New Mars Forums

Actually, the notion about different races being 'evolved' more or less is silly. I'm no PC policeman; I've pretty well established my credentials in the jackboot section of the US poltical spectrum. But in the same way that gorillas, chimps, and humans all probably look very different from their common ancestor, modern human races have evolved in all sorts of different ways and in all directions... sometimes with things popping up in parallel that you wouldn't expect (blond hair, for instance, it popped up independently in Europe and among Australian Aborigines).

Actually, the theory has been advanced that apart from a few basic things like skin color and such, most of the differences are probably sexually selected, in other words, there are lots of redheads in Ireland because some proto-Celtic men really liked redheads, etc, and the differences among various ethnicities a matter of 'genetic fashion', so to speak.

Honestly... just make it a bit longer and drag the end on Earth someplace a bit more defensible. The thing is 25,000 miles long, more or less, a comparatively little curve near the end probably won't throw things off, right? It would be like having a twenty foot rope with one end sunk in a rubber ball, even if you align the rope so it's coming out of the 'pole' of the ball, the other free end will circle around at the equator.

One last note about the firebombing of Japanese cities, etc: Curtis LeMay, who was responsible for the general bombing campaign against Japan, requested and got leaflets printed up which said the following:

The US aversion to causing random civilian casualties predates laser guided bombs.

Actually, Cobra, Palomar would have gotten his wish. If the Japanese didn't surrender after the third nuke, the campaign of strategic nuclear bombing was going to be called off, and the land invasion would go forth as scheduled. That did not mean that the nuclear bombs coming on-line wouldn't be used, though: they would be made available for tactical use against any large formations of Japanese troops.

The logic, in case Cobra decides to call that an indefensible approach, was that if three cities vanishing into a bright light and sudden noise with the threat of more was insufficient to crush the Japanese will to fight, nothing along those lines would, so you might as well save the bombs for a useful purpose.

It's interesting to see the debate here, as I got to run through the scenario twice in college, for a history of  Japan course and a history of WWII course.

First things first, I'll handle the non-Japan stuff. The German atomic program (Virus House) was more off track because of dissension in the ranks of the physicists and a general lack of serious pushing from Berlin than anything. Not until later in the war, when the Amerika Bomber project and the A-9 rocket start getting support suddenly, is there any sign that the German government is taking it seriously. However, they were still off course - the US was going to beat them to nuclear weapons, possibly just barely if there's no Normandy invasion, which means a small nuclear war in Europe. Fun.

Also, while the Germans almost-but-not-quite invented a lot of interesting stuff, this is true of the UK and Russia to a minor extent, and the US to an even greater extent than Germany! Lockheed noticed the British experiments with jets and offered to build a fighter based on it in 1940; they were turned down. In late 1944, the USAAF asked them for the plane, and the fighter in question entered production just after the war ended. Well before WWII, Howard Hughes built an incredibly fast light plane, which he intended to sell to the Navy. The Navy turned him down. The Japanese, who were quite impressed, borrowed heavily from the design in making the Zero. A guy named Christie developed an excellent tank in the 1920's; the US Army turned him down, but the Soviets were very interested and licensed the technology; his tank is the grandfather of the T-34. The US developed SAMs and air-to-air missiles to the prototype stage, then scrapped them because we had control of the air... then restarted them in 1945 because of the kamikaze threat. The skills gained in those two programs ended up assisting the Nike SAM and Sidewinder AAM programs. There are other examples, but those should suffice.

As for Japan...

well, the plans for the invasion of Japan are well known. The numbers involved were staggering: Spruance was going to be commanding a fleet of over 3000 vessels, including something like 70 fleet, light, and escort aircraft carriers. 450,000 US troops would be invading Kyushu. All the planes that had been burning Germany to the ground were to be moved over to the Pacfic and assist the planes already there in blasting the crap out of everything. They knew the Japanese would be throwing everything including the kitchen sink into throwing them off the beaches, so plans were drawn up to carpet bomb southern Kyushu with chemical weapons.

The Japanese, for their part, intended to use radioactive materials to contaminate the beach, and were likewise planning on throwing the rule book out with regards to prohibited weapons. There were only a few beaches where the US could invade, so they loaded up the two target areas with troops and had around 2,000 kamikaze planes in the area to go after Spruance's monster fleet. In short, it would have been the most horrifically massive, destructive, and lethal battle ever fought, and would have made Stalingrad look like Family Day at the county fair.

And that was act one; if Japan didn't surrender after that, the whole show would be replayed on Honshu near Tokyo.

As for nukes - there actually was a third bomb en route to Tinian in case Japan didn't surrender after the second shot. The target was Kokura, which actually was wupposed to be hit by the second bomb. Nagasaki got blasted because Kokura was completely obscured by clouds. Actually, Nagasaki was mostly obscured by clouds, too; the nuclear bomb missed its intended aim point by a few miles, unlike the Hiroshima bomb, which hit reasonably close to the Japanese army HQ it was aimed at.

BTW, part of the reason that the Japanese did not surrender immediately after Hiroshima, and why Nagasaki got nuked, probably unneccessarily, is because the US planned the spacing of the two attacks for maximum psychological effect, but neglected to consider what the USAAF's targeting would do to disrupt this careful plan. The USAAF, knowing it had a 'big bomb' but not really understanding the sheer devastation an atomic weapon would cause, targeted the Japanese army HQ for southwestern Japan as the most important thing to destroy. Reasonable enough. However, when they vaporized it, they also took out the phone lines to Hiroshima and also the people who Tokyo would normally recieve reports on attacks in progress from, and whom Tokyo would call in order to find out what was going on. Naturally, being fairly close to ground zero, no HQ personell reported the explosion to Tokyo, as they were all killed instantly. So no one in Tokyo even realized anything was wrong until NHK noticed their Hiroshima affiliate had mysteriously dropped off the air, and could not be reached by phone. This was brought to the attention of the Japanese government, who then radioed the HQ to report on what was going on. It was not until 4 hours after the attack and scattered reports of smoke from Hiroshima that they stuck an officer on a plane and flew him out to the city; he landed the plane several miles away and phoned back that the city was gone.

The Japanese still had no clue what the hell had happened until the US made a press release, 16 hours later, and Truman issued his second warning. They really didn't have the time to process the attack before Nagasaki.

I'm agreeing with Mace, sort of... 'shields' will likely be physical. Utility fog - a cloud of microbe-sized robots - is envisioned for many interesting uses, but it would be a great defensive tool too, turning into opaque and reflective layers to absorb, ablate, or deflect lasers; cushioning explosions; or absorbing heat.

Yes, Stormrage, I'm aware that the Saudis keep the foreigners away, and don't let them in Mecca. That's why I said "Pretend". Saudi Arabia is NOT open and free like a western country; I merely wanted you to imagine it were, and think about what the Saudi reaction would be to a nonassimilating horde of foreigners living there.

That would be because building a city on Mars only requires flying across a vastly huge distance, adapting culture and technology to a wholly alien setting, and building a sustainable local economy - the sort of stuff we've been doing since some hairy apes decided it would be a great idea to leave sunny Africa for the chance to duke it out with angry cave bears in the tundra with nothing more than pointy sticks.

The various starving nations in Africa require only one step: beating human stupidity. Sadly, that can't be done except by accident.

This really isn't a 'will faith X accept the existence of aliens' thread. Nor is this a thread for random promotion of atheism - pretend, for just this thread, that it doesn't exist. For purposes of discussion we will assume that intelligent life will develop religious traditions that provide the sort of background morality and narrative of existence which contemporary human religions do.

What I'm asking is, do you think that the big human faiths are sufficiently attractive and supply sufficient meaning to indivividual existence that they will gain lots of alien converts, or do you think that there would be more attractive alien religions and theological structures which would be adopted by humanity? Do you think religions are likely to be too strange and bizzare to those not of the originating species, or do you think there would be large areas of similarity ("As you would not have your neighbor devour your larvae, do not devour the larvae of your neighbor") regardless of underlying biology and instinct? That is, is religion primarily something done to adapt biology to match the mind, or the other way around?

It's the fastest growing religion - in Islamic countries, and in European countries with open immigration. Elsewhere, Islam is not growing nearly as fast as Christianity, and most would not consider adding millions of hungry mouths to what are mostly desert countries depending on a finite resource for their surivival to be a viable long-term strategy.

China has last-mover advantage; it's growing very fast because it modernized very late. It's basically copying what worked for the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc, and because it's copying the process of industrialization, it's basically able to hurry up in its process of catch-up. China also has massive problems of bad debt, severaly uneven growth, and a whole host of other growing pains which it will have to muddle through. It is very, very unlikely that China will surpass the US in the coming century. It probably will surpass Europe, but that's only because Europe is staring demographic meltdown in the face.

As for the US losing its grip on superpower status, please. The US in the world resembles nothing more than some champion boxer being harassed by a crowd of children and surly teenagers. He knows that he could basically stomp them flat, and might even fantasize about doing it, but knows that no matter how satisfying smashing the little twerps might be, it's not worth the hassle in today's media-soaked world. Teenagers in that sort of situation tend to mistake that sort of mixture of stoic indifference and self-restraint to weakness and egg the guy on until he snaps.

Actually, the jihadis are falling out and duking it out among themselves. Some groups have given up - anybody heard from Muqtada Al-Sadr lately? The difference between Baghdad now and Baghdad last year is amazing. Elections have come and gone, there aren't any major insurgent controlled areas like Sadr City and Fallujah. The Iraqi police and army are acting independently and reasonably well. Most of Bin Laden's recruits are dying in-place there.

The war in Iraq is a success so far by pretty much any objective standard: tyrant deposed, free government instated, insurgency downgraded from major threat to major nuisance.

Correct. As much as I feel for people in various severely screwed up places in the world, I can't quite shake the feeling that not much ever changes. You only get new flavors of Megalomaniac of the Month and more misery. In darker moments of depression, I sometimes feel that we should build a big wall, literally or figuratively, and let Darwin solve our problems, primarily because of the following unpleasant logic.

1) If you send money, medicine, or food, it gets stolen and sidetracked.
2) If you send money, medicine, or food, and aid workers to prevent it from getting sidetracked, they let the aid workers distribute it... then take it away later.
3) If you send some soldiers too, then you have a war on your hands, and you will always have a sizeable chunk of the population who reflexively fight 'the invaders', even though said invaders are hellbent on helping them despite themselves.
4) If you kill Dictator-of-the-Month, other countries will throw a shit fit and generally be pains in the ass and generally obstruct any further humanitarian crises.

Correct... however, it's probably cheaper than having a bomber shot down performing a similar mission, and preferable in most instances to simply whacking it with a thermonuclear bomb. Generally speaking, the Secret Mega Underground Base is inconveniently sited in/near a city or within the best AA the enemy can buy or both.