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Maes

Gentlemen, choose sides...

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dew said:

Nice tacticool buzzwords, Maes, but wouldn't that rather be the Cold War II? Superpowers testing each others' might by proxy in local conflicts does not a WW III make and open conflict isn't probable, yet.


Call it Cold War II or World War IV if you like -if you subscribe to Cold War I being World War III.

But for practical and geopolitical/geostrategical reasons, an open conflict between major powers is exremely unlikely. Just one hint: they all have nuclear weapons, and so far, nobody has dared openly using them, not even the so-called tactical nuclear weapons, nor does anyone know what will happen if a conventional conflict starts between two nuclear superpowers and it continues to escalate: would there be a tipping point where one side would be tempted to use nukes? So far, every such conflict, even between India and Pakistan (both large, both nuclear) has been contained/limited to "local exchanges" and "border incidents", but what would happen in a more involved situation?

I recall that at some time, when the shitstorm of "Enduring Freedom" and "Iraqi Freedom" was just hitting the world, the proposal of using "small, low power nukes" against "terrorists" was timidly brought forward by spin doctors, hoping of course that the adjective "small" and "low power" would make them progressively more acceptable to the public. The latest such instance was a proposal to neutron bomb the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2012.

But did you notice something? In all those cases the use of even those "small, low power" nuclear weapons was to be directed only against irregular armies of rag-tag, barefoot insurgents or "terrorists". Using them against the regular troops of another nuclear power would be suicidal, as a retaliation would simply end up, sooner or later, to using the "big" ones.

And since I spoke about "rag tag irregulars", here's another thing: most modern armies, including the almighty USA's and practically all of NATO's armies, are now severely downsized and almost 100% professional, according to a "quality over quantity" doctrine, and they are optimized for rapid deployment, mobility and facing much weaker opponents (insurgents, rag-tags, pirates, etc.), rather than fighting WW-II type conflicts. The only countries maintaining large conscript armies suitable for this kind of warfare are typically third or second world countries.

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Unlike most of you, I was actually alive and sentient during most of the Cold War. This isn't like that.

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Maes said:
Just one hint: they all have nuclear weapons, and so far, nobody has dared openly using them, not even the so-called tactical nuclear weapons, nor does anyone know what will happen if a conventional conflict starts between two nuclear superpowers and it continues to escalate: would there be a tipping point where one side would be tempted to use nukes? So far, every such conflict, even between India and Pakistan (both large, both nuclear) has been contained/limited to "local exchanges" and "border incidents", but what would happen in a more involved situation?

Probably the acceleration of the development of invasive technology. One or two thousand years ago, powers had to send people, especially loyal armed contingents, to regions they wanted to lord over. Nowadays, that requirement is diminished because of media and financial technologies that allow proxy domination. The prospect of mutual nuking reinforces these methods.

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Mordeth said:

Unlike most of you, I was actually alive and sentient during most of the Cold War. This isn't like that.

Believe this man. We aren't practicing bombing drills in schools or building shelters like we used to.

Now all the hardcore survivalist types are preparing for government coups, pandemics, and police states -- not nuclear war. Nuclear disaster is always in the back of everyone's mind, but the feeling of having a human extinction event is no longer an imminent possibility due to superpowers colliding.

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TheCupboard said:

Believe this man. We aren't practicing bombing drills in schools or building shelters like we used to.

The "duck'n'cover" drill is from a time when more than 90% of the nuclear weapons stockpile was in American hands and even then I doubt it served any useful purpose beyond helping maintain civilian morale. The balance of terror has changed since then, and while the US and Russia have made substantial reductions to their stockpiles there are still enough nukes to kill every one of us several times over, so I suppose most people realised there would be little to gain from cowering under a classroom desk or in an impromptu bed mattress bomb shelter in the hallway at home. The powers-that-be still have secret bunkers they can scurry to should events spiral out of control (that hasn't changed) and sit out the worst of the aftermath in relative comfort before emerging to claim victory. It won't be the meek that inherit a post-apocalyptic Earth, or the cockroaches, it'll be the bureaucrats. </rant>

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I suppose ducking and covering is better than just standing upright in the open and "taking it like a man".

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Maes said:

I suppose ducking and covering is better than just standing upright in the open and "taking it like a man".

Maybe if you're a pussy. I'll be taking it on my stiff upper lip as is expected of an English gentlemen!

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Phobus said:

Maybe if you're a pussy. I'll be taking it on my stiff upper lip as is expected of an English gentlemen!


Record this as a quote with your best pompous British Empire accent, and you're gold.

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GreyGhost said:

It won't be the meek that inherit a post-apocalyptic Earth, or the cockroaches, it'll be the bureaucrats. </rant>

Euck, what a horrible existence.

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Maes said:

Record this as a quote with your best pompous British Empire accent, and you're gold.

As has been pointed out before, I've been saddled with the accent and voice of Neg from Balls of Steel, rather than the booming, authoritative tones of a Space Marine... But I'll be sure to give it a go ;)

EDIT: Where's Brian Blessed when you need him?

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Phobus said:

As has been pointed out before, I've been saddled with the accent and voice of Neg from Balls of Steel, rather than the booming, authoritative tones of a Space Marine... But I'll be sure to give it a go ;)


I was thinking something more along these lines:

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Oh... Yeah, that's doable! I shall have some tea and crumpets and get on that old boy.

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Aliotroph? said:

Duck-and-cover is a useful thing to know if there's any chance you might get nuked. Not everybody is in the vaporization zone in the middle of the blast.

Might keep you from being perforated by flying debris, but if there's no advance warning you'll probably absorb a hefty dose of gamma radiation before hitting the floor.

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Thing about a nuclear explosion is, though, it's kinda chaotic. You can't say for certain, "Oh I'm here, that means I'm gonna get vaporized, or oh since I'm in this spot, it means I get a lethal dose of radiation so worrying about falling debris isn't gonna matter." A lot of times, maybe "duck and cover" ain't gonna do shit, but eh, at the same time, it'd suck to be crushed by falling debris only to find out you would've survived if you had just taken cover.

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GreyGhost said:

Might keep you from being perforated by flying debris, but if there's no advance warning you'll probably absorb a hefty dose of gamma radiation before hitting the floor.


While, if you duck in time, the gamma radiation will somehow miss you?

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Maes said:

While, if you duck in time, the gamma radiation will somehow miss you?

A significant portion of it, yes. You may still die from the dose, but your death will be much slower and painful.

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R

dew said:

A significant portion of it, yes. You may still die from the dose, but your death will be much slower and painful.


And you'll be quicker than the gamma rays, that travel at the speed of light and emanate in all directions from the center of the blast? Do you really believe that finding yourself a meter lower and with a different body posture would really make a difference with the immediate blast's gamma rays?

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Of course, you might reduce your irradiation dose significantly, but don't expect to survive. Gamma is a bitch no matter what. :)

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People have survived a nuclear blast a few hundred feet away from detonation and lived well into their nineties. But I strongly advise against adopting this as a survival technique.

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Maes said:

Do you really believe that finding yourself a meter lower and with a different body posture would really make a difference with the immediate blast's gamma rays?

If you witnessed the blast before ducking - probably not. Though if you happened to be standing chest-deep in water in a reinforced concrete swimming pool, you should be shielded from the worst of the neutron radiation.

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GreyGhost said:

If you witnessed the blast before ducking - probably not. Though if you happened to be standing chest-deep in water in a reinforced concrete swimming pool, you should be shielded from the worst of the neutron radiation.


I'll ask it again -do you know of any humans fast enough to duck before the chain reaction starts (short of expecting it) or before the radiation which is released the moment of the explosion, and which travels at the speed of light, reaches them?

Any driver knows that the human reaction time is set -conventionally- to be around 1.5 seconds, aka the time between you see the shit happening and the moment you start doing something about it.

Let's even assume that you are a highly trained and conditioned athlete and you can bring this down to 100 ms, and that the bomb blast is 10 km away from you, that's still slow as molasses compared to the 33.3 us the radiation from a blast will take to reach you. Even though you'd be out of range of gamma and neutrons, the light and heat would still reach you and damage you before you had time to react, and it would just get worse the closer you were to the bomb.

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You might not be able to duck the radiation, but you'd have enough time to duck before the shockwave hit and knocked everything down. Sound travels a lot slower than light, after all - just like you hear thunder a few seconds after you see the lightning, unless you're standing right next to it.

Again, I think ducking and covering is more about avoiding collapsing debris and such rather than trying to actually duck the gamma rays. And if you're not instantly vaporized after a nuke, the very first thing you've got to worry about is the walls coming down on you or the roof collapsing.

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