[OT] [I mean totally OT] Re: What can you "new"

[Christopher Wright]

Daniel Keep wrote:
> 
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> ...
>>>
>>> It's like if you gave the Spartan Leonidas a Henry repeating rifle -
>>> he still would have lost at Thermopylae. But there is little doubt
>>> that one Henry repeating rifle is worth a hundred spear-chucking
>>> wicker-armored immortals.
>> Sometimes I run these crazy calculations: how much modern firepower
>> would be just enough to turn the odds in a classic battle? At
>> Thermopilae, I think two Vickers with enough ammo would have been just
>> about enough. Also at the Lord of the Rings 2 night castle defense, one
>> machine gun would have sufficed (better protection and fewer assailants).
>>
>>
>> Andrei
> 
> You mean the battle of Helm's Deep?  I think you'd need more than one
> machine gun.  If the wall had held and the orcs had been forced to come
> up the front ramp, then it might have been enough... but the bomb
> Saruman gave them took out the wall meaning that you'd have two streams
> of Orcs coming at you.

What bomb? There was no bomb at Helm's Deep.

The orcs assaulted the main gate and the walls, and eventually they 
crawled in through a drainage pipe as well. It's strongly implied that 
they had to go underwater for a significant way, which is why that route 
was not at all defended or watched. Once that entrance was discovered, 
the defending forces blocked it off with boulders. This blocked off the 
orcs, but it also dammed the flow, so after that they were fighting in a 
pond.

I seem to recall a bomb in the movie, but that was pointless frippery.