• GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
    1·
    18 seconds ago

    I’m glad I missed this.

    btw, did you know that the Australian government killed almost 1000 Emus in the Great Emu War and still lost?

    The military used over 10,000 rounds of ammunition. that would mean they used around 1000 rounds per Emu.

  • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
    14·
    5 hours ago

    i got the soviet-afghan war and wow did that recontextualize a lot of things about the modern world

      • lime!@feddit.nuEnglish
        132·
        4 hours ago

        bear in mind i was 10 during 9/11 so a lot of it was just upending things i had taken for granted. but like, how the US was pretty much allied with the taliban throughout the 80s, giving them training and weapons to fight against the soviet-friendly progressive, secular government of afghanistan.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    5·
    6 hours ago

    My case was Paraguay War a few weeks ago and I learned so damn much that school completely glossed over. What surprised me the most was just how much of a madman Solano Lopez, the Paraguayan dictator, was. You dare bring bad news to him? You bet your ass you’ll be flogged. You failed to follow one of his suicidal orders? Off to forced labor camp. You didn’t put him above God and Christ? Say your prayers, you’ll be shot bayoneted in order to save bullets.

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
    51·
    7 hours ago

    Hey, the Falklands is the one I’m obsessed with and it’s actually really interesting. Only “modern” war between near peers before ukraine.

  • andros_rex@lemmy.world
    411·
    12 hours ago

    The best class I took in college was an intercession course about the Vietnam War. We had to read an entire book pretty much every day, which was great prep for grad school.

    I basically learned that the entire war was completely unjustified, it was horrific and brutal on both sides in ways that aren’t talked about, but that ultimately the United States had absolutely no business interfering. Vietnam had spent years under French colonial control, which they overthrew under their own power. They had already asserted a desire to rule themselves.

    Tonkin was also a genuine false flag, which just isn’t acknowledged? We manufactured the cause for an extremely unpopular war. So many young man died or were disabled because of something that was pointless.

    That class was first that really got me to question the patriotic narrative I was taught about American history in high school.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    19 hours ago

    I’m the War on Christmas guy, and I’m getting my ass handed to me every single year.

    • Manifish_Destiny@lemmy.world
      56·
      1 day ago

      Yooo same. Why the fuck don’t these people just fuck off and relax? I can’t imagine having that much money and still feeling like I have to go to work.

      • themoken@startrek.website
        23·
        23 hours ago

        Because at some point after the first few million you turn into a dragon that must hoard wealth and the people that generate that wealth become a cost to minimize.

          • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
            2·
            13 hours ago

            When I’m a billionaire (and no longer temporarily embarrassed), I’m going to fund so much tasteless art. And by art I mean mostly pornography. But I’ll hire the best advisors to make sure it’s a classy positive influence on society.

  • explodicle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    25·
    20 hours ago

    WWIII nut here.

    Get yourself a Red Cross emergency kit, a lot of water jugs, and ramen. You’re underestimating your chances of survival and how much you’ll want to.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      17 hours ago

      You’re underestimating your chances of survival and how much you’ll want to.

      yes, you too can live out the remainder of your miserable days scrambling for rat meat in the irradiated future.

      of course, the desire to live, to survive, overcomes a lot, but ‘want to live’ I think is stretching it a bit.

      • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        4 hours ago

        I’ve worked briefly with civil defense stuff and got to visit and learn a whole bunch about bunkers. That cemented my “take out the long chair, open my best bottle, put on some shades, and enjoy the brief light show” approach to a hypothetical nuclear alert.

      • Sergio@slrpnk.netEnglish
        3·
        16 hours ago

        I suspect what they’re getting at is: there are a lot of scenarios other than “all out exchange between major powers”, and when the fallout starts floating, you can either just hang out at home (and die of cancer in a year or two), or shelter in a basement for a week (and emerge to a troubled but liveable world.)

          • Sergio@slrpnk.netEnglish
            3·
            15 hours ago

            I’m familiar with the extinction event scenarios, and agree that in some cases one may not find the world worth living in. I recommend Krepinevich’s “7 Deadly Scenarios”, a couple of those involve nuclear attacks. The sitations are comparable to the recent Covid pandemic: millions of people die, the world is subsequently scarred, but life goes on for most people. A bit of planning can make things less horrible and a lot of it overlaps with natural disaster.

            • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              10 hours ago

              I think you may misunderstand. <edit or I’m misreading your replies>

              Jacob’s book covers an all in exchange. everyone goes max. very little in the northern hemisphere would survive. a bit of planning, all the planning in the world - neither will save you when each side is maximizing the amount of fallout with ground strikes with megaton weapons.

              the ‘lucky’ folk in the southern hemisphere will just have to wait until the after effects catch up to them.

              Jacob’s scenario is megadeaths to gigadeaths - literally a billion dead directly (flash/blast/etc) and multiple billions dead shortly after. Krepinevich’s scenario is a few terrorists with tactical weapons.

              these are wildly different things.

              <edit I don’t think you’re meaning to downplay the seriousness of any kind of major nuclear exchange, but just underestimating how seriously civilization ending it is>

              • Sergio@slrpnk.netEnglish
                1·
                2 hours ago

                Yeah, I suspect we basically agree on things. I grew up with Threads and The Day After, and later I read up on nuclear winter and EMPs so I realize that human extinction is a very real possibility.

                But apart from that, the question is: how to prepare for the “less than extinction” scenarios, the sort of thing that Krepinevich and ready.gov discuss.

  • GraniteM@lemmy.world
    9·
    18 hours ago

    I listened to Hardcore History’s series on World War I in that window, so that was my assigned war of interest.

    • ThePancake@lemmy.world
      5·
      14 hours ago

      This was me too. I probably listened through the “Blueprint for Armageddon” series three times. Never really found any other history podcast that piqued my interest nearly as much as that did.

      • andros_rex@lemmy.world
        2·
        13 hours ago

        I like that he’s very open about the fact that he’s not an expert/professional historian. He walks the line between storytelling and rigor pretty well for a pop historian. My favorite episode is the one about the Memnonite (edit: Anabaptist) rebellion that ended with corpses being left up for centuries.