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Getting stabbed or shot doesn't quickly incapacitate people most of the time, so that's asking for a bit much. Spasms and uncontrollable diarrhea don't sound so bad.
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Jun 18, 2016 13:53
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Maybe the scholar got it a bit wrong? From P-mack's posts we know that happened a lot.
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Jun 18, 2016 14:11
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Look for the 'dubious quick kill' for the hard data on the art of murdering people.
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Jun 18, 2016 14:24
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100 Years Ago Time for another map of Verdun; as the Germans prepare for another attack, this time with the aid of phosgene gas, the French are occupying something called the "Line of Panic". At ground level, Henri Desagneaux succeeds in moving position without dying. German ace Max Immelmann gets shot down by a rather ridiculous British plane; Oskar Teichman watches an air raid in Egypt; Robert Pelissier goes on an ill-advised adventure into No Man's Land; Evelyn Southwell is trying to come to terms with the death of a friend; and Maximilian Mugge is back to describing his hut-mates.
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Jun 18, 2016 14:41
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 In this photo I see three Lewis guns. Is that one just behind the observer's seat and pointing forward?? The hell? okay, Wikipedia describes the photograph as such: quote:The observer's cockpit was fitted with three guns, one fixed forward-firing for the pilot to aim, one moveable forward-firing and one moveable rear-firing mounted on a pole over the upper wing. The observer had to stand on his seat in order to use the rear-firing gun. Being the observer must have been fun with the pilot's machinegun blazing just inches from your head. These people were mad.
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Jun 18, 2016 14:55
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Wait, you've got a photo that shows a man literally demonstrating how he will stand on the plane while it is 5,000 feet above the ground and enemy planes are thought to be nearby, and *that's* the thing that makes you declare him mad?
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Jun 18, 2016 14:59
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Maybe it helped that there was a man with a machinegun pointing at his head telling him to stand up? Of course, just flying in one of those things with no parachute was mad in and of itself
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Jun 18, 2016 15:02
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Nenonen posted:Maybe it helped that there was a man with a machinegun pointing at his head telling him to stand up? Yeah, so where is it pointing after he stands up?
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Jun 18, 2016 15:10
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WW1 aviators had such huge balls that a bullet would have just ricochet'd.
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Jun 18, 2016 15:15
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Nenonen posted:WW1 aviators had such huge balls that a bullet would have just ricochet'd. Two images to support this:  This is a photo taken of a height climber's forward gondola. Note the two ladders. The walk from the forward gondola to the bathroom was 700 feet, and at the start and the end of that you have to climb (or descend) a ladder. Now imagine climbing the really scary ladder, at night, really close to the whirling 18 ft propeller, while suffering from altitude sickness. As you would at 20,000 ft. This is a photo taken from a late war British blimp with one of those fancy 'enclosed cabins.'  I also came across this image:  So in 1917, the blimp SS15 was on patrol with some destroyers in the north Sea, when the engine up and died. SubLt. Cyril Pike, in command in the back seat, ordered his radioman ("wireless Telegraph" operator) Fredrick Crawford to start the engine. It was Crawford's second flight and he'd never started an aircraft engine before. After Crawford had a go, Pike got on the sheet of plywood and spent 45 minutes trying to start the engine. While this was going on, SS15 gained and then lost altitude before crashing into the sea. Fortunately Pike had signaled the destroyers, and he and Crawford were in the water only a few minutes, clutching at the gondola, before a launch rescued them. When both men were aboard, Pike learned Crawford couldn't swim. e: old air warfare images ahoy. May I direct your attention to the man-lifting kites? Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 16:29
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Whole lotta nope going on in those photos.
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Jun 18, 2016 16:53
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Trin Tragula posted:Wait, you've got a photo that shows a man literally demonstrating how he will stand on the plane while it is 5,000 feet above the ground and enemy planes are thought to be nearby, and *that's* the thing that makes you declare him mad? Makes perfect sense to me. With that ridiculous machine gun set up you're more likely to merely fall several thousand feet to your death instead of plunging several thousand feet to your death trapped in a burning airplane. I'll take skydiving without a parachute any time.
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Jun 18, 2016 18:16
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The WW1 history of the parachute is completely inexplicable to me. They had the bloody things perfected and working just fine before the war even breaks out and then decided that observation balloon crew were the only people who really needed them. And the pilots, at least some of whom must've met an observation balloon crew member at some loving point and also knew that they faced pretty decent odds of being shot down or having something vital fall off their marginally flyable deathtrap over the course of their career, apparently decided that falling to their deaths while possibly on fire was preferable to taking along one of these newfangled contraptions. And the military leadership, who knew that having trained pilots was really really important, also were okay with this. Has it ever been put forth as an explanation for this whole WW1 thing that everyone involved may have been really loving stupid?
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Jun 18, 2016 18:37
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aphid_licker posted:The WW1 history of the parachute is completely inexplicable to me. They had the bloody things perfected and working just fine before the war even breaks out and then decided that observation balloon crew were the only people who really needed them. And the pilots, at least some of whom must've met an observation balloon crew member at some loving point and also knew that they faced pretty decent odds of being shot down or having something vital fall off their marginally flyable deathtrap over the course of their career, apparently decided that falling to their deaths while possibly on fire was preferable to taking along one of these newfangled contraptions. And the military leadership, who knew that having trained pilots was really really important, also were okay with this. Has it ever been put forth as an explanation for this whole WW1 thing that everyone involved may have been really loving stupid? The only explanation I've heard is that airplanes were really expensive and hard to make. If pilots had parachutes they would abandon them too quickly rather than trying to fly them to safety where they could be repaired. Could be an urban legend.
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Jun 18, 2016 18:39
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How much did parachutes improve survival rates in WW2? I was curious about how effective they were.
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Jun 18, 2016 18:49
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Hazzard posted:How much did parachutes improve survival rates in WW2? I was curious about how effective they were. I wonder: at what altitude are they effective?
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Jun 18, 2016 18:50
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Nebakenezzer posted:
In that situation I'd just piss out the window.
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Jun 18, 2016 19:08
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Chamale posted:In that situation I'd just piss out the window. Sure: but are you going to poo poo out a window?
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Jun 18, 2016 19:12
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nothing to seehere posted:Sure: but are you going to poo poo out a window? It's possible.
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Jun 18, 2016 19:14
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How long are they on those flights for?
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Jun 18, 2016 19:15
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Koramei posted:How long are they on those flights for? Anywhere from 12-24 hours, depending Chamale posted:In that situation I'd just piss out the window. Counterpoint: -60 C Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 20:18
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Sorry if this was covered in the past 20 trillion pages but it's something I've always wondered about. Josef Stalin was one of the most paranoid people to ever live. He purged his army officers,cabinet members,party officials, etc. So why did he believe that Adolf Hitler would stick to their Non Aggression Pact?
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Jun 18, 2016 20:26
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He probably thought Hitler wasn't stupid enough to fight a two front war and would finish the west off before turning east. Never bet against Hitler's stupidity.
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Jun 18, 2016 20:30
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Your Gay Uncle posted:Sorry if this was covered in the past 20 trillion pages but it's something I've always wondered about. Josef Stalin was one of the most paranoid people to ever live. He purged his army officers,cabinet members,party officials, etc. So why did he believe that Adolf Hitler would stick to their Non Aggression Pact? Wishful thinking and mental illness. He didn't believe that that Hitler would attack even when Germans were pouring over the border.
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Jun 18, 2016 20:40
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Ignoring the nerdery, is there something to this guy's claim that the invention of cannons made holing up in castles an unviable strategy and necessitated more open field confrontations, which in turn required larger armies, thus more centralized government, ending the feudal age? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDdKmx0PW7s
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Jun 18, 2016 21:21
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Also, the USSR was providing Germany with oil, grain, and other critical materials at sweetheart prices. He probably figured the trade deals were sufficient protection, especially since Germany's wartime economy would tank without them.
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Jun 18, 2016 21:23
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Your Gay Uncle posted:Sorry if this was covered in the past 20 trillion pages but it's something I've always wondered about. Josef Stalin was one of the most paranoid people to ever live. He purged his army officers,cabinet members,party officials, etc. So why did he believe that Adolf Hitler would stick to their Non Aggression Pact? Someone more knowledgeable can correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it: because the diplomatic agreements that both sides had very carefully crafted were designed so that attacking at that moment would be incredibly loving dumb. War between the two powers was considered inevitable, but both sides needed both time and resources to prepare for it: the Soviets were shipping industrial resources to Nazi Germany right up until the very last hour, iirc, Stalin knew that Hitler needed these. Stalin gambled, (heavily) on the better judgement of Hitler to not open another front into a massive army that was also a vital trade partner just before the horrific Russian winter. In a way it didn't work out, in another it sort of did?
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Jun 18, 2016 21:29
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Ignoring the nerdery, is there something to this guy's claim that the invention of cannons made holing up in castles an unviable strategy and necessitated more open field confrontations, which in turn required larger armies, thus more centralized government, ending the feudal age? Someone who knows more can talk more about it but off the top of my head sieges actually got bigger and longer in order to deal with entrenched fortifications, which did then lead to larger armies and (eventually) more centralized government
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Jun 18, 2016 21:31
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all those old high-walled medieval castles were made obsolete but it's not like fortifications in general were, europeans still kept building forts and walls around everything for hundreds of years afterwards, just the fortifications became lower, more sloped, and thicker
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Jun 18, 2016 21:47
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HEY GAL posted:
drat kids with their baggy saggy pants
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Jun 18, 2016 21:52
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Yeah if anything forts became an even bigger deal. See the Low Countries ca 17th C. One big impact it had was it put the double underscore on nobles not being able to stare down the monarch by force. Castles were expensive but most were inherited from the days of peasant labor levies. Star forts were ruinously expensive, basically the stealth bombers of their age in that regard. There are other factors but it's one of the big indicators of when non state actors stopped being able to challenge states in toe to toe military confrontations.
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Jun 18, 2016 21:52
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Ignoring the nerdery, is there something to this guy's claim that the invention of cannons made holing up in castles an unviable strategy and necessitated more open field confrontations, which in turn required larger armies, thus more centralized government, ending the feudal age? The poo poo game of thrones fans come up with never ceases to amaze. The reason there hasn't been any meaningful technological progress over thousands of years in Westeros is because GRRM is terrible with numbers. He thought a 700 foot high wall was a thing that should exist, and that people on the bottom would shoot arrows and such up at the people on top.
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Jun 18, 2016 22:12
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah if anything forts became an even bigger deal. See the Low Countries ca 17th C. What if you built a star fort that was also a city and paid for it with your own dime? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamo%C5%9B%C4%87
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Jun 18, 2016 22:17
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StashAugustine posted:Someone who knows more can talk more about it but off the top of my head sieges actually got bigger and longer in order to deal with entrenched fortifications quote:which did then lead to larger armies and (eventually) more centralized government Sometimes I'm not sure about the first one--why do you need a big army for a long siege, necessarily? certainly you don't need one inside the fortress. and yet they keep getting bigger, and being kept in being longer, until they scrape against the ceiling of their host states' capacity to keep them around, in the 30yw. and the second one has been problematized quite a bit by the newest historians' reemphasis on privatization. nowadays we don't forget that the "fiscal military state," except for the 19th and the first three-fourths of the 20th centuries, is one which involves a whole lot of private enterprise in its warmaking. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Jun 18, 2016 |
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Jun 18, 2016 22:20
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PittTheElder posted:The poo poo game of thrones fans come up with never ceases to amaze. The reason there hasn't been any meaningful technological progress over thousands of years in Westeros is because GRRM is terrible with numbers. He thought a 700 foot high wall was a thing that should exist, and that people on the bottom would shoot arrows and such up at the people on top. Yeah the thesis of that video is pretty dumb, cannons obsoleted older fortifications not designed against cannons but people figured out star forts pretty quick and then you're back to the status quo. The Turks took Constantinople not because cannons trump forts, but because Constantinople had obsolete vertical walls that were vulnerable to cannon fire. And a lot of other reasons. Dragons seem more analogous to nukes. The only way to respond is either get dragons of your own or hope you can shoot them out of the air. But if they're flying toward you, you're most likely fried.
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Jun 18, 2016 22:35
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That video's premise seems to be that cannons being able to breach castles is what starts the arms race of more money = larger armies, so that's what pressured rulers to develop more into modern centralized nation-states, but generally more money is always better for whatever you're doing. It's not like castles before cannons came around were utterly invincible. I can see how a lack of reliance on things like castles would help provoke a more modern idea of borders, but that's about it. Every government always wants more money, and as populations grow dense they require more effective governance to manage. More penetrable castles seem like just a drop in the bucket of causes, and probably appeals more as a catchall to people who prefer military history and like to ignore the squishy and confusing social aspects of history. PittTheElder posted:The poo poo game of thrones fans come up with never ceases to amaze. The reason there hasn't been any meaningful technological progress over thousands of years in Westeros is because GRRM is terrible with numbers. He thought a 700 foot high wall was a thing that should exist, and that people on the bottom would shoot arrows and such up at the people on top. Lord of the Rings has a similar pattern of being really bad with numbers, but it doesn't stand out as much since Tolkien wasn't trying to think tactically or show technological growth. Mostly he just wanted to cover massive spans of time so he could chart out the evolution of his imaginary languages.
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Jun 18, 2016 22:39
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Also Tolkien shoved all that poo poo into appendices that you didn't have to read if you didn't want to.
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Jun 18, 2016 23:15
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PittTheElder posted:The poo poo game of thrones fans come up with never ceases to amaze. The reason there hasn't been any meaningful technological progress over thousands of years in Westeros is because GRRM is terrible with numbers. He thought a 700 foot high wall was a thing that should exist, and that people on the bottom would shoot arrows and such up at the people on top. The real deal is that GOT takes place inside a multi-generational spaceship and magic is technology as seen through the eyes of people who don't have the concepts to understand it any other way Bran the Builder was , the Valaryians are genetically spliced fire people as are their genetic creations the dragons, the ice people are evolved for life on cold planets should the ship ever encounter any suitable ones
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Jun 18, 2016 23:55
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SlothfulCobra posted:That video's premise seems to be that cannons being able to breach castles is what starts the arms race of more money = larger armies, so that's what pressured rulers to develop more into modern centralized nation-states, but generally more money is always better for whatever you're doing. It's not like castles before cannons came around were utterly invincible. There wasn't a whole lot else an early modern government spent money on, though. During war time military expenses could easily top 75% of the budget, and the average early modern state spent more time at war than it did at peace. Welfare schemes, such as they were, were local and managed by the communities, building infrastructure wasn't really a big thing (certainly not anywhere near the scale of making war). Really the second biggest post of the budget was prestige projects to show off. Plus in most European states, the monarch couldn't actually set taxes as he saw fit, he had to negotiate with the estates, and they were always stingy (because they were the ones who actually had to pay). Convincing the estates to cough up more money to "improve governance" is pretty much a non-starter at the time, because governance didn't need to be improved upon. For much of Europe in the early modern times, people believed that things had gotten bad because someone had hosed up, and to make things good again things needed to be unfucked. The governance of the past was already perfect, there was nothing to improve upon. The idea that the government needed more money because then it could do other things it previously couldn't would have widely been regarded as an argument against giving the government more money. There is simply nothing that the early modern state does that requires nearly as much money as warfare, and trying to match the rising costs is what drove states to create increasingly sophisticated taxation methods.
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Jun 19, 2016 02:04
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Ignoring the nerdery, is there something to this guy's claim that the invention of cannons made holing up in castles an unviable strategy and necessitated more open field confrontations, which in turn required larger armies, thus more centralized government, ending the feudal age? Castles are not purely static modes of defense. I'm not going to watch the video though so I can't really address it directly. HEY GAL posted:this is correct, the siege is the new hot thing in the 16th and 17th century to the point where David Parrot read a french theorist or two who was convinced that battle was obsolete--it'd be sieges and guerrilla fighting from now on I mean that's interesting but the double armed man was also a contemporary military theory. People were trying all kinds of garbage things (and, more importantly, writing down every harebrained idea) in the early modern period. quote:Sometimes I'm not sure about the first one--why do you need a big army for a long siege, necessarily? certainly you don't need one inside the fortress. and yet they keep getting bigger, and being kept in being longer, until they scrape against the ceiling of their host states' capacity to keep them around, in the 30yw. Why wouldn't you need a large army inside the fortress? Even in the early modern period, the besieged were not passive defenders whose only means of offense was ranged weapons. And the attackers, of course, would need to encircle the fortress and prepare to defeat a relieving army. This is not all spurred by gunpowder, but it had a big influence.
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Jun 19, 2016 03:42
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