What the novelization says:ID4

Attack on NORAD

" It's NORAD sir the man continued,his face white with fear. Its gone sir. They've taken it out. It took a moment for the idea to sink in. The group went from confused to stunned to mortified. Thats not possible. My God,the vice president,the joint chiefs. Perhaps their communication systems are out,but all of NORAD can't be gone. The aide explained more fully. I have it from pilots out of Peterson.They were in the sky when alien attack planes massed over NORAD and began firing continuously for several minutes.Eventually the entire complex was exposed and destroyed.Shortly thereafter,Peterson itself came under attack and they lost radio contact. Isnt Peterson where we're heading? We need a new destination!"

Alien strategy

" Connie led the way over to a paper map of the United States that was taped to the wall,the destroyed cities circled in black.Oh my God .She gasped when she saw the update. Are these confirmed? Whitmore asked,staring at the bad news on the map.Atlanta,Sacrramento and Philadelphia? Yes Sir.Those sites are confimed hits.We're also hearing of several raids on isolated targets,mainly military air bases. Which way are they heading? Grey answered. He walked over and used the map to illustrate. It looks like their plan is to send the Washington ship down the Atlantic coast,then possibly head in over the Gulf states.The Los Angeles craft looks like its going to continue up the West Coast,while the New York ship is moving toward Chicago right now. The president moved to the conference table ,took a seat and poured himself a glass of water while Grey went on. They're actually attacking corridors,sending out those little attack fighters as they pass through an area to hit specific targets.They arent moving around blindly thats for sure.We heard from Europe that the ship over Paris moved immediately to Brussels and hit NATO headquaters while the smaller planes picked apart Western Alliance installations. Then with an accusatory glare in Nimzikis direction he added.They've obviously scouted us planning this attack for some time.The shits knew exactly where and how to hit us."

More later

The aliens motives

"In a few seconds he moved through battles on other worlds learning how the aliens had conquered planet after planet flying from place to place like a swarm of locusts feeding on an environment expanding their population until its resources were ruined ,exhausted.Provisions would be made for the journey to the next feeding ground and they would all board the mothership,the temporary hive.All the creatures would sleep during the long journey and awaken famished,warriors ready to do battle for new food.He understood there would be no mercy,that the concept of it was nowhere in the alien's mind,as foreign to him as it would be for us to spare the lives of roaches.To him we were vermin,filthy little things that needed to be exterminated.And that was their plan,to wipe humanity of the face of this small planet.The objective of the initial wave of attack would be to exterminate the largest nests of humans,disable their weapons and establish beach heads,room for the aliens to establish their colonies.Then for many years they would live and breed here,developing new tools until it was time to travel,stronger and more numerous to the next home."

more later

City Destroyers


" Having communicated nothing to the people of Earth except their arrival the three dozen ships fanned out over the globe's most populated cities including: Beijing,Mexico City,Berlin,Karachi, Tel Aviv and San Francisco. In Japan, the citizens of Yokohama had watched the fireball splashing out of the heavens then level off at six thousand feet,a cauldron of boiling smoke.Out of the dense clouds,the clean front edge of the ship came plowing forward.The audacious scale of it staggered the thousands of people watching from the docks, then turned them into a screaming mob as the endless bulk of the ship continued to emerge.It had moved directly over their heads,plunging the great port into a quaking artifical twilight for several minutes until it moved away to the north.It was still visible from rooftops,hanging in the air forty miles away over the nations capital Tokyo"


"The same scene was repeating itself in cities around the world.One of every five people on Earth found themselves trying to get out of the cities,great hives of humanity,only to learn what a tiny fraction of them could be accommodated by all of their roads,trains and subways."


"CNN, still distorted, had pasted together a flashy letterbox logo- a bold graphic that twirled toward the viewer until it filled the screen - Visitors: Contact or Crisis? Wolf Blitzer, looking frazzled was standing in the false night outside the Pentagon. Officials here at the Pentagon have just confirmed what CNN has been reporting. Additional airships,like the one hovering directly above me, have arrived over thirty-six major cities around the globe. No one I've spoken with here is willing to make an official comment, but speaking off the record several people have expressed their dismay and frustration that our space defense systems failed to provide any warning."

Can you sort out the spacing? Makes it easier to read.

First wave attack

"The same grisly scene was repeating in cities around the world,everywhere the giant ships were stationed.Thirty-six of humanity's proudest creations,home to millions upon millions of people,were swiftly and systematically obliterated"

"Tokyo sustained the highest number of casualties.More than anywhere else, the Japanese had tried to go about their business as usual without panicking.Once the intricate train scheduling system had gotten knocked out of synch,the stations turned into madhouses. Half of those who did manage to get out of the city in time did so on foot or on bicycles.The destruction of the high rise city,until then the worlds most expensive real estate,was utter and complete. The area leveled by the blast was four times as wide as the H-bomb exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki decades earlier. The wall of destruction ended every human life within a twenty-mile radius.As far away as Yokohama and Omiya,half the population had been killed. "

" Manhattan was gone.The island was transformed into a barren shelf of land,swept clean of builidings all the way up to Yonkers.Amid the choking swirl of dust and smoke,natural gas lines shot towers of flame into the sky. Twisted brick and concrete foundations showed where the bulidings had been torn away.Only a few hundred people,mainly those in deep sections of the subway system had survived.On the south side of Staten Island and deep into New Jersey those who had not been killed outright by the wall of destruction lay trapped beneath their collapsed homes,their bodies blistered with severe burns."

"There was not a single human survivor anywhere on Earth close enough to watch the long,needle shaped firing cones retact into the ships.The petal doors raised slowly to form an inpenetrable,airtight seal.The huge ships,the city destroyers,were ready to move on to the next set of targets."

The Aliens

"What makes you think they're interested in our planet? Just a hunch Okun said,cleaning his glasses with his tie .They're animals like us and they have a survival instinct.Perhaps some catastrophe drove them from their home planet and now they're wandering around.Also ,I'm guessing they need space because they're ranchers or farmers: they do some sort of animal husbandry.
How do you know that?
Youre standing under the answer.Those large plates,the ships armor.If you examine them under a microscope,you'll find hairline striations and even pores! Okun saw that none of the visitors understood the implications. That means,of course,that the plates are grown rather than forged.Each one is as individual as a human fingerprint.
We dont know how they do it,I think its done through bioengineering,manipulating the DNA so that the shells grow to precisely the same size.But Dr. Issacs believes they grow the animals in molds,the way the Chinese use to bind women's feet to keep them under a certain size.As to their age we cant be entirely sure.We've developed a varitation of the carbon fourteen test which indicates the plates take about eighty years to grow. And if our methods are relaible,the plates on this ship are between three and nine thousand years old."


" This ,he said,rapping on the yellowish exoskeleton, is only a suit of armor.The animal you are seeing now is actually a completely seperate species which the aliens raise to maturity,slaughter,then gut. The internal organs are scooped out,but the musculature is preserved.The skull and chest have a seam down the middle allowing the aliens to slip in and out.
So they wear the body of this other creature,sort of like crawling inside a zombie.Then by a process we may never understand, the physical impulses of the frail creature inside are carried out by the corpse of this much larger,much stronger animal.
Notice how the tentacles seem to flop around with little control.As you will see in a moment,the animal inside has no tentacles,so it may be that they are not able to manipulate those extra arms.Alas until we find a healthy specimen to study,this bio- armor will remain a mystery."

The Mother Ship


"The Mother ship was the size of a small planet sliced cleanly in half along its equator.The shimmering half dome was protected by a smooth exterior shell over most of its surface,except where it seemed to have been cut away to expse long swathes of a ruddy black surface beneath.The flatness of the underside was interrupted by bulging projections fifteen miles in diameter.
They were the domes of city destroyers,identical to the ones attacking the Earth.There were at least one hundred of them still locked on to the underbelly of the mother ship like leeches. Thirty-six empty rings showed where the giant warships which were attacking the Earth had once docked.Hanging dramatically off the side of the craft was a pair of tusklike projections.Glossy white and at least a hundred miles tall,these enigmatic structures arched through space like a mammoth set of cobra fangs."


"As they neared the center of the mother ship,they came across something stranger still.What looked like a tip of a screw hanging above a round platform. This circular platform was a level field approximately fifty miles across and fell away steeply on all sides.As the men were drawn closer,they were treated to a horrifying image of several thousand aliens marching in phalanxes towards the edges of the platform. The area was some sort of parade ground and the creatures appeared to be loading themselves into the long boxy ships that were docked around the platforms edges.An invisible energy shield protected them from the vacuum of space. What the hell is that? David wondered,physically repulsed. Looks like they're preparing the invasion Steve answered with a lump in his throat. For the first time in a long while,he felt himself getting scared."

Aftermath

"The battle over Area 51 had ended in a relatively clean and painless victory.Fewer than three hundred people had died.But the situation was far different in other parts of the country and around the world.Humanity had survived, but only at a staggering cost.
Millions were dead and millions more were injured.Many would never recover from the wounds,both physical and emotional,they had sustained during the invasion. Even as the survivors began digging themselves out from under the debris,thankful to be alive,they felt the dread of the months and years of rebuilding which lay ahead. The howls coming from the victory celebrations echoed over a collapsed and blighted world. In most places,the destruction was so severe that the living envied the dead.

More than a hundred of the worlds largest cities had been obliterated, among them ancient ,irreplaceable treasures such as Paris,Baghdad, New York and Kyoto. Gone too were the worlds finest museums and libraries,its major airports and factories,food processing plants ,markets,office buildings, and one out of every three human homes.
Refugees,hundreds of millions of them,without shelter or means of feeding themselves ,wondered how they would survive.The situation was most dire in the southern hemisphere,where it was the middle of winter. Mass migrations to the temperate zones of the Earth began immediately,further taxing already strained ecological resources. The Earth's water,land and air were all heavily polluted in the aftermath of the short but cataclysmic war."

Hope for the future

"It seemed that everything had been lost and that only one thing had,perhaps been gained: a wider frame of reference. Along with the certain knowledge that humans were not alone in the universe,the murderous squabbling over petty differences of race and nationality suddenly seemed to be petty foolishness. In the wake of the attack,the people of Earth finally realized the things they shared in common far outweighed their subtle differences.
There was a worldwide recognition that the human imagination had been fundamentally altered and there was no turning back. In a sense, the species had grown up the hard way,being shoved unwillingly toward maturity. There was also an awareness of a new interdependence: the world would have to prepare for the possibilty of a similar invasion in the future. Whitmore's hope had come to pass: July fourth would no longer be merely an American holiday.

It was a new future and leaders like Whitmore were anxious to help shape the new world that would be built upon the ruins of the old. They knew the direction and character of this rebuilding would be determined early,within the first few months.
There was every possibilty for America,one of the most violent and divided nations in the world,to tear itself apart in a struggle over scarce resources but there was the possibilty of people coming together ,co-operating with one another in a spirit of community that would set an example for others around the globe.
Before the dust of the battles had settled, Whitmore would be on the campaign trail once again,making essentially the same call to service and self-sacrifice he had delivered during his run for the presidency.
But this time the scope would be international and the risks much higher.What kind of world would he pass on to his daughter ? As the rebuilding began,one fact quickly made itself abundantly clear: the human spirit ,like the supple ,tenacious weeds already beginng to push their way up through the ruins,would once again reassert itself ,tougher,smarter and more unified than ever"

President Thomas J. Whitmore (D)

" I said it during the campaign and I still say it today, a bald man in suspenders declared the brand of leadership the president provided during the Gulf War bears no relationship to the kind of savvy insider politics needed to survive in Washington. After a brief honeymooon peroid with the Congress, his inexperience is catching up with him.His popularity numbers continue to decline in the polls.
A woman with smart hair and a sharp tongue waved her hand in the air,dismissing the balds mans ideas. Charlie you remind me of a broken clock-you're only right twice a day. But this is one of the few times I agree with you. The current administration has gotten bogged down in the swap of DC deal making. In recent weeks,the president has waded into the murky waters of pragmatic backroom politics,only to find the sharks of the Republican party biting at his ankles."

"The American people didnt send me here to make a bunch of pretty speeches.They want results and that's what I'm trying to give them. As far as Connie was concerned he was missing the point. Real accomplishments,she believed,weren't born from a spirit of muddling through. She feared Whitmsore was losing his fire,his vision.
Until recently everything about his presidency had been different. They'd campaigned on the themes of service and sacrifice, an "Ask not what your country can do for you" message that all the experts and operators told them was sure-fire political suicide. They said nobody wanted to hear about doing more and having less. But in Whitmore's awkward -charming way he'd made the message real to millions of Americans, and he had beaten his Republican opponentt .
In his first year ,he'd introduced major legislative initiatives to reform everything from the legal system to health care to the environment. But for the past few months the programs had been stalled in committees,held hostage by lawmakers who all wanted something on the side for their districts.
Against the advice of Connie and many of his advisers, the young( forty-eight) president had spent most of his time and energy shepherding his bills through the process,allowing himself to get bogged down by first term representatives he could have steamrolled.All of them were willing to cooperate but only in exchange for one favor or another.
In the meantime ,his prestige and popularity were down among the voters. Connie considered Whitmore not only her boss,but her friend and her hero. It killed her to see him bleeding from the thousand small wounds inflicted on him by other politicans,and the summer session was only beginning"


" At ease. The president smiled without returning the salute. His enthusiasm immediately put Steve more at ease. Its a honor to meet you Captain.You did one hell of a job out there today. Thank You Sir just trying to do my job.
You're out of El Toro arent you? Yes Sir Black Knights,first squadron. Have you ever heard of the Hellcats out of Fort Bragg? Steve couldn't repress a quick smile. He knew Whitmore had been a fighter pilot of course.During the Gulf War,the Hellcats had become a household word. But he hadnt expected any pilot talk during a meeting with the commandeer in chief. I've heard of them he said."

Secretary of Defense Albert Nimziki


Nimziki was a tall gaunt man of sixty who had earned the nickname " the Iron Sphincter". He was a rarity in Washington, a cabinet level appointee who kept his job through changes of administration. Whitmore was his fourth president,his second Democrat. He was not a likable man,but when he spoke,everyone felt obliged to listen. Some years back The Post had written about him: Not since J Edgar Hoover has a government official amassed so much power without ever haing stood for election. An intensely political animal, Nimziki always managed the appearance of staying above politics. He never let them see him pull the strings. He was ,in a word Machiavellian.

"The H-bomb exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki decades earlier"?

Trotsky said:

"The H-bomb exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki decades earlier"?

Click to expand...

Maybe it is an AH

JSmith said:

Maybe it is an AH

Click to expand...

While I don't know much about the development of atomic sciences, I suppose it is possible the Teller-Ullam design could come about maybe a decade early. Or maybe not; again, I'm not an expert.

Trotsky said:

While I don't know much about the development of atomic sciences, I suppose it is possible the Teller-Ullam design could come about maybe a decade early. Or maybe not; again, I'm not an expert.

Click to expand...

Then again maybe its just sloppy research/writing.

Operation Retal-OP

"Grey was able to orchestrate the nuclear strike in less than a quarter of the time he'd anticipated. Returning to the war room,he got the good news that military radio and radar capabilities had been partiallly restored thanks to some quick thinking in San Antonio.
The cluster of Air Force bases surrounding the city had scrambled two dozen AWACS into the skies over the United States. The large spy planes,with their trademark radar dishes whirling on top and sophisticated eavesdropping equipment within took over the job orbiting Comsats had done so reliably for decades. Their multichannel switching relays allowed military personnel to begin communicating once again. One of the first messages they broadcast came from Area 51. There was to be a simultaneous nuclear strike against all the ships over American airspace."

General, has there been any word from our friends? At the same time he was authorizing the use of an atomic weapon he was trying to restrain their use by the rest of the world. ICBM's in many locations were programmed to respond automatically to radar perceived attacks.The last thing the Earth needded was a chain-reaction nuclear launch initiated by computers.
We have commitments from most of our friends. They'll wait to see our results Grey said. But I think we are too late to save Houston. Thats affirmative sir the ship is already over the city. The president didnt flinch. He knew Houston would be lost one way or the other. He sent orders to the other B-52's that they were to hold their fire until the Houston bomb's impact on the invaders ship could be assessed.
Grey had arranged for observers in armored tanks to position themselves around the perimeter of the expected blast area.One of the San Antonio AWACS spy planes also positioned itself over the Gulf of Mexico at high altitude.
The people of Houston had wasted no time. With only a few hours of warning,the city was almost ninety percent vacant by the time the ground began to tremble under the approaching ship.The evacuation had turned ugly,causing almost two thousand casualties and countless injuries as escapees were trampled under foot or hit by speeding vehicles.
Similar frenzied exoduses were underway in Kobe,Portland and all the other major cities standing in the paths of the great black ships.
From the AWACS plane there was a violent shock of ultraviolet light followed immediately by the sight of suburban Houston vaporizing,folding and collapsing like tall grass in a sudden wind. The destruction traveled outward in concentric circles at an awesome rate of speed.
In a few seconds the racing explosion was over and the entire area was covered with dense smoke.An immense mushroom cloud gathered and floated higher into the sky.
In the war room the destruction showed up as nothing more than a samll patch of fuzziness,an atmospheric disturbance bleeding across lower Texas but no one felt the loss of innocent lives more than the men and women in that small room.With pained expressions Whitmore and his staff watched and waited . Minutre later the AWACS pilot broke radio silence.Unfortunately it looks like our taget is still in the air."


Whitmores strategy

"The president sank into a chair and stared up at the ceiling. The failure to inflict any damage on the aliens ship convinced him there was no way to prevent them from landing.Suddenly he felt like there was plenty of time.Somehow he knew from his mind-meld experience with the captured alien,it would take them a couple of years to move the entire population down to Earth from the mother ship.
In light of what happened in Hoston,it seemed to be time now to rethink the strategy of fighting the aliens and time to begin organizing ways to resist them once they began their invasion. The only logical course of action Whitmore could see was to wait for them to establish their cities,then blow the world to smithereens.
Mankind was going to be exterminated,he knew,without mercy.If were lucky,he told himself,we might be able to take them down with us."

Never mind.

Corbell Mark IV said:

Never mind.

Click to expand...

About what?

"NORAD, The North American Aerospace Defense system was the safest spot on the world. Built deep within Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, it was an impregnable underground military command post,a high tech santcuary for the nations leaders-the president in particular-in the event of nuclear attack. The walls of the bunker were designed to withstand the force of a nearby nuclear blast by themselves buried,as they were,deep below the surface of the Earth,they offered even greater protection of the facility. Even if every city in the US were to be wiped out,the technicians stationed in Colorado would be able to track enemy movement,coordinate troops stationed overseas and launch several different kinds of missile attacks.
The vice president,the joint chiefs of staff,their advisers and families were already safely sheltered in the mountain,waiting for the president to arrive. NORAD computers were linked to those aboard Air Force One.
Approximately twelve minutes into the bloody,one sided dogfights in the skies over New York, Los Angeles,San Francisco and Washington, the technicians crowded into Air Force One's command center began losing the ability to coordinate the nations militay response. First they lost radio contact with the surviving F-18's. Next global radar capability was interrupted. Finally they lost their links with NORAD and had to switch over to microwave telephone.
They must be targeting our satellites.We're losing all satellite communication,tracking and mapping. They switched over to the Air Force Ones ULR (UpLooking Radar) then watched a sweep screen showing the positions of the most important Comsats. One by one they were vanishing. The only explanation was that the invaders were up there,33,000 miles into the heavens,the altitude where a satellite could stay in geosynchrous orbit over a fixed spot on Earth.
As the awkward muti-million dollar transmitters floated past they were being blasted out of the sky. The military had satellites stationed in different orbital paths at other altitudes,but switching over required ground crews in several locations to retarget the receptor dishes.
Before that work could even be ordered,the bases themselves came under massive ,virulent bombardment. The last thing Air Force One heard from El Toro was the flight tower screaming incoming, hostile incoming! Before a single plane could get off the ground,the base was transformed into a smoldering ruin. Slowly the president's flying fortress was being cut off from the rest of the world.
What's the report from Peterson the president asked,referring to Peterson Air Force Base near Colorado Springs,where they were scheduled to land in less than thirty minutes,the base closet to NORAD. The demoralized expression on Greys face told more than his words. We're continuing to evacuate as many of our forces from the bases as possible but we've already sustained deep loses. Damn it,the president slammed his fist down on the arm of the chair. Not only do they know where to hit us,they got the order of priorities down.They're moving right down a damned checklist. Yes sir Grey allowed, its an exteremely well planned attack.They seem to understand our defense system."

So what do you think?