occamsnailfile posted:

Jamaican steel drumming originated from the US Navy's immense number of castoffs.

Also the Zone Rouge (and similar ordinance-disaster zones around the world) are are interesting and terrifying. Meanwhile, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had plants growing again within months of the nuclear explosions, against great fears they would poison the soil for a century or more. They certainly did lasting damage, but arguably Fukushima has done more since it's still loving leaking. I did a cursory search and couldn't find any quick results on how much radiation lingers in underground testing sites and for how long--I guess it depends somewhat on the isotope (Americium has a half-life of 432 years? fsck) but to some degree fears of a blasted nuclear wasteland incapable of supporting life and/or cloaked in perpetual winter seem overblown. Unless of course you also shelled the area extensively, covered it in land mines, and blanketed it with chemical weapons.

Fangz posted:

Einsatzgruppen were killing Jews during the Invasion of Poland so if you think Hitler was trying to lose he sure started early

fishmech posted:

Fukushima is leaking tiny amounts that are easy to clean away and dilute in the ocean to insignificance. Especially since they've been able to go and build a whole system of containment stuff in the areas to make sure anything dangerous is collected properly.

Some of those nuclear test ranges are still pretty dangerous, but they also got absolutely pounded with dozens of bombs or more in relatively constrained areas, or they were even tests of deliberately extra-radioactive bombs to find out, well, what effects would that have? Well we better build some and find out (or hey, oops, this design we were testing turned out to put out way more radiation than we expected)! Because that's just how you did things back then.

Mycroft Holmes posted:

HEY GUNS posted:

if there is nothing else i have learned from this godforsaken phd it's how to dispose of a dead body with primitive equipment and he's either mistaken or lying about the burning thing

HEY GUNS posted:

OR the insane politics subplot

HEY GUNS posted:

the reboot hasn't brought back winged hussars OR the insane politics subplot, i am boycotting

Epicurius posted:

I don't know. That commentator sort of has a point, in a sense. What I mean by that is that, too often, when we talk about World War II, and specifically Nazi Germany, we use apocalyptic terms; as a simple question of good vs evil. Nazi has become shorthand for modern evil, and calling somebody a "Nazi" is almost never intended as a neutral descriptor. It's almost entirely used a slur; as shorthand. We see it, for instance, in "Godwin's Law"...the observation that, if an internet argument goes on long enough, one side will inevitably compare the other to Hitler. Now, of course, there are good reasons we do this, because Nazi Germany, and Nazi ideology committed atrocities and genocides that are without parallel in history. i certainly don't have to go into detail in this thread about how terrible the Nazis were or how morally bankrupt and destructive their ideology was.

The problem with doing that, though; with just using Nazi as a shortcut for evil, is that we strip it of context, and it cuts off analysis. When we say "so and so was a Nazi" and then just end there, we've passed moral judgement, but haven't explained anything. It doesn't say how or why that person became a Nazi or the tools that the Nazi state used to transmit their ideology and perpetuate it. Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men", which is a look at the Reserve Police Battalion 101, which participated in Operation Reinhardt and Aktion Erntefest, the mass murder of Jews in occupied Poland, and killed about 83,000 in the course of the operation., looks at that question. The members of Battalion 101, mostly made up of police officers from Hamburg, weren't, for the most part, particularly remarkable people. There was no evidence in most of their histories that they were psychologically disturbed or particularly cruel or violent, or that they were particularly anti-Semitic. The book looks at the way these supposedly ordinary people were shaped by Nazi Germany to carry out mass murder. So, i think i agree with the statement "The people in germany during that time weren't more evil compared to society today or in the past. " The crimes of Nazi Germany didn't happen because Germans in the 1930s or 1940s were somehow inherently wicked. They happened because the German government actively normalized the commission of those crimes, and through a mixture of coercion, rewards, and psychological conditioning, got people to accept and carry them out.

Chillbro Baggins posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler I mean, he probably wasn't a saint, but he tried to be the least evil Nazi.

Edit: apparently he was buried in Jerusalem, so maybe he would be a saint if the Jews were into that sort of thing. Goddamn. You hear a lot of Nazi apologists saying [person] were only in the party because it was required, but Schindler was actually that rare case where it's true.

spiderbyte posted:

Insane politics subplot? Heh, you must really be under a rock the last few years.

Chillbro Baggins posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler I mean, he probably wasn't a saint, but he tried to be the least evil Nazi.

Edit: apparently he was buried in Jerusalem, so maybe he would be a saint if the Jews were into that sort of thing. Goddamn. You hear a lot of Nazi apologists saying [person] were only in the party because it was required, but Schindler was actually that rare case where it's true.

Beefeater1980 posted:

I see he was in the Abwehr too. Was *everyone* in the Abwehr actively working against the Nazi party? It seems to have been a bit of a hotbed for that kind of thing.

Cyrano4747 posted:

God that is so my jam. I loving live for figuring out how administrators make the day to day running of ideologically driven regimes happen.

Squalid posted:

I feel like I've made similar arguments itt, but really video-games like Wolfenstein are toys for children.

As an adult I obviously don't play video games and hence am only vaguely aware of this subject

Groda posted:

They occationally end up on eBay from US sellers, but shipping them from Sweden isn't the most absurd proposition.

Do you want one?

SimonCat posted:

I have been looking for one, I take it you're in Sweden? How much do they go for there? We can take this to PMs if you have that option.

Chillbro Baggins posted:

I too want a Swedish milsurp bicycle for cheaper than Sportman's Guide is selling them.

13th KRRC War Diary, 26th Apr 1918 posted:

The usual routine of Battn. in front line continues. Things are on the whole very quiet. In the early morning patrols were sent out and some enemy posts were located.
In the evening the trench mortars attached to the Battn. fired on the posts located this morning.

Epicurius posted:

I don't know. That commentator sort of has a point, in a sense. What I mean by that is that, too often, when we talk about World War II, and specifically Nazi Germany, we use apocalyptic terms; as a simple question of good vs evil. Nazi has become shorthand for modern evil, and calling somebody a "Nazi" is almost never intended as a neutral descriptor. It's almost entirely used a slur; as shorthand. We see it, for instance, in "Godwin's Law"...the observation that, if an internet argument goes on long enough, one side will inevitably compare the other to Hitler. Now, of course, there are good reasons we do this, because Nazi Germany, and Nazi ideology committed atrocities and genocides that are without parallel in history. i certainly don't have to go into detail in this thread about how terrible the Nazis were or how morally bankrupt and destructive their ideology was.

The problem with doing that, though; with just using Nazi as a shortcut for evil, is that we strip it of context, and it cuts off analysis. When we say "so and so was a Nazi" and then just end there, we've passed moral judgement, but haven't explained anything. It doesn't say how or why that person became a Nazi or the tools that the Nazi state used to transmit their ideology and perpetuate it. Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men", which is a look at the Reserve Police Battalion 101, which participated in Operation Reinhardt and Aktion Erntefest, the mass murder of Jews in occupied Poland, and killed about 83,000 in the course of the operation., looks at that question. The members of Battalion 101, mostly made up of police officers from Hamburg, weren't, for the most part, particularly remarkable people. There was no evidence in most of their histories that they were psychologically disturbed or particularly cruel or violent, or that they were particularly anti-Semitic. The book looks at the way these supposedly ordinary people were shaped by Nazi Germany to carry out mass murder. So, i think i agree with the statement "The people in germany during that time weren't more evil compared to society today or in the past. " The crimes of Nazi Germany didn't happen because Germans in the 1930s or 1940s were somehow inherently wicked. They happened because the German government actively normalized the commission of those crimes, and through a mixture of coercion, rewards, and psychological conditioning, got people to accept and carry them out.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

What other civil war era regiments are still in existence? I know the 69th NY (famously Irish) are still around as an NY Guard unit.

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

due to a series of bureaucratic and legislative quirks

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

a few National Guard regiments (the 116th Infantry of Omaha Beach fame being one of these) have battle honors from the Confederate Army.

And in case you're wondering how Confederate regiments survived the end of the Confederacy itself, that's due to a series of bureaucratic and legislative quirks surrounding the Confederate armed forces and the creation of the National Guard a half-century later.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Italian Aircraft of World War 2 Post 2

Jobbo_Fett posted:

A Gloster F.7/37, looking very similar to the bis variant.

slothrop posted:

Woop! love these posts!

Just wondering why you included the Gloster in there? Was it simply because the Gloster looked similar to the FC.20? (also minor nitpick, is it supposed to be F.9/37?)

SimonCat posted:

I have been looking for one, I take it you're in Sweden? How much do they go for there? We can take this to PMs if you have that option.

Phanatic posted:

Stolen from the Airpower thread. Cool video of Hellfire missiles being used in an anti-air role, so you can see what a HEAT penetrator looks like blowing through a fragile little drone instead of a main battle tank.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwar09qcUAc

Phanatic posted:

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/mattis-russian-mercenaries-syria-ordered-annihilation/


Well then.

Chillbro Baggins posted:

-- ALL THE TANKS are right in the middle of Texas

Nebakenezzer posted:

So is the really fast thing moving away from the explosion the heat warhead shoving a fine mist of the former drone? Or is this something different? Also, are the missiles physically ramming the target? I thought most anti-air munitions exploded close to the target, to shred the whole thing in tungsten projectiles.

Jobbo_Fett posted:

Yeah, just for the extreme similarity in the two designs, neither of which saw service/combat. And yeah, I did mean to write F.9/37

Oh and photos of Italian planes usually have them on the ground so its not always as exciting!