The time has come! The time of boundless imagination, and boundlesser ridiculousness.
We the people of the Harkovast forum must now compete for dominance of a spot of ground with a higher altitude relative to the surrounding area, from this point on referred to as a “hill”.
the “hill” is of course imaginary, but just use your boundless imagination alluded to earlier.

the rules are simple(ish)
I shall be the first on the hill.
the next person to post must come up with a creative solution to knock me off the hill.
when you take the hill you may come up with defenses, like barb wire or sentient shades of blue.
the next person to post after the last person must knock the new person on the hill off the hill.
ad infinitum.

I know you won't break the rules for how to properly knock someone off the hill, because there aren't any.


I am on the hill. bring it.

60 megaton Nuclear explosion.

…

Now the hill is uninhabitable due to massive amounts of radiation.

Also, now it is no longer a hill because I exploded the bomb from a tunnel under the hill, which annihilated everything above it and turned the dirt to glass. So it is now a… uh, what do you call a piece o… oh, right, crater.

I don't go for half measures you see.

I am pretty content that the radioactivity will keep most people off the ‘hill.’

I assume your admiring your work, so I shove you off the lip of the crater (the elevated part around the edge of a crater. I then install seismic sensors to detect any tunneling, and a legion of burrow bots to stop any would be tunnelers. I also don a rad suit, and take anti-rad medication

you destroyed one hill, but made a bigger one, that's ring shaped. Now it's king of the crater.

Wait… which direction did you shove me? You would have had to shove me into the crater because otherwise I would have seen you coming… And I am also wearing a Rad suit… so… I'm still King of the crater, cause I'm in the center of it, just went for a bit of a tumble in the process. Sure, it's a terrible tactical position, but I'm still there. Oh, and thanks for making sure nobody else can tunnel under me…

Now, I know I left that baseball bat somewhere around here…

curse you! But you forget, I control the sensors, and robots, so they protect ME from tunnelers, not you. I'll just keep that up my sleeve for now :D

I take cover, begin taking shots at you with my rifle, and make a call with a radio. Just be patient, it's coming…

you might want to take cover from my rifle yourself. getting a corpse out of a crater is easier then warm body >:)

… Yeah… I know an airstrike call when I see one.

Hmm…

I knew I put this teleportation device in that pocket!

Yes, my rad suit has pockets. Don't laugh at me.

Whelp. I'm outta here. I gotta date with an oven and baked goods recipes. Enjoy the tactically impossible defensive position! I'll be back after I'm full of bakey goodness. And I've got some kind of heavy weaponry.

This is better then expected. as you teleport away to your oven, I track your signal, and make a second call. not too hard to redirect.

enjoy your kinetic strike. the question is, will you try to save the muffins? WILL YOU?!?

I have the burrowers dig out a bunker with reinforced concrete, and steel plating in the bottom of the crater. I then set up motion sensors around the perimeter of the crater. I then go into my shiny new bunker, set up my equipment, and have my space based lasers, my rods from heaven, and my hunter/killer sattelites on standby.

Ha Ha I control the highest ground of all; SPACE. good luck taking my low ground.

I wasn't expecting this war to start with this heavy of equipment, I was expecting to escalate from sticks and stones. Good thing I was prepared.

Ironic. Your own kinetic strike lands right on your bunker's head, hope you weren't in it. I teleported directly beneath you. My base is several kilometers below the center point of the crater.

Ouch. Sorry bout that.

Besides, the base itself is highly mobile. Mobile UNDERGROUND. Yeah. Brilliant, right? It also teleports when I want it. *Does little dance*

Ahem. Sorry.

And fuck the muffins. I'm not making muffins. I'm making biscotti. Yum.

Now leave me alone or I'm going to blow up your spacey things. Well, I will anyway, but I'll do it later. Or maybe someone else will. Then again, you just lost your controls to them with the bunker, no doubt you will get them back soon.

Oh, and someone is gonna have to be coming to investigate that nuclear blast. Have fun.

I mean, I was hoping for a baseball bat fight between two fellows in rad suits inside a glassed nuclear crater. See how that goes later.

This has officially escalated to king of the planet.

Shooting my own base may have set me back a bit, but lemons to lemonade. I still have the seismic sensors, and the controls for the satellites are not too hard (for me) to reestablish.
using the seismic sensors, and the impact of the kinetic strike, I can determine your bases location, or where it was. from that I can focus my advance space based sensor arrays and determine if your still there, and if not, where you went to by following your quantum wake. the hunt is on.
I have the kill sats clear an even larger area of space for my use, and pile all the junk into one giant ball of wrath for later use.
Finally, I check my machete for sharpness, and start walking to your base…

we may have to make stats, and roll dice at some point.

Machete? Watching faaaar too many bad Hollywood movies there…

You can walk all you want, but you will have to catch me first.

Mobility is key, you know. Key…

MMMM. Tasty biscotti.

Now… let me see… I may skip the bat on this one.

Oh, and you were wondering how I knew about the Machete? There is a reason for it.

And if you are monitoring your little dig bot things? They blink out of commission for a moment and blink back, with everything reading normal.

Now, what close quarters weapon to choose? Ponder ponder ponder. Oh, nothing too complicated…

Now, where did my base go? It's still underground, but it has stopped moving a short distance from the crater. That is since you know it already, of course.

“My faithful cousin mole people! The time is at hand for a crushing strike on the surface! Very soon the remnants of those pesky land dwellers will tremble in fear and fight amongst themselves in their confusion, unaware of the true danger lurking beneath their feet! It is then that we shall strike!”

Ahem. I've always wanted to say that. Always. Well, no, for the last three hours maybe.

Was the mole people thing a joke? Or is it the sinister truth? Tune in next time!

I turn my back for five minutes and you guys are all over my hill!

I am officially driving a bulldozer up onto this thing and retaking my place as official king of the Harko-Hill!

How well do bulldozers do on a solid glass crater?

I wonder how Tiberius is going to react to this. He's busy coming after me with a machete, and Hark is taking the hi- er, crater!

Yummy biscotti. Yum. Mmm. Have fun you two! I've got the bulldozer scene from A Fish Called Wanda stuck in my head now…

Now that I know exactly where you are…



I have my space lasers vaporize the ground above you, and shortly after that you hear some fizzing and popping in your base. good luck escaping after getting EMPed. the repairs should take a few weeks just to get the basics running again. But I doubt you have that long.

RODS FROM HEAVEN INBOUND! BRACE FOR KINETIC STRIKE.

5!

4!

3!

2!

1!

IMPACT!

That should take care of your base… permanently.

And before you can think about hacking my satellites, know a few things-
they are programmed to trace any hack attempts, and to vaporize them.
If they can't vaporize the hacker, they'll vaporize his transmitter
To hack them you must answer a series of riddles. no googling the answer. honor system.

Now to deal with Hark

I run back to the hi- I mean crater. machete at the ready just in case. The burrow bots collapse the ground under the dozer, causing it to crash through the glass layer, and slide down a steep tunnel, finally ending about where canoueva's base WAS.

I then space laser out a fox/wolf hole, and get ready to repel borders with my rifle. while I wait, I have another laser cook a steak for me.
mmm laser steak.
and if your wondering how I control the orbital arsenal; it's a combination of a back up hand held, laser markers for more precise work, and brain implants.

the area so far.

map not to scale

1- The craters outer edge. keep in mind there's a raised edge encircling the pit part of the crater.

2- What was my bunker. Now it's own mini crater, with a ruined bunker in the middle

3- pit where Canouvea's base was. it's deep down from the laser mining, and has a crater at the bottom from the subsequent rod from heaven. Can, and Hark are currently at the bottom with one ruined base, and one bulldozer that might work still

4- hole the dozer fell in

5- the tunnel the dozer slid down

6- my wolf hole

I teleported out of the base far before the EMP, and I took my biscotti with me. See, burning through several kilometers of ground requires some serious free electron weaponry, as such the energy requirement would have been massive. So I saw the buildup coming. My base would have taken far too long to teleport itself though, so I only had time for my personal teleporter. The strike base was a loss, but not an irreparable one.

Where did I go? You will be finding out soon. I'm not dumb enough to pop out in the open with space weaponry hanging over my head. So I'll have to deal with that before anything else.

Easy. Space based weaponry generally aims at the ground… how do they deal with other space objects?

Almost undetectable bots attach to each and every one of your space weapons… and begin the hacking.

Bring on those questions! But, honour system, I would prefer riddles made up by you and generally answerable. Not easy, but not specialized. Like, if you are a microbiologist, no riddles based on microbiology!

you got pass my kill sats! damn your stealth space bots.

on to the hacking.
there are three firewalls, thus three riddles/questions.

1st one.
one and a half chickens lay one and a half eggs in one and a half days. how many eggs will nine chickens lay in nine days?

solve that, and then I'll give the next. that way I'll have time to come up with another riddle. I think I know what to do for the 3rd tho.

Math. It had to be math. I had expected wordplay. Good move sir.

Okay… I'm using Google as a calculator. Aaaand then going to a calculator program.

Table: Example Question

#Chickens 1.5 9

Time 36hrs 216hrs

#Eggs 1.5 ?

C= #Chickens
t = time elapsed in hours
E = #Eggs

r=rate at which one chicken lays an egg

What is r? That is the key to figuring this out.

What kind of formula would be used? C x t x r = E {} or (Ct)/r = E ?

Whelp… I think they both work out to be the same thing. But I'll try to transcribe my notes.

for the C x t x r = E one…

1.5 x 36 x r = 1.5

54 x r = 1.5 (divide both sides by 54)

r = (1.5/54)

So

9 x 216 x (1.5/54) = 54

So 54

For: (Ct)/r = E

54/r = 1.5 (multiply both sides by r)

54 = 1.5r (divide both sides by 1.5)

36 = r

So (9 x 216)/36 =54

So, both are either right or wrong. Hmm… maybe messing around with the hrs vs days was a mistake…

Lets try something else. Back to 1.5 days instead of 36 hours.

Aaaand… same thing.

still 54…

Hmm. Now I will try something different, to double check because I hate math. Here is my reasoning:

How many eggs do 9 chickens produce in one and a half days? (this came to me, er, my robots, while walking the dog…)

We know the answer for 1 1/2 chickens, and 1.5 is 1/6th of 9…
So multiply 1.5 by 6… which is, of course, 9…
so 9 Chickens lay 9 eggs in 1.5 days. But we need 9 days, so multiply 1.5 by 6… 9… but need to do the same to 9, so 9 x 6 = 54

This ends up meaning… 9 chickens, 9 days, 54 eggs…

54 eggs seems right, but I am terrible at math.

a simple way of putting it is; each chicken lays 2 eggs every 3 days, or 2/3rds of an egg every day. most people make either the obvious mistake, or somehow more commonly, the dumbass mistake.
the obvious mistake is thinking it's a 1 to ratio, and that the answer is 81
the dumbass mistake is thinking it's 9. I don't get how most people's first guess is 9.

anyway…

that is correct. you get through the first firewall, and if you don't like math, then you'll hate this. get out the calculator again.

superman has just gone so fast around the earth that he has gone back in time to save lois lane. Superman can fly at a top speed of 2130 mph, and can't go faster because he is tired from time travel, you would be too. He needs to get to Star City to save lois lane. the earthquake that kills lois happens at 5PM, rubble will finally crush her at 5:15. Star city is 10,000 miles away to the west from supermans current location. Superman looks at his superwatch, and it says it's 7:31PM. To complicate matters, lex luthor has bathed the earth in low power kryptonite radiation, slowing superman by 10%. once superman gets to star city he has to search for lois, but he also has to save as many people as he can. Star city has an area of 900 square miles, and a population density of 1,000 people per square mile. Superman can save 100 people a minute, but only 10% will need saving in a mile. superman can thoroughly search 10 square miles for lois in one minute. how much time will superman have to spare if lois is found in the last square mile? math can be rounded, explain your answer.

You do know that the last one gave me a headache right?

I don't know if I will be able to get back to you right away, because I have something to do for mother's day first…

Second, I am assuming that it is 7:31pm of the day before the Earthquake, or Superman would be too late still.

So, first off, Superman's top speed is not 2130 mph anymore, but 2130 - 10%… 10% is 2130 x 0.10 = 213… so 2130-213, = 1917 (the year the USA entered WW 1… and Russia left). Superman's speed is now 1917mph… which is 31.95 miles per minute

second, Superman has under 24 hours. (And if the answer is 1 minute because of that 7:3'1' then I will explode…figuratively). So, 7:31 - 7: 31 is 24rs… 24hrs is 1440 minutes. The deadline for finding Lois, given if he actually finds Lois Last, or saving everyone, is 5:15 (not 5:00 you trickster you)… So, the difference between the two is 21hrs and 44mins, which is 1304 minutes. Superman has 1304 minutes.

Now, 10 000/1917 = 312.989045383 minutes Let's make that 313 for my brain's sake. 313 minutes to get to the city.

1304 minutes - 313 = 991 minutes left.

Now… 1000 people per square mile… but only ten % per square mile need rescuing… (presumably before 5:15, though some would probably croak almost as soon as the quake started)…10% of 1000 is 100, which lines up nicely with how many superman can save in a minute… 100 people. So superman can save 100 people per minute, and that minute is all he needs to save the 10% that need saving per square mile… and Lois would be one of the 10% that needs saving.

As such, superman searching 10 square miles for Lois per minute is only needed if he cannot save everyone who needs to be saved.

Now, how long would it take superman to save the the 90 000 (900 square miles x 100 people needing saving per square mile) people who need saving in the city? 900 minutes at 100 per minute.

So 991 - 900 = 91 minutes if he just goes about doing the saving without thinking about his girlfriend.

But, and this seems likely because she is the reason he went back in time and surveying an area is smart, if he checks each 10 square miles in a minute before starting the saving, just to see if she is there, then that will extend his time.

He can check 10 square miles in a minute. Ends up being 90 minutes to cover every last section of the city. So 91-90 = 1… (and given that bit of rounding up I did…) I would assume that the surveying would bring him right to where she was, making the answer 1 minute IF he decides to do the searching part instead of just diving in to help.

I should have just guessed 1. Really. Because that is how these things work. But there you go, a long winded explanation for it. Though there is some rounding involved, of course, so it would probably be about a faction of a second longer as he got there just a short time before 313 minutes were up.

Oh, and that was mean of you.

you forgot the time zones.>:)
roughly 1 timezone = 1000 miles, since there are 24,000 miles to the earth's circumfrence, and 24 timezones. the time he starts from is actually about 9:31AM star city time. some of your other math was wrong too.
the travel time is 5 hours and 13 minutes.
the kryptonite doesn't stop affecting him when he starts rescuing. so every minute he can search 9 square miles. that's 100 minutes.
cumulative with that is saving people. 1,000 minutes, or about 16 hours, 40 minutes
total- 23 hours 33 minutes (or 21 hours, 53 minutes if he can search while saving). so he'd be done at 9:04AM the next day. 15 hours, 52 minutes late.

And thus the answer was




you are going to hate me so much for this…





He has all the time in the world. He has the ability to time travel. he just has to rest up for a bit. eventually there will be so many time cloned Supermans flying around star city that everyone will get saved, including Lois, on time.

If it helps, it took me about 2 hours to come up with this. And I got my own math wrong the first time.

bad news for your hack bot too. with it's failure to get past the superman fire wall, it's detected, and a kill sat captures it, dissasembles it, studies it, and adapts. You won't be able to sneak past the guard dogs so easily next time.

I fear I may have destroyed your soul.

Hmm. You never specified if he was on the Earth or not. You said he was 10 000 miles away. He could have been in space for all I know… Or, a better explanation is that his watch would give him the time of the timezone he was last in… but it is a super watch, I did not consider that, of course it would magically change timezones.

Doesn't kryptonite just tire superman, not slow him? So wouldn't only his top speed be reduced? I mean, he isn't going to be shooting about at 1917 mph in a city. He'd kill everyone. That is kinda what the wording suggested… hmm.

313 minutes is 5 hours and 13 minutes. I got the travel time correct, I was just using minutes.

Bad news was that this was a trick question. Darn. And all my complaining aside, I forgot about the Kryptonite and never considered the timezones.

Bad news for your space satellites too though. My hack bots don't like being touched, and there are several of them, one for each of your heavy weapons satellites. Now, I had hoped to hack them so I could use them on YOU, but since that isn't happening… well, anyway, the hack bots all explode with enough force to completely cripple the satellites. For double measure, they give off a short EMP burst beforehand in order to cripple any electronic defenses. And because I am never one for half measures I fired a nuclear ICBM out along with the hack bots. From where I'm not telling. It had halted and was waiting for confirmation of the hacking success… it failed, and so the missile broke into its component warheads and they went straight for the weapons platforms. With each area covered in a EMP blasts, there are no methods available to detect the incoming warheads. Nuclear explosions cause anyone who can see the space above to stare.

End result? No more Space Based support for any of us. I was really looking forward to that.

And I look forward to the time I get to use riddles on you. That time is coming pretty soon I'm afraid. Oh, and they most likely will not be math based ones.

And yes, I really do hate you for that. Here, I'll prove it…

The satellites were essentially directly above the crater, and so the nuclear explosions also generate a kind of EMP (Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 tells me so), which knocks out all electronics, including communications and electronic scopes, in the area. This includes your dig bot things… unless they are shielded by the ground. Up to you, I don't know how effective that would be.

Your move.

At least my steak is done. And it is delicious

I predict that there is going to be at least a 20 mile radius of death centered on the crater.

each of my kinetic strikes was like a tactical nuclear strike. we now have entire satellites devoted to dropping things coming down. along with the space lasers that are fusion powered, and will likely explode upon impact, and the EMP satellites, that used miniature nuclear bombs to shoot their semi-precise emps.
In short. anyone who does not find a way to get out faster then foot is going to be incredibly dead.

I run to what was my bunker, and dig out a dirt bike, repair it's minor damage, and then ride it to safety.

I think we need a new hill, this one isn't even going to be a crater, it's going to be a wound upon the earth itself.

RUN!!!

I love me my teleportation.

now hark just needs to get out of that pit and escape.
wouldn't that massive EMP also destroy your teleporter? and possibly a vast majority of technology on earth.

did… did we just cause the apocalypse?

Nah, it's a personalized teleporter I carry with me, and I wasn't anywhere near the crater… I was deep enough in the earth to protect me from the initial EMP. But as soon as I found where you are and go there… well, the teleporter may well be useless.

But no. The Mole People still have most of their stuff working. So the Apocalypse hasn't quite happened. (I may be joking about the Mole People… you're gonna have to find out I suppose)

Well, anyone near the crater will think it was the apocalypse… if they survive.

I think we can assume Hark has a special bulldozer that will protect him… and he is pretty far down below the earth… not quite as far as me, of course, but not instantly dead.

The EMP didn't reach me, but the hell coming down on the “crater” might. I'm not taking any chances. I'm outta here.

upon further calculation, I realize that a 20 mile radius might be too hopeful.

it's probably closer too 100 mile radius, considering the satellites weren't all clustered together, so will have a cluster bomb effect, and since almost every strike will be at least 5 times a normal kinetic strike, and some of them are actually nuclear powered, the fallout, blast waves, heat waves, and radioactive dust cloud should immediately destroy a 100 mile radius area, and then proceed to rapidly kill off another 100 miles worth, and kill another 100 miles worth over time.

YAY. our need to be fake king of a small geographic feature has doomed millions!

good thing I still have access to my wormhole network! I use it to get far out of the 300 mile radius death zone.

Hark, hurry up and escape, I don't think that dozer of yours will save you.

I predict it will crash soon . I will inform you when it does.

See Hark Run,
Run Hark Run!

Wow! You guys are really good at this game!
You've got lasers and maps and brain implants and everything!

Mole people? Can I never be part of anything that isn't furry? I was hoping or Morlocks!

I am setting the self destruct system of the warp core on my bulldozaer to explode in 5 parsecs.
The self destruct is me hitting it with a hammer till it blows up.
I think this will take about 5 parsecs.
And dont tell me a parsec measures distance, if Han Solo says it means time, then it means time!