Yerameyahu wrote:

Honestly, I'm not sure why these both haven't already happened, unless the TITAN stuff on Earth is just stupid now. :)

That is a possibility. Remember the necrocytes on the Moon in Stanislaw Lem's "Peace on Earth"? Sometimes accelerating evolution doesn't produce superminds but just superparasites.

Quote:

Still, orbital bombardment remains the proper way to deal with these.

Just try it. Say I put an antenna every square kilometre in the Pacific. An orbital hit will destroy one. There will be 165.2 million left. That now will focus on your mass driver with a power of a few giga- or terawatts.

TITAN tools and Exsurgents are dangerous, to be certain. None of them are reasons to reclaim Earth, however. Far more likely, they're going to motivate the movement that says "BURN THE WHOLE THING TO ASH!" and bolster their argument greatly. It's far safer to just pound the thing from orbit with super-weapons. Reclaiming Earth requires something else; an impetus to make going down there worth the effort. As it stands, I can't think of anything short of reprogramming TITAN machines that would make the risk worthwhile. A TITAN nanoswarm, now working for Reclaimers, having restored a significant portion of Earth (say, Brazil) would get people's attention, of that I am sure.

Arenamontanus wrote:

Just try it. Say I put an antenna every square kilometre in the Pacific. An orbital hit will destroy one. There will be 165.2 million left. That now will focus on your mass driver with a power of a few giga- or terawatts.

I'm guessing that if I'm Ord Brown in the L-LA I'm bombarding you long before you can get the first 50 of your phased array antennas built. I've allways assumed that the bombardment has been carried on pretty much since the evacuation. It was probably one of the primary reasons for the evacuation. And it's probably one of the reasons the L-LA doesn't fully support the reclaimer movement. Here's a news Item I wrote for my game.

OneTrikPony's Game wrote:

[b][i]ERATO TIMES:[/I]New Orders for Bombardment Spark Flames in Old Debate[/b] It seems recent archaeological finds have excited an old debate over the defensive bombardment of known TITAN operations still active on earth, specifically those active in the areas north of the Arabian peninsula. L-LA Senior Enforcer, Ord Brown along with the Consortium Senior Rep. Randal Vox, announced together today that several lunar mass drivers would be employed launching inert masses of up to 50 tons each at targets across a swath from Arabia and the Mediterranean coast to Eastern Europe. With each projectile producing an explosive yield of about 650 Tons, the total yield of the planned bombardment is expected to exceed 50 megatons. When asked if the orbital bombardment of former Moslem territory is related to the recent exposure of several important Islamic artifacts the Senior Enforcer denied any correlation. Says mr. Brown; [i]"We will always take full measure to protect the citizens of the Alliance - and humanity at large - from threats still extant on Earth. We do this because it is our responsibility to never forget. It is our duty to continue the battle against evil. It is our destiny to survive and thrive here in the Lunar-Lagrange Alliance. This is something we've needed to do for a while now."[/i] [i]OPINION FORUM:[/i] Add your input and see what other Alliance citizens are saying; * [b]Civic Net: Yes, 62%[/b] [i]"Of course the best defense is a good offense, it's basic strategy in business as well as war. We must not become complacent about the threats that face us all. We must always remember the TITANs are still active on Earth.[/i] (Link: [u]Erato times, 9:250 AF; Launch from Earth Surface Destroyed in LEO[/u])[i] Personally, I can never forget the devastation they caused and the loss of our brothers and sisters in New Mumbai also."[/i] [b]Daljit Ramirez[/b], manager for IndyFuel, (Shackle) * [b]Ecowave: No 54%, Yes 28%[/b] [i]"Further orbital bombardment of the surface is worse than useless, it's stupid. The biosphere that remains is in extreme flux and I'm convinced that the levels of biodiversity required to maintain any biosphere at all are at a crisis point. We're all ready seeing indications that levels of O-2 in the lower atmosphere are dropping. The fact is that the major trouble on Earth are the climate effective nanoswarms that continue to disrupt natural weather patterns in a system that is just emerging from nuclear winter. You can't fight massive nanite infection by throwing rocks. We should be inserting our own guardian swarms not further disrupting the atmosphere, and several ongoing studies thereof, with massive explosions."[/i] [b]Enoshi Ken[/b], Marketing VP for Terragenesis (Elegua Station) [b]Mr. Vox replies[/b]: [i]"I know Ken well. That's why I'm so surprised that he would completely avoid the science while couching his remarks in the most emotional terms. This bombardment is a surgical strike against the buildup of TITAN forces in specific areas and has been carefully calculated to cause minimal further disruption to the infected environment of the Earth. The total mass we intend to insert into the atmosphere is less than three thousand tons. I'd remind Mr. Enoshi that we put twice that tonnage in processed iceteroids on Mars last fiscal quarter, I hear they're up to a balmy -40C degrees now [grinbig]. As my compatriot Ord Brown so elequently put it; we have a responsibility to protect ourselves."[/i] [b]Enoshi Ken[/b]: "...Science? [rolleyes]." [b]Randal Vox[/b]: [i]"Yes, Ken; Science. I'm a simple politician so maybe you could explain to me what science you have that would indicate any offensive nanotech we could apply would not just be subsumed by the hostile swarms? Or do you have... Perhaps we should talk about this privately."[/i] [i]"The[/i] 'responsibility' [i]people need to remember is that there ARE survivors on Earth. What about our[/i] 'duty'[i] to them? I'd like to think that their[/i] 'destiny'[i] involves a brighter future than slowly dying in their battle against[/i] 'evil' [i]while we bomb them from the moon. I would like to, again, propose; [b]Remembrance Day[/b][/i], (Link:[u] Erato times, 6:54 AF, Should we Interrupt the Signal Quarantine to Look for S.O.S.?[/u]) [i]a national day of secure radio silence in which we interrupt the signals jamming of the interdiction cordon for twelve hours. We owe it to[/i] 'our brothers and sisters' [i]who we left to die, to at least listen for their distress calls once a year. And don't give me that plausible deniability line, Vox. You know the Consortium could do it if you want to."[/i] [b]Tate Markess[/b], Executive Director of ERP, Station Chief of Vo Nguyen [b]Ord Brown[/b]:[i] "It's been ten years now, Tate. The chances that Jon's still alive are... I'm so sorry. But, we have to do this. There's nothing human in those areas."[/i] At [i]ERATO TIMES[/i] we'd like to know what you think about this contentious subject. Should we bomb TITANs? [b][YES] [NO] [/b]

Probably I'm off by a decimal on the megatonnage yeild of the bombardment. Looking it over now I remember being really tired when I did the napkin math for the main story but I'm sure you get the point.

Arenamontanous, I was indeed referring to massive bombardment, not just one shot. :)

As horrific as the idea of TITAN machines turning Earth into an enormous super-weapon is, I need to point out again that none of this will lead to a Reclaimation movement as was requested. It's been pointed out again and again that transhumanity is but as gnats before the creations of the TITANs, yet alone the TITANs themselves. There needs to be some impetus to make returning to the surface both worthwhile and safe.

What about this: the invention of a counter-nanoswarm. The reclaimers have successfully hacked one of the TITAN nanoswarms to behave nicely (likely with secret Promethean help). They can demonstrate that it can keep an area safe and push back the other nanoswarms - apparently the remaining TITAN systems are not evolving towards increased virulence but rather towards forming a kind of weird ecosystem, so a targeted defense swarm actually works. They have just demonstrated that they have freed a culturally important region, and even found traces of survivors. Suddenly popular opinion is galvanized, and the PC powers realize they better get on the bandwagon. Of course, the big question is how to deal with the orbital cordon. And whether the swarm is really long-term stable. And what happens when a bunch of groups want to claim key places for themselves...

To answer the OP directly: AFAIK there is no reason to return to earth that can be rationalized by profit or danger. Arenamontanus' Phased array turn the earth into a deathstar plan may be difficult to combat via bombardment from orbit because the equipment could be spread over too large an area. If that's the case then it's even more difficult to combat from the ground because the C&C will be distributed over that same amount of area, decentralized processing. A matrioska brain would be nearly undetectable from orbit if it were "under a tibetan mountain" so by the time you know it's there it's because the physics of this universe lost to the TITAN intelligence and it's not really important anymore. Even if it turns out to be true that there is a Gate in antarctica the only way to locate it would be to watch something come through it and by then it's probably way tooo late. (the exception would be if Humans found this back door from another gate world and it was miraculously unoccupied by exurgeant forces. As a GM you take a big risk writing that into the setting. A gate on earth would change everything.) There is one compelling reason to put people on earth again; that would be to gather intelligence so you can stop the matrioska brains, the superlative phased arrays, and find the hidden gate. But the Promethians probably won't let you take that risk. All you're left with for rationalizing the Reclaimer movement is the fact that transhumannity is human. It's only been 10 years since the fall. 95% of the population in the solar system once lived on earth. It is the *HOMELAND* and if history tells us anything it's that we will go to war ENDLESSLY to kick squatters off our homeland(s). That's the reason me and my main character are Reclaimers. There's lots of better options, Mars will be tereformed eventually, there's lot's of habitable Exoplanets that are paradise compared to the earth after the fall, but that's not the point. The point is; WE WILL NOT ABIDE SOMEONE FUCKING WITH OUR HOMELAND.