Multiple People said:
A lot of crap about shitty bands.
I have a rule of thumb:
"If this band's music appears in a television commercial or summer blockbuster movie trailer, I need to look back and consider if this band was ever really that good."
Never done me wrong.
In one of the episodes of the Expanse, the's a similar scene where the military leaders on earth is watching a situation with Mars unfold and due to the time delay can't issue orders in real time so they have to try to anticipate and give orders before something happens and it's very tense. I can't remember the specifics of what happened but the idea being that making the wrong call could either kick off a war(if they were too agressive) or lead to the Earth forces being destroyed(if they weren't agressive enough).
It's in season 2, in the adaptation of
Caliban's War. Pretty much a straight riff on the Cuban missile crisis. The MCRN has multiple stealth ships capable of a first-strike nuclear launch capable of turning the Earth's surface into a sheet of glowing green glass, and the UN only has a handful of satellites capable of detecting them and a planetary defense rail gun network. The UN Navy needs to detect all the ships and launch a timed railgun attack that destroys all the stealth ships simultaneously, before any of them retaliate -- or before Mars initiated that first strike in the first place.
(It doesn't work.)
It's actually a pretty stupid setup and none of the logic of it works, if you think about it. Which is why that scenario wasn't in the book in the first place.
Instead, the books go at length about how nuclear weapons really aren't politically or strategically influential any more. The ultimate equalizer (and source of mutually-assured destruction) is simply stealth-coating asteroids (which is less of a big deal in the books than the show), attaching Epstein drives or fusion torches to them, and aiming them at your target gravity well. And, how if Mars, Earth, or the Belt pushed any of the other powers too hard or kickstarted a cycle of revenge with too great fervor, it was certain to happen eventually...and how humanity's interdependence on each other was the only thing that kept anyone from having done it already.
No small part of Miller's chapters (in
Leviathan Wakes, the very first book) are dedicated to driving home how it's only a matter of time before someone, somewhere, starts throwing rocks and ends it all. The middle-aged, washed-out, high-functioning alcoholic detective can figure it out for himself, and the books drive it home that since he can, anyone with the education, experience, or resources to actually do it, figured it out a long time ago. Avasarala's chapters in
Caliban's War only reinforce it, because her entire thing is to deescalate the Earth-Mars-Belt conflict
before it gets to that point...although with the protomolecule being weaponized and at work on Venus, the point rock-throwing may be the best-available alternative is equally made.
