The "Firewall" Thread (Spoilers)

[gangster]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Theophilus:
<font color=yellow>I must agree with Lennier...I don't see Valhalla Sector as a credible threat to take over the world. Even if they had the natural immunity that everyone else has (for crying out loud, they're running around in environment suits) they've gotta be too small a number to rule even a large segment of the US. They're going to have to have a LOT of outside collaborators to do anything more than rule their own town.

But that doesn't mean that they can't create a lot of trouble while they try...</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

Agree. Basically they are prisoners in their own complex. Running around in E-suits limits them to very small area of operation. True, helos give them a larger range but this is still a relatively small AO. And, if the helo goes down with mechanical problems, everyone on board is dead since their self-contained systems would be insufficient to walk back.

 

[PillowRock]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

I have scanned (as opposed to exhaustively read) this thread. I must admit that this was the first ep that I have seen since the premiere, so I am not really caught up on the plot arc.

I haven't seen anyone mentioned this, though, and it jumped out at me. When Markus was giving his speach about "if we don't make the future, others will", was I the only one who heard direct echos of Ivanova's voice-over speach from the end of B5? We seem to have hit a favorite theme of JMS. /ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif

 

[Recoil]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PillowRock:
<font color=yellow>I haven't seen anyone mentioned this, though, and it jumped out at me. When Markus was giving his speach about "if we don't make the future, others will", was I the only one who heard direct echos of Ivanova's voice-over speach from the end of B5? We seem to have hit a favorite theme of JMS. /ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>
I mentioned it. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif Scan in more detail at my first reply to this thread, which I think is the second post overall. /ubbthreads/images/icons/tongue.gif Its nice to see someone else noticed that.

 

[evilteq]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

hi
I think this episode is the best i've seen in a very looong time.

Wasn't NORAD suposed to... no, DESIGNED to resist a even a large scale nuclear atack? What could those choppers have to make everyone worry?

About the virus:
-I think we must just admit everything about it, and forget every concerns we have about it based on actual biology, just as we admit hyperspace or things like that on other series.
-if it spreads by skin, why wear enviroment suits with air suplies? why must the woman under glass be kept in the same way?
-I think VS people are the adults who survived the BD by keeping themselves out of the infected.
-The woman under glass IS infected. She is a carrier, she is infected but she does not suffer it.
- Interesting idea i've read here about she being the cause of the BD.
-I dont think the boys who survive the BD are now inmune to it. They just werent infected becose of their age, and when they grew up, there was no virus left to infect them.

I also find very interesting the idea of Ezequiel being Jeremiah's clone.

What do you think?
bye
evilteq

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

Some observations...

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr><font color=yellow>Wasn't NORAD suposed to... no, DESIGNED to resist a even a large scale nuclear atack? What could those choppers have to make everyone worry?</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote> It was designed to. Naturally upon learning of such considerations, the USSR built several 25 megaton bombs. Just in case a world without people would need a Lake Norad. Yet even a shelter which can take a small nuke may fail against people who know it...

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr><font color=yellow>About the virus: I think we must just admit everything about it, and forget every concerns we have about it based on actual biology, just as we admit hyperspace or things...</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote> I guess we should. But the process is much easier with concepts we have never seen. Hyperspace among them. The problem with viruses is simple - we already know a lot about how they work.

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr><font color=yellow> If it spreads by skin, why wear enviroment suits with air suplies? </font color=yellow><hr></blockquote> Perhaps the virus has developed new strains since the initial outbreak. Perhaps it used to spread with skin contact, but now also moves in air?

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr><font color=yellow> Why must the woman under glass be kept in the same way?<hr></blockquote></font color=yellow> I would suspect she is somewhat of an exception. Perhaps she didn't fall ill because of a genetic peculiarity, or gained partial immunity and fought it off? Just like I can resist the harmful effects of the common cold, but may threaten a person without immunity by transmitting it.

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr><font color=yellow>They just werent infected becose of their age, and when they grew up, there was no virus left to infect them.<hr></blockquote></font color=yellow> That would contradict the epidomological model of an age-specific infectious disease. New generations would be constantly entering the infectable age group, and the virus would never disappear. Instead it should move towards younger age groups.

 

[Recoil]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

Lennier, again, you are making a lot of conclusions here about the virus when you know nothing about it. Who says it has to act and behave like any other virus in existance? You are applying current science and logic to something that is completely unknown to any of us except JMS. You said we already know a lot about how they work --- but we know NOTHING of how THIS virus works.

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr><font color=yellow>Perhaps the virus has developed new strains since the initial outbreak. Perhaps it used to spread with skin contact, but now also moves in air?</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>
How can you say things above that you almost take as a fact for how viruses operate, but then toss in a line like this where you are saying "well maybe it has a new strain?" Maybe this, maybe that. That is just the point, we DONT know anything. It has been said that everyone over puberty died. That viruses die out of a corpse after a few days, so this all totally fits.

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr><font color=yellow>That would contradict the epidomological model of an age-specific infectious disease. New generations would be constantly entering the infectable age group, and the virus would never disappear. Instead it should move towards younger age groups. </font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>
Again, what if this doesnt act like a "typical" model of an age specific disease? Maybe it was engineered to do a specific thing, killed anyone over a certain stage of physical development. They DID say that after a body was dead a few days the virus died. So it is completely possible that all the people near a certain development stage got it, died, then before younger people got to that age, the virus died off from the corpses, and now there isnt a trace of it anywhere. We hear rumors it may be coming back, but we dont know how or from where yet.

My recommendation to everyone, is to consider the Big Death Virus as the following. Just compare it to the idea of Telepaths in Babylon 5. When we all first saw Babylon 5, everything seemed pretty explainable to what we knew for the most part, except the idea of a human telepath. No way could we naturally evolve to that level in such a short time. We didnt have the technology to CREATE them of our own (this was mentioned in the B5 series early on). We barely could stop the effects with harmful drugs. So what did us, the B5 fans have to do? Just treat is as the truth for what we knew. Sure it didnt make sense at the time, but it did to JMS. And in time, in the story, he told us how it came to be. You can bet that the virus is perfectly explainable at some point in the story, we just dont know it yet. Everything that has happened as a result of the virus is also perfectly logical, and will be described to us in good time.

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

The definition of a virus: a strand of DNA or RNA contained and protected by a protein case. It attaches to a target antigen expressed on a cell's surface, injects the strand of nucleic acid. The nucleic acid gets processed by the cells protein synthesis mechanisms. The proteins it produces take over the metabolism of the cell, using it to produce more copies of the virus.

What a virus can do is limited by what a host cell can do. How a virus can behave is very predictable, because trillions of generations of random viruses have tried it before and pretty much exhausted the options. Our limits define the limits of our viruses. <font color=yellow>What a human cell cannot build, a human virus cannot be.</font color=yellow>

Make the assumption that we are not dealing with a "virus" in the strict sense (this would be the case with Shadow or Technomage creations) and I am perfectly willing to suspend disbelief.

 

[gangster]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Lennier:
<font color=yellow>The definition of a virus: a strand of DNA or RNA contained and protected by a protein case. It attaches to a target antigen expressed on a cell's surface, injects the strand of nucleic acid. The nucleic acid gets processed by the cells protein synthesis mechanisms. The proteins it produces take over the metabolism of the cell, using it to produce more copies of the virus.

What a virus can do is limited by what a host cell can do. How a virus can behave is very predictable, because trillions of generations of random viruses have tried it before and pretty much exhausted the options. Our limits define the limits of our viruses. <font color=yellow>What a human cell cannot build, a human virus cannot be.</font color=yellow>

Make the assumption that we are not dealing with a "virus" in the strict sense (this would be the case with Shadow or Technomage creations) and I am perfectly willing to suspend disbelief.</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

One item about the virus that has been bothering me is that it originally was spread by direct contact. If this is true, then it should have been containable using normal quarantine measures. Any comments?

 

[Recoil]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by gangster:
<font color=yellow>One item about the virus that has been bothering me is that it originally was spread by direct contact. If this is true, then it should have been containable using normal quarantine measures. Any comments?</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>
Yep. That part is rather strange and has bugged me as well. Either they were wrong about the virus, or really really careless in containing it if it was only by skin contact, or it is more than it appears, or it is an oversight on the *gasp* writers part. It probably isnt the latter. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif

 

[gangster]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Recoil:
<font color=yellow>Yep. That part is rather strange and has bugged me as well. Either they were wrong about the virus, or really really careless in containing it if it was only by skin contact, or it is more than it appears, or it is an oversight on the *gasp* writers part. It probably isnt the latter. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

Naturally it couldn't be the writers. Everyone knows they walk on water. <LOL>

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

I thought about that also. If you think about it in a major population a contagious disease would spread like wild fire even if just by touch. You could try and contain it, but unlike ebola in africa where the population it hits is small and they dont leave, not everyone would tell people they had it. Just that one guy going into thunder moutain killed everyone since he didnt mention he got cut on a dead womens earing, then the next guy didnt mention it who touched him. And so on and so on. Just think about how many people you bump into in a day by accident, while at work, at the mall, supermarket, movies and i can list a lot. One person infected walks into a airport touchers the luggage guy, a flight attendent.He goes on a plane to another country. Those that worked at the airport touched people going to other countries. Before you know it is all spread out. How are you going to contain that?

capt

 

[channe]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

Well, in the case of this particular writer... /ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif

J/K. No, really - I like to think that JMS and Sam Egan have consulted, or do consult, people at the CDC, in the medical profession, etc, as to how a virus would really work.

 

[gangster]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by CaptDS9E:
<font color=yellow>I thought about that also. If you think about it in a major population a contagious disease would spread like wild fire even if just by touch. You could try and contain it, but unlike ebola in africa where the population it hits is small and they dont leave, not everyone would tell people they had it. Just that one guy going into thunder moutain killed everyone since he didnt mention he got cut on a dead womens earing, then the next guy didnt mention it who touched him. And so on and so on. Just think about how many people you bump into in a day by accident, while at work, at the mall, supermarket, movies and i can list a lot. One person infected walks into a airport touchers the luggage guy, a flight attendent.He goes on a plane to another country. Those that worked at the airport touched people going to other countries. Before you know it is all spread out. How are you going to contain that?

capt</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

True to an extent, but as soon as a deadly virus like the BD was known, quarantine would go into infect, transportation would shut down (worldwide,) people in not yet affected areas would make damn sure no one from the outside got in, even if it meant killing them, and so on..... Not perfect but that is what would happen.

 

[channe]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

Maybe the Big Death didn't begin just at one place...

 

[gangster]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by channe:
<font color=yellow>Maybe the Big Death didn't begin just at one place...</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

Even it started a number of places, the quarantine would have gone effect. It still would have spread as people paniced and ran for possible safety but again, those in unaffected areas would have done everything they could to keep those people out. Some places would have been successful.

 

[Morden]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

My, my. So many speculations...

On The Big Death Not Happening Everywhere:

Yes it did. And even if it didn't, does anyone honestly believe that some Japanese or Germans or any other nationality that weren't effected are going to come riding in on their white horse and save Jeremiah?
Like Hell. JMS wouldn't give us that bad of an ending.

On Valhalla Sector Taking Over:

For every virus, there's going to be someone immune. Who says the folks at Valhalla Sector need the enviromental suits? They, I know unlikely, may be used to strike fear in an opponent, hell they may even be body armor. Either way, I don't think their suits are going to inhibit them from making a world based on power. They'll find a way around it, and if they don't, they'll use people uneffected by the virus to make the world they want.
But, look at it this way, we need more facts.

Subs, Satellites, and Space Stations:

Channe told us that the show's technology is from 2021. But, the show's technology is really from 2006. 15 years since the plague killed most of the adults, subtract from 2021, you get 2006. That means there isn't a whole lot we could have missed. (Unless Bush is really going to throw us a loop)
Satellites - I find it odd we haven't heard about a satellite crashing to Earth or at least heard about some wreckage from a crashed satellite.
Subs - Hmm...I think by now most of them would have resurfaced in need of supplies, and probably would have died. Most of them.
Space Stations - Keep in mind, Mir is still up there. And it's my personal belief when Reagen had the Star Wars Program, Mir got retrofitted by someone to be one helluva big weapon.

Qunatrell. Cantrell.:

Okay, that is a stretch. Besides, JMS used Quantrell as a Senator in Season 2's "And Now For a Word..." I think JMS just likes the name.

The question is where is Valhalla Sector ?

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

Regarding space stations:

We cannot assume that Mir (or its counterpart in that "parallel universe") would be up there. Not unless it got built significantly later than it did. Or unless space research was much more active in Jeremiah's world, resulting in more (or more long-lasting) space stations. Now their counterpart of the ISS would be more likely to be up there.

Regarding space stations in general, I would suspect they can sustain a crew for several months, perhaps even a year. How long their automatic navigation systems would last without assistance is unknown. But several months would be quite sufficient to collect and analyse data about what happened on Earth, and perhaps do some theoretic biomedical tests in important directions.

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>My recommendation to everyone, is to consider the Big Death Virus as the following. Just compare it to the idea of Telepaths in Babylon 5. When we all first saw Babylon 5, everything seemed pretty explainable to what we knew for the most part, except the idea of a human telepath. No way could we naturally evolve to that level in such a short time. We didnt have the technology to CREATE them of our own (this was mentioned in the B5 series early on). We barely could stop the effects with harmful drugs. So what did us, the B5 fans have to do? Just treat is as the truth for what we knew. Sure it didnt make sense at the time, but it did to JMS. And in time, in the story, he told us how it came to be. You can bet that the virus is perfectly explainable at some point in the story, we just dont know it yet. Everything that has happened as a result of the virus is also perfectly logical, and will be described to us in good time.</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

Well said. I think it's only fair that we give JMS the benefit of the doubt... for a while at least /ubbthreads/images/icons/grin.gif

 

[grendel]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

Actually Odin One eye Lord of the Hanged deliberately caused the heroes to be killed in battle and brought to Valhalla by his daughters the Valkyries. Not to keep them from Hel's grasp but so that he would have doughty warriors at his back when Fenris and the ice giants come for him at Ragnarok (the end of the world)

 

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Re: The \"Firewall\" Thread (Spoilers)

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PsionTen:
<font color=yellow>Ezekiel and Jeremiah. I don't think its a coincidence that both these guys have biblical names. I'm not up on my Old Testament but I'd love it if anyone can tell me (briefly) the biblical stories of both Jeremiah and Ezekiel to see if there are any parallels. </font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

Ill do a small repost of something i posted on the thread "Jeremiah Question" a while back. It might give you some more info.

<font color=yellow>Ezekiel ha?

Yes I do know. I study theology see.

Lets see here if I remember it correctly. Ezekiel was born into a priest-family in ancient Israel about 615 BC. The prophet Jeremiah had warned Israel for decades that if they didn’t turn from their evil ways and again rise as a people of God, the Babylonians would come and conquer them. Of course The people didn’t repent, the Babylonians came at 597 and Ezekiel was among the first who got taken prisoner and deported back to Babylon. But Jerusalem had not yet fallen, so in Babylon the Lord came to him in a vision and commanded him to be one of his prophets. (Fascinating vision by the way, read the first chapter of Ezekiel and you will know what I mean.)

So he preached just as Jeremiah that the people should repent of their sins, that there was still hope if they but turned, but they didn’t. So in 586 the Babylonians crushed and annihilated the little that was left of Israel. Everything was lost and everyone who was not slain was taken as prisoners and deported to Babylon. Now Ezekiel changed his tune. He spoke to the new generation growing up in Babylon. The children of Israel complained that it was unfair: “The fathers eat grapes and the children get sour teeth” And Ezekiel agreed with them that the children should not be punished for the sins of the fathers. Even thou it seemed hopeless there was still hope. God had promised they would return on day. Finally, the people repented, and reinstated their divine covenant.

And after 70 years, they did return.

But Ezekiel saw longer than the return of Israel, he had visions about the coming of the Messiah and about Judgment day.

A very interesting character. It is obvious how JMS could implement this in his story arc. Despite warnings mankind didn’t turn from their wicked ways. Just like the Babylonians, the Big D came. Ezekiel is there to preach hope and work for a future when mankind can return from banishment.

Hehehe.. come to think of it. The Show and the main character shouldn’t be named Jeremiah. It and he should be named Ezra, Nehemiah or Haggai! They were the guys who led the rebuilding of Jerusalem . After Jerusalem fell Jeremiah himself was taken, against his will, to Egypt. There he was rumoured to have died a few years later. But since the show is about rebuilding I hereby propose a change of name for it! How does Nehemiah sound to you?

Sleep tight.
/Com </font color=yellow>


And with that said I just must say that Major Quantrell was a wonderfully drawn out character. He did the military act so well that would have fully believed him to be a real commander, had I met him in real life.

/Com