Latest Page Discussions/Comic Update Chitchat

[Windfighter]

I think Minna said somewhere that spirits in Iceland are capable of choosing whether to show themselves to humans, magic or not? I might be misremembering, though.

It took me 20 minutes to find it, but I have finally located the comment you're talking about! I had not seen it before.
For the curious, here:

Icelandic spirits are known to show themselves to people now and then, encountering some isn't a telltale sign of being an Icelandic mage.
But Reynir being a mage might let him see spirits that aren't deliberately trying to show themselves to you. And how many he can see and what he can do to interact with them is still different from what Lalli can do. But of course we won't know a whole lot more about that before we get further into the story.

It was however an answer to this comment:

So Reynir has seen ghosts before, but doesn't know he's a mage? Odd.

sooo... uh... That does kinda point to him having encountered ghosts before, doesn't it? I mean, otherwise wouldn't the answer have been "Not ghosts but Icelandic spirits yadda yadda"?

[Solokov]

The only problem with such an attitude I can see is that high density target area tend to also be areas of high agricultural value or high value period. Such a move would basically mean that there is no hope of retaking the areas, ever and it's better to burn it all.

High population density.... equals ag area..... wha?.... maybe in the east but west of the mississippi heavy ag use is generally rural with low population densities.

Additionally fallout mostly depends on the type of bomb and how it's deployed.

[urbicande]

and have stuck around for so long. Other places have ghosts, but from some of the things that Onni said a ghost infestation is practically unheard of in the Known World.

I'd even posit that it's completely unknown, at least in terms of hordes of murderghosts.

[Vafhudr]

High population density.... equals ag area..... wha?.... maybe in the east but west of the mississippi heavy ag use is generally rural with low population densities.

Additionally fallout mostly depends on the type of bomb and how it's deployed.

Most metropolitan areas were built around places of pretty high land value - as in good or rather low effort farmland. Perhaps it is different in the US, but in Canada population centers tend to be smack dab in the best arable land in the country. Deploying a nuke against such centers would therefore almost automatically compromise the arable high value land around it. Prairie farmland notwithstanding due to generally low population in general.

[Solokov]

Most metropolitan areas were built around places of pretty high land value - as in good or rather low effort farmland. Perhaps it is different in the US, but in Canada population centers tend to be smack dab in the best arable land in the country. Deploying a nuke against such centers would therefore almost automatically compromise the arable high value land around it. Prairie farmland notwithstanding due to generally low population in general.

Down in the U.S. in the west, generally our population centers are where potable water was in large quantities, and while there was decent ag land around, the majority of our high production agriculture land isn't near those cities and we've got a stupidly complex water delivery system for it all. Lots of smaller towns spread out across the rural areas. And then the air bases are built even further out from the population centers.

Now the east coast is an overbuilt mess and a death-trap.. then again that's my assessment of LA, San Francisco and Sacramento as well.

Regardless nuclear weapons would be something of an absolute last resort and stuff like thermobarics would be deployed much sooner than that.

[Possib]

Eh... there were enough left in Denmark to  bomb out the area where the crew currently is. The area honestly looks less "90 years of wear and tear" and more "90 years of wear and tear after a couple artillery bombardments."

There's no evidence at all of explosions or artillery, those holes in the buildings are 90 years of wear and tear in a wet country. That probably would've burned down the entire area, and if the hospital was one of the last known "safe" areas, they'd have no reason to destroy it even after it fell to disease.

As for the rest of the military, they'd have collapsing command structure by the point of widespread societal collapse, and the small groups left over would be much more worried about finding food and escaping the cities than burning them down.

Regardless nuclear weapons would be something of an absolute last resort and stuff like thermobarics would be deployed much sooner than that.

I was thinking more from an eastern US/European perspective, but I can see how firebombing the Front Range or Salt Lake City would take out most of a large area's infected, things being a lot more concentrated out there

[Purple Wyrm]

There's no evidence at all of explosions or artillery, those holes in the buildings are 90 years of wear and tear in a wet country.

Indeed. Take a look at pictures of Pripyat, it's only been abandoned for 30 years and it's falling to bits.

Nature is astonishingly hard on buildings without humans being there to intervene.

[Aierdome]

So, I was still wondering for no particular reason what rank the chief military guy is, and today we got a good look at his insignia:



So the four stars would indicate that the guy is a full general - however, the shape of the stars doesn't match up. This is what Danish Army general insignia looks like:



You can see that the number of "arms" is wrong. What the stars' shape does match, however, are the insignia of a general of the Swedish army:



So... we know the general here wears Danish uniform, so why does he have Swedish insignia? I fully admit it might be a small oversight on Minna's part, but I'm just curious about other opinions.

[Sc0ut]

I say oversight. I think Minna google image'd "general insignia" in Swedish and just went with the first image that came up, which happened to be the *swedish* one, and didn't realize it would be different for Denmark. (People severely underestimate how time consuming it is to properly research every single small detail that might come up win a comic. Often you're not even aware you're overlooking something.)

[Haspen]

Oversight definitely.

Also, well, drug-induced euthanasia vs living up to who-knows-long as eldritch abomination chewing down fellow humans? Yeah, I think euthanasia is better option in this context...

[urbicande]

I would NOT want to be the one having to make that decision.

[JacobThomsen]

I would NOT want to be the one having to make that decision.

Me neither, but that is probably why he's general, because he is able to make thoes kind of decisions.

On another note since the general just confirmed that trolls and beasts existed back in year 0, I wonder what they would looked like. Since all the trolls and beasts we see are shaped by decades of mutation, what would the first beasts look like? Would they be more classic zombie looking, like the dog Emil encountered, or would the greyish skin we see on beasts in year 90 already be present back in the early stages of troll and beast development. It must have been really shocking to be the first doctor to discover that their patient suddenly wasn't human anymore.

[urbicande]

Me neither, but that is probably why he's general, because he is able to make thoes kind of decisions.

On another note since the general just confirmed that trolls and beasts existed back in year 0, I wonder what they would looked like. Since all the trolls and beasts we see are shaped by decades of mutation, what would the first beasts look like? Would they be more classic zombie looking, like the dog Emil encountered, or would the greyish skin we see on beasts in year 90 already be present back in the early stages of troll and beast development. It must have been really shocking to be the first doctor to discover that their patient suddenly wasn't human anymore.

Well, we already knew that the bodies of the victims were grossly distorted early on.  I expect they saw live trolls as well.

[JacobThomsen]

Well, we already knew that the bodies of the victims were grossly distorted early on.  I expect they saw live trolls as well.

Maybe, but then again we don't know how long that body had been trapped there before it died. Since we don't know how long beasts can last without food/water (or whatever they need to stay alive) the body could in theory have been stuck there for years before it died. Which would leave plenty of time for it to slowly mutate.

[Vafhudr]

Well actually we can probably presume that most beast and trolls looked pretty much like what we saw so far. Well, at least beasts, because they have the same basic physical makeup and the virus has more of a 'the thing' kind of relationship with animals.

What I wonder is whether trolls are born strictly from the corruption of humans or if they can breed independently. Because I have to admit that some forms of trolls, especially the smaller ones and alien looking ones - that is to say those who look a lot more functional than a cancerous mass has any right to be - were really born from humans or if they were born at a later time through some form of reproduction.