Smythe posted:

our tax dollars at work. incredible.

etalian posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb5rHthCXoA

etalian posted:

It has a similar vibe to those US military aircraft boneyard satellite photos.

etalian posted:

It has a similar vibe to those US military aircraft boneyard satellite photos.

Maya Fey posted:

Homeless Friend posted:

etalian posted:

It has a similar vibe to those US military aircraft boneyard satellite photos.

yellowcar posted:

love to see an empire crumble in real time

quote:

In the early years of the war under President George W. Bush, the CIA used Bagram as a "black site" detention centre for terrorism suspects, subjecting them to abuse that President Barack Obama would later acknowledge as torture.

Later, as the U.S. and NATO presence in Afghanistan grew, so did the base. A second runway was built, with permanent barracks, gyms and a Pizza Hut.

Maya Fey posted:

torture site pizza hut

Smythe posted:

i wish they could give me one of the cool trucks. i would like to drive it into stuff

blatman posted:

I wonder how far I could get a gently used fighter jet before I died assuming nobody shot me down, like how far could I fly that thing before I just crashed into a mountain or would I even be able to get it airborne

Smythe posted:

do u know how to fly a plane... ?

Maya Fey posted:

torture site pizza hut

Not So Fast posted:

I'm at the Pizza Hut
I'm at the Torture Site
I'm at the combination Pizza Hut and Torture Site

yellowcar posted:

love to see an empire crumble in real time

Atrocious Joe posted:

watch these get stripped of weapons and armor and turned into buses.

Blaisedell posted:

afghanistan is where empires go to die. can't wait to see what china does there

Smythe posted:

do u know how to fly a plane... ?

blatman posted:

no but im sure there's a youtube tutorial for it i can just watch the video while i'm picking out a fighter jet

Raskolnikov38 posted:

yeah China’s plan so far is just “here is some money if you let us mine and don’t shoot at us, also stay out of xinjiang”

Raskolnikov38 posted:

it’s loving July, why was Christmas poo poo still there

quote:

The story is set in 2014, eight years after the Zone came into existence around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and two years after the events in Call of Pripyat. In the book's alternate reality, terrorists detonate nuclear warheads in Kabul, Afghanistan. After a few years, rumor starts spreading about a New Zone having been created there. Because nuclear fallout alone cannot create a Zone, The Ukrainian Academy of Sciences sends an expedition into the New Zone to find out if its creation could be connected to another rift in the noosphere. When they disappear, Major Degtyarev sends out Captain Tarasov (in 2014: Major) on a search-and-rescue mission. As the Southern Comfort webpage explains, "the USSR's Afghan war is largely forgotten in the West, nonetheless it was the other disaster that had led to the downfall of the Soviet empire. Just like Chernobyl, it scarred the bodies and souls of a whole generation... Besides, the war in the 80's left so much Soviet [war] debris behind that many places there feel exactly like the Zone. Several characters are old acquaintances from the Zone, too, including the protagonist himself."

quote:

Somewhere in the former USSR lies a place called the Zone of Alienation: a secret area where physical laws are outright broken and mysterious phenomena manifest.

In 2011, Al Qaeda detonates nuclear warheads in Kabul. In the wake of devastation another Zone is apparently created. A scientific expedition tries to find out if the new phenomena could be connected to the first Zone of Alienation. When the researchers disappear, a search and rescue operation is launched.

For Mikhail Lazarov, commander of the Russian special forces trying to contain the Zone of Alienation, this land of lush decay is his home turf. But when he sets out on his mission into the New Zone, he soon finds himself facing perils he has never encountered before. His mission becomes a struggle against evil permeating the wastelands, confronted with the shadows of the country's troubled history at each step. Lazarov encounters unlikely friends and foes alike: outcasts, adventurers, renegade US Marines and a mysterious woman who appears to be the keeper of dark secrets. But beyond all the perils, the ultimate danger awaits: betrayal.

The noir, post-apocalyptic narrative of Southern Comfort takes the reader on a contemporary voyage into the heart of darkness, where not only the laws of physics are bent but the rules of the outside world as well. This is an alternative reality where outcasts prevail, the oppressed take revenge and the most faithful revolt.

fits my needs posted:

https://twitter.com/nwarikoo/status/1413869549678702596?s=20

i guess the cia's gonna have to fund isis now

etalian posted:

quote:

Digital rodents and abandoned Pokemon presided over the streets of Bagram Airfield on the day news broke that U.S. troops had left the base.

All U.S. forces have left Bagram, which for much of the past 20 years was the largest military base in Afghanistan, U.S. defense officials announced Friday. But the animated critters and some of what’s left on base are visible in digitally animated form through the game app Pokemon Go.

The game allows players to walk to real-life locations and catch or battle digital monsters, who can be found using the app’s barebones version of Google Maps. Some of the Pokemon left by U.S. soldiers remain at their posts.

Normally, players must be physically in the area to use their Pokemon. But Stars and Stripes obtained screenshots from a hacked version of the game in which the user changed the game’s GPS coordinates to Bagram.

Bagram once had a thriving Pokemon Go community of troops, contractors and civilians who played the game while exercising and after work.

“We weren’t expecting Pokemon Go to be thriving in Bagram, and yet it was,” recalled U.S. Army Spc. Corey Olsen, an electrical technician for attack helicopters who played the game with others from his shop in 2019.

Playing the game offered a chance to catch Pokemon in Afghanistan that can’t be caught in America, as some monsters can only be found in certain regions.