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Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

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Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#361

Post by soylentcola »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #318
flukus wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

28 Days/Weeks/Months is a good zombie series set in the UK, it was mostly the military doing the fighting. I never could understand how zombies in the walking dead managed to overrun the US military and all their bases, many in the middle of the desert or other hard to reach places. When it comes to zombie attacks pointy sticks seem pretty effective anyway.

Walking Dead is a TV show that makes zero sense whatsoever. I dropped watching it after 2.5 seasons, because after season 1 it lost any semblance of a plot, and became a TV-show-equivalent of the very zombies it portrays - mindlessly wandering around. I can't understand why it is so popular.

I agree that it's long overstayed its welcome, but from what I gather, the zombies are mostly irrelevant. You could swap out "zombie outbreak" with any other persistent hazard that causes the breakdown of civilization and provides a constant background threat to the actual focus of the story: the people who have to survive and deal with each other/the environment they're faced with after said breakdown.

As much as I enjoyed the early seasons, I understand that it was always the goal of the original author and the showrunners to make it more about people being people in extreme circumstances. If it was decades earlier it could just as easily have gone the Fallout route and used nuclear war/radioactive hazards/mutants/etc. as the backdrop and the stories could have stayed 95% the same.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#362

Post by mikeash »

jbay wrote: post #218
mikeash wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wasn’t MAD during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US had the ability to completely destroy the USSR but the reverse was not true, which is why they wanted to put missiles in Cuba in the first place. If a war had occurred, the US would have suffered enormously, but it would have come out of the conflict largely intact. Think the “get our hair mussed” bit from Dr. Strangelove. The Crisis just shows that war can be…

Actually, the US only thought that there wasn't MAD. As mentioned in the documentary "The Fog of War", only decades later did the US discover that there were already nuclear missiles with warheads in Cuba when they began the blockade. And Castro was willing to use them! That made the situation even more dangerous than they realized at the time. The US would not have come out intact. It's very lucky for everyone that…

Those would have hurt but they wouldn't have been a MAD-level threat. They could only reach the Southeastern US and there weren't that many.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#363

Post by mikeash »

baybal2 wrote: post #345
mikeash wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wasn’t MAD during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US had the ability to completely destroy the USSR but the reverse was not true, which is why they wanted to put missiles in Cuba in the first place. If a war had occurred, the US would have suffered enormously, but it would have come out of the conflict largely intact. Think the “get our hair mussed” bit from Dr. Strangelove. The Crisis just shows that war can be…

No it did not. Up until eighties, accuracy of ICBMs was so bad, that they were completely useless against even a brigade sized formation in an open field. There is even a theory that Khrushchev intentionally nudged USA into believing into "missile gap," as a part of diversion. TBMs were another story, but there USSR had a sizeable lead in them.

ICBMs wouldn't get used against military forces in the field. Shorter range missiles and other tactical weapons existed for that. ICBMs were for destroying military bases, factories, and cities. Their accuracy in the early 1960s sucked, but it was good enough for that job.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#364

Post by swarnie_ »

masonic wrote: post #352
swarnie_ wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The USA has the first military power in the whole world and could go and invade a bunch of countries if they wanted to We'll ignore Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq (twice) for the sake of this comment? Also lets ignore all those south american Coup d'états because it helps the narrative.

Coup d'états ... are not a thing. Coups d'état, maybe.

A letter out of place doesn't change the point.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#365

Post by baybal2 »

mikeash wrote: post #363
baybal2 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it did not. Up until eighties, accuracy of ICBMs was so bad, that they were completely useless against even a brigade sized formation in an open field. There is even a theory that Khrushchev intentionally nudged USA into believing into "missile gap," as a part of diversion. TBMs were another story, but there USSR had a sizeable lead in them.

ICBMs wouldn't get used against military forces in the field. Shorter range missiles and other tactical weapons existed for that. ICBMs were for destroying military bases, factories, and cities. Their accuracy in the early 1960s sucked, but it was good enough for that job.

That's the very point — while US were to be wasting megatons on Soviet cities without a plan B, Soviet paratroopers would be already landing on their lawn, and their main force moving down whatever left of enemy land force with a rain of short range tactical nukes.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#366

Post by tomatotomato37 »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #62
us-throw1 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really sure that the US is undisputed in those 4 categories? A list of obvious weaknesses: * The US economy and industrial power is dependent on IT and brittle supply chains. Nobody knows how much the cyber infrastructure holding this up is already compromised. * Russian S-400s can already deny air superiority to Israeli planes, which are not far behind US planes. * How does the US have space superiority when…

I can happily go point by point here, but my original comment wasn't intended to suggest I agreed with the current state of world military balance and shouldn't be taken as implicit support of US policy. That said - * The S-400 is an impressive system. The Russians have so built ~300 of them, and like any system, the soft factors are more important than the paper facts suggest. Training, deployment, doctrine, and str…

One interesting factor I don't see a lot of in these discussions is that the US also has a nasty habit of leaving its military assets out of range of the land they ultimately defend. A hyper-advanced carrier group out in the Arabian sea won't be a lot of help if Mexico suddenly becomes hyper-nationalistic and decides to press their claims on the US southwest

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#367

Post by norswap »

49531 wrote: post #23
norswap wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a reasonable analysis based on a careful study of the facts. Keep going.

Much of global trade is facilitated by the US military. If that support and protection is withdrawn, people will be more likely to dive into war over resources. I'm not saying the US is _good_ because they prop up free trade. It's just empire 2.0, not some altruistic quest on the US's part.

I was being ironic.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#368

Post by mistermann »

tareqak wrote: post #287
mistermann wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do nationalists not engage in mutually beneficial trade out of spite or something? Is there historical evidence of this?

You can see the Wikipedia page for isolationism or any of the other *isms I listed above [0]. To say that there was no beneficial mutual trade in at least some of the cases is probably a stretch. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolationism

So now you do see how nationalism might also include international cooperation?

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#369

Post by geggam »

gaius wrote: post #354
geggam wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has with no doubt the best ground on the planet to defend themselves with. Isolated by two large oceans and bordered by "mostly" friendly nations Force extended requires significant amplification. So for China to impact us in a meaningful way they would have to somehow sneak a force large enough to damage across a pretty wide open space, then maintain that logistically. Ditto for the RU That said once in the U…

Ditto for the RU Russia is only 55 miles from the US.

Yeah... only Russians and Inuit find that area habitable and then we are using that word quite loosely.

Re: Reasons to Fear Another ‘Great War’

#370

Post by mikeash »

baybal2 wrote: post #365
mikeash wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICBMs wouldn't get used against military forces in the field. Shorter range missiles and other tactical weapons existed for that. ICBMs were for destroying military bases, factories, and cities. Their accuracy in the early 1960s sucked, but it was good enough for that job.

That's the very point — while US were to be wasting megatons on Soviet cities without a plan B, Soviet paratroopers would be already landing on their lawn, and their main force moving down whatever left of enemy land force with a rain of short range tactical nukes.

The Soviets had no ability to land any significant force in the US. They would have poured forces into Western Europe, but both sides had so many tactical nukes there that the whole place would have ended up flattened.
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