn't have been useful but i've seen the mirror portal or tech like it used in other fics before as an escape route in the event of a planetary catastrophe.
Yes, I see that now, I don't see where he was ever asked if he could help as one of the very few entities that might be expected to have that power.
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He hasn't explicitly been asked in the story yet but it will be mentioned later. What I meant was that he has been mentioned as existing in this universe (when Celestia and Luna are discussing magic and other forces that they could not control such as Everfree Magic, Discord etc).
So much effort when they could be turning the crops into ethanol, then drinking the fuel instead?
Almagiibuierre Drive is following the scifi abilities, but using a spot of physics more MOND than plain Einsteinieen.
The same magical effect might be useable for bunker shielding, if teh velocity change can be seperated?
Well, now you've got a time machine, you've got all the time in the universe to save everyone.
We're almost there, I'm guessing the next chapter will be G-day and the launch, I'm wondering how friendship one will know if anyone survives the burst, or if the plan is to just leave, never look back and just hope there were survivors
The bunkers should work, especially if constructed on the moon. With the entire mass of the planet in front of the gamma ray burst, there shouldn't be anything leaking through.
Hey, Discord? Yo! God-level chaos dude?
There's some high-energy photons coming here that are going to hurt Fluttershy. Turn them to fish or something.
PROBLEM SOLVED!
11099725 Gamma rays are nothing but photons of a teensy wavelength. If Discord can do something as simple and warp light, then they're NOTHING to his power.
Hell, he just has to bend space around the planet, and the wavelengths will simply obey physics and follow the curve.
When you know the formula of Creation, even a supermassive black hole isn't much of an issue.
Gods play marbles with galaxies, you know.
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But then there wouldn't be a story, so...
You pays your money, you takes your choice!
Besides, I'm not sure Discord is ever shown dealing with planetary-scale magic of any sort, but mostly localised changes to spacetime and whatever other weirdness he unleashes. He doesn't control the sun or hurl asteroids at the planet or anything like that. Likewise Celestia and Luna move the Sun and Moon but show no indication in the show of being able to influence any other astronomical events or bodies.
11106505 He was popping the Sun and Moon up and down at random when he took over. It literally took him no effort at all to do so.
We never see anything off-world in the show, but we can kinda extrapolate that Discord's powers are immense. As I said, gamma rays are nothing but very energetic light. It must follow the laws of physics. Discord BREAKS the laws of physics for fun and games. He just needs to do a comic thing such as posting a huge "NO GAMMA RAYS ALLOWED!!" sign in front of the planet and the rays would be halted, because chaos power!
You must understand cartoon powers to understand THERE ARE NO LIMITS. We who worship the ways of Yakko Wakko and Dot know these things, as taught by their high priest Freakazoid!
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But Animaniacs and Freakazoid are kind of deliberate exaggerations for the sake of their story and their style. This story isn't (because if it was, there would be no story at all). Plus, as much as I enjoy all-powerful Celestia and as entertaining as Discord can be, I like the idea of something being beyond even their power to stop. It drives home the vastness and power of space.
Plus as the scientists mentioned earlier, if they started randomly moving the sun and moon around to try and block the incoming rays, it would destroy the planet or render it uninhabitable anyway, thus achieving the same end result as the gamma ray burst! The thing about Discord is that he's too 'easy.' He can be handwaved as a solution to any problem, and that makes it hard to write any sci fi/disaster/first contact/apocalyptic stories based on MLP. It's almost expected for him to be able to always save the day and I personally try to write him out of stories for that reason- because it makes it impossible to actually write a story if he's on hand at a second's notice to fix everything!
you damn foolish griffons
It's a special kind of dick move to target transports that have nothing to do with the war.
Those rockets better go, I hope they can leave before those idiots get there.
This is it, last days before gday
Not foolish. From the Griffon perspective, Equestria is an imperialist power that has conquered every other country on the planet, and can only be kept away by threat of overwhelming force. Now their leader has gone crazy and destroyed their economy because of what sounds like a delusion.
The griffons expect that nothing will happen on doomsday. This would destroy political legitimacy in Equestria and tip them over into a civil war. If a new government eventually forms it's likely to be a brutal one more difficult to deal with. Until it forms, there'd undoubtably be a refugee crisis, and never before seen oppertunities for international crime.
From that perspective, a military occupation is not only a good idea, but the only good idea.
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Why go after the rockets, though? If they just happened to target the base, I'd chalk it up to the author ratcheting tension, but apparently they have some in-story reason for targeting the rockets, and I hope it's not "for the evulz".
just nuke the griffon attack column.
Or, you know, being a magic weilding civilization, use magic.
Combine the two, even. Just teleport in there with a nuke.
At this point, I'm wondering if the general's motivation is darker than even Celestia can conceive. Blowing up Friendship One would be a big "fuck you", yes, but the threat of doing so will make Celestia pull her entire military force to its defense - including herself. And her Plan B means every other alicorn will be there with her.
Maybe those missiles are so light on fuel because they aren't meant to be launched... or, at least, not launched very far. Just far enough to decapitate Equestria's leadership at a stroke.
NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED.
preparing to murderer a bunch of civilians at a desperate fallen Equestria that they say is there last hope of survival, what did you expect? A dance off?
The Griffins forgot.
Celestia always plays Ghandi.
That line is the reason I can't watch live stream launches anymore.
farewell equestria
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What line?
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Go for throttle up.
5 seconds later I saw seven people die.