D&D and the rising pandemic

[niklinna]

But I think we now so far off topic it's getting hard to spot the original thing this thread was supposed to be about. Maybe it's natural after over 500 pages,

I got my booster a couple weeks back! Been seriously considering the monkeypox vaccine too but supplies are still limited and others need it more than I do, for now.

 

[billd91]

Lately I read about a "black day for the Russian air force" due to four planes being shot down over Ukraine in a single day. Four. During WW2 they'd send out hundreds of planes in a single raid, lost 50 and called it a success.

Would any modern nation be able to bear the losses of a full fledged WW2 style war anymore? Adding Russian and Ukrainian losses over the eight months of invasion and it's much less than the casualties just from the one month (and a little) long Battle of the Bulge.

Hard to say. Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union were able to sustain ridiculous number of casualties because they ultimately had little choice. They had brutal, authoritarian governments willing to spend human lives with an astonishing profligacy - something the various democracies involved may not have been so willing to sustain - and may have developed even less willingness to sustain over the years as our technological capabilities have improved. This is why the US spends so much effort with remote methods of killing people like drones (and rely on proxies on the ground).
And now, even Russia tends to rely on technology and expensive equipment more than mass quantity. That's why a black day for the Russian air force is 4 planes shot down in a single day.

 

[Mirtek]

I got my booster a couple weeks back! Been seriously considering the monkeypox vaccine too but supplies are still limited and others need it more than I do, for now.

I am getting my flu shot next week and will use this opportunity to ask for a second booster in middle to late November. Have another vacation planed starting 16th of December and then my first booster will be more than a year ago.

Currently that wouldn't matter (as far as travel regulations are concerned) but who knows what rules might be in place in a couple of weeks and since I never got the PCR to document my recovered status getting a fresh fourth shot certificate might be helpful.

 

[billd91]

Just to touch on a couple of things here:

Things were different in 1942 or whatever the population won't go along with what governments got away with back then Vietnam changed that.

The US government's pursuit of the Vietnam War and the revelation of massive cynicism behind both Johnson's and Nixon's policies shattered a lot of relationships between the US government and the press and the public - relationships that have generally not healed, helping to set up some of the problems we continue to have, including the COVID response.

The fundamentals have changed with globizatiin/trade etc. The world's not as resilient economically. We're getting economic crisis every decade or so vs 1929-87.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Globalization has changed things - we're far more interconnected in many ways and that means a crisis in one place tends to spread. But thanks to the proliferation of social safety nets, they're generally not as deep or long as they were before the New Deal in the US and the spread of welfare states in the wake of WWII in Europe, the Americas, and parts of Asia/Oceania. That means, in many ways, we are more resilient, though less autarkic in the way we deal with it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Just to touch on a couple of things here:


The US government's pursuit of the Vietnam War and the revelation of massive cynicism behind both Johnson's and Nixon's policies shattered a lot of relationships between the US government and the press and the public - relationships that have generally not healed, helping to set up some of the problems we continue to have, including the COVID response.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Globalization has changed things - we're far more interconnected in many ways and that means a crisis in one place tends to spread. But thanks to the proliferation of social safety nets, they're generally not as deep or long as they were before the New Deal in the US and the spread of welfare states in the wake of WWII in Europe, the Americas, and parts of Asia/Oceania. That means, in many ways, we are more resilient, though less autarkic in the way we deal with it.

I'm aware of the Vietnam thing. Alot if the modern problems now have direct links to the aftermath of that conflict.

Choices made 40 years ago due to Vietnam are coming home to roost now.

 

[Zardnaar]

Lately I read about a "black day for the Russian air force" due to four planes being shot down over Ukraine in a single day. Four. During WW2 they'd send out hundreds of planes in a single raid, lost 50 and called it a success.

Would any modern nation be able to bear the losses of a full fledged WW2 style war anymore? Adding Russian and Ukrainian losses over the eight months of invasion and it's much less than the casualties just from the one month (and a little) long Battle of the Bulge.

But I think we now so far off topic it's getting hard to spot the original thing this thread was supposed to be about. Maybe it's natural after over 500 pages,

Cost of military toys has exceeded inflation. From memory

Tank 8-15k
Bomber 100k
Battleship 50 million.

These days crap tank 2 million.

 

[Zardnaar]

So, I'm going to burst a little bubble here.

At the height of WWII, the US produced about 80 million metric tons of steel.

Spoiler: citation - Wikipedia

(History of the iron and steel industry in the United States - Wikipedia The graph stops at 2014 because that's as far as data went when it was made, not because our production plummeted to zero) But, yeah, or peak steel production wasn't in the war - it was in the 1970s.

Wanna guess how much steel the US produced in 2021? About 80 million metric tons - with capacity to do about 100 million.

Spoiler: citation - Congressional report on US steel production

(https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47107)

The US capacity to produce steel as a portion of overall world production has dropped. But absolute production capacity is at WWII levels currently! We have maintained (well, gained and lost) capacity - other nations have increased theirs.

The real way we managed so much wartime production wasn't so much in outright steel production as it was in strict rationing. As an example, in 1941, in the US, we produced about 3 million consumer automobiles. During the war, apparently that number dropped to... 139. We basically completely halted new car production.



Well, your previous reply was based on an erroneous premise. We haven't actually lost capacity.



Don't bet on that. The issue with the Vietnam War was that the American public saw little point in it, while the government pursued it. This has been similar for most wars since that time. But then, nobody's actually tried to take control of Europe in a full offensive either.



A bit of cherrypicking of a unique case there. We cannot get into the politics of it, but under a different administration, it could have gone quite differently.



So, wait a minute - you say we have become less resilient since WWII.... but use an example that starts before WWII? That doesn't say what you think it does.

And they can't do as much with said steel.

They're not number 1 anymore and the population is a lot bigger. The factories don't exist anymore and you can't really build a new factory in 1 year anymore like you could back then.

Financial and service sectors a way larger % these days.

USA still has a lot of advantages though self sufficient in food and energy, geography, demographics. That's the good news make the right decisions you'll do better than most in crisis situations.

And what I said is modern USA couldn't refight WW2. Even if they could match a few metrics eg steel they can't turn it into useful toys, fund said war or mobilize the masses either.

Not meant as an insult we couldn't do it either.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Look at vaccination drives vs polio and smallpox vs modern day efforts recently.

That kind of thing waxes & wanes in this country…unfortunately.

 

[Eltab]

So, I'm going to burst a little bubble here.

At the height of WWII, the US produced about 80 million metric tons of steel.

Spoiler: citation - Wikipedia

(History of the iron and steel industry in the United States - Wikipedia The graph stops at 2014 because that's as far as data went when it was made, not because our production plummeted to zero) But, yeah, or peak steel production wasn't in the war - it was in the 1970s.

Wanna guess how much steel the US produced in 2021? About 80 million metric tons - with capacity to do about 100 million.

Spoiler: citation - Congressional report on US steel production

(https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47107)

The US capacity to produce steel as a portion of overall world production has dropped. But absolute production capacity is at WWII levels currently! We have maintained (well, gained and lost) capacity - other nations have increased theirs.

The real way we managed so much wartime production wasn't so much in outright steel production as it was in strict rationing. As an example, in 1941, in the US, we produced about 3 million consumer automobiles. During the war, apparently that number dropped to... 139. We basically completely halted new car production.



Well, your previous reply was based on an erroneous premise. We haven't actually lost capacity.



Don't bet on that. The issue with the Vietnam War was that the American public saw little point in it, while the government pursued it. This has been similar for most wars since that time. But then, nobody's actually tried to take control of Europe in a full offensive either.



A bit of cherrypicking of a unique case there. We cannot get into the politics of it, but under a different administration, it could have gone quite differently.



So, wait a minute - you say we have become less resilient since WWII.... but use an example that starts before WWII? That doesn't say what you think it does.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to the Prime Minister of Japan (who unfortunately was not actually in a position to tell the Imperial Army what to do), December 1941: Are you aware the US can out-produce Japan in steel and oil and other essential wartime resources by 10-to-1 ?

We know the result.
Today with more like 1-to-1 production capacity vs likely opponents, the long-term outcome is far less certain. We also cannot rely on buying a year of time getting our pre-war armed forces clobbered while we tune up the Economic Miracle Machine to build replacements for everything.

 

[Zardnaar]

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to the Prime Minister of Japan (who unfortunately was not actually in a position to tell the Imperial Army what to do), December 1941: Are you aware the US can out-produce Japan in steel and oil and other essential wartime resources by 10-to-1 ?

We know the result.
Today with more like 1-to-1 production capacity vs likely opponents, the long-term outcome is far less certain. We also cannot rely on buying a year of time getting our pre-war armed forces clobbered while we tune up the Economic Miracle Machine to build replacements for everything.

The other key difference bfor crisis response was USA had access to the industrial capacity it wasn't being used.

It was already picking up 1940 due to British and French war orders.

Alot of the "miracles" in batent that miraculous once you look at the actual reasons. Essentially they just turned the money taps on and had some very clever people.

That capacity isn't actually their anymore. The boots on the ground aren't there last o heard they were short of said boots as well.

USS Big Stick can still crush anyone it's the aftermath though. They don't need to refight WW2.

The main point was for crisis management the resources, will and ability aren't there anymore.

We can't do it either we mobilized 100k from 2 million these days we can do 250k. Well no people would just leave and if you shutvthat off a good chunk would just take the jail term plus protests in the streets.

Sure it's not impossible theoretically but yeah.

Here they actually made things government could do illegal. They could theoretically change the law but yeah protests, riots, point blank refusal.

War just an example see vaccinations for more modern example.