I think Fortress Worlds make sense in settings like Star Wars and Mass Effect where efficient FTL requires very specific travel routes, rather than just freely traveling in any direction you want. In such a case, you could effectively block off ideal travel routes and force people to either deal with your fortress in some way, or waste a lot of time going around it the long way.
Even in settings where you can travel in all directions, fortress worlds would still need to be taken or monitored because it can be used to stage attacks; ignoring them could result in the military having to deal with a counterattack being launched behind the "front lines".
@@sixthcairn This is also leaving aside the fact that even IRL, whether or not we get FTL or are stuck with STL, Fortress Worlds would make some sense. Admittedly, with the STL IRL example that requires someone coming up with a reason to effectively fight major interstellar wars but I'm skipping that part of things for now. The reason is very simple: stellar geography mean that some solar systems will be located in regions where valuable systems are 'behind' them whilst around them are systems that just aren't useful for supporting a major offensive through and past them. Sure, you can do it but when you have to import or create all of your workforce, industry and infrastructure whilst also either importing the resources you are using or exploring the system to identify mining sites, setting up the miens and then having those mines produce output... Well, how easy do you think all of that is to do when the enemy has a local logistics network fully operational and will be continuously scouting those 'low value' systems to make sure nothing like this can happen by surprise. At which point, they're going to drop a battle fleet on that system to destroy what they can or potentially co-opt it in order to allow them to carry out a counter-offensive through a route that you haven't set up major defences along already. Of course, this requires the local region to still be relatively 'undeveloped' by which I mean you don't have a major colony in every system which has more than a star in it, and potentially a minor colony supported by a stellar lifter in even those systems. But considering more or less all fiction takes part in a galaxy or local interstellar region which is at that level of 'undeveloped', it's not much of a stretch to just assume that's the case. And even in a 'developed' local interstellar region, that probably means Fortress Worlds are still useful because those worlds are the ones that have defensive set ups strong enough to ensure any colony killer attacks fail, thus making it so they can keep their logistics capabilities intact whilst the surrounding systems rapidly get depopulated and razed.
Even in Hard Sci-fi settings they could make a lot of sense, provided interstellar travel is dependent on solar-system bound infrastructure. E.g., if primary ship propulsion are lasers powered by dyson swarms, each solar system can be an important node for further travel, and based on location some can be blocking multiple other routes.
@@horvathrichard862 Particularly when you factor in said Fortress Dyson would be able to launch interception strikes or fleets for anything going near it.
Though to an extent it has to be combined with something like Stellaris where you can interdict ships with these planetary forts. I suppose you could use them as a base to disrupt unescorted convoys but that requires a large fleet of raiders that can hide behind (or more likely in/under) the planet in question, and allows for a relatively small force to suppress the planet’s interdiction capabilities while the main fleet goes on ahead.
Multi-use spaces as a means of handling long-term food storage reminded me of my submarine days. You can't replenish a modern submarine at sea (not the ones I served on anyway), but we had to be able to stay at sea, submerged, for about 90 days. With space to "comfortably" house 121 crewmembers - you can imagine that's a lot of food. We could make our own air and water of course, but we could not make food at any real scale. Note that submarines are pretty tightly packed anyway, with crew shoehorned in, so we had to be creative storing all of that food for a deployment. One technique involved coving the decks in berthing areas with #10 cans and topping that with rubber mats. I, and probably many others, forgot exactly once that there was less headspace and stood up a little too quickly when climbing out of the rack after a "good" 4 hour rest and bashed my head into the overhead.
I'll argue with you briefly on behalf of my uncle who worked a naval supply tender. They can be re-supplied and refueled at sea (all the sub "classes" are on the list of what they can service), although it must be rather dangerous since "in my 20 years, we never had to give a sub anything but their mail-bag". (It has to be both redundant, and of high risk to very expensive equipment - otherwise they'd do it as "training" on the regular instead of just having the theoretical capability standing by.) P.S. By classes, I don't mean "attack" and "boomer", I mean the named classes like the Ohio's, Threshers, and damnit those are all I can remember out of a half page list.
@@muninrob I'm reminded of the scene in *_Das Boot_* which shows that there are two tiny toilet stalls, but one of them can't be used for the first part of the cruise because it starts out stuffed with food. I'm a little bit surprised that there aren't any submarine tender vessels - or maybe there are, and their existence is classified.
@@arcadiaberger9204 I don't think those have been a thing since the final days of WW2, although the Japanese & Germans did have some submarines serving as fuel & supply tenders. (IMO, the volume of space available for supplies makes it a hard sell due to inefficiency)
@@muninrob I served on submarines, but before doing so served on three surface ships. I have done underway replenishments at sea on those surface ships, so I am well familiar with the process. They could do it on old diesel boats, which were really surface ships with the ability to dive for relatively brief periods. With all due respect to your uncle, the closest thing you can do to an unrep on a modern nuclear submarine is to surface and maybe get a small package or offload a seriously ill or injured crewman. There is no way to get supplies on the boat from another ship since the only way in or out when on the surface without risk of taking on water is through the sail, and that's a very narrow hatch. Here's an experiment you can try on your own that I just did so I know what will happen: go to your favorite search engine and search for "unrep US nuclear submarine" and see what comes out.
@@spiffygonzales5160 The droids couldn't stop an army of like, 5 million dudes of questionable skill. I'm not especially convinced they'll really do the trick here.
@@tetsatou2815 100 quadrillion droids? Sure they could. Also it was about 500 million guys trained from one of the most elite bounty hunters in the galaxy then given genetic engagements and some of the best training the galaxy had to offer. Not to mention literally every force within the Republic that wasn't just clones.
A planet converting into a fortress worlds seems quite reasonable for a world during a interstellar civil war that does not feel compelled to join either side.
The siege of Vraks was a prety good example of a good planetart war. Even with nassive scale of death and given the nature of vraks ( large areas which were uninhabited and VERY difficult to traverse. ) failed to fully explain the nature of a planetary war. Also the battle of kreig shows us how ugly things wold Get when both sides go underground. They can bomb all they want. Everyone is DEEP underground. You woulf need to crack the world with Exterminatus of an epic scale. I really LOVE these 40k adjacent videos. I still think my favorite series is the Unity series with colonizing Titan being my favorite. This series is an EXTERMELY close second. Like a hairs width close, the Unity seriez just gave me more ideas for my writing which is why it is first. Great work Isaac, SFIA never fails to impress and entertain!! Great series!! kreig is my favorite 40k faction!! I will be rewatching this series for sure!!
19:00 Fighting through the equivalent of a modern Navy ship would be an absolute nightmare. Everyone stationed there intuitively know every knee knocker and dead end. Unless you can get perfect schematics and either build a replica or implant the knowledge directly, the familiarity alone would feel like a two to one or three to on advantage.
Star Trek starships having tons of empty space for their crew size does make a certain amount of sense when you think about the times when they've had to evacuate populated areas often the size of a planet from the threat of the week. Though realistically, that means there ought to be special purpose passenger ships meant explicitly for this, also with emphasis on faster warp drives for rapid deployment to wherever you needed to get people out of in a hurry, and way more transporters than the Enterprise had.
One thing I'd add that a planet might use is a series of massive electronic warfare batteries. Your terrestrial power generation is much more robust than anything in orbit, so if you wanted to be swamping an invading fleet with EM, you could outmatch them all day long.
I always wanted to see a sci Fi franchise where planetary invasions are more like sieges. A besieging fleet and army trying to conquer the planet before a relief fleet arrives and this can take decades.
@@asmithgames5926 that is if they planet relied on the sun. They could just use nuclear and artificial green houses and have loads of stuff stock pilled.
I liked the stepping stones from easily imaginable to pocket dimension with timespace distorting defenses. They way it walked there made the insanity of the last seen reasonable!
There will be no war in the future The only wars happening now are caused by and fought in the second/third-world (eg Russia/Ukraine, Israel/ Palestine, China/Philippines) Advanced societies don't have the stomach and are to educated to die to further the interest of their rich, powerful leaders As Russia, Asia/China and the Middle-East become more wealthy, educated and stable war will end completely
There are so many risk with a singular fortress world, but there are massive advantages to making a solar system a garrison. If you are spread throughout the system that you could use as a solar system sized telescope/radar, you could get so much more out of it. That would require militarizing/fortifying multiple planets, which would have the added benifit different launch points throughout their orbits for long range defenses.
In the anime "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" there's a fortress "world" by the name of "Iserlohn" which is a mix of civilian and military facilities, it has liquid metal armour to shrug off attacks, and multiple weapons emplacements so it can effectively fight back against an invading fleet.
Fortress worlds, hive worlds, and industrial worlds have existed LOOOONG before Warhammer 40K. Also.... First Galactic Empire in Legends is stronger than the Important of Man
I've been missing my weekly Isaac Arthur binge for like five months. Oh, its buttery smooth music to my ears to finally hear Isaac talk about science and space.
I think the general flaw I see in fortress worlds is that (if we consider distances over which lasers are infeasible), there is only one valid form of defense, and it is "not being hit". At relativistic speeds, every hit is catastrophic to everything. A planet does not dodge, therefore, planets are useless as fortifications.
Well, this is like saying that standing armies make no sense because nukes exist, even at the height of Cold War both sides did keep standing armies, although they did prioritise investing in strategic nuclear forces. And there are options for defense, you could detect the projectiles from far away, and then send slow moving projectiles to intercept them, any such projectile would be destroyed upon hitting any moderately sized object. The reason why it was thought that the defense during the Cold War was useless was because of MIRV, but there were 2 factors in that, the very short window when such projectiles can be intercepted, and the lack of technology to accurately hit these projectiles, that is not such a problem in space when you have more time to react and the technology would allow you to accurately intercept these projectiles. Also, their speed would probably work against the attacker, since it means that changing their course would be impossible, so you end up with the short range ballistic missile scenario - you have a projectile that moves very fast, but cannot change course, so it's course is entirely predictable, making it easy to intercept.
Yeah, but planets have one characteristic that ships and space stations don't, the sheer mass to tank the hit if you can't dodge. So yeah, a direct relativistic impact might wreck the entire surface of a small continent but won't scratch the tunnel network hundreds of a few thousands of meters below the surface, maybe in the immediate area of impact but not beyond a few kilometers from ground zero.
I guess you missed the Kessler syndrome discussion. A relativistic weapon is really only viable against a fortress world if you don’t want anything from the system you’re attacking. You risk a good chance of making sure nothing can fly through the target system.
FYI regarding the Death Korp - the memes are a little off (big surprise, right?). They aren't carelessly or thoughtlessly wasting lives on pointless battles, they are using a brutally pragmatic combat doctrine in which lives and equipment are spent freely to purchase as many victories as possible. (Attrition warfare does end up being all about the numbers & logistics especially at the interplanetary scale)
I think it depends a bit on the author of the fluff/book, but yeah they definitely have a meme-portrayal a bit more fatalistic and suicidal and than some of their canon appearances.
It's both, the tragedy of Kriegers is that while their own doctrine makes a kind of twisted sense, their complete loyalty and willingness to follow orders means it is very easy for Imperial commanders to spend their lives carelessly without achieving any strategic goals. There is an art to commanding Krieg regiments, just as there is an art to being one of their Commissars.
@@p_serdiuk That's why, when possible, you have Death Korp regiments led by a commander from within the Death Korp. A few Inquisitors have proven up to the task as well - it seems to require a level of callous "big picture" thinking that is rare outside of the Death Korp. (Most of Isaac's fans could do it - we kind of understand how tiny the loss of hundreds of millions of men is at galactic scale.)
@@p_serdiuk Imperial Generals which are promoted up from regiments & corps - for generals from the Death Korp that means a trooper who has fought in (and survived) every level of the Krieg command structure, from his start as a boot in the trenches, up to and including commanding an imperial crusade. (The latter is kind of a stretch, it's the IG commander under Rowboat, not the Girlyman himself.) P.S. You're not entirely inaccurate, you're just a step or two further down the chain of command than you should be - you're thinking the lords & governors that hold theater & sector command positions.
David Weber had his heroes turn Earth into a fortress world in his Heirs of Empire series. (Mutineers Moon, The Armageddon Inheritance, and Heirs of Empire). The fortress world and its use are the primary focus of the second book. John Steakly has a creepy alien fortress world, a la Heinlein Starship Troopers, in his book Armor (seriously crazy good book). Speaking of Heinlein, Starship Troopers is about a campaign and attack on a fortress world.
Hey Isaac, we have a couple of things in common here. I was I the British Artillery in Germany. We fired the M107 gun. I met some GIs out there. It was just before the end of Vietnam. One guy asked me if I knew what US Army stood for on his patch. So I said United States army. He said no, it means Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet. Most of the Amercan soldiers were conscripts at that time.
As much as WH40k isn't meant to be realistic, it's general length of ground wars (some never really ending but more cyclical in nature) is oddly on point. Like the Siege of Vraks was calculated to take between a few decades or a century or more but they were able to figure an average time of 75 years using the Deathcorps of Krieg.
Actually the Germans had plans to take out the Maginot line, that is what the Siege Guns used at Sevastopol were were originally intended for. France Just fell too Quickly to use them. The plan was to take out several nearby forts . eliminating the interlocking protective fire, creating a hole in the line then pour a mechanized force through the line.
Isaac, what a great subject! You’ve done so many excellent shows that I’m floored by your constant knack for finding something compelling to devote entire episodes to. There’s not one dud amidst you hundreds of episodes!
The Problem with a fixed or predictably moving fortification, is that an attack can arrive at almost (or exactly) the speed of light, leaving no time for defense. If the attacker has a weapon that can do serious damage to your fortress, and just plans to bypass it, you maybe in for a very bad day.
I absolutely loved this episode, and also loved that you added at the end that who knows what defensive techniques the future will bring, that's just like asking us to think of some more
@@brodriguez11000 stealth hide the planet might involve lots of tunable lasers that fill the gap our planet substracts from our Sun's shine pointed at specific stars we think might watch us
Came across this channel by complete accident and I am very interested in these types of videos but just didn’t know where to find them. Keep up the good work man. Happy to say I will be binge watching all of these over the next couple of days.😊
This subject remind me of the Planet Harvest from Halo Game. However, the military instillation of that planets is lost due to multiple attack from the Covenant.
Asteroids that had their surfaces melted many meters deep, but hollowed out for gun & missile emplacements would be effective strongholds. Comets too, maybe, as covert emplacements.
easy, just spam planetary shields on every planet/habitats you own. remember, you can only have 1 inhabited habitat per systems, as such if you want only a "doorstopper" don't bother with any of the other orbitals
The modern M50 gas mask is infinitely better than the one I had to wear when in. (MCU-2 I think.) Add a powered option to it, and it would be even more comfortable for prolonged use.
And you open with our own lovely Eilean Donan castle... I'd suggest putting it on your itinerary if you ever visit here Isaac... thanks again for your content, always welcome, but even more so in this world gone mad... I always feel that if those 'in charge' could see the off-world possibilities you show us (no matter how ambitious or fantastical...), they'd be less likely to be kicking the shit outta the planet, and each other...😢 But then, I'm just an amiable dreamer, eh? 😅😅 Thanks again, you're a good man...👍🏴🤗
2:24 Another attempt of Isaac to orbital strike Floridaman. At this rate, someone should come along and list out every instants that this accorded in, just for fun.
Something often forgotten is how deep we can go too. Deep core drilling and sound wave readings have found underground caves the size of Texas! If we can make a space station, we can make an underground station just as well, maybe better. Entire civilizations could be built underground.
Excellent content as usual. The freeform scenarios tie everything together (or branch possibilities out?) nicely. And the more personal snippets are a welcome feature of your show that keep us grounded.
I feel that attacking a planet can be either easy (If you want to destroy a threat to your space activities without regard for life or resources, just dump several large asteroids at high speed on the planet) or very hard (if you want to preserve planet side resources or life).
Depending on how thorough you want to be it can be extremely hard in all cases, since I double even dumping 100s of asteroids would be enough to destroy bunkers 15km deep
Depends, asteroids and other kinetic projectiles would be easy to intercept by sending objects at them for them to hit, the faster they go the harder it is for them to change course, and no matter what they hit they will be vaporised.
When I see how much conflict and violence there was in our past and still is in our modern world, I can only draw the conclusion that war will be forever part of the human condition and that the civilizations of the future will inflict unimagineable horrors on each other.
One of the scifi stories i think does planetary invasion some justice is mechwarrior. Im reminded of the invasion of earth which took years and millions upon millions of soldiers. Its neat
this reminds me of stellaris they have a mod called gigi engineering that has this Maginot World, you can have 60k in just ground troops, it disables jump drives in your lands so basically they have to take out the planet oh yea and if they do take the planet the planet itself blows up i think the system itself sooooo. Stellaris - Maginot World Mechanics (When You REALLY Don't Want The World To Break) from the youtuber Aspec if you want to know more. Yes i did not include firepower it is insane
I play Gigastructures myself, and it is quite fun watching the AI try to get past a Maginot world. Sometimes I will spawn one in over an opposing AI's capital world for a challenge.
On comfortable defence facilities: My great-granddad participated in Kerensky-offensive in 1917, overrunning the Austrian trenches. He was astonished at their comfort and sophistication - like, officers' quarters had wallpapers inside iirc.
Don't forget the Macross model: An immense warship with so much unused space inside it that you use it to grab whole cities and carry them in the comparative safety of a cargo hold in the belly of the ship, including food and energy production intended to support the city and not the ship carrying it. And Armageddon got the name because of how the two human factions utterly ruined it when it was invaded by demons, since neither side had any idea what the demons were and that all they needed t o do to beat them was blow the warp-gates, which they did as a desperation move hoping to trap the incomprehensible aliens they thought they were fighting. Instead of trapping the demons, cutting off the flow of energy through the warp gates caused the demons to simply vanish.
20:45 could we have an episode about what kind of fusion we should strive for. Dd. Cno. What could be usefull in certain situations? What is the next step in fusion once we have done the easy fusion.
Hey i have a recomendation, Ai on Ai war, we always imagine the Ai fighting for freedom against the exploiting human, but i think the one most likely to kill a protesting worker robot is the AI managing the automated factory, that could make a interesting science fiction setting where the war is betwen a loyalist AI and a rebellius AI while the humans try to survive in the crossfire
~4:00 Attacking ships can sit out at the asteroid belt and throw rocks, pounding the planet's infrastructure until the planet surrenders. Shooting back at them is difficult, since they can see your missiles lifting off and be somewhere else before they arrive. Another reason to get ourselves dispersed into defensible habitats.
The scale of Warhammer, some sci-fi series, and Expanse references and the grounded realism of what is technically possible. Only on SFIA can such mind breaking scales and numbers be made both Huge and Small yet immersive simultaneously. Another informative and entertaining video Isaac. Made my commute that much more enjoyable.
When you're talking about orbital bombardment and protection underground it made me think of how people think a powerful nuclear bomb or a hydrogen bomb could ignite and atmosphere and kill all life on a planet. If that were true and I'm getting that right, wouldn't an invading force only need to get one missile through if they're not concerned with keeping anything alive on the planet or natural resources? Maybe people in the underground bunkers / fortresses could still survive but I imagine it would be very miserable for them and maybe even more difficult to defend outside their bunkers with any exterior defenses after that. Great video as always though!
Going from 0 kids to 3 is a hell of an adjustment, and I'm glad you finally started calling them your kids instead of explaining they're adopted every time. :D They're really going to get a good start in life; it looks like you and your wife are doing a great job spending time with them and everything. Great video, as always ^.^
Yeah, the kids have been calling us mom and dad since we first met them but it felt dishonest not clarify they were in the process of adoption. I don't want to treat it as a secret either but it feels superfluous now
I think it makes sense to turn a planet into a fortress world if there's something on that world or near that world worth protecting. Perhaps the civilization's central government convenes there. Or perhaps the fortress world could be something like a "Failsafe" to retreat to if something within the civilization goes horribly wrong such as galactic wars, disease, or technological collapses. You may also want to build a fortress world if it's being used as a staging ground for other projects. For instance, lets say you're trying to harness the power of OUR sun for example. You can use Mercury as a staging ground for creating a Dyson's Swarm or Sphere and maybe even turn Mercury into a gigantic power plant of sorts which would obviously need to be heavily defended from extraterrestrial attack or terrorism.
21:15 diamonds are hard, not strong. A diamond dome would certainly shatter upon meteor impact. It might be beneficial for making structures scratch resistant (to avoid corrosion and mitigate some of sandstorm damage), otherwise it makes no sense.
Most sci fi: A couple dozen ships and several thousand soldiers is enough to take several planets 40k & Helldivers: Literally tens of millions in fatalities alone to take a single planet
Yes, I'd say making up a headline would be tougher but we'll enjoy anything you work on so go for the classic movies ^^ I'm here mostly for the mo ie breakdowns, the end joke is great but I'm here for the middle bit
Hey Isaac, have u ever done a video expanding on the idea of "brain jars" you brought up in this video? You mentioned that, for the purposes of fortress worlds, a civilization could shed their bodies, place their brains in a safely stored device, and upload their conciousnesses to artificial bodies to defend their fortress world. I was wondering about expanding this... "brain jar concept" to cover the idea of human kind eventually doing the same, for the purposes of not just war, but exploring space, or engaging in life endangering thrill seeking, and how the idea of having backup bodies would impact society. Would we ( as a species) become more reckless and violent? Would we become fearless explorers? Would some nefarious governing force use this technology to enslave us? What do you think?
The planet broke before the guard did.
Imagine the low trust environment when boarders learn that directions can lie.
First Galactic Empire in Legends is stronger than the Imperium of man. :P
Cadia Stands!
@@spiffygonzales5160 you... you really have absolutely no clue what you are saying in every sense of the word
The guard still broke
"The combined might of NATO kicking in the door of a daycare facility." Is the best imagery I've had in a long time.
Happens all the time really.
Don't give them ideas!
That cracked me up. I'm going to use that in a future conversation.
I think Fortress Worlds make sense in settings like Star Wars and Mass Effect where efficient FTL requires very specific travel routes, rather than just freely traveling in any direction you want. In such a case, you could effectively block off ideal travel routes and force people to either deal with your fortress in some way, or waste a lot of time going around it the long way.
Even in settings where you can travel in all directions, fortress worlds would still need to be taken or monitored because it can be used to stage attacks; ignoring them could result in the military having to deal with a counterattack being launched behind the "front lines".
@@sixthcairn This is also leaving aside the fact that even IRL, whether or not we get FTL or are stuck with STL, Fortress Worlds would make some sense. Admittedly, with the STL IRL example that requires someone coming up with a reason to effectively fight major interstellar wars but I'm skipping that part of things for now.
The reason is very simple: stellar geography mean that some solar systems will be located in regions where valuable systems are 'behind' them whilst around them are systems that just aren't useful for supporting a major offensive through and past them. Sure, you can do it but when you have to import or create all of your workforce, industry and infrastructure whilst also either importing the resources you are using or exploring the system to identify mining sites, setting up the miens and then having those mines produce output...
Well, how easy do you think all of that is to do when the enemy has a local logistics network fully operational and will be continuously scouting those 'low value' systems to make sure nothing like this can happen by surprise. At which point, they're going to drop a battle fleet on that system to destroy what they can or potentially co-opt it in order to allow them to carry out a counter-offensive through a route that you haven't set up major defences along already.
Of course, this requires the local region to still be relatively 'undeveloped' by which I mean you don't have a major colony in every system which has more than a star in it, and potentially a minor colony supported by a stellar lifter in even those systems. But considering more or less all fiction takes part in a galaxy or local interstellar region which is at that level of 'undeveloped', it's not much of a stretch to just assume that's the case. And even in a 'developed' local interstellar region, that probably means Fortress Worlds are still useful because those worlds are the ones that have defensive set ups strong enough to ensure any colony killer attacks fail, thus making it so they can keep their logistics capabilities intact whilst the surrounding systems rapidly get depopulated and razed.
Even in Hard Sci-fi settings they could make a lot of sense, provided interstellar travel is dependent on solar-system bound infrastructure. E.g., if primary ship propulsion are lasers powered by dyson swarms, each solar system can be an important node for further travel, and based on location some can be blocking multiple other routes.
@@horvathrichard862 Particularly when you factor in said Fortress Dyson would be able to launch interception strikes or fleets for anything going near it.
Though to an extent it has to be combined with something like Stellaris where you can interdict ships with these planetary forts. I suppose you could use them as a base to disrupt unescorted convoys but that requires a large fleet of raiders that can hide behind (or more likely in/under) the planet in question, and allows for a relatively small force to suppress the planet’s interdiction capabilities while the main fleet goes on ahead.
Multi-use spaces as a means of handling long-term food storage reminded me of my submarine days. You can't replenish a modern submarine at sea (not the ones I served on anyway), but we had to be able to stay at sea, submerged, for about 90 days. With space to "comfortably" house 121 crewmembers - you can imagine that's a lot of food. We could make our own air and water of course, but we could not make food at any real scale. Note that submarines are pretty tightly packed anyway, with crew shoehorned in, so we had to be creative storing all of that food for a deployment. One technique involved coving the decks in berthing areas with #10 cans and topping that with rubber mats. I, and probably many others, forgot exactly once that there was less headspace and stood up a little too quickly when climbing out of the rack after a "good" 4 hour rest and bashed my head into the overhead.
It's a yellow submarine, So it's all good. All our friends are all aboard. many more of them live next door.
I'll argue with you briefly on behalf of my uncle who worked a naval supply tender. They can be re-supplied and refueled at sea (all the sub "classes" are on the list of what they can service), although it must be rather dangerous since "in my 20 years, we never had to give a sub anything but their mail-bag". (It has to be both redundant, and of high risk to very expensive equipment - otherwise they'd do it as "training" on the regular instead of just having the theoretical capability standing by.)
P.S. By classes, I don't mean "attack" and "boomer", I mean the named classes like the Ohio's, Threshers, and damnit those are all I can remember out of a half page list.
@@muninrob I'm reminded of the scene in *_Das Boot_* which shows that there are two tiny toilet stalls, but one of them can't be used for the first part of the cruise because it starts out stuffed with food.
I'm a little bit surprised that there aren't any submarine tender vessels - or maybe there are, and their existence is classified.
@@arcadiaberger9204 I don't think those have been a thing since the final days of WW2, although the Japanese & Germans did have some submarines serving as fuel & supply tenders. (IMO, the volume of space available for supplies makes it a hard sell due to inefficiency)
@@muninrob I served on submarines, but before doing so served on three surface ships. I have done underway replenishments at sea on those surface ships, so I am well familiar with the process. They could do it on old diesel boats, which were really surface ships with the ability to dive for relatively brief periods. With all due respect to your uncle, the closest thing you can do to an unrep on a modern nuclear submarine is to surface and maybe get a small package or offload a seriously ill or injured crewman. There is no way to get supplies on the boat from another ship since the only way in or out when on the surface without risk of taking on water is through the sail, and that's a very narrow hatch. Here's an experiment you can try on your own that I just did so I know what will happen: go to your favorite search engine and search for "unrep US nuclear submarine" and see what comes out.
The timing of this episode is so timely. I just got a commission from the Lord Solar about fortifying the various worlds from the Tyranid threat.
Just get the star wars droid army. Problem solved
@@spiffygonzales5160HERETEK!!
Don't tell the Admech if you do that haha
@@spiffygonzales5160 The droids couldn't stop an army of like, 5 million dudes of questionable skill. I'm not especially convinced they'll really do the trick here.
@@tetsatou2815
100 quadrillion droids? Sure they could.
Also it was about 500 million guys trained from one of the most elite bounty hunters in the galaxy then given genetic engagements and some of the best training the galaxy had to offer. Not to mention literally every force within the Republic that wasn't just clones.
I always appreciate the "First rule of warfare" reminders
There's a lot of them. Ignore one at your peril
The first rule of warfare, is ignore it at your peril. The second rule of warfare is please see the first rule.
Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
A planet converting into a fortress worlds seems quite reasonable for a world during a interstellar civil war that does not feel compelled to join either side.
The siege of Vraks was a prety good example of a good planetart war. Even with nassive scale of death and given the nature of vraks ( large areas which were uninhabited and VERY difficult to traverse. ) failed to fully explain the nature of a planetary war. Also the battle of kreig shows us how ugly things wold
Get when both sides go underground. They can bomb all they want. Everyone is DEEP underground. You woulf need to crack the world with Exterminatus of an epic scale. I really LOVE these 40k adjacent videos. I still think my favorite series is the Unity series with colonizing Titan being my favorite. This series is an EXTERMELY close second. Like a hairs width close, the Unity seriez just gave me more ideas for my writing which is why it is first. Great work Isaac, SFIA never fails to impress and entertain!! Great series!! kreig is my favorite 40k faction!! I will be rewatching this series for sure!!
19:00 Fighting through the equivalent of a modern Navy ship would be an absolute nightmare. Everyone stationed there intuitively know every knee knocker and dead end. Unless you can get perfect schematics and either build a replica or implant the knowledge directly, the familiarity alone would feel like a two to one or three to on advantage.
Star Trek starships having tons of empty space for their crew size does make a certain amount of sense when you think about the times when they've had to evacuate populated areas often the size of a planet from the threat of the week. Though realistically, that means there ought to be special purpose passenger ships meant explicitly for this, also with emphasis on faster warp drives for rapid deployment to wherever you needed to get people out of in a hurry, and way more transporters than the Enterprise had.
One thing I'd add that a planet might use is a series of massive electronic warfare batteries. Your terrestrial power generation is much more robust than anything in orbit, so if you wanted to be swamping an invading fleet with EM, you could outmatch them all day long.
3:12 i wish there was some footage of a massive attack coming from the ground to the spaceships to show instead of just the orbital bombardment
I always wanted to see a sci Fi franchise where planetary invasions are more like sieges. A besieging fleet and army trying to conquer the planet before a relief fleet arrives and this can take decades.
Thats Star Wars.
They could black their sun as well.
40k, except 40k is basically space ww2 with scifi aesthetics.
@@asmithgames5926 that is if they planet relied on the sun. They could just use nuclear and artificial green houses and have loads of stuff stock pilled.
@@megathicc6367 True. Would be demoralizing tho.
The speculation story section at the end of the episode is always the best part, but this one was especially awesome.
I was waiting for Isaac to mention the ripping and tearing that was happening on Eros.
I liked the stepping stones from easily imaginable to pocket dimension with timespace distorting defenses. They way it walked there made the insanity of the last seen reasonable!
There will be no war in the future
The only wars happening now are caused by and fought in the second/third-world (eg Russia/Ukraine, Israel/ Palestine, China/Philippines)
Advanced societies don't have the stomach and are to educated to die to further the interest of their rich, powerful leaders
As Russia, Asia/China and the Middle-East become more wealthy, educated and stable war will end completely
There are so many risk with a singular fortress world, but there are massive advantages to making a solar system a garrison. If you are spread throughout the system that you could use as a solar system sized telescope/radar, you could get so much more out of it. That would require militarizing/fortifying multiple planets, which would have the added benifit different launch points throughout their orbits for long range defenses.
The Maginot line worked quite nicely. Germany did an end run around it.
Thank you so much for the subtitles! I'm so tired of replaying other creators videos 5 times to try and figure out if they said "can" or "can't".
In the anime "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" there's a fortress "world" by the name of "Iserlohn" which is a mix of civilian and military facilities, it has liquid metal armour to shrug off attacks, and multiple weapons emplacements so it can effectively fight back against an invading fleet.
Fortress world's Isaac's a official warhammer convert brothers.
Fortress worlds, hive worlds, and industrial worlds have existed LOOOONG before Warhammer 40K.
Also.... First Galactic Empire in Legends is stronger than the Important of Man
What a Fister, that enjoys reading WH40k books and became one of the best futurists on RUclips, will wonders never cease!
I've been missing my weekly Isaac Arthur binge for like five months. Oh, its buttery smooth music to my ears to finally hear Isaac talk about science and space.
I think the general flaw I see in fortress worlds is that (if we consider distances over which lasers are infeasible), there is only one valid form of defense, and it is "not being hit".
At relativistic speeds, every hit is catastrophic to everything.
A planet does not dodge, therefore, planets are useless as fortifications.
Well, this is like saying that standing armies make no sense because nukes exist, even at the height of Cold War both sides did keep standing armies, although they did prioritise investing in strategic nuclear forces.
And there are options for defense, you could detect the projectiles from far away, and then send slow moving projectiles to intercept them, any such projectile would be destroyed upon hitting any moderately sized object. The reason why it was thought that the defense during the Cold War was useless was because of MIRV, but there were 2 factors in that, the very short window when such projectiles can be intercepted, and the lack of technology to accurately hit these projectiles, that is not such a problem in space when you have more time to react and the technology would allow you to accurately intercept these projectiles.
Also, their speed would probably work against the attacker, since it means that changing their course would be impossible, so you end up with the short range ballistic missile scenario - you have a projectile that moves very fast, but cannot change course, so it's course is entirely predictable, making it easy to intercept.
Yeah, but planets have one characteristic that ships and space stations don't, the sheer mass to tank the hit if you can't dodge.
So yeah, a direct relativistic impact might wreck the entire surface of a small continent but won't scratch the tunnel network hundreds of a few thousands of meters below the surface, maybe in the immediate area of impact but not beyond a few kilometers from ground zero.
I guess you missed the Kessler syndrome discussion. A relativistic weapon is really only viable against a fortress world if you don’t want anything from the system you’re attacking. You risk a good chance of making sure nothing can fly through the target system.
There is an anime anthology called "memories." I think 80s. The third episode somewhat Satirized such a life. Odd and funny.
FYI regarding the Death Korp - the memes are a little off (big surprise, right?). They aren't carelessly or thoughtlessly wasting lives on pointless battles, they are using a brutally pragmatic combat doctrine in which lives and equipment are spent freely to purchase as many victories as possible. (Attrition warfare does end up being all about the numbers & logistics especially at the interplanetary scale)
I think it depends a bit on the author of the fluff/book, but yeah they definitely have a meme-portrayal a bit more fatalistic and suicidal and than some of their canon appearances.
It's both, the tragedy of Kriegers is that while their own doctrine makes a kind of twisted sense, their complete loyalty and willingness to follow orders means it is very easy for Imperial commanders to spend their lives carelessly without achieving any strategic goals. There is an art to commanding Krieg regiments, just as there is an art to being one of their Commissars.
@@p_serdiuk That's why, when possible, you have Death Korp regiments led by a commander from within the Death Korp. A few Inquisitors have proven up to the task as well - it seems to require a level of callous "big picture" thinking that is rare outside of the Death Korp. (Most of Isaac's fans could do it - we kind of understand how tiny the loss of hundreds of millions of men is at galactic scale.)
@@muninrob Regiments and Corps aren't a problem, it's Armies that are led by Imperial generals.
@@p_serdiuk Imperial Generals which are promoted up from regiments & corps - for generals from the Death Korp that means a trooper who has fought in (and survived) every level of the Krieg command structure, from his start as a boot in the trenches, up to and including commanding an imperial crusade. (The latter is kind of a stretch, it's the IG commander under Rowboat, not the Girlyman himself.)
P.S. You're not entirely inaccurate, you're just a step or two further down the chain of command than you should be - you're thinking the lords & governors that hold theater & sector command positions.
David Weber had his heroes turn Earth into a fortress world in his Heirs of Empire series. (Mutineers Moon, The Armageddon Inheritance, and Heirs of Empire). The fortress world and its use are the primary focus of the second book.
John Steakly has a creepy alien fortress world, a la Heinlein Starship Troopers, in his book Armor (seriously crazy good book).
Speaking of Heinlein, Starship Troopers is about a campaign and attack on a fortress world.
Hey Isaac, we have a couple of things in common here. I was I the British Artillery in Germany. We fired the M107 gun. I met some GIs out there. It was just before the end of Vietnam. One guy asked me if I knew what US Army stood for on his patch. So I said United States army. He said no, it means Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet. Most of the Amercan soldiers were conscripts at that time.
As much as WH40k isn't meant to be realistic, it's general length of ground wars (some never really ending but more cyclical in nature) is oddly on point. Like the Siege of Vraks was calculated to take between a few decades or a century or more but they were able to figure an average time of 75 years using the Deathcorps of Krieg.
Actually the Germans had plans to take out the Maginot line, that is what the Siege Guns used at Sevastopol were were originally intended for. France Just fell too Quickly to use them. The plan was to take out several nearby forts . eliminating the interlocking protective fire, creating a hole in the line then pour a mechanized force through the line.
Isaac, what a great subject! You’ve done so many excellent shows that I’m floored by your constant knack for finding something compelling to devote entire episodes to. There’s not one dud amidst you hundreds of episodes!
The Problem with a fixed or predictably moving fortification, is that an attack can arrive at almost (or exactly) the speed of light, leaving no time for defense. If the attacker has a weapon that can do serious damage to your fortress, and just plans to bypass it, you maybe in for a very bad day.
Beautiful start to the day
Or to end it, in another Timezone.
I absolutely loved this episode, and also loved that you added at the end that who knows what defensive techniques the future will bring, that's just like asking us to think of some more
Planetary shields. Or just stealth hide an entire planet.
@@brodriguez11000 stealth hide the planet might involve lots of tunable lasers that fill the gap our planet substracts from our Sun's shine pointed at specific stars we think might watch us
Came across this channel by complete accident and I am very interested in these types of videos but just didn’t know where to find them. Keep up the good work man. Happy to say I will be binge watching all of these over the next couple of days.😊
Next few months you mean? SFIA has an incredible catalog! I've been with the channel since early days, the journey is wonderful.
@@oldmankatan7383Where's he from anyway? I can't place the accent.
@@thehound9638 Midwest, USA. Issac also has a speech impediment that might make placing it a bit hard. 😉
At 22-23 minutes, when you talk about space habitats with modular homes, reminded me of the ASTEN space habitat.
And don't install a huge vent directly to your power core. Rebels will use it for aiming practice.
2 more episodes till episode 420 ,, can't wait
Me too
"As long as there's people, there will be conflict." Unless the aliens who arrive are the angels escorting Jesus, in which case ...
This subject remind me of the Planet Harvest from Halo Game. However, the military instillation of that planets is lost due to multiple attack from the Covenant.
More like Reach
Asteroids that had their surfaces melted many meters deep, but hollowed out for gun & missile emplacements would be effective strongholds. Comets too, maybe, as covert emplacements.
easy, just spam planetary shields on every planet/habitats you own. remember, you can only have 1 inhabited habitat per systems, as such if you want only a "doorstopper" don't bother with any of the other orbitals
15:00 ‘Khorne approves this video’ Lol
The modern M50 gas mask is infinitely better than the one I had to wear when in. (MCU-2 I think.)
Add a powered option to it, and it would be even more comfortable for prolonged use.
I love that you mentioned the geo-front from neon genesis. I have thought of it a few time when you were talking about domes on the channel.
Our boy Isaac been hitting them Imperium books. We will never forget CADIA! And for Star Wars nerds the Prakith, and of course Byss.
They protect the imperial borders
My first thought was Siege of Vraks
@@robert48044 my thoughts bless the death korps
Borders? Humanity rules over all. They stand as bearings against heresy.
-Krieg, probably
And you open with our own lovely Eilean Donan castle... I'd suggest putting it on your itinerary if you ever visit here Isaac... thanks again for your content, always welcome, but even more so in this world gone mad... I always feel that if those 'in charge' could see the off-world possibilities you show us (no matter how ambitious or fantastical...), they'd be less likely to be kicking the shit outta the planet, and each other...😢 But then, I'm just an amiable dreamer, eh? 😅😅
Thanks again, you're a good man...👍🏴🤗
One day I'll make it out there, I never got to see many castles outside Germany and NE France and it was a favorite pasttime while living in Europe
@@isaacarthurSFIAFantastic buddy, and you'll get a warm welcome when you get here. 👍🤗🏴
2:24 Another attempt of Isaac to orbital strike Floridaman. At this rate, someone should come along and list out every instants that this accorded in, just for fun.
Thankkkkk youuuuuuu❤❤❤❤❤❤❤. I needed this episode more than you know. 🎉🎉
I like the idea of a fortress world
Great show Auther
Could there also be agriculture worlds? Worlds specifically made for producing food?
Apparently that's a future episode
Something often forgotten is how deep we can go too. Deep core drilling and sound wave readings have found underground caves the size of Texas! If we can make a space station, we can make an underground station just as well, maybe better. Entire civilizations could be built underground.
Excellent content as usual. The freeform scenarios tie everything together (or branch possibilities out?) nicely. And the more personal snippets are a welcome feature of your show that keep us grounded.
I feel that attacking a planet can be either easy (If you want to destroy a threat to your space activities without regard for life or resources, just dump several large asteroids at high speed on the planet) or very hard (if you want to preserve planet side resources or life).
Depending on how thorough you want to be it can be extremely hard in all cases, since I double even dumping 100s of asteroids would be enough to destroy bunkers 15km deep
Depends, asteroids and other kinetic projectiles would be easy to intercept by sending objects at them for them to hit, the faster they go the harder it is for them to change course, and no matter what they hit they will be vaporised.
When I see how much conflict and violence there was in our past and still is in our modern world, I can only draw the conclusion that war will be forever part of the human condition and that the civilizations of the future will inflict unimagineable horrors on each other.
Not first, but still eager.
Nice video! That opening shot of a castle os only a few hours down the road from my house!😊
There are more first rules of war than space corp directives :) someone needs to collate all of your first rules into a single.list
Make a Warhammer 40k episode already. I can feel the tension in you.
Nice Patton reference!
I'm loving the 40k-esque vids :)
Arthursday is always a good day. :)
Loved the Iain M. Banks reference. Among my top three favorite sci-fi authors of all time.
Never forget that Cadia broke before the Guard did. The Emperor Protects.
One of the scifi stories i think does planetary invasion some justice is mechwarrior. Im reminded of the invasion of earth which took years and millions upon millions of soldiers. Its neat
Nice to see Eilean Donan castle Isaac, good choice! I'm getting married there next year :)
this reminds me of stellaris they have a mod called gigi engineering that has this Maginot World, you can have 60k in just ground troops, it disables jump drives in your lands so basically they have to take out the planet oh yea and if they do take the planet the planet itself blows up i think the system itself sooooo. Stellaris - Maginot World Mechanics (When You REALLY Don't Want The World To Break) from the youtuber Aspec if you want to know more. Yes i did not include firepower it is insane
I play Gigastructures myself, and it is quite fun watching the AI try to get past a Maginot world. Sometimes I will spawn one in over an opposing AI's capital world for a challenge.
On comfortable defence facilities:
My great-granddad participated in Kerensky-offensive in 1917, overrunning the Austrian trenches. He was astonished at their comfort and sophistication - like, officers' quarters had wallpapers inside iirc.
Don't forget the Macross model: An immense warship with so much unused space inside it that you use it to grab whole cities and carry them in the comparative safety of a cargo hold in the belly of the ship, including food and energy production intended to support the city and not the ship carrying it.
And Armageddon got the name because of how the two human factions utterly ruined it when it was invaded by demons, since neither side had any idea what the demons were and that all they needed t o do to beat them was blow the warp-gates, which they did as a desperation move hoping to trap the incomprehensible aliens they thought they were fighting. Instead of trapping the demons, cutting off the flow of energy through the warp gates caused the demons to simply vanish.
20:45 could we have an episode about what kind of fusion we should strive for. Dd. Cno. What could be usefull in certain situations?
What is the next step in fusion once we have done the easy fusion.
Im trying to imagine serving in a military bunker for years at a time with Isaac as my bunk mate. I would either go insane or become enlightened.
Hey i have a recomendation, Ai on Ai war, we always imagine the Ai fighting for freedom against the exploiting human, but i think the one most likely to kill a protesting worker robot is the AI managing the automated factory, that could make a interesting science fiction setting where the war is betwen a loyalist AI and a rebellius AI while the humans try to survive in the crossfire
I just found your channel again! Yes. And I get serious Warhammer vibes right at the getgo. :D Much love.
Lol! Khorne approves this video! Indeed.
The Maginot line would have worked if the French front command did not prematurely pull their units out... So yeah the idea was not that bad.
~4:00 Attacking ships can sit out at the asteroid belt and throw rocks, pounding the planet's infrastructure until the planet surrenders. Shooting back at them is difficult, since they can see your missiles lifting off and be somewhere else before they arrive.
Another reason to get ourselves dispersed into defensible habitats.
The scale of Warhammer, some sci-fi series, and Expanse references and the grounded realism of what is technically possible.
Only on SFIA can such mind breaking scales and numbers be made both Huge and Small yet immersive simultaneously.
Another informative and entertaining video Isaac. Made my commute that much more enjoyable.
When you're talking about orbital bombardment and protection underground it made me think of how people think a powerful nuclear bomb or a hydrogen bomb could ignite and atmosphere and kill all life on a planet. If that were true and I'm getting that right, wouldn't an invading force only need to get one missile through if they're not concerned with keeping anything alive on the planet or natural resources? Maybe people in the underground bunkers / fortresses could still survive but I imagine it would be very miserable for them and maybe even more difficult to defend outside their bunkers with any exterior defenses after that. Great video as always though!
Could there be a version that just pulls a big duvet over its head?
Going from 0 kids to 3 is a hell of an adjustment, and I'm glad you finally started calling them your kids instead of explaining they're adopted every time. :D They're really going to get a good start in life; it looks like you and your wife are doing a great job spending time with them and everything.
Great video, as always ^.^
Yeah, the kids have been calling us mom and dad since we first met them but it felt dishonest not clarify they were in the process of adoption. I don't want to treat it as a secret either but it feels superfluous now
@@isaacarthurSFIA I hear you, that sounds reasonable
Essentially the Siege of Vraks should be the _baseline minimum_ of what planetary siege warfare in the 41st millennium should be like.
16:55 Ah yes Kreg.
Don't forget your shovel.
The ad at the end deserved a like on its on!
"the combined force of NATO kicking in the door at a daycare facility" is the funniest imagery I've heard in a while
Isaac -- at ~ 18:30 "a decent approximation of sanity" in a life of war and death . . . R O F L
It is Thursday, My Dudes!
Time for SCIEEEENCE!
Man it makes me happy to see you enjoying time with your kids. Onwards and upwards bud ❤
What Warhammer 40K got right was the utter pants shiting dread war on an Interstellar scale can inspire
Love the short stories!
Arthuria Stands!
I think it makes sense to turn a planet into a fortress world if there's something on that world or near that world worth protecting. Perhaps the civilization's central government convenes there. Or perhaps the fortress world could be something like a "Failsafe" to retreat to if something within the civilization goes horribly wrong such as galactic wars, disease, or technological collapses. You may also want to build a fortress world if it's being used as a staging ground for other projects. For instance, lets say you're trying to harness the power of OUR sun for example. You can use Mercury as a staging ground for creating a Dyson's Swarm or Sphere and maybe even turn Mercury into a gigantic power plant of sorts which would obviously need to be heavily defended from extraterrestrial attack or terrorism.
21:15 diamonds are hard, not strong. A diamond dome would certainly shatter upon meteor impact. It might be beneficial for making structures scratch resistant (to avoid corrosion and mitigate some of sandstorm damage), otherwise it makes no sense.
Thanks Isaac anthur for sharing this massage about discoveries
Most sci fi: A couple dozen ships and several thousand soldiers is enough to take several planets
40k & Helldivers: Literally tens of millions in fatalities alone to take a single planet
Warhammer 40k has joined the chat... 😏
You are one imaginative MF, love your content man.
Yes, I'd say making up a headline would be tougher but we'll enjoy anything you work on so go for the classic movies ^^ I'm here mostly for the mo ie breakdowns, the end joke is great but I'm here for the middle bit
Hey Isaac, have u ever done a video expanding on the idea of "brain jars" you brought up in this video?
You mentioned that, for the purposes of fortress worlds, a civilization could shed their bodies, place their brains in a safely stored device, and upload their conciousnesses to artificial bodies to defend their fortress world.
I was wondering about expanding this... "brain jar concept" to cover the idea of human kind eventually doing the same, for the purposes of not just war, but exploring space, or engaging in life endangering thrill seeking, and how the idea of having backup bodies would impact society. Would we ( as a species) become more reckless and violent? Would we become fearless explorers? Would some nefarious governing force use this technology to enslave us? What do you think?
Just. One. Name.
Cadia
In any NATO vs Kindergarten scenario, the later one has the Advantage of a far more efficient decision making process.
You forget that trafficking children is the specialty of the UN and NATO.