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Moon Slayer posted:Dale Brown vs Central America I vaguely remember the secondary protagonist was basically Pilot Not-Ding-Chavez, who listened in the briefings only for the altitude that contrails would form and then slept through the rest of it
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Mar 11, 2023 07:25
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Charlz Guybon posted:The 35th Maine Infantry regiment and the 44th New York Light Artillery battery are being shipped down to the Carolinas for an amphibious landing late in the civil war (1864ish?). A storm happens and they get Bermuda triangled to a planet tens of thousands of light years away. It might actually be in one of the Magellanic clouds because they can see the whole spiral of the galaxy laid out at night in the sky. Later on in the series, a member of the alien species from when they had more advanced technology gets teleported to the world, and starts helping his nomadic descendants against the humans.
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Mar 11, 2023 15:20
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Fivemarks posted:Later on in the series, a member of the alien species from when they had more advanced technology gets teleported to the world, and starts helping his nomadic descendants against the humans. I never got that far. I just read the first two books.
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Mar 12, 2023 09:59
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Charlz Guybon posted:They are carnivores who use humans as cattle. I read a quality sci fi short story where humans make contact with an advanced alien race that in exchange for something like cell samples from the negotiator humans receive useful tech and peaceful relations. The negotiator learns that human meat becomes a core foodstuff for the aliens, except I think they make it in an ethical way where they vat grow millions of copies of the negotiator but without the brain or something similar so the copies aren’t alive. It’s still creepy for the negotiator to know every day his body parts are being devoured.
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Mar 13, 2023 05:35
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Hyrax Attack! posted:I read a quality sci fi short story where humans make contact with an advanced alien race that in exchange for something like cell samples from the negotiator humans receive useful tech and peaceful relations. The negotiator learns that human meat becomes a core foodstuff for the aliens, except I think they make it in an ethical way where they vat grow millions of copies of the negotiator but without the brain or something similar so the copies aren’t alive. It’s still creepy for the negotiator to know every day his body parts are being devoured. This was one of the Draco Tavern stories by Larry Niven. EDIT: "Assimilating Our Culture, That's What They're Doing" Lemniscate Blue fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Mar 13, 2023 |
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Mar 13, 2023 05:45
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Also shows up in Rudy Rucker's Ware series.
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Mar 13, 2023 05:49
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If you remember the "alien Scarlett Johannsen picks up random dudes in Scotland and dissolves them" weirdfest that was Under the Skin, the book had a much clearer narrative that basically was a critique of factory farming. She lured dudes into captivity, where they castrated them and cut their tongues out and forcefed them to plump them up to eat.
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Mar 13, 2023 06:13
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Madurai posted:After the generally excellent Red Army, Ralph Peters decided to do something a little more technothrillery, and so launches into the career of a tough-as-nails US Army airmobile officer who, after losing most of his command in an intervention action in central Africa to orbital lasers (again, the 1980s and their laser satellites), goes on a sort of walk in the wilderness to find themselves. And by "wilderness" I mean, "Mexico" and by "themselves," I mean "Mexican rebels backed by the cartels and also armed by Japan." (Another 80s-ism it might be difficult for younger folk to relate to is the idea that Japan was an unstoppable economic juggernaut). Our Hero gains some very war-crimy rep in putting down those darn rebels, bringing him to attention as just the sort of can-do officer to take charge of a new, experimental unit. Was that the one where one side, I can't remember which, reveals their new super-sekret 'Author is bored with lasers' weapon. And it turns out to be some total SciFi Neural Disrupter-like weapon that blasts people into a permanent vegetatative/locked in/quadraplegic state, again I don't remember the details but it was pretty hosed up.
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Mar 13, 2023 13:52
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Also I'm pretty checked out of that scene, but I'd be interested in a nostalgia visit. Are there any good* modern military techno-thrillers? I'm assuming China is the new default bad guy. *Decently readable might be more realistic.
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Mar 13, 2023 13:54
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Why would you want decent, it seems the abortions are a lot more fun
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Mar 13, 2023 14:11
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The Cold War is Over and Dale Brown is Struggling -or- The fall of the Berlin Wall was basically 9/11 for these authors (not to be confused with actual 9/11, which was basically Christmas) With the Soviet Union in the dustbin of history, Dale Brown lasers in on the newest global conflict flashpoint that's sure to dominate the headlines: Latvia vs Lithuania. I'm not 100% sure which one was the good guy and which one was the bad guy (I think Lithuania was the good one?) but one is an emerging democracy and one is a warlord state run I believe by a former Soviet general. Border conflicts are flaring and the Dreamland team are sent in to ... do something I guess. Patrol Lithuanian airspace? A slight divergence, but Brown as a former Air Force guy writing firmly in the post-Gulf War I era is clearly absolutely certain that air power is the be all and end all of combat. No combined arms tactics here, all conflicts will be resolved by dropping bombs. Maybe some special forces will go in and knock out air defenses but it's the noble knights of the skies that'll be keeping the world safe from now on, not some grunts with rifles. Anyway, this incredibly low-stakes dispute between two small former Soviet states is suddenly very personal when they find out that the guy who they lost on the B-52 raid into the Soviet Union in the very first book is alive! And he was captured and brainwashed and thinks he's a Soviet scientist! He's got a new personality and everything (something I'm pretty sure is entirely the realm of science fiction). He's been helping the Soviets (now Russians and Latvians (or possibly Lithuanians)) build their own super awesome stealthy all-in-one flying fortress. I don't remember very much about how the book ends but I believe that the American and Russian superplanes go head to head and after about fifteen chapters of playing cat and also cat good old-fashioned American know-how wins out. I also seem to remember the captured scientist getting rescued by Delta Force who come in on -- you guessed it -- V-22s.
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Mar 13, 2023 14:30
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Deptfordx posted:Also I'm pretty checked out of that scene, but I'd be interested in a nostalgia visit. I don't know if it's any good, but the DC blob was really into Stavridis and Ackerman's book "2034" about a war with China a few years ago.
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Mar 13, 2023 16:18
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I should definitely talk about the Destroyermen books sometime- where the ultimate endgame is "Everyone teams up to fight the Nazis and the Hypercatholics", and the prequel series Artllerymen, where book 2 has a twist ending that they foreshadow and you hope for but don't expect.
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Mar 13, 2023 17:44
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Notahippie posted:I don't know if it's any good, but the DC blob was really into Stavridis and Ackerman's book "2034" about a war with China a few years ago. Actually that reminds me, I did read Ghost Fleet. Which is definitely heavily inspired by Red Storm Rising. And has a subplot involving, and I swear this was written as a bet to top the infamous Iceland sideplot from RSR, of a vigilante super sexy serial killer. It's genuinally WTF, how did this get past the editors?
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Mar 13, 2023 18:08
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Taking a break from Dale Brown to play "guess that novel." This one'll be easy. Our super-secret team of awesome high speed low drag tier one operators is flying coach across the Atlantic when terrorists hijack the plane. They immediately kick their asses as this is just the prologue. They are going to England and establish a super elite SWAT team right as a bunch of hostage situations kick off across Europe. These are mostly resolved through sniping. Anyway it turns out all of these various attacks were orchestrated by the big bad as a distraction from their real plan; releasing a bioweapon to cull humanity while a select few bunker down and then repopulate the planet. Their plan is foiled and the team round them up at their base in the Amazon, strip them all naked, and leave them to die.
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Mar 14, 2023 16:14
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Moon Slayer posted:Taking a break from Dale Brown to play "guess that novel." This one'll be easy.  6
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Mar 14, 2023 16:17
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Milo and POTUS posted:Even as a middle schooler the ending to rainbow 6 crept me out
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Mar 14, 2023 16:19
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Made for some pretty cool early 00's video games though.
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Mar 14, 2023 16:31
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Clancy also had a novel out at this time where the Russians put a bomb in the Time's Square ball on New Year's Eve 1999. I'm not sure why they did this or what the goal was or absolutely anything else about the book but I remember the cover had an American flag with a hammer and sickle branded into it and my 13-year-old self thought that it was the sickest poo poo.
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Mar 14, 2023 16:50
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Wasn't the R6 heartbeat sensor thing something that someone was shopping around back in the day, and it was as bogus as those wands with fake/useless electronics that were supposedly bomb detectors, but Clancy totally fell for it and thought the tech was real?
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Mar 15, 2023 00:26
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Deptfordx posted:Wasn't the R6 heartbeat sensor thing something that someone was shopping around back in the day, and it was as bogus as those wands with fake/useless electronics that were supposedly bomb detectors, but Clancy totally fell for it and thought the tech was real? I'm too lazy to go find the source for this but yes, I recall that being the case.
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Mar 15, 2023 13:37
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So something I always found kind of interesting is how Dale Brown and Tom Clancy went completely opposite ways on Russia. Where Brown has at least three or four books where Russia's government is overthrown by a radical nationalist general who brings back the good old days of fighting an evil empire, Clancy decided that Russia was going to be on the side of the angles, which leads us into The Bear and the Dragon. Despite being the most recent and last Clancy novel I ever read I don't remember too much other than the fact that China's economy crashes at the start and they decide that seizing Siberia is the best way to get them out of the hole. This leads to, over the course of the novel, Russia joining NATO and the west going to war with China. In the end a pro-democracy revolution occurs in China but I guess it doesn't stick because I thought I saw that his next (and final, RIP to a real one) book was about China vs Taiwan?
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Mar 16, 2023 15:28
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Moon Slayer posted:So something I always found kind of interesting is how Dale Brown and Tom Clancy went completely opposite ways on Russia. Where Brown has at least three or four books where Russia's government is overthrown by a radical nationalist general who brings back the good old days of fighting an evil empire, Clancy decided that Russia was going to be on the side of the angles, which leads us into The Bear and the Dragon. Also notable for a repeated discussion of how the Chinese are like Klingons whose way of thinking we in the West will never truly understand and the classic racist line "They just don't value human life like we do." And the abortion thing. Ugh.
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Mar 16, 2023 15:37
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Lemniscate Blue posted:
Babies crowning! Get the needle ready!
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Mar 16, 2023 17:07
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Handsome Ralph posted:Babies crowning! Get the needle ready! Darkest sketch award goes to....
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Mar 16, 2023 17:39
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Moon Slayer posted:So something I always found kind of interesting is how Dale Brown and Tom Clancy went completely opposite ways on Russia. Where Brown has at least three or four books where Russia's government is overthrown by a radical nationalist general who brings back the good old days of fighting an evil empire, Clancy decided that Russia was going to be on the side of the angles, which leads us into The Bear and the Dragon. After I swore off Clancy for good after Debt of Honor, multiple people I know and used to trust urged me to read Bear and the Dragon. I no longer take recommendations from these people.
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Mar 16, 2023 19:25
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Deptfordx posted:Wasn't the R6 heartbeat sensor thing something that someone was shopping around back in the day, and it was as bogus as those wands with fake/useless electronics that were supposedly bomb detectors, but Clancy totally fell for it and thought the tech was real? Not as bogus as - it was those exact loving things.
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Mar 19, 2023 09:03
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Ok so I'm going to stretch the definition of military thriller here and do The Road to Damascus 1 and 2 by Gerard de Villiers, whose whole oeuvre is just  . Also I have belatedly realised I am not in CSPAM but I'm already committed to making the postOur golden eyed Austrian prince ubermensch protagonist takes a break from sex with his royal fiancee to get briefed by a CIA guy who is blatantly based on someone who leaked information to the author, probably in a fancy steakhouse. The situation in Syria circa 2011 is outlined - Obama is worried that Assad will be too weak to win the upcoming civil war, and doesn't want to leave the fractured country in the hands of "brothers", which I assume refers equally to jihadis and the Muslim Brotherhood. I think the plan is to kill him and have Hafez take over? Theres also a Mossad head there and he's tired. They decide that Assad will react poorly to being asked nicely to step down, so they try to do a palace coup. I don't remember how exactly this goes down but there are car bombs involved, a brutal torture scene, some dude gets poisoned, and part 1 ends with the Syrians killing everyone involved. At some point at the beginning too a Syrian guy takes an extra minute for roadside sex with his Lebanese girlfriend because she put on her stockings over her panties, a delay which costs him his life. Anyway I think the Israelis have a mole or something because they get a Hamas executioner whose sister needs Israeli chemo to put a bomb on the car of some minister on the baath military committee so their guy can take his place, but Assad and his brother (neither of whom get a sex scene) have already decided to take the guy out and they're like wait what are the Americans trying to do. Anyway they suss out the main plot and kill and/or torture everyone involved then the Israeli plan B (coup via tank battalion) gets derailed because the main character catches feelings for a Lebanese woman with an unpronounceable name who he deflowered (and paid for hymen reconstruction surgery), who the Syrians kidnap, and he betrays the plan to save her. And everyone lived happily ever after.
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Mar 23, 2023 21:20
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what in the goddamn? Is Assad the good guy in that book?
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Mar 23, 2023 23:51
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This seems like one of those stories where the main conflict isn't man vs man/nature/society/god, but instead is closer writer vs reader and writer vs self.
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Mar 25, 2023 04:27
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Moon Slayer posted:what in the goddamn? Not really. The Syrians are portrayed as violent killers but there's a whole explanation at the beginning where the US and Israel have to weigh their appreciation for Assad's foreign policy with the prediction that he's about to lose most of his country to political Islam. If I remember right, Bashar only makes appearance, but Hafez gets more airtime and comes across as very competent. Ronwayne posted:This seems like one of those stories where the main conflict isn't man vs man/nature/society/god, but instead is closer writer vs reader and writer vs self. Writer vs literary establishment, writer vs good taste, writer vs urge to dickride men of action. I've read a lot of these for French practice so if anyone is curious about a title I can try to remember. Highlights include Israeli plotz to kill Obama, the most sympathetic depictions of Osama bin Laden in all of western literature, Uday Hussein sex scenes, and a Serbian woman getting so turned on by two guys murdering someone to protect Karadzic that she immediately allows them to double team her in a truck cab
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Mar 25, 2023 17:52
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I suppose the threshhold for bad military thriller memories has been met when said memories are identical to Faces of Death video summaries. (ed: I reread that and it sounds kinda harsh, keep them coming) Ronwayne fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Mar 26, 2023 |
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Mar 25, 2023 21:09
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I just remember Sum of All Fears had a really long loving sub plot about Japanese monks or some poo poo buying some trees in the US, same being shipped on deck aboard a US ship that then lost them, they floated around and eventually got hit by an American SSBN. I’m not sure what the point of it all was but there was a gently caress ton of orientalism.
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Mar 26, 2023 04:48
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FrozenVent posted:I just remember Sum of All Fears had a really long loving sub plot about Japanese monks or some poo poo buying some trees in the US, same being shipped on deck aboard a US ship that then lost them, they floated around and eventually got hit by an American SSBN. Debt of Honor was the one where the US fights Japan again Because Reasons. IMO Clive Cussler's Dragon was the better Pacific War Part 2: Electric Boogaloo novel. Speaking of, I call dibs on recalling that plot badly in a future post.
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Mar 26, 2023 05:00
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FrozenVent posted:I just remember Sum of All Fears had a really long loving sub plot about Japanese monks or some poo poo buying some trees in the US, same being shipped on deck aboard a US ship that then lost them, they floated around and eventually got hit by an American SSBN. Oh poo poo I forgot about Clancy's thing where he'd cut away to some totally random thing happening that wouldn't "pay off" until twenty chapters later. Like, imagine reading a spy thriller where every now and then the focus abruptly shifts to a guy working at an ammo plant in Tennessee who's going through a divorce for a few paragraphs, and then two chapters from the end the hero's gun misfires because that guy let a bad round through QA.
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Mar 26, 2023 14:43
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My favorite of those is the two guys with the truck full of ANFO slowly driving across the country to blow up the White House. TLDR (and boy is it ever TL) they get caught by beat cops before anyone even realize they exists. Teeth of the Tiger also had a drawn out cybersex subplot where one of the terrorist was roleplaying sexy Auswitch with what he thought was a 16 year old (turned out to be a fat middle aged german dude).
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Mar 26, 2023 18:12
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Moon Slayer posted:So, Dale Brown. He was an actual Air Force back-seater on B-52s in the late 70's-early 80's and clearly has a chip on his shoulder about never getting to actually drop bombs on anybody for real. Amazing that in a genre full of self-insert fantasy fulfillment characters the biggest one manages to be an airplane. Should've named it the Airy Sue instead. At that point why not also make it supermaneuverable and supersonic so that you've basically crafted the airplane version of the Milennium Falcon. Moon Slayer posted:Glad I repressed that memory. Too bad I can't also get rid of the passage in the Clancy China vs Russia book about how Chinese women don't shave their armpits and how fascinating the Japanese-American spy finds this. Oh God I had repressed the memory of that awful book and y'all are bringing it back. IIRC in that same sex scene she also muses about how Chinese dicks are like little Chinese sausages as she prepares to blow his giant American hog Why I remember all of this 20 years later I don't know, I thought I had managed to unremember it pretty well
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Mar 26, 2023 21:42
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This thread is literally going to result in bad military thriller book purchases (by me) to spur my memory, and that's just....the worst outcome
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Mar 26, 2023 22:18
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GD_American posted:This thread is literally going to result in bad military thriller book purchases (by me) to spur my memory, and that's just....the worst outcome  Dale Brown has a Deep Understanding of the Complex Geopolitics of Northeast Asia There have been a ton of media asking the question of what happens if North Korea attacks South Korea. Only Dale Brown dares to ask: what if opposite? The US and South Korea are conducting some annual exercises but the South Koreans are being weird and shifty. Then, halfway through an aerial drill the ROK planes suddenly break off and turn and burn north. Surprise, we decided to kick off reunification and didn't tell our chief allies because they probably would have said "no that's crazy." Now, I'm guessing what happened here is Brown read somewhere about the times where the US had to slap down a South Korean nuclear weapons program and decided to extrapolate. Despite being a bonkers scenario for any number of reasons (not least of which that the ROK is acutely aware of the economic cost of annexing their impoverished neighbor) in able hands this could be an interesting what-if. This being Dale Brown, of course, the "invasion" consists entirely of aerial bombing. No mention of the massive artillery barrage that would certainly reduce Seoul to an uninhabitable wasteland or really ground troops at all that I can remember. Lots of North Korean units mutiny and surrender but one SRBM unit does get a nuke off and destroys Busan. There's a scene where the ROK staff just shake their heads and go "we knew we were going to lose something." Anyway it's all over in a few hours and the Korean peninsula is unified. China is, of course, less than pleased by this, and this is where Our Heroes come in. Brown has decided that the B-52 is old news and the B-1 is the new hotness. So a unit of the super-secret AEB-1Ts or whatever are sent to the new unified Korea right as China sends in bombers to I guess destabilize the new government? Again, air power and dropping bombs is the only thing important in international conflicts. I don't actually remember too much about how this all goes down but in the end the Chinese head home with their tale tucked between their legs and everyone is happy except I think this is the book where one of the main characters dies? Who cares.
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Mar 27, 2023 14:40
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Not a military thriller per se, but I once found a book on a boat (often a bad start) about a cowboy who found out about Angola prison and decided to get more cowboys to go and uh… destroy it? Idk, not-Audie-Murphy was involved, along with trick shooters and what have you. Lots of gun porn. Title was something about a pale horse. Edit aw poo poo it’s got a Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Horse_Coming?wprov=sfti1
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Mar 27, 2023 15:42
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