Great Burn

Whats up with the Great Burn. What happened after it? Didn't it happen because the human factions (one proisa one anti) launched missiles at each other? Could anyone help me on this whole thing? Thanks

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Earth was in the civil was - again - and the good guys who wanted to remain in the ISA, bombed the enemies, but only the military bases. After the destruction, Rangers came and helped humans secretly. And finally after that, in time, humans evolved in non-corporeal form.

TheInfection

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Things change... long time gone by.

I suspect that in the Great Burn, humans finally went nuclear with each other. And with such weapons, targets really don't matter.

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"We are the universe, trying to figure itself out.
Unfortunately we as software lack any coherent documentation."
-- Delenn

It was only Earth. There were other humans, uninvolved in the civil war (like those Rangers) that decided to leave the humans stewing for a few hundred years until they learned from their mistake.

And, of course, if any of you have read A Canticle for Liebowitz, JMS has a more positive outlook on the whole thing.

And if you haven't read Canticle, do it. It's seminal.

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channe@[url="http://cryoterrace.tripod.com"]cryoterrace[/url] | "Last one to kill a bad guy buys the beer." -lost in space

Anyone who isn't sure what Canticle is can find the info here:

Study Guide for Walter M. Miller, Jr.:
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/science_fiction/canticle.html



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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."

so it only happened on earth? no colonies or anything?

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And how - I've been wondering - did the Rangers and ISA keep any unaffected Human colonies and all alien races from going to Earth? Did Ranger ships patrol the skies to make sure this was so? Another quarintine but different and longer? And even so, wouldn't ships (at least bigger ones) be seen by anyone using a good enough telescope and I'm sure that would have happened at some point in Earth's post-Burn history - especially with legends of them once being among the stars. Or maybe the Rangers have impressive stealth capabilities ... I wonder if we'll ever know ...

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Well, we can guess that the other Human colonies agreed with the Rangers about the quarantine.
And, since Earth was effectively back in the Middle Ages, it is doubtful any of the Alien races thought there was anything on Earth worth the trouble of making a landing.

Plus, it was at least Implied in the segment that there was a fair amount of Anti-technology feeling for at least a hundred years after the Great Burn.

Aliens landing on Earth might find themselves hanging from the nearest tree.
Or guest of honor at a Barbeque.

Part of the problem was that Earthgov had been mostly taken over by Clarke's type.
They were spreading a Lot of Anti-Alien propaganda just before the great Burn.
Whatever part of that group that survived would Certainly have blamed Aliens for what happened.
They sure as hell wouldn't have admitted that They were responsible.



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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."

The great burn about after the civil war, after the nukes, where humans blamed technology for the war and their misery so went on a burning spree destroying all technologies and data from that era but this of course is my opinion

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"When it is time, come to this place, call our name, we will be here" -Walkers of Sigma957
Babylon 5 freegame-I've Found Her

JMS has said that after the war(and it was only withing Earth, Garabaldi's hologram gave the other side enough heads up to keep it that way) Earth was offered help(most likely by the Rangers) but refused because they blamed technology for their predicament. The other colonies were fine with this because as we see with Mars they did not exactly feel like Earth had treated them fairly in the past.

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"I was free to wallow in my own crapulence." -Mr. Burns in "Who Shot Mr. Burns Part Two"

Since nuclear weapons were used during the Great Burn it would have affected the whole Earth even if only military sites were targeted. Don't forget, the winners were still out there with their ships and weapons and they could keep off anyone who tried to take advantage of the situation. There were a number of Earth colonies which wouldn't have been affected and of course, the Rangers probably appeared as soon as it was safe to do so.

After that DoFS went to the far distant future and we just have to try to imagine how humans developed.


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I always seem to be diagonally parked in a parallel universe.

I'm sure that the bad guys got off a few shots too, and that several civillian targets were nuked. As far as I understand it, those who could leave earth after the burn probably did. It sounds like the Roman Catholic Church took an anti-technology stance and, having little else to lean on, most of Earth's population turned to the church for answers and meaning.

As I imagine it, there was probably a time kind of like the beginnings of Prodestantism where those who didn't agree with the church's stance (those who still used machines and/or computers) were heavily persecuted as being partly responsible for the destruction that "technology" had brought.

We come into the story 500 years after the burn, when tempers have calmed down a little and people were becoming a little more liberal toward technology.

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You are finite. Zathras is finite. This...is wrong tool.

jtk724@hotmail.com

oh, no no no... the missles that were talked about in the hologram part of "deconstruction" weren't the missles that caused the great burn... that was just a preemptive strike. what probably followed was a full scale war waged across the earth alliance, which caused the great burn...

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### Hi, I'm a sig virus. Please add me to the end of your signature so I can take over the world.### - caught from Saps @ B5MG

im just as fine not hearing it, and leaving most of it up to the imagination

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### Hi, I'm a sig virus. Please add me to the end of your signature so I can take over the world.### - caught from Saps @ B5MG

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR> It sounds like the Roman Catholic Church took an anti-technology stance and, having little else to lean on, most of Earth's population turned to the church for answers and meaning.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

There is nothing in the episode that says any such thing.
The story makes it pretty clear that the Entire Population took on an Anti Technology prejudice.
The Rangers Covered their real identities and purpose by disguising their station on Earth as a Monastery and recruiting Local residents to do most of the work.
There is no reason to believe that any one church was able to take over the entire world.

Down that road lies Conspiracy Theory madness.




Unless you'd like to believe that all the Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists suddenly decided: Hey, that Pope guy has all the answers, Let's go join HIS church.

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Do not ascribe your own motivations to others:
At best, it will break your heart.
At worst, it will get you dead."

[This message has been edited by bakana (edited February 24, 2002).]

The Great Burn: Just another example of a great story yet to be told. Hopefully one day we'll get to hear it, and all of our questions will be answered.

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I have to agree, some things are better left to the imagination. After all we would not have as much to discuss here if everything was explained. Not that discussion would stop, after all some peole seem to enjoy intentionally ignoring given explanations if they contradict their pet theories.

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"I was free to wallow in my own crapulence." -Mr. Burns in "Who Shot Mr. Burns Part Two"