An intelgent dicussion regarding the "7 hour war"

Half-Life Series
#1

So I am new here on these forums, However I am not new to Half Life. It was one of the first FPS games I can remember playing as a kid and I loved it. But that’s not too important now except know that YES I have played Half Life 1 and 2.

Now in Half Life 2 it is a pretty well known historical event that the Combine destroyed the entire Earth military in 7 hours. Hence “7 hour war”. Which is pretty awesome. However If I’m not mistaken weren’t the Xen aliens already causing havoc on Earth as well as zombie outbreak?

Also the Portal Storms themselves could have easy been equivalent to a nuke or at least an EMP. Which means Earths forces were fighting aliens already and zombies THEN they were probably shocked and destroyed by the Portal Storms.

And then BAM an entire Combine army comes strolling in on an already damaged, weakened and probably dismantled army. For example if Portal Storms had any nuclear or EMP similar effects most of Earths defensive weapons, air support, radars, satellites, tanks, AA’s and so on would be “off” and useless.

So my question is this: Lets say there were no Xen aliens, no zombies and lets say Portals were just portals and didn’t cause any damage at all and lets say us Humans were fully aware of what was coming WOULD the Combine still be able to take us over in 7 hours. Would we destroy them without a problem, Or would the combine still win but take longer.

Thank you.

#2

A lot of members like to judge the first statement you ever make like it’s some kind of attitude check initiation…“MUST BE LIKE US”.

They would manage to still take full control…unless G-Man never interfered.

#3

This exact thing was discussed in one of the Civil Protection episodes (it’s a machinima) where Mike, a CP, starts talking about what would happen if we were fully prepared for an attack. He said something along the lines of, “Then what? It’d be the 10 Hour War?” But, to state my opinion, the Combine army seems to be so advanced and above what we thought possible, there would be no way the human military would be able to hold them off for long. Especially since for however long, aliens were teleporting in before the Combine got there.

#4

The more interesting question is how did a force of rebels drawn from the remnants of humanity manage to capture the Combine’s chosen capital, when as you said, they had defeated Earth’s armed forces in seven hours and held at bay the aliens from Zen?

My theory is that the Combine grew overconfident with their success and thus withdrew a large portion of their garrison once they had subjugated Earth’s population, instead relying heavily on human sympathisers (for example Dr Wallace Breen and City 17’s Civil Protection) to maintain order.

#5

Assuming we don’t have any of the fictional weapons from HL1 like the tau cannon or the gluon gun, I don’t think we’d stand any chance against the combine or any ‘real’ alien invasion in any sense of the word. Their technology is far too advanced compared to ours.

Their Citadel is more than 4 times the size of the tallest building in the world without even tapering, so their construction materials must be significantly more advanced than our own. Their units are machinery constructed from the same material or life forms co-opted from several other worlds, some of which may be more advanced than ours & enhanced with their technology. Sure we may have developed nuclear weapons, but they’re nowhere near as focused as the reusable weapons like the mortars or strider-canons. The best we’d hope for is mutually assured destruction between us & whatever fraction of the combine is present on earth at a given time.

In reality I’m sure even a slightly more advanced civilization would be able to destroy our planet or anything on it without much effort if they wanted to do so & could get here.

#6

@ The Dude Man 19

The combine could travel between dimensions, man! DIMENSIONS

God only knows what they’re capable of! I’m surprised we even lasted 7 hours!

Considering our weaponry was made for fighting ourselves, I whole-heartedly agree.

#7

EDIT: whoops d-post

#8

Sorry to ruin your discussion, but you should really learn how to spell “Intelligent” before making an “Intelligent Discussion”.

#9

You all talk about the ‘advanced’ weaponry they have and how we could never possibly beat them, even with our military powers…

yet several years later we have rebels taking out Striders with rocket launchers.
We have rebels taking out combine with normal pistols.
We have rebels taking out Hunters with their bare hands. ;p

The only ‘new’ weapon introduced by the combine is the AR2 and that’s fairly similar to what would have been available on earth at the time of the invasion anyway (just with added plasma grenade)

With the exception of the Striders and Dropships they don’t have a huge technological advantage over us.
Our jet fighters are easily fast enough to bomb Strider targets and escape before they were anywhere near able to retaliate.

As mentioned before, the Portal Storm must have acted as an EMP preventing us from using all but the most basic weapons. Without the portal storm I think it would have been a pretty even fight.

#10

I’m pretty sure that could be thanks to a certian somebody in a suit.

Combine soldiers are coopted humans with mostly human technology. A soldier’s death seems much a loss to them as people comitting suicide rather than fight.

Except for the Autogun, the Suppression Device, Strider-Cannon, etc. Weapon’s aren’t just the hand-held weapons used by people. It wouldn’t come as a shock to me if the AR2 was just another human-made weapon, a slightly clunky attempt at making a man-portable version of a strider’s nose.

So the giant 2.25 mile tall factory-towers with giant fusion reactors that punched through from an alternate universe doesn’t strike you as a technological advantage?

Or anybody near by to get out of the way. With how many were crawling around outside the Overwatch Nexus & White Forrest, it seems like the best possible option would be to carpet-bomb, which seems like suicide. I’m sure they’d also have some kind of advanced anti-aircraft weaponry that probably got reassigned to another planet after humanity had been thoroughly enslaved, where anti-aircraft weapons would probably have been completely unused.

Despite what Hollywood might lead you to believe, EMP’s aren’t some kind of magic off-button for technology. All that’s needed to stop an EMP is decent surge protection or a faraday cage. If anything all of our most carefully designed & advanced technology would be fine, while everybody’s ipod would probably be fried.

#11

I was under the impression that, by the time you got back to the city, the rebellion had been going on for most of the week since you disappeared. But I’m with you, why didn’t they just get reinforcements and stop the uprising before we even reappeared? And the only reason the rebels “won” was because Breen didn’t just shoot Gordon, and we all know what happened after that.

#12

The Combine are clearly eons ahead of us in both technology and evolution. Not only can they teleport in worldwide armies but also the bases they use for occupation, in one, in one piece.

I hardly think that within the 20 years of Xen infestation, portal storms, the attack of the Combine and the enslavement and destruction of the human race there would be much time for inventing a readily available plasma weapon. It’s clearly a combine weapon, scaled down for human use.

People don’t realise that the 7 hour war was only 7 hours, and not the entire destruction of the human race because Breen stopped it. They chose to ‘spare’ us to aquire our knowledge, something they wouldn’t of bothered with if it had not been for Breen telling them in general what we knew. The Combine forces we see in HL2 are the occupational force, not the invasion force.

Why do people assume that the forces we see in HL2 are all the diversity the Combine have to offer. There could be an entire air force we have no knowledge of. Synths that can fly at quadruple the speed of sound. I hardly imagine that when they dumped striders down in the seven hour war they came in packs of two at the most. It’d be like a freaking ant colony from above, with us being THEIR prey. Not to mention whatever foot soldiers they used.

@OP original question: No, even without the portal storms and Xen life we would of not stood a single chance. I almost said myself it’d just be the 10 hour war, but apparently thats already been made a joke in a machinima? I must watch these things.

#13

Everyone’s seen a “7 hour war” mod that died, I was in a “7 hour war” mod that died.

#14

My follow on question would be then. Where are all the rest of the Combine forces from the other smaller citadels during the resistance uprising? Were they dealing with their own uprisings? Were they too far away? Is it the rules bases don’t help each other? Were they cut of communication wise? In which case why didn’t they send something anyway?

@Sersoft. This is my problem with these 7 hour war mods. They’d have a real hard time making it look realistic imo. The entirity of the human forces wiped out in 7 hours.

To make it even slightly realistic you’d have to be in a small city that wasn’t as important and didn’t have as much military. That way it’d make sense to not see thousands of Combine.

#15

I’ll go Finnish on this one: “BRING IT ON MF!!” Might not be so intelgent, op spelling
but it’s very effective :wink:

IF the “world” would have known about the combine attack…would ´we have takeb extreme measures like cannonfodder, druging our troops to make suicide attacks etc?

EDIT : and with that prolonged the war with how many hours?

#16

I think the combine would have called in reinforcements from the citadel portals if they deemed it necessary. They probably could have cleaned up the resistance too, hadn’t freeman miraculously infiltrated their citadel & blew up the teleport. (which for some reason caused a chain reaction, breaking the other teleports) I’m pretty sure calling in reinforcements was that whole deal with the data packet & superportal was about.

Also; I don’t think the other citadels are any smaller or otherwise less important than the one in City 17.

#17

I don’t really think the Combine are that good, First off demention does not really mean power, it means intelligence however if the combine were that smart they would have left the portals open incase of any problems. For a species that can travel through dementions they sure don’t have much common sense.

Plus Combine can open these portals by themselves, So if they were never open at all The Combine wouldn’t even be attacking us at all. They used Xen as a bridge world [I think that’s how it worked, correct me if I’m wrong] but if Xen was never used we would be safe.

Also an RPG is not the most powerful thing we have to offer, An M1 Abrams fires a 102/120 mm shell that would make an RPG seem like a BB-Gun. We have airplanes with enough fire power to level entire towns, Machine guns that fire bullets powerful enough to bust through concrete and metal plating.

We have ballastics that can burn through tanks melting everyone insde, napalm, explosions and AA guns and Battle Ships loaded with weapons. Not only that many of our guns have advanced targeting programs.

Think of this, There’s an anti-tank/personal fighter plane that uses a gatling gun the size of a small car that fires 30.cal bullets the size of a small water bottle. And this Gau-Avenger (the gun on the plane) can shoot so fast you’ll be dead before you would hear it coming.

Sorry but unless the Combine had weapons we didn’t see in Half Life they aren’t that good. The Guns they use are cool but no real better then our weapons, and there armor isn’t too good either, Remember as I said 7+ FPG blasts seems like a lot until you realize we have weapons stronger then that, RPG’s are rebel, cheap weapons. If those can do damage think of what a legitamate bazooka could do?

Now I’ll make it fair if we didn’t know it was coming we would loose, within 10 hours. But if every human and nation was prepared and allied, using every weapon we could, defensive measurements were at peak and communcation between nations and moral was high, we’d win.

#18

yeah…All of your US "allamerrcan superhero forces are still wulnerable to emps…so all the tanks and battlefield supersoldiers would be wiped out because us soldier without coms is = chicken without a head. granted the shielded stuff like Cheyenne Mountain would still work but to what en …there are only dead soldiers on the ground anyways

EDIT I Just skimmed thru your post and found that mine is not relevant

EDIT 2 Why not just give it to the Chinese…they’re allready doing the shit we don’t wan’t to anyways

#19

Humans were vastly outmatched one way or another. We’d stand no chance in hell even if we had all our nuclear missiles ready to fire at them.

#20

I do agree that the Combine were certainly powerful enough to take out the worlds militarys, but I think the humans could have lasted atleast a few days. Im at school for 7 hours each day! Its probably taken some people here more than 7 hours to finish the first Half Life! XD

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