Train many small units with a small armor piercing artillery piece like this and conceal them everywhere in a line in which the martians are advancing, when a martian is sighted they all take aim and await an officer to take the first shot, after which they fire their own and immediately abandon the weapon and try to escape. This is then repeated at a fallback line. The martians will have to fight for every inch and gradually take irreplaceable casualties while only managing to take revenge on a few humans.
>conceal them everywhere in a line in which the martians are advancing, when a martian is sighted they all take aim and await an officer to take the first shot, after which they fire their own and immediately abandon the weapon and try to escape.
They did just that in the book and it got maybe one Martian before the Martians just started using black smoke on literally anything that could hide men or field guns, then zapped the stragglers with the heat ray.
Maybe, but the book describes the black "smoke" as a sort of powder once it settles and became inert or rendered inert by martians administering super hot steam onto it. I don't know if that would clog the filters or not. Also, martians still fried anything they thought held a gun position.
[...]
On the subject of ships, we saw that Thunderchild was able to take down three tripods with relative ease, but the tripods heat rays easily pierced her deck and cause a catastrophic detonation. How would you harden ships against tripod attacks? I was thinking you set up a system which pumps water over exposed parts of the deck to keep them cool.
>Instantly melts glass and makes lead run like water at it's touch >Flashes water to steam instantly >Cracks brick/mortar and makes it glow red hot
You'd need something more than water
>Instantly melts glass and makes lead run like water at it's touch >Flashes water to steam instantly >Cracks brick/mortar and makes it glow red hot
Its not to prevent deck fires, its job is to keep the steel from melting.
I don't think you'd necessarily need to hut some sort compressed CO2 system that is activated to cover the decks when about to receive fire might work.
The Royal Navy battleline in the 1890s had a mix of guns with effective ranges out to 12,000 yards, they could sit out to sea at depths beyond where the tripods could operate and shell them to bits even just using the 6 inch guns
Does the CO2 actually stop the heat? Because if its just fire suppression, that isn't the real issue.
Something that can flash boil metal and turn humans into atoms probably needs a bit more.
You best bet would be creating some low tech equivalent of modern day aerogel TPS tiles used in spaceflight. Either that or something ablative that can carry heat away as it’s evaporated by the ray, some kind of pure carbon might help.
Ok, so the other guy said it liquifies lead. You're saying it flash boils steal and turns people to atmons. So which is it?
>"in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute non-conductivity. This intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light... it is certain that a beam of heat is the essence of the matter. Heat, and invisible, instead of visible, light. Whatever is combustible flashes into flame at its touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass, and when it falls upon water, incontinently that explodes into steam."
From the book
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
So would that make it infrared rays?
4 weeks ago
Anonymous
no, ultrakill rays, probably gamma or something stronger. keepbin mind radiation hadnt been invented yet
Considering how the book describes it, i’d say atomizing humans is a pretty apt description. Water’s not gonna help against something that makes people fizzle into nothing and join the atmosphere in an instant. So i say we need spacecraft tier thermal protection systems or something that tries to get close to it.
> Despite a degree of knowledge concerning the behaviour and effects of the Black Smoke, little is known of its chemical composition, and scientists are still not entirely certain of precisely how it has its effect. Spectrum analysis of the black powder points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a brilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible that it combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with deadly effect upon some constituent in the blood, causing it to near-instantly coagulate. Its behaviour when exposed to moisture only serves to enhance its lethal properties; as it is inhaled by its victims, it is believed to undergo a reaction with the natural moisture present in the lungs. This causes it to coat the internal surface of the lungs with a smothering layer of powder, preventing the victim from obtaining vital oxygen from the air. The only ways to avoid its effects are to move to a sufficiently elevated position that one is above the level of the cloud, or to filter the air one breathes through a moistened cloth of fine weave.
If they're not protected from biological/germ warfare they're definitely not chemically sealed. Hammer them with gas shells.
Further, they have the advantage of destructive power and mobility but they lack range, indirect fire capability and optics. They also only seem capable of operating in littoral water. As such heavy artillery and naval guns operating from long range would be effective with enough volume of fire. Area denial through traps and landmines/fougasses as well as ambush teams with light field guns would limit their operational mobility.
I also don't know if the heat rays can fire above the tripods. They could be vulnerable to bombs dropped by hot air balloon.
There were ships of shapes and sizes, scattered out along the bay.
And i thought i heard her calling, as the steamer turned away…
On the subject of ships, we saw that Thunderchild was able to take down three tripods with relative ease, but the tripods heat rays easily pierced her deck and cause a catastrophic detonation. How would you harden ships against tripod attacks? I was thinking you set up a system which pumps water over exposed parts of the deck to keep them cool.
Something that can flash boil metal and turn humans into atoms probably needs a bit more.
You best bet would be creating some low tech equivalent of modern day aerogel TPS tiles used in spaceflight. Either that or something ablative that can carry heat away as it’s evaporated by the ray, some kind of pure carbon might help.
I don't think you'd necessarily need to hut some sort compressed CO2 system that is activated to cover the decks when about to receive fire might work.
The Royal Navy battleline in the 1890s had a mix of guns with effective ranges out to 12,000 yards, they could sit out to sea at depths beyond where the tripods could operate and shell them to bits even just using the 6 inch guns
>Effective” being enough to hit another ship, a smaller, spindly and agile target like a tripod might require you to get much closer.
Even a mile or two out should be enough, the tripods are about 100 feet tall which means they can realistically only operate at depths of ~70 feet and still fire their heat rays.
They'll also be much less able to move in deep water because they've got very thin legs that will just sink in ocean sediments.
Problem with ships is that just before the martians got the flu they were assembling flying machines that would probably fuck up the ships sooner or later
scorched earth tactics could maybe starve some martians and push them to do something drastic. Hidden explosives underground could break some legs perhaps too, leave some boobie traps on london for the invaders. If gas masks are developed in time the hidden artillery positions and anti armour squads could do some serious damage as long as they werent spotted by flying machines or caught by one of the harvester machines.
Effective anti armour and anti air technology hasnt been developed in the 1890's its gonna be a massacre but if the martians are few enough humanity might be able to contain and even defeat them. The best option for the martians if the invasion of britain failed would be to try and in less developed countries with high population but most of those were well armed colonies at the time.
They didn't give cruising altitude so we can assume shot from conventional artillery of the time will work. These aliens apparently didn't work out the wheel much less tracks
Would spraying a large cloud of water around of the ship help? Some small missile boats use a lighter system like that to reduce their thermal signature to roughly that of the water around them.
They were quite killable with artillery. Both field and naval units took out tripods. Martians countered by gassing any position that might be hiding cannons and zapping ships early and often. Both of which outraged the human weapons. So ultimately, the best strategy would be a rapid response force that could quickly take out the Martian cylinders after they land but before they have time to assemble their war machines.
Pretty much every real study by actual military people (even when it was written) is that IRL they would have been beaten with relative ease. When the US army was asked to help with the 1953 version they explained that the only way they would have a chance is if they had magical invunerable forcefields so they got exactly that.
Wells didn't actually know much about military technology; he protrayed they Thunderchild as as a massive warship (a experimental torpedo ram had recently been in the news) when in reality it would have been the weakest and smallest ship in the fleet.
The flying machines would have been the only real problem assuming their bases survived long enough to be launched and even then there just aren't enough Maritan machines to protect their bases.
Gas masks were already around and were mass produced VERY quickly when gas became a thing in WW1, even with the initial shock period field artillery vastly out ranged the black smoke projecters not to mention the heat rays.
Not only would Thunderchild have been the smallest and most lightly armed ship in the fleet that it broke away from, the fleet had line of sight to the tripods so they would have instantly been blasted to bits over open sights.
No one posted this yet? Shame.
Here's your answer, OP. >use the Germans as meatshields to buy time >saturate with artillery >? >Study captured alien tech to use against them.
I mean the entire idea is you don't. How do you stop Europeans with rifles and quick firing artillery when you have spears and shields? You get lucky a few times and wind up getting colonized or a probe up your ass. That's what happens.
Actual /k/ answer now. Tripods could be downed by regimental artillery, so they're not thickly armored. But their weapons will instantly kill anything they can see - even heavily armored warships like the Thunderchild don't stand up to more than one blast from a heat ray. You'd want lots of fast gunboats armed with relatively long range and accurate guns - a long barrel 4",5" or 6" would be more than enough with armor-piercing shells. You'd need swarms of these things though, and very good communications to organize swarm attacks from multiple angles. Battleships wouldn't be worth much - their guns are too inaccurate to hit a tripod at range.
On land the only option is to destroy them while they're still in the cylinder and diassembled. Any concentration of troops and artillery that could actually be a threat when they're mobile would be bloodbags ready to drink like a capri sun.
> even heavily armored warships like the Thunderchild
Read the book again. Thunderchild was a torpedo ram, not a battleship. Or even an armored cruiser. Think a destroyer but shitter.
The contemporary armor technology would buy a dreadnought what, 30 seconds within heat ray range at the belt? Assuming ideal conditions where the Martians target the belt and not the superstructure.
>Battleships wouldn't be worth much - their guns are too inaccurate to hit a tripod at range.
Larger guns on larger ships are actually more accurate because not only do they have a more stable platform and shells with lower area to volume than smaller guns, reducing atmospheric influence, they also have larger rangefinders on their ships.
They are, but for the era we're talking about ~11-12" rifles. They're more accurate but the tripods are extremely small, erratically moving targets. They would be extremely hard to hit at range and getting closer puts a large battleship closer to heatray range.
>Battleships wouldn't be worth much - their guns are too inaccurate to hit a tripod at range.
Larger guns on larger ships are actually more accurate because not only do they have a more stable platform and shells with lower area to volume than smaller guns, reducing atmospheric influence, they also have larger rangefinders on their ships.
If a shitty ship cannon could kill a tripod i'll teach those dumb 1890s fucks to make early efps using dynamite and copper manhole covers. That or other advanced explosive accelerators.
Forget the thunder child, we'll mass produce horse drawn and aimed efps that send one ton copper plate formed long rods at 3000 m/s for a hundreth of the price of a cannon. Those tin cans will get blown the fuck out.
That + mines to blow off the legs. And i assume the bitches are sealed against non martian atmo but it wouldnt hurt to *TRY* some chlorine gas.
There are other options if neccesary even given 1890s tech but i wont be discussing those ^:)
Did they ever say how many martians were on earth?
How many tripods?
I feel like if they used enough artillery you could down a tripod and there can only be so many in the invasion fleet, I'm pretty sure humanity could outweather them.
there was like a dozen of them. but after the earth invasion fails they decide to invade venus instead so we can assume the martians would send a second wave if the first one was defeated
Train many small units with a small armor piercing artillery piece like this and conceal them everywhere in a line in which the martians are advancing, when a martian is sighted they all take aim and await an officer to take the first shot, after which they fire their own and immediately abandon the weapon and try to escape. This is then repeated at a fallback line. The martians will have to fight for every inch and gradually take irreplaceable casualties while only managing to take revenge on a few humans.
>conceal them everywhere in a line in which the martians are advancing, when a martian is sighted they all take aim and await an officer to take the first shot, after which they fire their own and immediately abandon the weapon and try to escape.
They did just that in the book and it got maybe one Martian before the Martians just started using black smoke on literally anything that could hide men or field guns, then zapped the stragglers with the heat ray.
I would invest in mines
Gas masks?
Maybe, but the book describes the black "smoke" as a sort of powder once it settles and became inert or rendered inert by martians administering super hot steam onto it. I don't know if that would clog the filters or not. Also, martians still fried anything they thought held a gun position.
>Instantly melts glass and makes lead run like water at it's touch
>Flashes water to steam instantly
>Cracks brick/mortar and makes it glow red hot
You'd need something more than water
>Instantly melts glass and makes lead run like water at it's touch
>Flashes water to steam instantly
>Cracks brick/mortar and makes it glow red hot
Its not to prevent deck fires, its job is to keep the steel from melting.
Does the CO2 actually stop the heat? Because if its just fire suppression, that isn't the real issue.
Ok, so the other guy said it liquifies lead. You're saying it flash boils steal and turns people to atmons. So which is it?
>"in some way they are able to generate an intense heat in a chamber of practically absolute non-conductivity. This intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic mirror of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light... it is certain that a beam of heat is the essence of the matter. Heat, and invisible, instead of visible, light. Whatever is combustible flashes into flame at its touch, lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass, and when it falls upon water, incontinently that explodes into steam."
From the book
So would that make it infrared rays?
no, ultrakill rays, probably gamma or something stronger. keepbin mind radiation hadnt been invented yet
Considering how the book describes it, i’d say atomizing humans is a pretty apt description. Water’s not gonna help against something that makes people fizzle into nothing and join the atmosphere in an instant. So i say we need spacecraft tier thermal protection systems or something that tries to get close to it.
> Despite a degree of knowledge concerning the behaviour and effects of the Black Smoke, little is known of its chemical composition, and scientists are still not entirely certain of precisely how it has its effect. Spectrum analysis of the black powder points unmistakably to the presence of an unknown element with a brilliant group of three lines in the green, and it is possible that it combines with argon to form a compound which acts at once with deadly effect upon some constituent in the blood, causing it to near-instantly coagulate. Its behaviour when exposed to moisture only serves to enhance its lethal properties; as it is inhaled by its victims, it is believed to undergo a reaction with the natural moisture present in the lungs. This causes it to coat the internal surface of the lungs with a smothering layer of powder, preventing the victim from obtaining vital oxygen from the air. The only ways to avoid its effects are to move to a sufficiently elevated position that one is above the level of the cloud, or to filter the air one breathes through a moistened cloth of fine weave.
>or to filter the air one breathes through a moistened cloth of fine weave.
Gas masks it is then
If they're not protected from biological/germ warfare they're definitely not chemically sealed. Hammer them with gas shells.
Further, they have the advantage of destructive power and mobility but they lack range, indirect fire capability and optics. They also only seem capable of operating in littoral water. As such heavy artillery and naval guns operating from long range would be effective with enough volume of fire. Area denial through traps and landmines/fougasses as well as ambush teams with light field guns would limit their operational mobility.
I also don't know if the heat rays can fire above the tripods. They could be vulnerable to bombs dropped by hot air balloon.
On the subject of ships, we saw that Thunderchild was able to take down three tripods with relative ease, but the tripods heat rays easily pierced her deck and cause a catastrophic detonation. How would you harden ships against tripod attacks? I was thinking you set up a system which pumps water over exposed parts of the deck to keep them cool.
Something that can flash boil metal and turn humans into atoms probably needs a bit more.
You best bet would be creating some low tech equivalent of modern day aerogel TPS tiles used in spaceflight. Either that or something ablative that can carry heat away as it’s evaporated by the ray, some kind of pure carbon might help.
I don't think you'd necessarily need to hut some sort compressed CO2 system that is activated to cover the decks when about to receive fire might work.
The Royal Navy battleline in the 1890s had a mix of guns with effective ranges out to 12,000 yards, they could sit out to sea at depths beyond where the tripods could operate and shell them to bits even just using the 6 inch guns
“Effective” being enough to hit another ship, a smaller, spindly and agile target like a tripod might require you to get much closer.
>Effective” being enough to hit another ship, a smaller, spindly and agile target like a tripod might require you to get much closer.
Even a mile or two out should be enough, the tripods are about 100 feet tall which means they can realistically only operate at depths of ~70 feet and still fire their heat rays.
They'll also be much less able to move in deep water because they've got very thin legs that will just sink in ocean sediments.
Problem with ships is that just before the martians got the flu they were assembling flying machines that would probably fuck up the ships sooner or later
scorched earth tactics could maybe starve some martians and push them to do something drastic. Hidden explosives underground could break some legs perhaps too, leave some boobie traps on london for the invaders. If gas masks are developed in time the hidden artillery positions and anti armour squads could do some serious damage as long as they werent spotted by flying machines or caught by one of the harvester machines.
Effective anti armour and anti air technology hasnt been developed in the 1890's its gonna be a massacre but if the martians are few enough humanity might be able to contain and even defeat them. The best option for the martians if the invasion of britain failed would be to try and in less developed countries with high population but most of those were well armed colonies at the time.
They didn't give cruising altitude so we can assume shot from conventional artillery of the time will work. These aliens apparently didn't work out the wheel much less tracks
Would spraying a large cloud of water around of the ship help? Some small missile boats use a lighter system like that to reduce their thermal signature to roughly that of the water around them.
>around of
How the fuck did I even manage that
It would probably help if we knew what kind of rays those heat rays are.
> How would you harden ships against tripod attacks?
You could start by using an ACTUAL armored warship, and not a shitty torpedo ram.
There were ships of shapes and sizes, scattered out along the bay.
And i thought i heard her calling, as the steamer turned away…
Artillery, lots of it, and gas masks.
Stay near the coasts and fuck the fuckers up with cannons, both ground and naval.
my dick
They were quite killable with artillery. Both field and naval units took out tripods. Martians countered by gassing any position that might be hiding cannons and zapping ships early and often. Both of which outraged the human weapons. So ultimately, the best strategy would be a rapid response force that could quickly take out the Martian cylinders after they land but before they have time to assemble their war machines.
Sneeze on them.
>Hard mode: no germ warfare
Suicide bombers.
Anal Jihad
Lots of Paris guns, line of sight the heat rays
Pretty much every real study by actual military people (even when it was written) is that IRL they would have been beaten with relative ease. When the US army was asked to help with the 1953 version they explained that the only way they would have a chance is if they had magical invunerable forcefields so they got exactly that.
Wells didn't actually know much about military technology; he protrayed they Thunderchild as as a massive warship (a experimental torpedo ram had recently been in the news) when in reality it would have been the weakest and smallest ship in the fleet.
The flying machines would have been the only real problem assuming their bases survived long enough to be launched and even then there just aren't enough Maritan machines to protect their bases.
Gas masks were already around and were mass produced VERY quickly when gas became a thing in WW1, even with the initial shock period field artillery vastly out ranged the black smoke projecters not to mention the heat rays.
Not only would Thunderchild have been the smallest and most lightly armed ship in the fleet that it broke away from, the fleet had line of sight to the tripods so they would have instantly been blasted to bits over open sights.
?si=1mGHXTsPuMHKxvDP
No one posted this yet? Shame.
Here's your answer, OP.
>use the Germans as meatshields to buy time
>saturate with artillery
>?
>Study captured alien tech to use against them.
I mean the entire idea is you don't. How do you stop Europeans with rifles and quick firing artillery when you have spears and shields? You get lucky a few times and wind up getting colonized or a probe up your ass. That's what happens.
Actual /k/ answer now. Tripods could be downed by regimental artillery, so they're not thickly armored. But their weapons will instantly kill anything they can see - even heavily armored warships like the Thunderchild don't stand up to more than one blast from a heat ray. You'd want lots of fast gunboats armed with relatively long range and accurate guns - a long barrel 4",5" or 6" would be more than enough with armor-piercing shells. You'd need swarms of these things though, and very good communications to organize swarm attacks from multiple angles. Battleships wouldn't be worth much - their guns are too inaccurate to hit a tripod at range.
On land the only option is to destroy them while they're still in the cylinder and diassembled. Any concentration of troops and artillery that could actually be a threat when they're mobile would be bloodbags ready to drink like a capri sun.
> even heavily armored warships like the Thunderchild
Read the book again. Thunderchild was a torpedo ram, not a battleship. Or even an armored cruiser. Think a destroyer but shitter.
The contemporary armor technology would buy a dreadnought what, 30 seconds within heat ray range at the belt? Assuming ideal conditions where the Martians target the belt and not the superstructure.
They are, but for the era we're talking about ~11-12" rifles. They're more accurate but the tripods are extremely small, erratically moving targets. They would be extremely hard to hit at range and getting closer puts a large battleship closer to heatray range.
>Battleships wouldn't be worth much - their guns are too inaccurate to hit a tripod at range.
Larger guns on larger ships are actually more accurate because not only do they have a more stable platform and shells with lower area to volume than smaller guns, reducing atmospheric influence, they also have larger rangefinders on their ships.
Show them my dick.
you dont. that was the whole point of the series
>How do you defeat the Martians using only 1890s technology?
Restrict their movement by inventing the land mine.
If a shitty ship cannon could kill a tripod i'll teach those dumb 1890s fucks to make early efps using dynamite and copper manhole covers. That or other advanced explosive accelerators.
Forget the thunder child, we'll mass produce horse drawn and aimed efps that send one ton copper plate formed long rods at 3000 m/s for a hundreth of the price of a cannon. Those tin cans will get blown the fuck out.
That + mines to blow off the legs. And i assume the bitches are sealed against non martian atmo but it wouldnt hurt to *TRY* some chlorine gas.
There are other options if neccesary even given 1890s tech but i wont be discussing those ^:)
Did they ever say how many martians were on earth?
How many tripods?
I feel like if they used enough artillery you could down a tripod and there can only be so many in the invasion fleet, I'm pretty sure humanity could outweather them.
there was like a dozen of them. but after the earth invasion fails they decide to invade venus instead so we can assume the martians would send a second wave if the first one was defeated
100 Japanese samurai warriors wearing explosive TNT vests who have already written their final death poems.