bluGill

I’ve hake seen many comments here that favor war crimes. Sad but all too common and I don’t think they are bots*

Careful how that is done. Hitting random things tends to make people more in favor of war - get back at those who destroyed the neighbor’s house. Hit things that are more impersonal like ammunition factories instead.

The purpose of the UN is to bring all countries no matter how evil together. The UN is useful - to the extent is useful at all - because of the larger number of nations that get together in peace to talk. I’m sure China loves this as it helps their efforts to keep Taiwan out. This is just another attempt to destroy the UN.

At this point the culture had shifted to not value large families and so few even think it is possible while not having kids seems like a valid option. It takes years to shift this even with an effort to encourage kids.

Ukrain is aware and probably giken minimal training - at least howito get a trasnlator on the phone.

Meat assults are not a great thing to learn.

South Korea has a lot of useful equipment and the supply chains (factories) to build a lot of it. That equipment is what Ukraine needs more than anything, ideally at a low price (or under generous loan terms)

Nuclear programs are expensive and only useful in cases where things are so bad you are willing to end the entire world - including yourself. I’m not completely against France expanding their nuclear program, but I do think most of their effort should be focused on not letting things get that bad in the first place and that means enough conventional defense that they can defend themselves.

That itself would be a victory. One of Trump’s stated reason for wanting out of NATO is Europe wasn’t doing their part - the treaty requires specific amounts of military spending and most members were below that. Now that Ukraine happened most of Europe is at least close to the treaty required levels (many are still below, but at least they are close)

Which is to say you can’t lay down arms you don’t have. If you want to leave America behind (which is both good and bad in different ways) you need to have something in place to handle potential attacks without America.

The Korean war is still on - the last serious battle was 1953, but the two sides just decided it wasn’t worth fighting but never agreed to end it. It probably isn’t hard to find treaties and laws dating to back then that give the US military permission to attack without asking congress. (the us never declared war though, so it would need a very detailed lawyer and months to go through all the laws to figure out the exact status)

How old are you? The Cuban missile crisis was far worse than this - but 1962 was 62 years ago - not many people alive are old enough to remember how bad it was then. For most of us that is just something for history while the things happening today are real to us.

Odds are this will pass, but just like in 1962 nobody knew for sure we were not on the brink of war, I cannot tell you for sure.

Every since the end of WWII there has regularly been things happening that felt like we were steering towards WWIII. You have to learn to live your life, you have no idea in advance what will actually start WWIII. There are of course plenty of signs but you don’t know until after WWIII is over what were important. Even WWII when the first shots were fired did not have to become a world war, things just escalated in ways that you couldn’t be sure at the time they would.

Don’t real the above as you shouldn’t work for peace, or that you shouldn’t prepare for WWIII. You should be doing both at the same time. The cost of peace sometimes higher than the costs of war - and war is expensive! (peace can sometimes only be had at the cost of becoming a slave - I’d rather my kids die in war than become slaves)

The smaller munber is yesterday.

Putin has surrounded himself with those who agree with him, and killed those who disagree who are at all in danger of getting a position of power. Unless you kill nearly everybody in politics nothing will change. (if you do I don’t know what the result will be other than really bad - and no guarantee of change for the better even with just the Ukraine issue)

We don’t need a growing population, but it can’t shrink fast. We can probably even handle a slow shrinking, but a birth rate of .6 (which some countries are getting to) is low enough to be a real problem. Stable population needs a birthrate of a bit over 2 (1 child for every adult, and a few extra to account for accidents - how much extra depends on factors like how good your medical care is).

Of course the above is statistics. Some people have terrible genetics and shouldn’t have kids. Many people would be terrible parents (but few are willing to admit it is them - ironically many who will admit it would be good parents). And raising kids is takes a lot of effort (it isn’t as expensive as those without kids think, but it does take a lot of time) - all good parents have to give up a ton of things they currently do (in countries with the worst birth rates this is often working too many hours, but even countries with reasonable working hours are seeing concerningly low birth rates) .

Right, but about the turn from 2023 to 2024 tank numbers dropped a lot. Generally it was thought that russia ran out of tanks in storage that can quickly be reactivated. Of course they still have a lot, but the running out of tanks in storage forced hard decisions about how to use tanks. In turn that made the tanks lost number go way down this year, but since they have a lot of tanks they can use them more and sometimes they will lose more than they can make.

Russia still has a lot of tanks in storage - many dating back to just after WWII. However all the good ones have been used up and so what is left needs major rework, or brand new off the assembly line tanks. Generally it is thought between the two Russia can produce about 3 tanks per day (the real number is classified so we/I don’t know). What this means is Russia was forced to make hard decisions about using tanks

I don’t think you can custom design shot in a useful way. At least I can’t think of any way to impart a spin on shot which is what you want to get range and accuracy. I’m also not sure if that would be a good idea - short range is often an advantage - if you miss you don’t kill someone on your side you cannot see.

You are mistaking accuracy for lethal range. A lucky shot with buckshot could hit a human at 150m, but the shot will bounce right off their tshirt. A lucky shot with an infantry rifle could hit that human at 3km and kill them. Both of the above shots are luck - nobody can do that intentionally no matter how much training they have. Both of those are about as far as it is possible to reach with the respective gun (pointing up at a 45 degree angle)

If you want to talk about accuracy in the hands of someone well trained, your article is correct. This is well training - you won’t get that much training during basic training. That same training on an infantry rifle would get 800m with confidence (but if you are going to train someone that well you give them a more powerful gun so they can get 2000m).

I agree video games get this wrong all the time.

But depending on direction your fired ammo can fall on someone else on your side and now not only are you dead but you killed someone else via friendly fire.