Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-294840-20170719134411/@comment-26018514-20170731001136

SpiritedDreaming wrote: I wonder what would have happened if Ozpin did give Ironwood the go ahead on bombing Mountain Glenn instead of sending RWBY to do recon. I mean, the road/ceiling of the cave was so unstable it collapsed under Ruby's weight, so it's not like a nice clean bombing run wouldn't collapse it and crush the entire operation before Roman got wind it was coming...

And as for PR?

Ironwood and Ozpin make a statement about recon teams reporting increasing numbers of Grimm in the underground levels of the abandoned city, and due to the proxity some of the closed tunnels had to citizens of Vale, they decided to preemptively strike and eradicate the Grimm before anything could happen and as a show of good will Atlas and Vale are working together to protect the citizens of Vale. In the nearby future teams will be heading into the collapsed tunnels to make sure all Grimm are eradicated or removed from the area, thereby insuring the safety of the City of Vale for years to come. Actually... it probably would have been far worse... Ruby collapsed a very small area in the roof of that massive cavern directly over a small overlook the WF seemed to use for surface access/recon of the aboveground City the train was in. An unfocused carpet bombing may have missed the actual train completely, but removed the WF's only route to the surface, as well as releasing Grimm into the tunnels early meaning the WF could have left more explosive force for the breach itself, as opposed to detaching cars to detonate attracting grimm and getting them better access to the tunnels in the first place.

PR wise, you would then have 2 stories, one of which looks like this:

1.  First Atlas Bombs Survivors/resettler's of Mountain Glenn unprovoked

2. Then a few days later after either Some idiot is sitting on an airship with a "Mission Accomplished" banner as they hear the Explosion of the Breach or a huge portion of Atlas's army is out combing the remaining area of Mountain Glenn looking for enemies who have moved on.

3. The WF then blame Atlas's attack on a peaceful settlement for their retalitary strike on Vale, possibly even going as far as to sell it as not being an attack at all, but rather a desperate ploy to escape the grimm infested tunnels that Atlas trapped them in... unprovoked.