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Victor Hugo proclaimed in the 1860s that the advent of balloons and airships would end all wars because existence of a threat that ignores frontiers and can strike anywhere, at any time, would be absolutely discouraging to any aggressor. The idea that air power gives new credibility to the threat of destroying the state itself in case of a war has been historically extremely compelling.
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Feb 24, 2017 17:16
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hogmartin posted:There's been an argument made that the bombs gave the Japanese leadership - at least the factions that wanted to end the war - an opportunity to do so. The theory is that amphibious landings, bombings, and air-supported ground actions were nothing new to the military leadership, but that single bombs that flattened cities gave them an out: "well, this is a weapon beyond anything we can produce, and we can't counter it, no shame in capitulating now". Of course, Japanese leadership had enough back-biting factions to make Nazi leadership look like a campfire sing-along, but the fight-to-the-end ones happened to lose in this case. Pretty hard to sell fighting to the end when for all you know the opponent can kill you all without you doing much more than scratch them.
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Feb 24, 2017 17:19
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Khazar-khum posted:Let's look at some pre-history: Old technology is fascinating. Take Ulfberht swords for example, they are so advanced that it only became possible to replicate them after the industrial revolution.
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Feb 24, 2017 18:03
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steinrokkan posted:AFAIK most plans issued in preparation for the invasion counted American casualties "only" in tens of thousands. Also they didn't want to destroy / genocide Japan, that is some weird revisionism. They for the most part wanted to capture the Tokyo coastal plains and force the Emperor to surrender at Kyoto. I mean, they manufactured a million purple heart medals in the lead-up, and in fact are still using those today for soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seems like the preparation did account for the largest number of casualties in any operation of WWII. http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/1801
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Feb 24, 2017 20:56
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Apparently you can get a purple heart for friendly fire (or rather, being the victim of friendly fire). Pat Tillman got a purple heart when he was friendly-fired to death by US forces. A posthumous purple heart seems like adding insult to
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Feb 24, 2017 21:41
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A White Guy posted:Apparently you can get a purple heart for friendly fire (or rather, being the victim of friendly fire). Pat Tillman got a purple heart when he was friendly-fired to death by US forces. A posthumous purple heart seems like adding insult to Why would that be a revelation to you? Shot during a war is shot during a war.
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Feb 24, 2017 22:50
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A White Guy posted:Apparently you can get a purple heart for friendly fire (or rather, being the victim of friendly fire). Pat Tillman got a purple heart when he was friendly-fired to death by US forces. A posthumous purple heart seems like adding insult to You're an idiot.
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Feb 24, 2017 23:04
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A White Guy posted:Apparently you can get a purple heart for friendly fire (or rather, being the victim of friendly fire). Pat Tillman got a purple heart when he was friendly-fired to death by US forces. A posthumous purple heart seems like adding insult to I had a high school history teacher with two Purple Hearts. In his telling, the first was for being moderately blown up by a landmine. The second was for breaking his leg falling off a troop transport.
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Feb 24, 2017 23:36
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Shooting yourself probably shouldn’t count. Otherwise, a bullet is a bullet. Your flesh doesn’t care who fired it.
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Feb 24, 2017 23:49
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Platystemon posted:Shooting yourself probably shouldn’t count. It doesn't, unless it happens during a combat action/firefight. Then it counts.
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Feb 24, 2017 23:52
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Shooting yourself to get off the front lines was a relatively common problem in both world wars and was punishable as desertion if it was found out you did it on purpose.
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Feb 25, 2017 00:28
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Ensign Expendable posted:Shooting yourself to get off the front lines was a relatively common problem in both world wars and was punishable as desertion if it was found out you did it on purpose. (it still is) well not shooting so much but malingering
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Feb 25, 2017 00:45
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Ensign Expendable posted:Shooting yourself to get off the front lines was a relatively common problem in both world wars and was punishable as desertion if it was found out you did it on purpose. Do they also punish you for throwing yourself into a subspace anomaly deliberately?
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Feb 25, 2017 01:24
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bewbies posted:(it still is) What is malingering
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Feb 25, 2017 05:06
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verbal enema posted:What is malingering Avoiding responsibilities and obligations by faking illness or injury, basically. If you, for example, fake being sick constantly so you can hang around the hospital on sick leave instead of exercising and doing your job that is malingering. If you deliberately injure yourself to be put on medical leave that is malingering.
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Feb 25, 2017 05:07
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steinrokkan posted:AFAIK most plans issued in preparation for the invasion counted American casualties "only" in tens of thousands. Also they didn't want to destroy / genocide Japan, that is some weird revisionism. They for the most part wanted to capture the Tokyo coastal plains and force the Emperor to surrender at Kyoto.
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Feb 25, 2017 05:56
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Nessus posted:It seems to be a long-standing theory that we didn't use the Bomb on Germany because we didn't want to kill white people, but I think a simple glance at a timeline reveals that this would not be the case. If Hitler had held out til summer, I don't think he would've seen autumn. Also we were doing a lovely job of not killing white people with all the firebombings of German cities.
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Feb 25, 2017 06:06
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 Differences in life expectancy in Sao Paulo, Brazil e: oops, meant for this to go into the maps thread System Metternich has a new favorite as of 06:23 on Feb 25, 2017 |
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Feb 25, 2017 06:17
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Nessus posted:It seems to be a long-standing theory that we didn't use the Bomb on Germany because we didn't want to kill white people, but I think a simple glance at a timeline reveals that this would not be the case. If Hitler had held out til summer, I don't think he would've seen autumn. Alex Wellerstein on “Would the atomic bomb have been used against Germany?” The point about having no B‐29s in Europe is a good one, but the U.S. wasn’t above nuking Germany. Platystemon has a new favorite as of 06:24 on Feb 25, 2017 |
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Feb 25, 2017 06:19
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Nessus posted:It seems to be a long-standing theory that we didn't use the Bomb on Germany because we didn't want to kill white people, but I think a simple glance at a timeline reveals that this would not be the case. If Hitler had held out til summer, I don't think he would've seen autumn. Not to mention Operation Vegetarian, Churchill's plan to turn Europe into an uninhabitable wasteland for generations, which even went through a prototyping phase. The island used to test the biological weapons prepared for this scheme remained off-limits until the 1990s when a costly sanitation took place. The idea that in the middle of the largest war between white people in history, a war that included literal genocides, people were particularly concerned about racial solidarity between nations seems odd to say the least. (That is assuming people in Europe wouldn't want to see their neighboring countries destroyed even during peacetime)
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Feb 25, 2017 08:22
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Pretty nice thread we had ourselves here, until folks started down that Glory Road of Nuclear What - If. 
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Feb 25, 2017 08:52
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Alhazred posted:Old technology is fascinating. Take Ulfberht swords for example, they are so advanced that it only became possible to replicate them after the industrial revolution. The other big 'name brand' was Inglerii. They were also pattern-welded, with the name inlaid in the blade. When you first see real medieval chain mail, one of the things that grabs you is that every single ring is riveted shut. Yeah, you understand intellectually why that would be, but it's another to see it, realizing that the man who put this on hoped it would keep him alive. After that you start considering the technology that allowed them to make the tiny holes and rivets.
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Feb 25, 2017 08:57
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Khazar-khum posted:Pretty nice thread we had ourselves here, until folks started down that Glory Road of Nuclear What - If. Star Trek: Voyager is why we had Obama - or at least, made his path much easier. Jeri Ryan's marriage to Jack Ryan (not the guy from Clancy) was strained heavily by Jeri going to LA to work on Star Trek Voyager while Jack stayed in Illinois. This led to divorce. Jack won the 2004 primary for the senate seat from Illinois, up against some guy named Barack Obama. Jack Ryan's divorce records were unsealed, revealing that he had taken Jeri to weird sex clubs, leading to his withdrawal from the race and Obama going on to crush noted crazy person Alan Keyes by a much larger margin. (He had been leading Jack Ryan in polls beforehand, but by a much slimmer margin, and 2004 was not full of massive Democratic headwinds like '06 was.) You can theory-craft out the implications of McCain or some other guy possibly beating  in '08 for yourself.
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Feb 25, 2017 09:04
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Japan is an island uniquely poor in iron. Folded steel swords don’t just look cool—it’s a technique that is a necessity with the poor ores availabel to Japanese smiths.  Traditional Japanese wood joinery developed quite literally for want of a nail.  Even Japanese razors made economical use of steel. The blade is asymmetrical. Cuts are made with the “ura” away from the skin. Why? So that the good steel could be concentrated at the cutting edge. The bulk of the blade would be made of inferior metal.  It’s subtle, but you can see the transition between metals here.
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Feb 25, 2017 09:49
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Khazar-khum posted:When you first see real medieval chain mail, one of the things that grabs you is that every single ring is riveted shut. Yeah, you understand intellectually why that would be, but it's another to see it, realizing that the man who put this on hoped it would keep him alive. After that you start considering the technology that allowed them to make the tiny holes and rivets. A friend of mine makes historical replicas for living. Joining the rings of a mail is for the most part "just" a lot of hours with a pair of these: 
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Feb 25, 2017 09:53
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steinrokkan posted:A friend of mine makes historical replicas for living. Joining the rings of a mail is for the most part "just" a lot of hours with a pair of these: To illustrate how much work making chainmail is: When the armor makers on the set of LotR had finished all their chainmails their fingerprints had worn off.
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Feb 25, 2017 10:42
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steinrokkan posted:A friend of mine makes historical replicas for living. Joining the rings of a mail is for the most part "just" a lot of hours with a pair of these: that's nutty and rad- I knew a guy in high school who made bargain bin ren-faire level chainmail stuff out of thick gauge wire using a set of several modern pliers and vise-grips. Even with the modern tools it looked like a bitch of a time and was way, way slower than yarn knitting- and that's without fastening the rings, just bending them closed after threading then again he didn't use heat and the tools were light enough to get some progress done on lunch break, so it probably doesn't compare well- but I'd really like to see a fake How Its Made book where industrial engineers imagine the machines we'd devise to mass-produce obsolete things like ringmail as though they were crucial to national defense and not just ornaments Come to think, that reminds me of the resurgence of the pike during the Kansas/Missouri 1850s Border War (an event that is fuckin chock full of historical fun facts and historical sad facts)- John Brown is credited with designing a cheap, easy to produce polearm that was a bootleg of the Bowie knife favored by pro-slavery forces. In 1857 he took a looted Missourian knife to a blacksmith and had him forge 950 pikes at a buck a pop to distribute to freed slaves over the following years. Et voila, the creatively named John Brown Pike was born  gonna do a better effort post on Border War stuff; I'm from there and that conflict still shapes so much of the current economic and political conditions in Kansas City- in typical winding road of history fashion, there's possibly no Garmin without John Brown, no basketball as we know it without William Quantrill Peanut Butler has a new favorite as of 11:01 on Feb 25, 2017 |
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Feb 25, 2017 10:58
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Peanut Butler posted:then again he didn't use heat and the tools were light enough to get some progress done on lunch break, so it probably doesn't compare well- but I'd really like to see a fake How Its Made book where industrial engineers imagine the machines we'd devise to mass-produce obsolete things like ringmail as though they were crucial to national defense and not just ornaments In the case of mail, we would join the rings with electrical welding. It’s used for mail gloves and shark suits, and of course ordinary, one‐dimensional chains. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vomLiA6vqVQ
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Feb 25, 2017 11:09
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Nessus posted:You can theory-craft out the implications of McCain or some other guy possibly beating I don't know, I think the Republicans winning in 2008 is pretty unlikely unless the Democrats ended up nominating Kucinich. I imagine it'd be more likely that everyone would be grumbling about Clinton's vice-president (I don't know, Deval Patrick or someone) losing to Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney last year.
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Feb 25, 2017 11:11
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Wheat Loaf posted:everyone would be grumbling about Clinton's vice-president (Joe Lieberman) losing to Donald J Trump last year. filled in some blanks here- there's no way the fat man stays out of it in Timeline-Kes-Lives, he just rides there on misogyny peppered with racism instead of the other way around
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Feb 25, 2017 11:23
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Peanut Butler posted:filled in some blanks here- there's no way the fat man stays out of it in Timeline-Kes-Lives, he just rides there on misogyny peppered with racism instead of the other way around Nah, hadn't Liberman spent the past eight years or so endorsing George Bush? I reckon he'd be on the outs with the Clintons by the time '08 rolled around. In any event, the reason I'm not convinced Trump would have been so quick to run in alt-2016 is that a) he was a Democrat between 2001 and 2009, joining because it was cool to stick it to George Bush and quitting because at the end of the day he's either a racist who bought into birtherism, an opportunist who bought into birtherism or a racist opportunist who bought into birtherism (and also because he's a monstrously petty man, who purportedly embraced birtherism all because Obama made a joke about him at an early press event); and b) he was on decent enough terms with the Clintons back in the 1990s, and if he went back to the Republicans over Obama, It's eminently likely that in alt-2016, Trump becomes the Democratic nominee running on the same platform he did abortively with the Reform Party in 2000. 
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Feb 25, 2017 11:59
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Wheat Loaf posted:I don't know, I think the Republicans winning in 2008 is pretty unlikely unless the Democrats ended up nominating Kucinich. I imagine it'd be more likely that everyone would be grumbling about Clinton's vice-president (I don't know, Deval Patrick or someone) losing to Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney last year. In 2012 you mean.
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Feb 25, 2017 12:34
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Wheat Loaf posted:Nah, hadn't Liberman spent the past eight years or so endorsing George Bush? I reckon he'd be on the outs with the Clintons by the time '08 rolled around. We're going counterfactual here which is as fun as it is uncertain; but I don't think that'd faze the Clintons at the end of the day- Patrick is a pick that I think reflects more risktaking than Hillary would ever be willing to muster- if not Lieberman, then Chafee or some other GOP-lite dem that a spreadsheet chose also I think you have a deep misunderstanding of Donny "Roy Cohn's Protege" Torp if you think his party affiliation or freak slight had anything to do with his lust for greater prominence. Maybe an obscure Harvard Law Professor has a popular Twitter account ragging on the guy, and he ruins Barry Obama's career- or does something else, anything, to attract the attention of the rising far-right. Like- I don't see Gamergate turning out any better in this timeline, and that radicalized shitloads of apolitical nerds directly to the alt-right. At the very least, even in this Obamaless counterfactual, I don't think a "normal" candidate would weather the shitstorm building since the Civil Rights Act that exploded into this boatwreck of an election- a Jeb! or a Cruz I don't see him running as a democrat and succeeding- he doesn't have the same Islamaphobia/derk er jerbs/"the blacks" win button that he hammered to victory last year and I don't think he's a guy whose message works in anything but shithead dogwhistles, like its the one weird trick, the only one, he's genuinely talented at
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Feb 25, 2017 13:37
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Peanut Butler posted:We're going counterfactual here which is as fun as it is uncertain; but I don't think that'd faze the Clintons at the end of the day- Patrick is a pick that I think reflects more risktaking than Hillary would ever be willing to muster- if not Lieberman, then Chafee or some other GOP-lite dem that a spreadsheet chose Actually, I reckon it would be Kaine, because Obama thought about picking him before he went with Biden.
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Feb 25, 2017 13:58
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Wheat Loaf posted:Actually, I reckon it would be Kaine, because Obama thought about picking him before he went with Biden. Then the world's best and cutest friendship never happens 
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Feb 25, 2017 16:21
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Re: counter-factuals: I'm sure there must be some folks in this thread who will find this amusing.
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Feb 25, 2017 21:57
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Suspect Bucket posted:Then the world's best and cutest friendship never happens That's one of them causality nexuses, they end up meeting as very old men on the LTR-9-EXODUS and are known as the old men who race Honda Sprees on the gravloop
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Feb 26, 2017 00:30
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Wheat Loaf posted:Re: counter-factuals: I'm sure there must be some folks in this thread who will find this amusing. alter-factuals
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Feb 26, 2017 01:06
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Peanut Butler posted:That's one of them causality nexuses, they end up meeting as very old men on the LTR-9-EXODUS and are known as the old men who race Honda Sprees on the gravloop Oh my goodness. That would be adorable and then they would be best space-bros.
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Feb 26, 2017 02:50
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Alhazred posted:Old technology is fascinating. Take Ulfberht swords for example, they are so advanced that it only became possible to replicate them after the industrial revolution. Ugh, I hate this "fact" because it's insanely centric to western Europe. The Ulfbehrt and most high quality swords forged in Pagan Scandinavia and many in modern Germany and France (what was at the time the center of European arms production) were forged with high strength carbon steel, but it wasn't some secret knowledge. The papal blockade against the pagan controlled lands lead to them having to source steel from far away sources due to the fairly poor state of Scandinavian iron production in the Viking Age, this meant they were primarily getting it from two places: Pagan Rus (modern Ukraine) and Al Andalus/North Africa (Muslim Spain and Libya) and then in later years once things started getting rougher with the Muslims they would make it as far as what was then called the Roman Empire but what we call Byzantium. And in these places they discovered steel that was not domestic to Europe and was instead being produced in what is now Syria and India, they bought it and then brought it home to make swords with it. Eventually this steel made it into France and Germany where the Ulfbehrts were probably made because even a economic blockade cant stop the demand for amazing quality steel. My issue with this is that the people making this steel never really stopped doing it. Just domestic low quality steel production got jump started and crusades and rise of the outremer states meant that the supply lines became cost prohibitive for Europeans and the importation stopped. But Muslim generals and officers carried swords made of the same steel the Ulfbehrts were made of up until WWI (also the last time the battle standard of Muhammad was displayed for more Islamic war factoids). So really, they weren't advanced, Western Europe was just behind the times and never managed to reverse engineer the process of making them. The same goes with stuff like the scientific method and other things that were kicking around the Islamic world as early as the 900s but didn't make it over into Europe for hundreds of years because why would you ever translate scientific works done by those dumb desert dwelling Satan worshipers, you might catch the Islam from them if you do! Platystemon posted:Japan is an island uniquely poor in iron. What's funny is that Japan actually does have some really high quality iron, but because their smiths had been so used to using techniques designed for refining low quality iron into pattern welded steel when they came across it they had no idea what to do with it and loaded it full of carbon until it was super brittle and used it for the edges of blades not ever really getting that they could have just made the entire blade from that material as well.
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