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Centurium posted:The psychological impact of dealing with the enormity of human evil is not a trivial matter. I know a professor at American University who works extensively on the bomb. He has a preemptive talk with graduate students doing archival research on the subject after several students felt suicidal after spending days in small archives reading rooms examining the calculations around ending the world. Apparently the papers considering countervalue targeting (screw military units, command structures, and missiles, just explicitly try to annihilate as many population centers as you can) are particularly noxious to mental health. Whoa, that's really interesting. I'd... actually like to see those papers.
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Nov 14, 2013 05:50
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You poor bastard you posted too well! Now look at you. I would like a big thick book recommendation about Stalingrad that tells me what it was like for the fellows actually fighting it.
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Nov 15, 2013 02:35
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The Romans actually tightened up when faced with horse archer attack. They did the famous testudo that Hollywood tends to misuse, and then were scattered by the cataphracts when they charged. I've always wondered why the Romans didn't adopt the phalanx in the east. That would have been a great counter to the cataphract, and it's not like they lake the discipline or the manpower to pull it off.
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Nov 15, 2013 05:44
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Mans posted:I never quite understood how planes could fit cannons and machine guns right next or even behind the blades of the engines without blowing said blades to hell. I guess there's a delaying mechanism that stops the blades when you shoot, but how do you make sure the blades don't stop in front of the guns and wouldn't said delay cause the plane to lose speed and energy? The trick is to time your firing mechanism so you can only shoot when you won't hit the propeller. This took a while to work out, actually.
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Nov 16, 2013 02:08
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Those Flak towers were quite effective at providing a reliable shelter though? Too reliable, really, considering how difficult they are to destroy.
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Nov 18, 2013 20:35
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SeanBeansShako posted:Remember that warfare is universally pretty horrible? well, it is time to depress you with what I call 'The How does he know what happened on the ship?
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Nov 20, 2013 06:29
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Of War!'
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Fangz posted:Britain entered the war ostensibly to protect the neutrality of Belgium. Going back on that is unthinkable politically. Further, both Britain and France did not trust each other that much and did not want the other to gain an advantage. The supposed distrust between Britain and France has been largely overstated. The two had differing goals occasionally, but for the most part they agreed on European policy decisions with a few notable exceptions in the interwar period.
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Nov 23, 2013 01:28
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Why didn't the trench war of WWI turn into a very nasty underground war?
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Nov 27, 2013 09:11
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What's the idea behind helicopter-based Anti-Sub warfare? Is it 'lol there's no ship attached to this active sonar device so the only one suddenly exposed is you' or what?
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Dec 13, 2013 02:21
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veekie posted:Probably dates all the way back to ancient Sumer. No bet.
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Jan 13, 2014 15:19
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Arquinsiel posted:Killing the head of state is usually punishable by death, as it counts as treason. Given that he was there and shot at the exact same time a case can be made for him heroically laying down his life in an attempt to prevent the assassination of said head of state by a deranged lunatic. A deranged lunatic acting in self defence. Wait, I think I'm going to need a flowchart for this one.
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Jan 14, 2014 08:06
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It's funny to me that lasers are indispensable in modern warfare - and yet nobody's getting a laser gun anytime soon.
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Jan 14, 2014 22:31
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Bacarruda posted:It's already here! Not man portable, doesn't count.
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Jan 15, 2014 04:45
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FAUXTON posted:Wait, so just like some kid rolls up to Gnaeus Douchius Maximus of Legio II Ursus and just stabs that motherfuck in the balls? While Stultus Maximus discovers that raping the kid's mother is challenging when you have been disemboweled by her obsidian carving knife, yes.
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Oct 14, 2014 13:00
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Hey Hegel, what're the strangest anecdotes you've come across in your research?
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Oct 17, 2014 01:05
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HEY GAL posted:No idea, the series of letters stops around that point. Having your head removed tends to inhibit your ability to write letters, perhaps. I wish there was a concrete answer though!
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Oct 18, 2014 12:48
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Jamwad Hilder posted:I've been reading a biography of Stonewall Jackson and this dude must have had aspergers or something, right? Brilliant commander but I'm definitely getting some serious autism vibes from reading about his mannerisms and personality. My favorite is how he was convinced half of his body was larger than the other so he'd walk funny or work out the "weak" side extra in the hope that it would even out. Nope, it's a fairly common conclusion AFAIK. Source: I live in the south and chat with historians sometimes. Nobody's running to write a paper because diagnosing a dead dude with autism is... well... a poor career choice.
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Oct 19, 2014 04:28
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HEY GAL posted:Don't worry I post enough for five on my own, so the Early Modern is well discussed Was there any sort of popular uprising against the mercenary bands or was that sort of thing considered non-kosher? In the 30YW, I mean. I'm asking Hegel obviously. VanSandman fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 07:06
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Nuclear War posted:I've seen a few declassified documents and slides from the plans for the defence of the Norwegian mainland against a Soviet invasion and the words 'used up' are used frequently to refer to mobilized brigades being thoroughly destroyed. Specifically one document I think, referred to the 12 mobilization brigades and the one standing brigade being 'used up' while slowing the Soviets/waiting for the Americans to arrive and get their stuff out of mountain halls. The wording was really chilling to me for some reason Apparently quite a lot of Cold War military historians burn out and get depression when they realize the sheer lethality of the conflict that the world just missed.
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Nov 21, 2014 10:18
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bewbies posted:The bigger consideration is cost of sustainment. Tanks and guns both are hellaciously expensive to maintain in the field: the cost of their fuel , of their prime movers, their ammo, crews, repair parts and the logistical assets to move all that poo poo dwarf the initial cost of the tank itself. That's why it isn't really as simple as "2 SPGs = 1 tank" or whatever; that might be true in a firefight, but a SPG costs nearly as much to sustain as a proper tank does. So, looking at it from a strategic perspective, if you can sustain either 1000 tanks or, say, 1200 SPGs with your given sustainment assets, you're going to pick the tanks every time (which is exactly what just about everybody did/has done). I forget who it was who said it, but the Cold War Sweden Tank made complete sense from the Swedish perspective. Picture this: The Cold War has gone hot, and you're a Soviet Tank commander leading your forces into Sweden. You don't have the best troops or the best tanks - those are in Germany - but you've got the 2nd rate stuff. You're probably pretty green, too. Your job is to take the hundreds of miles of woods between northern Sweden, where you can invade from, and populated Sweden in the south. It's a very lonely road, and indeed there are only two major roads traveling north to south that you can even use. All of the sudden, the tank ahead of you explodes, blocking your advance. You see a small bastard of a tank scoot out from it's entrenched position and get around the next bend before you can get a shot off. You didn't see it coming because the thing is about half the height of any tank you'd ever trained to fight and easily concealed. You know you've got orders to travel a few hundred miles into before nightfall, when you can't advance because it will only be worse. You're going to experience crazy disproportionate casualties, and the little fucker responsible is practically a ghost. 
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Nov 22, 2014 09:30
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Raskolnikov38 posted:The nullification crisis did give us one of the best Andrew Jackson quotes: Calhoun, it should be noted, was one of Jackson's Vice Presidents. Jackson was a real motherfucker to people he didn't like (or peoples he didn't like, in the case of native Americans) and it showed. When asked if he had any regrets when leaving the office of President, he said, 'I have only two regrets: that I did not shoot Henry Clay and I did not hang John C. Calhoun.' Henry Clay, for those who don't know, was Speaker of the House, easily the number two position of power in America at the time.
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Nov 27, 2014 17:52
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Ok, this one goes out to Hegel and other experts. I've been sick these past few days. Without medicine I would still be sick today. Nothing life threatening, just a cold - but it shut me down hard. What sort of protocol was there for sick soldiers before the advent of modern medicine? What about sick officers? If the fellow in charge was deathly ill, what did the army do? Did they take their ill with them on march, or leave them behind and expect them to catch up later? I'm interested in anything from the Classical era up to the US Civil War. Also, I don't get sick very often, due to a mostly decent immune system and understanding germ theory and whatnot. How often were soldiers sick? Were they expected to tough it out? Was getting sick basically a death sentence? Sorry to hear you were sick too, Hegel. I had honestly forgotten how much it sucks!
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Oct 8, 2015 14:32
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HEY GAL posted:spelling is more of a gentle suggestion than anything else at this time, I've run into a guy whose name is spelled von Ossa zu Dehla, von Ossa zu Thal, von Ossa zu Lehna, and a whole shitload of other things. Sometimes Pappenheim spells his last name with a B. Maybe he had a cold those days. 
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Oct 27, 2015 13:21
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Is there anything Japan won't turn into a high-school girl?
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Nov 7, 2015 03:14
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HEY GAL posted:i thought it was fine, the times i've shot one Is that you on the right there?
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Nov 7, 2015 16:54
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cheerfullydrab posted:I'd enjoy a reverse 1632, where a normal HRE town gets transported to 2015, and is immediately overrun by academics and tourists, and all the inhabitants become extremely jaded bed and breakfast owners or "living history" performers. They'd all die quickly of our incredible booze.
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Nov 13, 2015 08:51
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How does the pike part of the shot-and-pike era compare to other massed pole-arms throughout history? Is there a reason why the long-pole phalanx of Alexander and his successors would've been outdated besides not having guns? I don't know jack about polearms.
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Nov 21, 2015 15:03
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FAUXTON posted:It's pretty crazy to read broad-stroke stuff about the 1848 revolutions because it's always about how poor people got hosed by the powerful when nature dealt a poo poo hand, but instead of sitting in church and praying for the strength to put up with it they came up with the idea of shooting the bastards who were charging an arm and a leg for a loaf of bread. Why? Was there some critical tipping point where literacy allowed revolutionary ideas to spread like wildfire? Was mass illiteracy even a thing in the mid-19th century anymore? The mass proliferation of firearms maybe contributed?
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Nov 24, 2015 05:53
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HEY GAL posted:that vest is baller I think you mentioned before your dudes were somewhat inordinately fond of looking fly as hell. Would they have fought over such a vest? Killed?
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Dec 2, 2015 14:26
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HEY GAL posted:eighteenth century military stuff in the german speaking world is organized pretty well, usually, because it was well-organized at the time. I love how mad you get about organization of fuckers who, by your own description, were permadrunk fuckups.
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Dec 4, 2015 15:13
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HEY GAL posted:for some reason, 30yw infantry is good at records, but cavalry is not. why? They got places to be, not books to write!
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Dec 4, 2015 21:57
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PittTheElder posted:This guy gets it. Do you have a copy of this saved anywhere? I can't get it to load. Edit: Nevermind.
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Jan 9, 2016 15:34
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TheFluff posted:There are no known weapons that can shoot down GPS satellites; they're in geostationary orbit and getting there is a huge pain in the rear end. All current anti-sat weapons are for shooting at imaging satellites in LEO. You jam GPS, you don't shoot the sats down. GPS satellites are not in geostationary orbit. Here's an explanation: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html They are indeed a huge pain in the rear end to shoot down, but not impossible by any means. The best protection against that is not going to war against nations capable of shooting satellites.
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Jan 24, 2016 17:57
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bewbies posted:Ideally, something like modern loss rates. IE, if I send 100 IL2s off on a CAS mission, how many can I expect to lose on average? I was under the impression from this thread that the Red Army did a lot more of what we would consider CAS missions than the western allies, which focused mainly on total-war style bombing missions? Could well be 100% wrong though!
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Mar 17, 2016 17:17
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George's story is fascinating. Thank you so much for posting it.
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Apr 15, 2016 22:06
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I want all of George the Objector stuff in the new thread, it's solid gold from a historical perspective and super interesting to me personally.
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May 1, 2016 16:33
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lenoon posted:Thanks for all the kind words about George, I'm sure he would have been very embarrassed about them. Thank you for all of this.
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May 4, 2016 21:44
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HEY GAL posted:Please Cav Responsibly You ask too much. I could honestly read a book of great Cavalry fuckups/successes throughout history - don't tell me which one I'm getting before reading the whole thing, give me a little background info on the battle and it's participants, then give me a play by play and a post-battle breakdown.
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May 24, 2016 13:08
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Fangz posted:Let me tell you about my unsettling reality where tea was never invented. That would actually be a huge historical change!
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May 28, 2016 15:33
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Cyrano4747 posted:Hah holy shi just looked it up. They're still kicking and they still loving live at Hohenzollern Castle. What's that mean? Prussian?
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May 31, 2016 20:21
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