U.S. alcohol-related deaths have doubled, study says

That is literally not true, by a lot. Ww2 hit russia harder then west which was hit super hard. There was whole year of males basically killed (not sure which one, but the ones that were 18 when it all started I think). There were massive atrocities against civilian population, whole areas burned down and all that uncontrolled violence going on along with ethnical cleansing.

What happened is that post ww2, people had children. You lived in communism and people turned into familly instead of to career.

Post communist russia has less children for the same reasons why western countries have less children - you got options if you are ambitious and also need to work if you are not.

At the moment all the evidence we have says that msot people don't get any benefit from drinking. If you're a woman aged over 60 you get some benefit from drinking about one small[1] glass of wine a day (with some days drink free). No-one else gets that benefit. For everyone else the harm increases with dose, although the risks of small amounts of alcohol for most people are very small.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

(Note this article doesn't include harm caused by intoxicated driving or intoxicated violence).

[1] 125 ml of wine at 8% ABV, or about 88 ml of wine at 12%. That's really not much. Most people would have glasses that are 175 ml or 250 ml. (These are standard serving sizes in UK restaurants.)

My grandfather was an alcoholic.

He was stationed at various places in Europe during WW2 and saw some truly horrible things during that time. He had nightmares for the rest of his life.

After the war, he drank vodka for many years, then later switched to cheap, strong lager (something like 8-10%, which tasted like cat's piss), which he drank all day, every day, for another 20 years or so. He didn't eat much during this time, presumably because he was full of lager.

A bit of an aside, but I may as well add some more, since we're sharing stories. He ended up in hospital for a few weeks due to some condition caused by his alcoholism (surprising it took so long, really), and nearly died. He went through withdrawals during that time, and almost dieing gave him quite the scare - he never touched another drop from that day on. It was quite incredible how he was able to just stop with no relapse after drinking so heavily for so long.

I know. Russia suffered greatly in ww2. That's my point. It's why I compared ww2 to the soviet collapse. That's how awful the soviet collapse was for russia. It was even worse than ww2. I never claimed the west suffered more than russia in ww2. No country suffered more than russia in ww2.

> What happened is that post ww2, people had children.

Not only that they had jobs and hope for the future. Life expectancy increased, everything got better. They became the 2nd largest economy in the world. Everything improved not just from ww2, but even prior to ww2.

The exact opposite happened after the soviet collapse. They stopped having children, people died in droves, life expectancy dropped dramatically, their economy tanked from being #2 economy in the world to a third world hellhole being picked apart by foreign vultures, etc. Even today, 30 years later, russia still hasn't recovered. It took russia 10 years to recover from ww2. In 30 years, russia has yet to recover. In other words, russia is worse off today in population, economy, international clout, etc than they were 30 years ago.

> Post communist russia has less children for the same reasons why western countries have less children - you got options if you are ambitious and also need to work if you are not.

We have less children because we are wealthy and selfish. Russia isn't wealthy. Also, given the growth the west has enjoyed in the last 30 years, we can afford to have less children ( though we probably should be having more ), but russia doesn't have that luxury.

Anyways, people think since bombs weren't dropped during the soviet collapse that ww2 was the worst thing russia experienced in the 20th century, but an objective analysis clearly shows otherwise. Winning ww2 helped russia advance and improve. Losing the cold war truly damaged russia in ways that it doesn't seem capable of recovering from. Not only that Russia has a higher median age than the US. So not only is russia older, it's poorer than the US. That doesn't bode too well for future russian prospects.