The concept of this skip is pretty decent. However, there are a few things that I see that could use some fixing.
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page SCP-1120.
Operatives are advised to be watchful and to exercise great caution.
You could (You don't need to) change it to this:
"All Operatives within a suspected zone should remain watchful and exercise caution."
Otherwise, It is a + from me.
This seems like a good idea. I like how it is based off a real event (the Pompeii eruption) and it is a creepy concept to think about. I like how you included a message on the walls describing their fate. It makes it all the more interesting that I am currently studying Latin. I suggest that they (since there are clearly more of this specific SCP) are intelligent and able to speak. It would make for a very interesting interview. I would like to see more work on this.
~Schrödinger's_Kitty
I'm old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway.
Eagles may soar in the clouds, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.
Love your enemies. It makes them so damned mad.
Can we actually "know" the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown.
Hey, I dont know if this is my place to say this, but I don't think you should use a signature. I've heard somewhere that they are generally not necessary or tolerated on the site. Take this with a grain of salt, tho, because I have no authority or understanding over this issue.
But I do agree with what you mentioned above, and don't really understand why this article is in the negatives
I know, but I have my own website and I use a signature there, not for here. Don't know how to fix that so it's only on my website.
I'm old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway.
Eagles may soar in the clouds, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.
Love your enemies. It makes them so damned mad.
Can we actually "know" the universe? My God, it's hard enough finding your way around in Chinatown.
He was talking about the
~Schrödinger's_Kitty
Which is different from the set wikidot signature. Wikidot signatures are set not to display on this site- what Chork meant is "don't type your name at the end of your posts".
A few comments:
Diamond-tips doesn't translate very well from tools like saws to bullets. To begin with, it'd wreck your gun. More importantly, it wouldn't be as effective as metals currently used for armor-piercing , since diamond is not dense even though it is hard. I'd suggest replacing the diamond tipped bullets with tungsten tipped bullets.
More of an opinion, but I cannot imagine a spec-ops outfit that would willingly call themselves virgins.
At the end, are you implying Sumus is using Greek fire to force Mt Vesuvius to erupt? If so, there are two scientific and historical reasons that make the idea silly. For one, the known components and effects of Greek fire would not cause a volcano to erupt. Secondly, Greek fire was created and used by the Byzantines, hundreds of years after the eruption in Pompeii. If there is a historian in the forums, feel free to fact check me on this.
I feel the main hook of this article is its historical basis, but the details of Pompeii just feel tacked on to me, and the actual skip is just rock-covered skeletons creating more rock-covered skeletons. The idea has potential, but the execution seems rather bland.
issued a sufficient number of diamond-tipped bullets.
"… and, at that point, supervisor [REDACTED] simply dropped the budget summary and said 'no, fuck this, we're using plastic explosives.'"
"Man, I love that guy."
Also, completely ignorant question; would diamond-tipped bullets practical at all?
the only known method of penetrating SCP-1120's exterior.
I know rock is hard. I do. But I believe it's not that hard. ,,Also, a diamond-tipped bullet simply has no stopping power. These things can go through walls, why would a single bullet cause enough damage to render them inactive?
Upon entering an active state, an instance of SCP-1120 will patrol the surrounding area aInstances of SCP-1120 exhibit inhuman strength, and have been observed to break through cinderblock walls and destroy sizable pieces of urban infrastructure while in pursuit.
… how do we know it will, if we have only witnessed once since containment?
Instances of SCP-1120 exhibit inhuman strength, and have been observed to break through cinderblock walls and destroy sizable pieces of urban infrastructure while in pursuit.
… eh. Humanoid what is strong is not necessarily bad, but I'm reading this and I can't stop thinking of undead trolls with a preference for construction materials.
Also, wholesale urban infrastructure seems to be part of what they do, which I believe should not be. Unless they hate urban facilities, or are secretly in league with construction contractors.
From this point on, SCP-1120-1 is to be treated as a new instance of SCP-1120 and contained accordingly.
… this belong on the SCP section. Furthermore, call me unimaginative, but I am not really feeling the horror of being turned to stone by reading this paragraph.
though the actual number may be much higher.
If we know the number of instances discovered, we know how many people died and disappeared under the assumed rubble.
To anyone who reads this, get out while you can. I go now to cast the last of the Greek Fire into the heart of Vesuvius.
… that's not even remotely what Greek Fire does, in the real world anyways… but alright.
VERDICT: Reluctant downvote.
See, I don't really mind most parts here. Its technical language is precise and adequate, it's mostly spot on at this incarnation… but it doesn't make me feel anything until the paragraph before the Addendum (which I like probably more than the Addendum itself), and the Addendum itself, which is presented barely without a frame for me to latch onto.
I don't dislike the final Addendum. It's simply failing to impress me (which is my fault, or rather, not yours). Furthermore, the SCP line drop at the end is just not engaging for me. I'd have bought a short explanation on how this was a small group that performed the functions of the Foundation and later became the precursor Foundation, but there is no explanation or expansion on that concept, and thus it falls completely short of interesting.
Finally, we already have anomalous humanoids that turn you into ONE OF US (from 008 upwards, and 008 IS ZOMBIES, so imagine how many permutations have we attempted here). The kick and conclusion is that this item does a lot of things nicely, but I don't see it staying on the mainlist without being a) insanely well-written and b) a lot more interesting.
That said, please keep writing for this site. You've got the tech-speech down to a T, and this counts for a LOT in this format writing.
I mentioned it in my post but no, diamond tipped bullets are far from practical. For one, they'd be very expensive, and would cause extensive damage to any gun using them in a short period of time. Even though a diamond tipped bullet is hard, it'd either shatter at contact, or just bounce off the intended target due to diamond's low density.
I guess the use of diamond in cutting tools misled the author. Diamond dust leftover from diamond cutting is used on diamond-tipped saws, since the cutting tool only needs hardness, not density.
would cause extensive damage to any gun using them in a short period of time.
Why? I feel like you are confusing jacketing with tipping, tipped materials should never recontact any internal surface of a gun after chambering, diamond tipping a bullet would seem irrelevant to the life cycle of the internal parts (I'm not firearms expert, so I might be wrong, correct me if that's the case)
I would expect the performance of a diamond tip bullet to be near-enough-as-to-not-matter to any other conventional ammo, since it is just a hollow point with diamond instead of the hollow (more aerodynamic but no mushrooming which was kind of the point of having the hollow in the first place)
I mean ya, its stupid because it is expensive, but making a synthetic diamond tip in volume probably costs in the dozens of dollars range, so it wouldn't be PROHIBITIVELY expensive (just two orders of magnitude of the cost of conventional ammunition).
I think the line should just be use high caliber weaponary though, but it isn't like diamond tipped bullets would be prohibitted from consideration were there a situation which somehow warranted their usage, like if you were fighting a werewolf made of buckminsterfullerene who had diamond as his silver.
(just two orders of magnitude of the cost of conventional ammunition).
Twelve times that on each magazine. Not beyond imagination, not for the Foundation, but seriously inefficient nonetheless.
like if you were fighting a werewolf made of buckminsterfullerene who had diamond as his silver.
And I wanna read this now. Damn you, Patrick.
uncut diamonds are actually really cheap, and who say we cant use cubic zirconium?
They also have cleavage planes and will shatter.
Sectional density and toughness matter as much as hardness when it comes to projectiles penetrating other things.
Actually a shattering effect might be beneficial in terms of damage to the target. A coworker of mine in the security industry uses frangible ammunition specifically for that purpose, since it shatters and transfers its energy so efficiently to the target (not entirely dissimilar to the effect of a shotgun blast).
That being said, diamond really wouldn't add any appreciable benefits to a round, as far as I know. Also, given the difficulty involved in cutting diamond into an exact shape, its utility is further diminished. Possibly to the point of being actively detrimental to the ballistics of the round.
Oh yeah, for some reason I was typing the word "tip" and everything, but I was typing about a diamond-jacket - awkward. I do agree with you that high caliber weaponry would be the way to go, since a diamond tipped bullet probably isn't what the author wants in this scenario.
Thanks for correcting me!
I've made a few minor tweaks to wording and eliminated the diamond stuff. The intent with that was mainly to give it a vulnerability in order to keep these guys from being too overpowered, but I guess given the cost of the materials needed it didn't make much difference. I'm not sure what I can do to fix the execution without a complete overhaul, so I think for the time being I'll clean it up best I can and see how long it lasts.
Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!
not being able to interact/damage human bone seems sufficient.. and its not like we have a shortage of human bones laying around… (dark headcanon of the details of "termination")
As I said in the forums, the last addendum really kills it for me.
The eruption from Vesuvius that destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii was an explosive one, meaning that there would've had to be a buildup of massive amounts of pressure over time in order to achieve that kind of eruption. Sorry, but a bit of Greek fire thrown into a caldera wouldn't be able to trigger such an event. There were also large quantities of seismic activity leading up to the eruption, and you completely left that bit out.
Also, Greek fire wasn't invented until about 600 years after Vesuvius erupted.
I love volcano-related stuff, and I really wanted to upvote this, but until you can fix the aforementioned problems, I'm novoting.
EDIT: The addendum still just doesn't work. One person simply can't trigger a volcanic eruption. I'm not even sure that the citizens of Pompeii were aware that Vesuvius was an active volcano, and even if they did, the wouldn't know what could make it erupt. I'm still going to novote, but I'm leaning more towards a downvote the more I think about it.
I guess my thought with that was that, if there was an ancient Foundation (or something similar), they could have used some kind of anomaly to trigger the volcano in order to keep these guys contained. I think I was trying to insinuate that with the Greek Fire bit (maybe it was anomalous too?), but I communicated it rather poorly. It's less "one guy holding out against the monsters" and more "the Foundation did this in order to stop things from getting worse". But I understand if it still doesn't work. Thanks for the feedback regardless!
Edited again. Removed the Greek Fire stuff in favor of something more generic.
A solid idea. I think there is a little too much information, which detracts from the reader's vision. I'll gladly upvote this if there is some refinement, but for now, keeping neutral.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
