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| Superpower conflict scenarios; Since I didn't want to clutter up the original topic... | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 31 2010, 03:20 PM (1,810 Views) | |
| T.Neo | Oct 31 2010, 03:20 PM Post #1 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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WW2 was won by the allied powers, of which the US was a member. I am not denying the Russian victory on the eastern front, nor am I denying the participation of other nations during the war. And the war in all of Europe was not solely fought by Russia, as the US had a large role in the western front. And of course the US also played a part in the bombing of Germany, and also the use of nuclear weapons that ended the war. Suffice to say, that if the US did not participate in the war, the UK would have had a far harder time, and Russia would have finished off Germany... eventually. And I think a lot more of Europe would have been Russian puppet states or whathaveyou.
Notice my quote marks. I didn't mean "win" literally.
Indeed, but it's silly to think that the US would not participate at all. Basically, I agree with lamna. He was discussing an "everyone trying to invade America" situation, which I don't think is very realistic, but still...
The geography is different... still, I doubt it would be easy, or even possible, to invade a country that large. And there would be a resistance in the US due to the fact that there are educated people who enjoy their national way of life. In a nation such as China or India that could be different, but then you have to deal with essentially the entire male population being conscripted to fight against you... I think you will get resistance stuff popping up regardless. And they would be damn hard to fight, as has been shown by insurgents in the middle east.
That depends... launching nukes at a country with nukes (or heck, any country) is just as good as launching nukes at yourself. And I doubt that there would be no conventional war after a nuclear conflict. But it depends how much military infrastructure would be destroyed... You can't really match the destructive power of a nuclear weapon with conventional munitions. To get the same destructive power as a 1 kiloton bomb (which is a very measly yield), you would need a flight of 32 B-52s carrying their full combat loadout in pure TNT. No casings, no fins, no nothing. Just explosive. There are tactical nukes though, and they can be used against combatants rather than civillians. Not that conventional weapons are not used against civillians... One thing I think would be really scary is a nation launching a nuke, or nukes, at a smaller, nukeless nation. And nobody retaliating because they don't want to be nuked themselves. I suppose there could be a conventional retaliation, but still... Edited by T.Neo, Oct 31 2010, 03:21 PM.
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| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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| dialforthedevil | Oct 31 2010, 03:27 PM Post #2 |
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Frumentarii Administrator
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Hmm i find viral weaponry a much more scary idea |
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| Holben | Oct 31 2010, 03:30 PM Post #3 |
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Rumbo a la Victoria
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Far more costly than nukes though. There'll be a time when hand nukes can destroy countries, and i think that's quite worrying. |
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Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea. "It is the old wound my king. It has never healed." | |
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| Canis Lupis | Oct 31 2010, 03:55 PM Post #4 |
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.
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The Soviet Union actually stopped existing in 1991.
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| dialforthedevil | Oct 31 2010, 04:37 PM Post #5 |
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Frumentarii Administrator
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Well i seriously recommend you guys type Tsar Bomba into youtube its the biggest bomb ever made |
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Please come visit A Scientfic Fantasy http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/3433014/1/ ALSO!!! JOIN THE NEW RPG SITE!!! FOR ALL MEMBERS!!! IM GOING TO RUN MA GLOBAL SIMULATORS THERE!!! http://s4.zetaboards.com/jasonguppy/index/ Join the Campaign to save minotaurs from extinction!!! (include this in your signature to show your support!) | |
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| T.Neo | Oct 31 2010, 05:16 PM Post #6 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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Holben, you will never get a grenade-sized nuke that can destroy a country. Not even with an antimatter bomb. A bomb with 1 kg of antimatter would be slightly less powerful than the Tsar Bomba. It's all about energy density. Here is the Tsar Bomba's damage radii, superimposed on Paris. That is not a small bomb, and it could certainly destroy a city. But the containment and power supply (you need to suspend the antimatter electromagnetically) for an antimatter bomb would be a good deal more than 1 kg. Futuristically, maybe something that you can fit in a backpack, but... I certainly would not want to carry that around. |
| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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| lamna | Oct 31 2010, 05:24 PM Post #7 |
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He never said what sort of country it could destroy. I'm sure you could get Monaco or Singapore in one go. |
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| T.Neo | Oct 31 2010, 05:56 PM Post #8 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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10 grams of antimatter might be able to destroy Monaco, and 700 grams (0.7) kilograms might be able to destroy Singapore. Of course, I'm assuming the energy release will act like that of a nuclear weapon... there's a chance it won't (due to, well, the wholly different nature of the device). 10 grams is something that you might be able to carry in your hand (the containment vessel would be a totally different matter though). 0.7 grams is going into the backpack territory... Still, if you say you can destroy an entire country with a munition, people will be rather amused when they read the fine print that says "only a country small as Monaco or Singapore". Also, can't we do something better with Antimatter? The stuff's damn expensive and it requires a lot of infrastructure to make a teensy bit of it. And I mean, a really small amount- with current antimatter production capability, it'd take you an absurd amount of money and something like billions or even trillions of years of time to make an amount as gigantic as 10 grams. That can be greatly improved upon, but it wouldn't be easy. Now hafnium isomer weapons... that's another story. High energy density of that stuff means you can pack the punch of a 2000 kilogram bomb in a 20mm cannon shell... The problem is, the energy leaks out over a period of something like 60 years. And nobody knows how to liberate it in an instant, or if that's even possible. If it was, well... Edited by T.Neo, Oct 31 2010, 05:58 PM.
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| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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| lamna | Oct 31 2010, 06:47 PM Post #9 |
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Bah you're all thinking like barbarians who have just learnt dried piss and charcoal go boom. Kinetic weapons are the way to go. Your warhead is so inert it makes C4 look positively volatile, but fire it and it's the doom of civilizations. Whether it's intercontinental artillery or Rods from God it's good for anything other than dishonourable things like terrorism. |
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Living Fossils Fósseis Vibos: Reserva Natural 34 MYH, 4 tonne dinosaur. [flash=500,450] Video Magic! [/flash] | |
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| T.Neo | Oct 31 2010, 07:13 PM Post #10 |
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Translunar injection: TLI
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Yeah, kinetic weapons can be really formidable... but you can't use them for everything. They don't have that flexibility. Rods from God is an awesome idea, but like any space-based weapons platform, it is easily visable and easy to destroy. But it could be useful against an adversary that lacks an ASAT capability (which is the majority of nations, though more and more people are developing launch vehicles- even countries like NK and Iran) that has bunkers or other suitable targets, that Rods from God would be able to affect easily. Intercontinental artillery is... interesting. But it would be very difficult to achieve, I mean, for one you have to have a gun system that can launch a projectile... some sort of coil or rail gun, then you need a projectile to fire out of it that won't melt in the atmosphere or break up upon firing, and you need a power supply to power the gun. And that has to be a pretty big power supply... And even if you settle on... I dunno, launching the projectiles on ballistic missiles or something, you're still at a real disadvantage. I mean, a W87 had an original yield (it's now being upgraded) of 300 kilotons, and is believed to mass 200-270 kilograms. But 270 kilograms going at 6km/s (a realistic velocity for some sort of intercontinental hypervelocity artillery) will only have the kinetic energy of about a ton of TNT. So... if you're trying to bunker bust, use conventional munitions, delivered either via cruise missile or aircraft. If you want to use mass destruction, use nukes. Hypervelocity weapons have their place, but it is certainly not as a be-all and end-all, and they have development problems as well... And there are places where hypervelocity stuff is impractical enough to be silly. I mean, you can't mount it on aircraft. And a hypervelocity small arm would probably have enough recoil to turn the firer into a projectile... I mean, sure you can't use Rods from God for terrorism, but there's a whole lot of other things you can't use for terrorism, like warships or fighter planes. But they can't do everything. Edited by T.Neo, Oct 31 2010, 07:14 PM.
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| A hard mathematical figure provides a sort of enlightenment to one's understanding of an idea that is never matched by mere guesswork. | |
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| Ànraich | Oct 31 2010, 09:31 PM Post #11 |
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L'évolution Spéculative est moi
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The USA and Britain could have never gotten involved in WWII and Germany still would have lost. Hitler was an incompetent oaf who deserved to continue living as a vagabond artist and could have never lead his people to any kind of significant military conquest. Not only that but no matter how events unfolded, Stalin was always going to eventually overwhelm Hitler. The USSR had won WWII before it had even begun. Hitler should have realized he made a huge mistake when Stalin drafted 36 million people into the Red Army the day after they invaded and refused to surrender even after his entire air force was decimated. No matter who loses, Stalin wins. |
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We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar. "The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming Tree That Owns Itself
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| Ànraich | Oct 31 2010, 09:35 PM Post #12 |
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L'évolution Spéculative est moi
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Isoroku Yamamoto is reputed (though not proven) to have said, "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." And he's right, there would be. Every. Blade. Of. Grass. |
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We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar. "The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming Tree That Owns Itself
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| Kamidio | Oct 31 2010, 09:59 PM Post #13 |
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The Game Master of the SSU:NC
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And C4 behind every bush. |
SSU:NC - Finding a new home. Quotes WAA
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| Ànraich | Oct 31 2010, 10:37 PM Post #14 |
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L'évolution Spéculative est moi
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But not behind the trees. We're green, we have to save them. |
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We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar. "The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming Tree That Owns Itself
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| seascorpion | Nov 1 2010, 02:42 AM Post #15 |
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Why Can't I Hold All These Mongols?
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@Parasky, No. without Britain and the USA supplying the Soviets, without the threat of Britain and the defenses that had to be stationed, without British troops preventing Hitler from gaining control of the Suez canal (whic would have given Hitler an immense amount of a strategic advantage). And Parasky, you obviously dont know how close Germany came to winning the Eastern Front, if Operation Barborrosa had actually been launched at the proper date (the beginning of summer,instead of halfway through) German troops would probably have control of the capital, Stalin would be dead and the Nazis would have a firm footing and position to wait out the russian winter and then continue the advance.No without the USA or Britain you can bet your ass the Third Reich would most likely still be with us. As for a rifle being behind every blade of grass, your probably right. What i mean't about the stalemate of WW3 wasn't that it would be impossible, it would just be incredibly difficult, Russia is so large that occupation of it would be an immense logistical problem, The USA is full of patriotic citizens who would do everything possible to sabotage an occupation, China and India have such large populations that it would be incredibly hard to monitor and uncover a resistance movement which could be numbering in the millions. All of them have heavily patriotic citizens (though the USA more than others) |
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