[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by CrazyPerson

Think of it like a country with: is it worth it to mobilize what little active forces you have against a hard to reach target, with no guarantee that it's actually your target? And Koko can move. She's not stuck in SA. Her flight/naval assets are fully operational.

But her factory is immobile. And how hard of a target can it be? She's only got a few people.

And against someone who just killed 700000 people and threatens the world with more to come? Yes, it's worth it. No sacrifice is too great, unless you're the one getting sacrificed. (Meaning SA wouldn't nuke itself even if it was a nuclear power, but for every other country that option would totally be on the table.)

Okay, assume they confirm it's the factory and 30,000 SA army peeps got down there,

You don't need all 30000.

assume the orders to hire the SA army get through,

Yes, assume a general can drive to a base and yell "Assemble! March!". That's really not as difficult as you paint it.

and assume the order from the SA commanders to their troops don't get intercepted and redirected, then Koko deploys her predator drones and bombs the army to pieces. She certainly has them 'cause if she can deploy a drone on unfriendly territory near Cuba, she can deploy on home ground.

A few dozen predators, even if she's got them, aren't going to save her.

Let's also assume she doesn't hire a personal PMC, of which there are probably plent of in SA, to help fight too.

Right now, she can't trust Jonah not to shoot her. What makes you think she can trust a random PMC?

For that matter, how is she going to pay them? Just her threat effectively destroyed our banking system.

Retaliation? That's a nice stock market you have there. It would be a shame if it suddenly got wiped. Electronic hospital records? It says little Susie Evans is a 87 year old man with incontinence and no penicillin alergy. Production Factories? How come my Ohio GM production line isn't making cars, but dancing around to the tune of Portal 2's "Exile Vilify?" Personal computers? Senator Lamar Smith and all his staff's work and home computers have all suddenly been bricked. That's probably sufficiently threatening if you target the right people or a good amount of people.

But see, here's the problem: if you take hostages, and start shooting a few, you lose almost all your leverage and most likely get a full assault. It doesn't matter if 90% of your hostages are still alive - that's the point where the police goes all in.

Killing 700000 people and threatening the rest of the world with more? It just means she has to do down as fast as possible. Worry about picking up the pieces of her rampage once she's dead and her computer destroyed or seized.

And worst case scenario: people learn to do without open electronic networks. It'll suck, but that's how we've done for most of our history. What they won't do is give up on killing Koko and taking back... well, late 20th and early 21st century technology. That's what this is about.