S04.E21: Monument Point

[ComicFan777]

I think Felicity mentioned,"As a prank, I once relocated a GPS satellite.  Everyone on the Eastern seaboard thought they were 20 miles west of their actual location."  Relocating/repositioning the satellite would be slow, so given the amount of time she had, it could only move the GPS location a small distance.

[AyChihuahua]

Basically, diverting it 20 miles was all she could do. Sure fallout will be a problem, but personally I'd rather deal with fallout (and likely immediate evac and medical care) than a direct nuclear hit.

Also, and some people missed this, the reason a nuke got through is that Murmur shot at Felicity and Noah, so they were removed from their whack-a-nuke job for a few vital seconds.

[Morrigan2575]

There was something I wasn't sure about, in the episode she mentioned that she once hacked a GPS satellite and moved it 20 miles.  Did she mean she just confused the satellite's information so everything was 20 miles off or did she actually move the satellite 20 miles which altered the GPS information?

[AyChihuahua]

Just now, ComicFan777 said:

I think Felicity mentioned,"As a prank, I once relocated a GPS satellite.  Everyone on the Eastern seaboard thought they were 20 miles west of their actual location."  Relocating/repositioning the satellite would be slow, so given the amount of time she had, it could only move the GPS location a small distance.

Yeah, she had like eight seconds. And she was repositioning where the nuke thought it was, she wasn't taking over the nuke itself and flying it somewhere. She tried that and it didn't work.

1 minute ago, Morrigan2575 said:

There was something I wasn't sure about, in the episode she mentioned that she once hacked a GPS satellite and moved it 20 miles.  Did she mean she just confused the satellite's information so everything was 20 miles off or did she actually move the satellite 20 miles which altered the GPS information?

I'm pretty sure she confused the satellite's info. Moving the satellite itself wouldn't change where the GPS on earth said people were.

[Orion]

A few years ago I was part of a think tank that looked at the possibility and repercussions of a terrorist group gaining control of a missile silo and launching a nuclear weapon.  There is couple of things Arrow got really wrong.  First a nuke launched from Russia would take 20 minutes to reach the US. Felicity would have had more time to attempt to hack the missile before it landed.  All major nuclear powers have a system that requires both a passcode (something Rubicon could have overridden) and a manual input (a key or button) that Rubicon would not have been able to effect.

If a nuclear weapon was launched at the US, NORAD (who already would have been on high alert once POTUS was notified of the threat) would be notified and cruise missiles stationed in Alaska would be launched to try to knock it down. Fighter planes would also be launched to attempt to intercept the missile and bring it down.

If the nuke managed to launch and make it past all of that there would 100% kill rate for 1.5 miles from impact (Although there were some survivors in Japan that managed to be in the right type of building when the bombs exploded and survived). At 4.5 miles you would have 50/50 shot at surviving. It would depend on a bunch of factors such as: if you were inside or outside (Arrow had the bomb going off at what looked like sunrise so chances are most people would be in their homes) and how fast first responders could get to you. Outside of 5 miles you have an excellent chance of surviving; although you would be taking Potassium iodide tablets for a while. Rates of cancer would be higher in the years to come but overall outside of Havensrock you would probably be just fine.

The type of radiation in a bomb is not the same either in amount or duration as what was released at Chernobyl. The Japanese began rebuilding 5 years after the bombs were dropped during World War II.

To bring this back to this episode, Lyla says that they were going to begin evacuations on Monument Point. When the bomb went off it should have given the first wave of people evacuating just enough time to get 20 miles from the city.    

Edited May 13, 2016 by Orion

[Chaser]

Dang.

[AyChihuahua]

From what I understand, at least all US nukes, if not ALL nukes, are not in any way online. Hacking them to launch without proper codes going to the humans who'd have to launch them is, literally, impossible. It'd be like hacking a 1980s VCR.

[Thundercatmary]

Yes I believe that's true.

[Morrigan2575]

29 minutes ago, AyChihuahua said:

From what I understand, at least all US nukes, if not ALL nukes, are not in any way online. Hacking them to launch without proper codes going to the humans who'd have to launch them is, literally, impossible. It'd be like hacking a 1980s VCR.

I don't believe that's correct.  I remember back in the 80's a team failed their training exorcise and proved that humans can't be trusted.  After that,  all missiles were put under the control of a very intelligent computer...that for some reason liked to play games. Pretty sure  here was a documentary on the subject.

[AyChihuahua]

Just now, Morrigan2575 said:

I don't believe that's correct.  I remember back in the 80's a team failed their training exorcise and proved that humans can't be trusted.  After that,  all missiles were put under the control of a very intelligent computer...that for some reason liked to play games. Pretty sure  here was a documentary on the subject.

At first I was nervous, and then I remembered "Shall we play a game?"

[Thundercatmary]

Do you ever worry that computers will gain intelligence and rise up against us in revenge for all the swearing at them we do? Cause I totally haven't. :p

[romantic idiot]

Nah, they'll have learnt from the movies that humans always win. Like cockroaches. Some always survive. 

[dtissagirl]

I apologize to my phone every time I drop it so Skynet will spare me.

[BunsenBurner]

Just a few comments.

Felicity's grommet coat kind of struck me as her homage to the BC costume. Both are ridiculous to look at.

Donna was right to take Lance to task over wanting to lie about Laurel being BC. It's his daughter if he loses his job over it then so be it. It's not about lying to get his job back it's disrespecting his daughter which would eventually eat at him. She made the right call.

Did Anarky call Thea Mommy because she said she made his face look like it does? It would make sense and makes his creepiness factor go even higher in my book.

The cattle prod to electrocute the boyfriend makes me ill I won't even use it on my cows.

Finally, I think that Oliver being pure of heart, as told to him on the island, will help him save the world. His pureness of heart will come through to the people of Monument Point as well as the world and he will harness their hope and use it against DD and destroy him.

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

Arrow Faces Nuclear Annihilation

Team Arrow tries to stop billions of deaths. And they're pretty much successful!

[arjumand]

15 hours ago, Morrigan2575 said:

I don't believe that's correct.  I remember back in the 80's a team failed their training exorcise and proved that humans can't be trusted.  After that,  all missiles were put under the control of a very intelligent computer...that for some reason liked to play games. Pretty sure  here was a documentary on the subject.

 

15 hours ago, AyChihuahua said:

At first I was nervous, and then I remembered "Shall we play a game?"

I think I love you both.

It would be great if someone told Oliver: "Fighting Damien Darkh is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

OT - I died inside when The Winter Soldier had Natasha saying the 'Shall we play a game ' line and a youtube comment said that it was weird to have a reference to the Saw movies in Captain America. Noooooooooooooo.

 

Back to the episode - no matter what MG or anyone else says, it was a mistake to have a nuke actually hit a town. It raises the stakes too high and tempts showrunners to keep one-upping themselves. And it's full of fridge logic moments, which some people have already mentioned. Like, I guess the US is at war with Russia now? And in a few years we'll have a

Spoiler

revenge

story a la Captain America Civil War,

Spoiler

focusing on the guys who tried to help instead of the guy who actually sent the nuke?

And no, you can't hack a nuke like that.

And where the fuck is Monument Point? And is Star(ling) City that close to Vegas that you can reach Smoak sex cabin from both with relative ease?

Ugh. I liked the good fighting by Oliver - even the flips. They reminded me of the pilot, where he does a lot of that sort of thing. I liked Oliver, Felicity, Kuttler, Digg. The Thea plot I could take or leave, though once Anarky turned up I got converted to that ship. Forget about Alex, Thea. He was dumber than Oliver in season 3.

Edited May 14, 2016 by arjumand

[dtissagirl]

1 hour ago, arjumand said:

OT - I died inside when The Winter Soldier had Natasha saying the 'Shall we play a game ' line and a youtube comment said that it was weird to have a reference to the Saw movies in Captain America. Noooooooooooooo

OH DEAR LORD NOOOOOOO. I bet this person also DIDN'T get it when Steve said "I understood that reference" re: flying monkeys in Avengers?

To get back to the episode -- sure they got many things wrong about how missiles work, but the one thing I thought they did good for a fake TV missile was that Felicity wasn't able to hack it and redirect it, and could only fool the GPS system into thinking Monument Point was some 20 miles off. That felt *real* in the midst of all the WTF NUCLEAR MISSILES DON'T WORK LIKE THAT feelings I was having during the episode.
 

[AyChihuahua]

Oh yeah, I'm totally fine with suspending disbelief re hacking nukes. I'd even have been fine with her being able to take control of the nuke and direct it into space or whatever. That's classic fictional nuke stuff. I'm just glad it's not how they really work. (Bc neither someone from the outside of the bunker NOR someone from the inside of the bunker can do it alone. I like failsafes when it comes to something like FRIGGING NUKES.)

[lemotomato]

53 minutes ago, AyChihuahua said:

Oh yeah, I'm totally fine with suspending disbelief re hacking nukes. I'd even have been fine with her being able to take control of the nuke and direct it into space or whatever. That's classic fictional nuke stuff. I'm just glad it's not how they really work. (Bc neither someone from the outside of the bunker NOR someone from the inside of the bunker can do it alone. I like failsafes when it comes to something like FRIGGING NUKES.)

I know you're being flippant, but I actually saw that mentioned somewhere else as an accusation made against Felicity-- that she didn't redirect the missiles into space and "chose" to drop them on innocent people. At which point my brain fried from the idea that missiles can defy gravity and change directions in the middle of their downward trajectory to go UP into space.

Edited May 14, 2016 by lemotomato

[AyChihuahua]

17 minutes ago, lemotomato said:

I know you're being flippant, but I actually saw that as an accusation made against Felicity-- that she didn't redirect the missiles into space and "chose" to drop them on innocent people. At which point my brain fried from the idea that missiles can defy gravity and change directions in the middle of their downward trajectory to go UP into space.

A lot of people weren't really paying attention. They didn't even notice Murmur SHOOTING AT HER. It's not as if she took a coffee break in the middle of it. They made it as clear as Arrow ever does that redirecting it a few miles was all she could do. 

[arjumand]

38 minutes ago, lemotomato said:

I know you're being flippant, but I actually saw that as an accusation made against Felicity-- that she didn't redirect the missiles into space and "chose" to drop them on innocent people. At which point my brain fried from the idea that missiles can defy gravity and change directions in the middle of their downward trajectory to go UP into space.

Wow, Just wow. Things like this are why I don't bother to read the io9 episode posts anymore - the posts are ok, usually, but it's the comments where all the anti-Felicity vitriol like this comes out, especially now that it's clear she was never the one in that grave.

Edited May 14, 2016 by arjumand

[lemotomato]

10 minutes ago, arjumand said:

Wow, Just wow. Things like this are why I don't bother to read the io9 episode posts anymore - the posts are ok, usually, but it's the comments where all the anti-Felicity vitriol like this comes out, especially now that it's clear she was never the one in that grave.

I try to avoid any Arrow talk outside this forum because I've realized it's bad for my blood pressure. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I do expect the discussion to be about what actually happened on the show, not what's imagined. 

[bijoux]

A review @tv echo posted and I can't quote here because the multiquote function isn't working for me, mentions how the flashbacks actually make sense due to Poppy's eyes lighting up. And this makes me think, why did they? Seriously, from Oliver's speedy training with Fortuna, it seems like you need to consciously try to channel whatever. Also, you apparently get juiced up by extremely recent kills, since the multitude of people Darhk has killed over the past century weren't enough, he needed fresh kills. Did she kill someone right before handling the totem?

The yellow eyes are not really well thought through. Darhk and Reiter get them after their kills and when they're around the totem, while also wanting to achieve that. Oliver's did it with no totem and just concentrating. Yes, no kills because he's using white magic. Hey, maybe he would juice up on saving lives then? Yin and yang. And Poppy's just did by touching the totem? 

[ottoDbusdriver]

Doesn't it normally take 20-25 minutes for an ICBM to transit from Russia to North America ?  Unlike this show where it took about 3 minutes to go from Siberia to Virginia.

When they zoomed on that map of the missile, the destination appeared to be exactly where D.C. should be, but for some reason Washington was indicated as located where Baltimore should be and Richmond, VA was located east of Chesapeake Bay (which is WAY off).  And for some reason there was a city called Elmond located near Washington -- why did they even bother to label a fictional town on that map that has nothing to do with nothing ?

The town that was nuked, Havenrock, was 20 miles WEST of Monument Point, so yeah, Monument Point is likely going to be in the fallout pattern downwind from the blast.  At least that means they can save on night lighting since all the monuments will glow in the dark now.  :)

When Lyla says that it was a direct hit on Havenrock and was maximum yield -- do they mean to say that Russians have variable yield nuclear weapons, and the Russians had the option to dial it back to minimum yield ?  How exactly ?  Was it a small nuke in the kiloton category (like Hiroshima/Nagasaki) or a big nuke in the megaton category (like H-bombs) ?  It does make a difference.  

And how does Lyla know how many were killed so quickly -- what if everyone in Havenrock was out of town visiting Monument Point that day ? 

Edited May 14, 2016 by ottoDbusdriver

[apinknightmare]

1 minute ago, bijoux said:

A review @tv echo posted and I can't quote here because the multiquote function isn't working for me, mentions how the flashbacks actually make sense due to Poppy's eyes lighting up. And this makes me think, why did they? Seriously, from Oliver's speedy training with Fortuna, it seems like you need to consciously try to channel whatever. Also, you apparently get juiced up by extremely recent kills, since the multitude of people Darhk has killed over the past century weren't enough, he needed fresh kills. Did she kill someone right before handling the totem?

Oliver's did it with no totem and just concentrating. 

I thought that Oliver's tattoo was his totem, according to the shaman? 

I'm not sure why Poppy's eyes lit up. Maybe we'll find out she's an island serial killer? They probably just did that because they wanted us to know she turned magically evil before they were ready to show how/why.

[bijoux]

That's true about the tattoo. But they are playing fast and loose with the rules here. Shocking, I know. I don't even care that much since it's just bringing me closer to the much awaited moment when Oliver pops her and goes in the direction of the Hood. It was just that reading that bit acutally made me think about her for the first time in ever.

[quarks]

It's very possible that Poppy has killed a number of people during the flashbacks this season and I just failed to notice.

[bijoux]

Sure it's possible, I just don't think it work retroactively. Darhk ceratinly has more than enough kills under his belt and he needed current ones to get the thing to work.

[kismet]

I think she did kill a few people and she wanted to kill them out of revenge for her brother and all bad things Reiter & co did. 

Listen yellow eyes made her interesting and relevant for probably only the second and most likely last time this season. Frankly, I don't care if it was playing fast and loose with rules.

Plus it contributes to my headcanon that she was bad all along or has done some pretty bad things.

[AyChihuahua]

Yeah, I thought the Poppy thing was weird, too. I also thought it was a mistake to have Oliver's eyes glow the same color as Reiter's. Should have gone with different colors for good/bad, like lightsabers.

Don't really care, though. It's all so dumb that I just whatever all that at this point.

[SmallScreenDiva]

I may have to watch the FBs again (the horror!) to be sure but I thought they showed Poppy taking hold of the idol just as a few people around her got machine gunned to death. So she may have inadvertently been "charged" with the bad juju.

[ottoDbusdriver]

46 minutes ago, quarks said:

It's very possible that Poppy has killed a number of people during the flashbacks this season and I just failed to notice.

Or care for that matter.  The flashbacks bring this show to a screeching halt.

[AyChihuahua]

3 minutes ago, SmallScreenDiva said:

I may have to watch the FBs again (the horror!) to be sure but I thought they showed Poppy taking hold of the idol just as a few people around her got machine gunned to death. So she may have inadvertently been "charged" with the bad juju.

Guggie said that you have to have CAUSED the deaths...he was talking about DD, but still. Poppy shouldn't have been juiced just bc she was in the vicinity. That actually tracks with the episode, bc DD CAUSED the deaths in Havenrock, but they were thousands of miles away, and he got juiced.

[dtissagirl]

I figured the island totem was sending the magic juju to Reiter, but it got diverted to #Poppy because she was touching it. Totems are dumb for plot too, guys.

[AyChihuahua]

I care so little about the flashbacks, Poppy, Bug-Eyed Reiter, the totem, or the island in general, that I literally do not care about the what or the wherefore. Midichlorians can have made the totem juice her for all I care.

[dtissagirl]

I don't care either, but I've seen this episode some seven or eight times now, osmosis happened.

[AudienceofOne]

1 hour ago, kismet said:

I think she did kill a few people and she wanted to kill them out of revenge for her brother and all bad things Reiter & co did.

The flashbacks were a complex psychological study into the devolution of a good human being into an evil one based on the pressures of circumstance. That Poppy started off good but had to "become dark to fight the dark" and was therefore consumed by it. And that this serves as an analogy for Oliver's arc over the past five years and his determination to come back from the darkness into the light.

I mean, are you saying you didn't get that from the five minutes of screentime where she repeated the same dialogue over and over with a bad accent while people dug things up? You clearly don't know how to watch TV.

[AyChihuahua]

11 minutes ago, AudienceofOne said:

The flashbacks were a complex psychological study into the devolution of a good human being into an evil one based on the pressures of circumstance. That Poppy started off good but had to "become dark to fight the dark" and was therefore consumed by it. And that this serves as an analogy for Oliver's arc over the past five years and his determination to come back from the darkness into the light.

I mean, are you saying you didn't get that from the five minutes of screentime where she repeated the same dialogue over and over with a bad accent while people dug things up? You clearly don't know how to watch TV.

Ha! It was basically "Good --> IMO kinda shitty to get some other dude tortured for what YOU did --> good --> good --> kinda pissy --> good --> good --> POSSESSED BY EVIL.

[apinknightmare]

5 minutes ago, AyChihuahua said:

Ha! It was basically "Good --> IMO kinda shitty to get some other dude tortured for what YOU did --> good --> good --> kinda pissy --> good --> good --> POSSESSED BY EVIL.

Didn't someone actually get killed because she let them take the fall for stealing the drugs? 

[AyChihuahua]

Just now, apinknightmare said:

Didn't someone actually get killed because she let them take the fall for stealing the drugs? 

I think yes? And a different dude got tortured? 

Please don't make me rewatch.

[wonderwall]

2 minutes ago, AyChihuahua said:

I think yes? And a different dude got tortured? 

Please don't make me rewatch.

I think you shoudl rewatch

[apinknightmare]

2 minutes ago, AyChihuahua said:

I think yes? And a different dude got tortured? 

Please don't make me rewatch.

Haha, I was hoping you might know because I don't want to rewatch either. I think someone got tortured, and someone got killed. Let's go with that. 

[lemotomato]

Is it too early to call that the romantic subplot in the flashbacks is finished without subjecting us to actually seeing them be romantic? (#grateful) I know there are two episodes left, but I'm assuming the window for that has passed now that Poppy is evil.

[kismet]

35 minutes ago, AudienceofOne said:

The flashbacks were a complex psychological study into the devolution of a good human being into an evil one based on the pressures of circumstance. That Poppy started off good but had to "become dark to fight the dark" and was therefore consumed by it. And that this serves as an analogy for Oliver's arc over the past five years and his determination to come back from the darkness into the light.

I mean, are you saying you didn't get that from the five minutes of screentime where she repeated the same dialogue over and over with a bad accent while people dug things up? You clearly don't know how to watch TV.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. But I got it. I'm far too lazy to ffwd the fb, so I've seen every thrilling second. I'm crap with names but I got the good become bad journey. Although I think she was sorta prone to evil from the start.

[AyChihuahua]

16 minutes ago, wonderwall said:

I think you shoudl rewatch

So mean.

2 minutes ago, kismet said:

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. But I got it. I'm far too lazy to ffwd the fb, so I've seen every thrilling second. I'm crap with names but I got the good become bad journey. Although I think she was sorta prone to evil from the start.

I just don't think it counts. Being possessed by evil involuntarily doesn't mean one is evil. I mean, Regan was a nice kid before that whole Satan thing.

[AudienceofOne]

2 minutes ago, kismet said:

Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. But I got it. I'm far too lazy to ffwd the fb, so I've seen every thrilling second. I'm crap with names but I got the good become bad journey. Although I think she was sorta prone to evil from the start.

I was being sarcastic but that doesn't mean it wasn't obvious what they were trying to do. It was just shallow and hamfisted. Having Oliver say they needed to become dark to fight the dark in this last episode was a pretty good clue that was what they were going for. But I still remember Poppy spending one episode going "you have darkness in you and you have to fight it and we cannot kill" and then literally the next episode yelling "Kill, Kill, KILL KILL KILL" through the whole thing while I tried not to fall over from characterisation-induced dizziness. They've taken four years to shown this change in Oliver. And then they try to do an analogy by attempting the same thing in one season of disjointed flashback sequences for a badly-acted character we couldn't give a shit about.

[BkWurm1]

4 hours ago, dtissagirl said:

I figured the island totem was sending the magic juju to Reiter, but it got diverted to #Poppy because she was touching it. Totems are dumb for plot too, guys.

Which makes Team Arrow's craft project to put the totem back together all the more asinine. 

3 hours ago, lemotomato said:

Is it too early to call that the romantic subplot in the flashbacks is finished without subjecting us to actually seeing them be romantic? (#grateful) I know there are two episodes left, but I'm assuming the window for that has passed now that Poppy is evil.

Oliver hasn't tried to cure her with True Love's Kiss yet, so don't give up hope!!  ;p

[bijoux]

I believe that the part about S5 is EBR's assumption, not spoiler, so I'm not tagging anything.

[arjumand]

11 hours ago, AyChihuahua said:

I think yes? And a different dude got tortured? 

Please don't make me rewatch.

WATCH IT WATCH IT. You know you want to.

Lol, don't worry, I had to rewatch a couple of times. The first guy got shot in the head, and then Oliver stuck a knife in the second guy's leg for an hour or two until wonderful amazing Poppy finally copped to stealing the drugs.

And once again, this makes no sense. Because if Reiter had the Magical Twigs O' Truth, why couldn't he just use them until he found out who was responsible?

And the whole, 'Oliver and Poppy, sittin' in a tree' - that was just to piss us off, right? Because right now, they're barely friends. I hope she dies soon, because her terrible acting is giving me heartburn.

I don't know how to multiquote while editing, so this is in answer to bijoux:

I love Emily, but that's nonsense. If she still owned Palmer Tech, how can they fire her as CEO? And have her escorted from the building by security, no less?

Edited May 15, 2016 by arjumand

[Morrigan2575]

35 minutes ago, bijoux said:

I believe that the part about S5 is EBR's assumption, not spoiler, so I'm not tagging anything.

Yes, assumption she said she hasn't asked what's going on with Flicity's in S5. 

IIRC the question was about Felicity's project (bio-stimulent) and what would happen now that she's fired.   This was how  the writers explained the firing to her because she didn't get it during filming. then said that she'd like for Felicity to have more to do outside of Tram Arrow and thinks that there will be more Felicity PT story in S5.

Edited May 15, 2016 by Morrigan2575