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A violently true depiction of what war really is

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Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#61

Post by jiggy2011 »

angrycoder wrote: post #52
Nitramp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? All I ever heard from people who did serious martial arts is that an attacker with a weapon will always be in advantage, and an attacker with no moral qualms even more so. Your karate won't help you much if someone attacks you with a knife, or a shattered bottle.

That is the problem with painting the martial arts with such a broad brush. Many styles have techniques specifically designed to deal with knife/gun/weapon attacks, and some styles are designed mostly around dealing with such things. A broken bottle is probably not as dangerous as you may think. A knife, you are probably going to get cut but your attacker will fair far worse. A gun becomes less useful the closer an a…

I did a martial art for a while where we trained against bottle/knife attacks etc.

I think that training was mostly useless, some nerd in a dojo attacking you in a predetermined way with a plastic bottle while you do "hip throw #3" is going to be very different to a real fight.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#63

Post by gruseom »

burgerbrain wrote: post #33
gruseom wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your experience, what determines the degree to which a unit will uphold such standards vs. degenerating into what the OP calls "sociopaths"? Is it a matter of training? leadership? character?

Hmm. As I read the article, it seemed like the author was alternating between suggesting that experience was what turned people that way ( "he was the FNG [ed: fucking new guy] that got blown up because he was incompetent, who left the fight before it turned him into one of us." ), and suggesting that there is something else at play ( "only roughly 20% of combat troops ever get PTSD – when if you think about it, it s…

Yeah, but I'm asking about roboneal's personal experience, not the article.

Edit: what bothers me about the article is that it seems unlikely that a true sociopath would describe himself in these terms.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#64

Post by JS_startup »

I like one point in particular that he touched on. That is, the military's careful manipulation of the media and public perception and the lens through which we view military personnel.

I know I'm supposed to laud infantrymen as brave and patriotic (which is why I'd never voice this in public), but frankly..nearly every frontline veteran I've ever met seems like an uneducated, violent and scary thug. I know that's basically what you have to be to fight on the frontlines, but the disparity between public opinion and reality is shocking.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#65

Post by spindritf »

gizmo wrote: post #59
spindritf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> War is part of society? To barbaric ones maybe. Civilized societies don't settle disputes by mass murder. It's quite the opposite -- only civilized societies can have the kind of logistics, range, military culture, ability to support the warrior class (or standing armies), and numbers to engage in organized warfare. Conflicts between small bands of foragers can hardly be even called war. Not to mention mass murder…

I present to you: Ghengis Kahn. 40 million people died as a result of his campaigns. Civilized society? Not at all. Just organized tribal warfare. > Actually, poor kids seem to be enlisting at lower rates (relatively) to richer kids Huh. I stand corrected.

> Civilized society?

Yes, of course. It came to existence when Ghengis Khan united nomadic tribes but so did the countries in Europe -- Franks were a confederation of tribes, Poland was founded by a tribe subduing its neighbours, etc, etc. That is how civilization is born.

If it wasn't for that they wouldn't be able to reach Europe. That is why we call them the Mongol Empire.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#66

Post by staunch »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #50
Nitramp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? All I ever heard from people who did serious martial arts is that an attacker with a weapon will always be in advantage, and an attacker with no moral qualms even more so. Your karate won't help you much if someone attacks you with a knife, or a shattered bottle.

Low-level, trained MMA fighters would wreck a street brawling toughman 10/10 times. If they rush the MMA fighter with a broken bottle, they'd get slammed to the floor on their own velocity and the MMA fighter would twist around, take their back, grab and arm, get their legs around it pull. Good luck fighting with a broken arm. We saw it play out recently. Remember Kimbo Slice? If you don't, he used to post videos of…

IIRC Kimbo was a street brawler who went MMA not the other way around. That he did so well against well trained fighters says a lot.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#67

Post by Splines »

dlikhten wrote: post #3
Sakes wrote: post #2

Wow, awesome read. If this guy consulted on a video game I would never play it. Mowing down Russian civilians in the game MW2 was more than F'd up enough for me.

If they want to make a video game depict war... Have a bad guy escape through some civilians, you shoot after him. Then after coming closer find a parent/child dead with another child screaming over his/her family's body. That would be a scene that makes people remember what war really is. But war games are not about war. They are about shooting things and feeling justified about it.

I'd be very interested to know if it's even possible to create a game where you genuinly feel remorse for killing an innocent person while chasing "the bad guy".

Many games have innocent bystanders, and there is a spectrum of consequence, from none (GTA), to inconvenience (Oblivion), to an instant game-over (Ghost Recon). In any case, I've never felt bad, since it's just a game.

Can a game elevate the characters to a point where you feel, even for a moment, real loss? I don't think it's very easy, if even possible.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#68

Post by yason »

angrycoder wrote: post #23
jakeonthemove wrote: post #11

Street fights and other violent encounters are the same. There is no honor, no right way to fight and nothing good comes out of it except you surviving. It's nothing like video games - martial arts won't help (well, beyond helping keep you in shape), a bullet will kill you in a horrible, slow way (dying instantly means you're lucky) or leave you with a disability for life, a simple knife slash will leave you in a hos…

>martial arts won't help This is patently false and completely ridiculous. Someone who is trained to take and give a hit will always have a significantly better chance in a fight.

The thing with 99,999% of martial arts is that they're practicing the wrong thing. At best they're practicing for competitions and some are even trying to pose as street-cred martial artists but yet that's a whole another universe away from survival. And survival isn't about fighting—at all. The thing is, it wouldn't be legal to teach survival in a dojo.

Fighting is about winning but survival is about... surviving, and anything goes. Survival is dirty, in the sense that if you think it's going to be a fight you will only realize he had a knife when the damn thing is already between your ribs or whichever side you momentarily forgot to leave less protected. Survival is something where you will get injured, bleeding and body parts disjoint very quickly; most often both of you do, and running like hell is often the best way to survive: in a war that might not always be an option, though.

Of course, that is, assuming it started as a one-on-one situation and ended as one, too.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#69

Post by Someone »

mattdeboard wrote: post #6

As a former Marine infantryman, and a former Marine PR idiot, I think his numbers are off but a lot of the concepts are right, with a caveat. It's not sociopathy of the organic sort. It's the kind of detachment from prolonged exposure to extreme, unmitigated stress. So don't take this article as justification to feel like there's something mentally wrong with people who join a combat arms unit.

I have heard (BBC documentary, a couple of years ago) that about 10% of soldiers are evil/psych/sociopaths and become heroes because of it (or die trying) and about 10% behave similarly because they are so unselfish that they are willing to sacrifice their lives.

That documentary also stated that modern military training tries to get rid of the former, and to shape more people to behave similar to the latter 10%, and is fairly successful at it (as measured by the fraction of soldiers willing to actually aim at the enemy)

So yes, there probably is something different about you. Whether to call that wrong, I don't know.

I googled for some reference on this. I havent read it, but I think http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316330116/warcatslai... is relevant reading on this subject.

Re: A violently true depiction of what war really is

#70

Post by roqetman »

nonce43 wrote: post #4

The Onion has its own take on the difference between real war and video game war: an "ultra-realistic" war game featuring endless paperwork, awaiting orders, and repairing trucks: http://www.theonion.com/video/ultrarealistic-modern-warfare-... (I don't mean to trivialize war by this, and I should point out that The Onion is satirical.)

Ahh, good times... not. I clocked over 6000 hours guard duty during my military time; a game based on my experience would be a few minutes of action and hours of boredom.
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