[Ukraine] Missing in Action: Western Minds

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DancingShade: Jul 26, 2007; by Fluffdaddy

If Evangelion and rahxephon have a giant godlike mecha brawl in Ukraine and break a footbridge over a small duck pond, which fictional Nippon does the international community complain to?

# ? Apr 6, 2023 06:12

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# ? May 23, 2024 11:49

The Atomic Man-Boy: Jul 23, 2007

Raskolnikov38 posted:

what cult and/or collection of nazis is soka gakkai

They're a kind of weird sect of Japanese Buddhism, they're generally fine, though they have their own political party, which is generally has earned them suspicion by the rest of the public. The generally caucus with the LDP, which sucks, but is the only way to get anything done there.

They're kind of on the borderline between a cult and an organized religion. Contrary to what you might expect, they have genuinely tolerant, anti-racist politics, which is also something of a rarity.

I've met some genuinely good Soka Gakkai people, but they do act a little cult-y. I think it's more of a function of the time and place they came out of, (getting repressed in the Imperial period) and cult-y is just kind of the vibe you get when you create an organized religion in Japan.

They're not my bag, but they're pretty chill, don't do forced marriages, don't believe their leader is the reincarnation of Christ, and (as far as I know) don't have ties to the CIA. So if you were forced to join a cult, you could do worse.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 06:34

Majorian: Jul 1, 2009

DancingShade posted:

If Evangelion and rahxephon have a giant godlike mecha brawl in Ukraine and break a footbridge over a small duck pond, which fictional Nippon does the international community complain to?

I'm not familiar with the second one but it's that one. Evangelion Japan will just turn into orange goo the second you ask anything of them.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 06:48

supersnowman: Oct 3, 2012

ianmacdo posted:

What's the international response if Russia uses a nuke on their own land. Like if Ukraine somehow get their million man army across the Russian border and Russia just nukes them?

I've asked this question to a few reddit armchair general raving about how NATO could roll on Moscow within 2 weeks and never got an answer.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 06:51

supersnowman: Oct 3, 2012

Ardennes posted:

It doesn't help that as Ukraine admitted there wasn't a real shell shortage on the Russian side across the winter. (I was pretty skeptical from the get go considering they were on the offensive, but I was pretty much alone in that regard.) Nevertheless, if the Russians had shells and seemingly still have them they are going to keep on shelling into the future, which allow them to persue their current strategy as well as make the Ukrainians may an high price for any offensive. In addition, at least according Russian sources, only more plants are going to be coming online by June would allow them to increase their fire rate even further.

The first real Russian shortage won't be shells but barrel after shooting so much with them.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 06:52

evilmiera: Dec 14, 2009; Status: Ravenously Rambunctious

Futanari Damacy posted:

But for real stop giving these white supremacist SCUM Nazi fucks guns you sick loving freaks

I agree, never sell Russia more guns.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 06:57

Regarde Aduck: Oct 19, 2012; c l o u d k i t t e n; Grimey Drawer

evilmiera posted:

I agree, never sell Russia more guns.

Good one

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:00

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

supersnowman posted:

The first real Russian shortage won't be shells but barrel after shooting so much with them.

They are probably making a bunch of them too to be honest.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:01

Majorian: Jul 1, 2009

ianmacdo posted:

What's the international response if Russia uses a nuke on their own land. Like if Ukraine somehow get their million man army across the Russian border and Russia just nukes them?

I think at that point Russia's well into "coup is likely" territory. :killing:

That's my working assumption in the event of most hypothetical nuclear launches though. It helps keep me calm.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:02

Delta-Wye: Sep 29, 2005

ianmacdo posted:

What's the international response if Russia uses a nuke on their own land. Like if Ukraine somehow get their million man army across the Russian border and Russia just nukes them?

nafo is gonna meme so hard

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:31

Regarde Aduck: Oct 19, 2012; c l o u d k i t t e n; Grimey Drawer

Majorian posted:

I think at that point Russia's well into "coup is likely" territory.

That's my working assumption in the event of most hypothetical nuclear launches though. It helps keep me calm.

I don't think they're gonna coup over a defensive nuking

Think they might be more concerned about the invaders

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:37

Majorian: Jul 1, 2009

Regarde Aduck posted:

I don't think they're gonna coup over a defensive nuking

Think they might be more concerned about the invaders

I think if Russia is doing so badly that Ukraine invades to the degree that a nuclear strike within Russia�s own borders is on the table, the generals are going to say �yeah no, Putin is bad at this, we�re taking the wheel now.� Note that this is not a �good� outcome, nor is it remotely likely.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:40

Slavvy: Dec 11, 2012

The USSR famously overthrew Stalin and the communist party when their German liberators showed up. Many such cases!

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:40

Majorian: Jul 1, 2009

Slavvy posted:

The USSR famously overthrew Stalin and the communist party when their German liberators showed up. Many such cases!

The military certainly helped overthrow the tsar and Kerensky when both started losing the war extremely badly. That would probably be a closer analogy to what we would be seeing in the "Ukraine crushes the Russian military and invades Russia" scenario than Operation Barbarossa. Note that again, Ukraine making it within Russia-proper�s borders is exceedingly unlikely.

e for clarity

Majorian has issued a correction as of 08:22 on Apr 6, 2023

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:42

DancingShade: Jul 26, 2007; by Fluffdaddy

Us at the moment:

Yeah we know things are going very badly for The West (tm) but what if they weren't?

We are the Roman mobility drinking wine and eating grapes as the Gauls advance relentlessly.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:44

Majorian: Jul 1, 2009

DancingShade posted:

Us at the moment:

Yeah we know things are going very badly for The West (tm) but what if they weren't?

We are the Roman mobility drinking wine and eating grapes as the Gauls advance relentlessly.

The (post-4th century BC) Romans beat the Gauls. You mean the Visigoths?

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:45

Ardennes: May 12, 2002

Some of their films were already upscaled, but it seems like Mosfilm is now relasing more Soviet films in redone 1080p/4k (possibly with an AI upscaler from the source?, they look pretty good) with cleaned up audio on their youtube channel. It really helps.

Ardennes has issued a correction as of 07:52 on Apr 6, 2023

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:50

genericnick: Dec 26, 2012

sum posted:

I was trying to make sense of the problems Ukraine is having with mobilization in light of the fact that they should nominally have a population of millions to draw from. Also I was bored at work. The TL;DR is that Ukraine has probably already mobilized a significant fraction of all the men they can ever hope to, and depending how you crunch the numbers the remaining manpower pool might be from between around 1 million to almost no men.

Anyway, on to the effortpost:

To continue prosecuting the war, the Ukrainian armed forces need lots of people, mostly able-bodied adult men. Despite the official ban on men aged 18-60 from leaving the country, UN statistics (https://population.un.org/wpp) show that the 18-59 cohort of men liable for service declined from 12.14 million men in 2021 to 9.59 million men in 2023, a 21% decline. The 18-44 cohort declined from 7.88M to 5.73M, a 27% decline, while the 18-29 cohort shrunk from 2.65M to 1.44M, cratering by 46%.

Let's use the 5.73 million men aged 18-44 as the prime manpower pool, as there's a many issues with mobilizing men past their mid-40s. 5.73 million is a lot larger than the 700,000 or so men they've mobilized already, so you would think that Ukraine should have recruits for years to come. But many of these men are not available.

For one thing, the UN appears to count people living in the occupied parts of Ukraine in their population statistics for Ukraine. Pre-war, the population of the LNR, DNR and Crimea combined were about 6 million. Adding about a million for the territory occupied since last February, and you have about 7 million people living in Russian-administered areas counted as Ukrainian. Of them, something like 1.2 million are 18-44 year old men, which we can subtract from our original 5.73 million, leaving 4.53M.

Next, we can exclude those with chronic health conditions. I don't have firm statistics on this, but the US DoD recently concluded that 77% of young Americans are unfit for service due to health reasons. In WW2, something like 30%-40% of US draftees were classified as 4F. Keeping in mind that Ukraine can't afford to have high standards, I think 25% of draftees being unfit is conservative. That leaves about 3.40 million men.

Some percentage of the remaining men are deferred from service. After all, you don't want to send your train conductors and physicians to the front line. I can't find good sources for this and again Ukraine can't afford to be picky, so I'll guess something like 10% of the remaining pool have deferments, leaving 3.06 million. You could easily estimate a higher number here though, through telegram anecdotes large numbers of men receive economic deferments.

Large numbers of Ukrainians are internally displaced (~13%) and draft offices often have out-of-date data, making it sometimes difficult to serve mobilization subpoenas. Keeping in mind that, again anecdotally, significant numbers of internal refugees have been drafted, I'll conservatively estimate something like 10% of eligible men can't be found by draft offices. 2.75 million remain.

Many men simply do not show up for draft summons. Some Telegram accounts have suggested that the draft dodging rate is 50% or above. From the scant reporting we have, it seems like punishment is rare and they would prefer not to have draft dodgers in the military at all. There's a wide band you could plausibly put in here which significantly affects the overall number of men available, but assuming the rate is 50% that leaves 1.38 million men.

Finally, the Ukrainian military had a standing strength of about 250,000 before the war and they've mobilized or recruited about 750,000 since the war started. Those men aren't part of the manpower pool so we can subtract them, leaving a pool of only 380,000 men remaining. This is crisis levels! But it also explains the videos of men being dragged off kicking and screaming in Odessa.

Also, I should note that there's dozens of asterisks all over this. The available manpower pool is highly sensitive to the draft dodging rate and unfit-for-service rate, and there's a wide range of plausible estimates for both. I'm also not totally confident in the UN's statistics, they say the sex ratio is still close to even and I think they might be dramatically overestimating the amount of men who left the country. If you estimate that the 18-44 manpower pool is closer to 7 million, using these numbers you'll get a manpower pool of about 900,000. All that said though, I think it's reasonable to conclude that Ukraine's manpower pool is hardly bottomless and expanding it would be politically, economically, and militarily painful.

This is how Bernie can still win

# ? Apr 6, 2023 07:57

DancingShade: Jul 26, 2007; by Fluffdaddy

Majorian posted:

The (post-4th century BC) Romans beat the Gauls. You mean the Visigoths?

Probably. My mind goes to Asterix books pretty easily.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:07

Homeless Friend: Jul 16, 2007

Al-Saqr posted:

this is very accurate because both of those statues are Heiling Hitler.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:13

Majorian: Jul 1, 2009

DancingShade posted:

Probably. My mind goes to Asterix books pretty easily.

Understandably, and to be fair, a lot of Gauls sort of folded into the Visigoths and the Franks and the Vandals etc, who all went on to gently caress Rome's poo poo up at one point or another.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:20

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Key difference is that they didn't really intend to gently caress up Rome the way they did.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:34

guidoanselmi: Feb 6, 2008; I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest post. No lies whatsoever.

Ukraine just needs to wait a few months to save up some PP and click Scraping the Barrel conscription law. they just need to save a little extra PP before that to also hit Request NATO small arms decision to arm the divisions they�ll raise.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:37

Weka: May 5, 2019; Can't post for 15 hours!

Slavvy posted:

The USSR famously overthrew Stalin and the communist party when their German liberators showed up. Many such cases!

Putin is weak and hasn't spent the last decade plus performing a series of brutal purges.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:46

Cuttlefush: Jan 15, 2014; gotta have my purp

always be purgin

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:48

Pistol_Pete: Sep 15, 2007; Oven Wrangler

At least these coming offensives should settle the question of whether the Western or the Russian propagandists are bullshitting harder about their situations and capabilities to do stuff on the ground.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:50

Pistol_Pete: Sep 15, 2007; Oven Wrangler

If it all peters out into yet another bunch of vague nothingness, I'm going to be pissed, I'm telling you.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:51

Futanari Damacy: Oct 30, 2021; by sebmojo

Palladium posted:

Imagination, NATO greatest weapon

Army Corps of Imagineers

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:58

CODChimera: Jan 29, 2009

Pistol_Pete posted:

If it all peters out into yet another bunch of vague nothingness, I'm going to be pissed, I'm telling you.

start preparing yourself for that now

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:58

Majorian: Jul 1, 2009

Pistol_Pete posted:

If it all peters out into yet another bunch of vague nothingness, I'm going to be pissed, I'm telling you.

Hoo boy, I have some bad news for you�

# ? Apr 6, 2023 08:59

Futanari Damacy: Oct 30, 2021; by sebmojo

evilmiera posted:

I agree, never sell Russia more guns.

Famous net importer of arms, Russia :roflolmao:

# ? Apr 6, 2023 09:02

Danann: Aug 4, 2013

https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1643860693647601664

sounds like this dude may be politically active and with funny tats on

edit:

# ? Apr 6, 2023 09:07

i say swears online: Mar 4, 2005

https://twitter.com/Chahuapa/status/1643863303742013442

# ? Apr 6, 2023 10:10

genericnick: Dec 26, 2012

Pistol_Pete posted:

If it all peters out into yet another bunch of vague nothingness, I'm going to be pissed, I'm telling you.

Yeah, no one is going to learn anything from this. Us included.

# ? Apr 6, 2023 10:25

crepeface: Nov 5, 2004; r*p*f*c*

DancingShade posted:

If Evangelion and rahxephon have a giant godlike mecha brawl in Ukraine and break a footbridge over a small duck pond, which fictional Nippon does the international community complain to?

how is there not an Evangelion opening edit with Zelensky yet

# ? Apr 6, 2023 11:14