The centre of the sun is less dense than you might think, owing to thermal and radiation pressure.
The energy from the aforementioned fusion counteracts the pressure from the outer layers pushing in. This state is one of equilibrium; reduce the rate of reaction and the core contracts, speeding fusion, increase the rate of reaction and the core expands, slowing the fusion back down again. The estimated density of the sun is much, much lower than the density would be for a non-fusing body of the same mass. If anything, this discrepancy will be more noticeable in the core, where the temperature is highest.
If no fusion reactions were occurring, which is what will happen when the fuel runs out, the core would contract until it became electron-degenerate matter, the material of a white dwarf star. With a more massive star, the contraction would continue past that point until neutron degeneracy took over (leading to a neutron star), or it passed the Swartzchild radius (leading to a black hole).
Look to Thief 2. 3 was something of a letdown; 1 was still a new idea (and therefor somewhat unrefined). 2 was easily the zenith of the series to date.
What was missing from 3? Large open levels, multiple solutions to each problem, and the varied mission objectives. Thief 3 at least got the sneak, stab and sap aspect of the game right, to its credit, and they included the requisite gadgets and arrows. As long as these things remain for 4, the game will be, at a minimum, adequate; done right it can be something more.
One of the things all three games got right was story. Atmosphere, character, plot and background are the series strong points, so they need a decent writer on staff (one familiar with the previous games). For the best of the series atmosphere, look to the Shaleridge Cradle section in Thief 3.
Final detail. Garret, whatever else he is, is one of the game's selling points. There is something to be said for a cynical misanthropic kleptomaniac with a bludgeoning tool and bills to pay. Keep those aspects of his character, and you'll go far; the last thing anyone wants to see is the writers trying to turn him into anything "better" than he is.
Against military rounds? Yeah, it will leave a hole. Pistol calibre rounds are another story, but he was talking about soldiers.
Also, even with body armour, being shot with a gun is nothing like being tagged with a marker. Gunshots that kevlar can stop still impact with enough force to fracture ribs and leave extensive bruising. The worst welt I ever got from a marker was from being bunkered at point blank range with a marker set too high - it left a bruise on my arm the width of a shot glass. Nothing major, and I recovered by the next match.
He did say "went along with" the Nazis, which is a bit different.
Switzerland still doesn't want to admit they did business banking for the Nazis, so I can see where he got them from. The Catholics turned a blind eye to the holocaust, so they make sense. I'm not sure where he got the Netherlands though.
Oh, I should clarify. I'm under no illusions as to the usefulness of paintball skills in a gunfight. If you reread my post, you'll see that was kinda the point. Someone can't just train on a marker, get a real gun, and go on a shooting spree. Or, they can, but they won't do any better than if they just skipped step one.
No, my reason for mentioning that I've fought people with real training and won on a paintball field is more to show how little that training relates to the sport. The best player I know has no training of any kind, though he does have hyperfocusing from ADD and a fondness for shooting.
Perhaps I should have said "yards" to make it consistent:-)
You can hit a man-sized stationary target with a rifle at a distance of tens to hundreds of yards easily. Doesn't even take much training, beyond how to fire it.
You can hit a man-sized stationary target with a paintball marker at a distance of tens to hundreds of feet with a little luck. More if it's a good marker.
It's the kinda thing that defeats the argument that one is much like the other.
It can serve as a form of combat training, especially for close-quarters combat. I used to play with some soldiers on an Army base who would train with paintguns for just that reason. They said that the military laser systems were rampant with cheaters and they also wanted the soldiers to feel the sting of being shot. (This was 10 years ago, maybe they have improved the laser systems since then.)
I'm sorry, feel the sting of being shot? Paintballs leave welts. Gunshots leave holes. That doesn't just "sting".
Unless you meant that as more along the lines of denying cheaters the opportunity to claim they weren't hit, which happens much too often in airsoft matches. With paint or lasers though, it isn't about the sting of being hit, so much as it is about there being physical evidence of a hit.
Paintball really honed my snap shooting skills and I have found that directly translates to shooting real firearms. I find that shooting trap or skeet with my shotgun is almost exactly like shooting a paintgun at a moving target. I also think that it improves defensive pistol shooting where you aren't carefully aiming at a target, but just trying to draw and hit it quickly.
Snap shooting, maybe. Marksmanship, no. And I can get you three guys who know more of shooting than I who I've paintballed with to back me up on this.
Over short distances the difference is lead and dip is going to matter less. You'll be off be a few inches. Medium range, it's more like a few feet. With a shotgun, that might matter a bit less, though (given enough spread).
And anyone used to shooting a paintball marker is going to be in for a rude shock when a shotgun kicks them hard enough to dislocate their shoulder. Recoil control is a really big deal with guns.
I get where you're coming from, but from the sound of it, most of your marksmanship skills come from actual firearms. Somebody who trains on a marker isn't going to have that.
I know Germany keeps the velocity low (210??), but it's 280-285 in the US at insured fields, and a lot of people who play on their own fields turn it up to 300 fps.
We're still talking a full order of magnitude lower than a rifle though, and less than a third the muzzle velocity of a pistol.
That said, I totally agree that in paintball, cooperation is key. The angry or solo players are usually taken out early... unless they are really good.
Which, conveniently, makes the whole "oh, it'll train psychos" argument even more lame. I'd kinda think that paintball would give the loners a chance to make friends with like-minded people. Teamwork can be good for that sometimes.
If every group of soldiers suffered just one serious casualty for every group of jews or whatever group they were assigned to bring in, morale would plummet to the point of mutiny pretty quickly.
Or, they'd get pissed off enough to fight harder. These are soldiers were talking about here, and in wartime to boot.
How bad did it have to get up at the front lines before morale broke? I'd say it was a hell of a lot worse than one casualty for each engagement.
I'll deny it. The best way to save lives would have been for good men to not let it even take root and begin.
True, but who could have done what earlier?
The German people could have rejected Hitler. They didn't.
The Allies could have intervened earlier. Too early and it'd probably have made things worse, but the US could have gone in in '39. They didn't.
Who exactly do you think should have acted to prevent the evil from taking root, and when?
By the time period we're talking about, resisting the SS by helping their targets escape really is just about the best thing the people could have done.
I wasn't talking about "fighting" in the metaphorical sense in the post you quoted originally.
I was talking about literal, blood and guts, fighting. "Going down fighting" in this context means battling to the bitter end.
And in that sense, no, Gandhi didn't fight. Nor did his followers. That's how they won, by taking the moral high ground and sticking to their principles.
Since the original discussion was Nazi Germany however, you bringing up Gandhi is pretty pointless. His methods would have earned him a quick death there.
Come on, look at Kristalnacht. Or the murder of countless Jews openly, either by mob or by SS. They started building the camps because it was taking too long, not to hide what they were up to.
What you're talking about isn't ignorance, it's denial. Big difference.
Now, in the occupied nations, I'll grant your point. But those are also the places where the population resisted the SS, typically by hiding the Jews, helping them flee, or just being silent when the SS came knocking. In places where antisemitism was already rampant, the SS had all the local support they needed.
I don't really understand what you mean by "war by proxy", or more relevantly, what that has to do with the discussion. It doesn't really matter how these civilians--and in the examples you conveniently provide, the combatants were by and large civilians--obtained their guns. The point is that they had them, and when it came time to use them, they did. And it may not have been armed populaces alone that managed to defeat their oppressors in these cases, but so what? They certainly played a critical role in these victories, in that if the general populace had been completely disarmed there would hardly have been any opposition at all.
Short version: In Afghanistan, when they were fighting the Soviets, the US supplied them with missiles, guns, training and logistical support, as part of the cold war efforts. The rest of the Mujahadeen's weapons came from the Soviets themselves, in the form of captured weapons.
Afghanistan would not have had a prayer of fending off the Soviet army on their own. Nor would Vietnam have had a hope against the US by themselves. Which is exactly my point. What I'm asking you for is an example where this didn't happen. What we're arguing here, lest we lose sight of it, is whether an armed population can fend off an oppressor. If the oppressor's enemies weigh in, even if they do so for the wrong reasons, is it really an uprising anymore? Or is it just another proxy war?
Sorry, but the numbers just don't agree with you. In the Warsaw Ghetto, it took 2000 German soldiers equipped with rifles and tanks nearly a month to suppress a few hundred Jewish rebels. If it had been a few million rebels instead of a few hundred, it would have taken far more manpower than the German army was able to commit to quash that resistance, even assuming the Warsaw uprising was particularly successful.
Well, first off, those rebels were up against a wall. People always fight hardest when they have nothing to lose.
Second, they were fighting on their home ground. Also a benefit. The Ghetto was theirs by that point, had been for some time.
Since neither of those situations was repeated elsewhere in German occupied Europe, I don't see it as a valid point of comparison. Let's say there were a million armed men fighting to avoid the camps. Spread out over many nations, threatened by the people who would turn them in - they'd be dead. Not all at once, but part of what the SS did well was dividing and isolating their victims.
Granted, they'd take some SS with them, which would be worthwhile. But fleeing the Nazis was always their best bet.
Consider that at least 11 million people were ultimately executed by the Nazis. Do you seriously believe that had these 11 million people been armed and prepared to fight, the death toll would not have been less?
We're arguing here what might have been, which is always a tricky business. But essentially, yes. I do not think their armament or lack thereof would seriously affect the outcome.
It takes more than just a gun to make a soldier. Many of those 11 million were women, children, elderly. Hell, quite a few were disabled; the Germans killed anyone "less than whole". And they weren't all Jews; 5 million belonged to many different groups, all seen by the Nazis as "subhuman", but otherwise having nothing in common. It's hard to arm and coordinate such a disparate group.
Had they been armed, but uncoordinated, I'll tell you what I think would have happened. Most wouldn't fight. The ones who would fight, would do so poorly, and die for it. Some people who did survive the holocaust by fleeing occupied territory would have stayed instead, and died in the process. The SS would isolate them, would pay people to rat them out, and finally would kill them.
Going down fighting has never done anyone the slightest bit of good; you have to have a chance of winning to make the fight worth your life.
Tell that to Ghandi.
Ok, I was laughing really hard there for a second. But I'm done now.
Gandhi? Are you out of your mind.
Gandhi didn't fight. That was the whole point of what he did - non-violent resistance. The notion of Gandhi "going down fighting" is hilariously ignorant of history. He'd have gone down peacefully, and he'd have won by doing so. He did, really, in the end, though not til after he'd won.
His methods worked in no small part because he was up against an opponent who fancied themselves as "civilized". The Brits couldn't kill him, or cart him off to a concentration camp. Fighting him, when he wouldn't fight back, only strengthened his movement in the eyes of the public.
I concede that. But I'll also point out that the "good men" who were making a difference were generally doing so by methods like hiding the Jews, or getting them across borders. We generally don't think of those methods as resistance, since they didn't bring the war any closer to the end, but it's undeniably the best way to save lives in their position.
Not sure what you're not getting here, but I'll take a stab at it.
Here are my points, separated for your convenience.
1) If you are the target of a genocide, flee. You can't win by fighting. Genocide doesn't happen just anywhere, you need a the support the majority to pull it off. If the people being killed do not have the support of their countrymen, they haven't a prayer of victory through arms.
2) If you are resisting an occupying force, fight, but indirectly. Standing your ground hasn't worked in a long time. You will lose a "fair" fight, so fight dirty instead.
Being armed, which seems to be your thing, helps in neither case. In the former case, you can't win by fighting, and in the latter case, your best bet isn't arming in advance, for a long list of reasons I've already gone over.
Per the first point I keep seeing people state that the Jews could have fought the SS and escaped. They couldn't. Or more accurately, any situation in which they could escape, they could better do so without fighting. Remember that the methods they had which worked best depending on keeping a low profile and either hiding or crossing a border. I'm basing this on what the survivors did, since the people who didn't survive obviously weren't as lucky.
Per the second point, my statement is based on my knowledge of history. The resistance movements that eventually found themselves free of occupation largely did so by fighting dirty and receiving help from outside (and helping the allies in turn, through espionage).
You're more likely to be successful with a gun than without one. If not, why would anyone want to have a gun in a fight?
Having a gun in a fight works if the fight is nearly fair. Two men with pistols each have a decent chance of winning a gunfight. We aren't talking about that here. We're talking about a civilian against soldiers, plural. Guns don't help there. Other weapons do.
Yes, I did. And yes, I do. If you were given the choice between fighting a corrupt power in a battle you believed to be hopeless and collaborating, you have made it very clear what you would choose. And how you would justify it to yourself.
Didn't I say I would fight? Several times. Again, you need to work on reading comprehension.
I wouldn't fight a battle I believed hopeless unless all other methods of fighting it were exhausted. Given a choice, however, I'd fight it on my own terms instead of letting a tyrannical government choose where and how it would be fought. By "fight on my own terms" I'm talking about guerrilla warfare, sabotage, assassination, that sort of thing. Methods that have been shown to work historically against a larger force.
Note that the people at Warsaw had no choice. In their position, I'd do what they did. But I'd also have been trying, up until that point, to get into a better position to fight.
Is it so great between a government and an armed populace that outnumbers the army by several orders of magnitude?
Yes. And has been for a century, at least.
If you wish to dispute this, I invite you to show me an example of an armed population taking down a conquering or oppressive army (domestic or invading) through force of arms. Do so with a nation who has access to a modern military.
Wait - you were going to say Vietnam vs. the US or Afghanistan vs. the USSR, right?
Here's why I disagree with those. Examples like that involve an "armed population" that is being supplied by a modern military power to fuel a war by proxy. I guarantee you they would not have succeeded without outside aid.
You're making the mistake of assuming the people "hoarding guns" and the people securing victories against tyranny through other means weren't one and the same. Look at the American Revolution, for example.
I was wondering when the revolution would enter this discussion. I'll grant you that your argument held weight in 1775. Does it hold weight today? I do not believe so.
Plus, don't overlook French involving in the revolution. This was their war by proxy. Without the French Navy, the colonists might not have won. So it wasn't just an armed populous.
At any rate, the people who evaluated whether to fight or surrender on the basis of whether they were certain they'd win the battle won very few battles.
Hmmm, I'll concede the point. Though I think I used the phrase "hope of success" instead of "certainty of success".
Would the people evaluating a fight do so if they had a hope of winning? Yes. Even if it wasn't certain. When they have no hope, the best choice is either to fight through other methods, or flee. Surrender isn't a good choice for individuals up against governments.
You can send me email at guidodelconfuso@gmail.com if you're genuinely interested in continuing this discussion offline. I assure you that I am. If you're in New York by any chance, I'll meet you this weekend.
Wow, I didn't expect that. I can be reached at my slashdot user name plus the word "backupaccount" at gmail.com. I'm nowhere near New York though.
No he's right, the 11 million+ figure is correct for the holocaust. People keep forgetting that while there were 6 million Jews killed, there were also at least 5 million other minorities killed as well. Possibly more, depending on whether you go by bodies and records, or people missing after the war ended.
Most of the people who did escape did so through other means. Having a gun is a liability if you're trying to sneak over a border; it identifies you to the forces trying to keep you from escaping.
The best thing to arm yourself with if you were a Jew trying to survive the holocaust would have been fake identification.
Yes, they should try to fight when they're out of options. But ideally, if you're the target of a genocidal purge, your best bet isn't to fight in the first place. It's to flee.
The lucky ones were the ones who got out of the way. The poor souls who didn't, or more often couldn't, had their options taken away until the only choice left was to fight and die.
The lesson to be taken from this is not that they should have armed themselves. The same outcome would have happened if they did.
If anything, the lesson we failed to learn in WWII is that when a tyrannical power is engaged in genocide, the other powers in the world need to intervene early and quickly. Waiting for them to finish is not a morally viable choice. The quote about how all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing comes to mind.
Your definition of "accomplishment" is bizarre and self-serving. If the only thing that makes anything worthwhile to you is immediate success in the endeavor, then we have no common ground on this matter.
Not immediate success, no. To give a counterpoint, the resistance movements against Nazi Germany in countries like France obviously accomplished something, just not immediately.
Put another way, it is worthwhile to stand up and fight a tyrannical government. Doing so may result in it's destruction or removal.
It only remains worthwhile if the tactics you use to stand up against them have a hope of success. If you take up arms against an occupying power, know that you must do so in a manner that will lead to victory, even if it doesn't do so immediately. Fighting to the bitter end is poetic, but doesn't effect change.
I stand behind everything I've said.
You likened my response to the collaborators in WWII. If you "stand by that", then you are scum. Nothing more.
Oh, and you fail at reading comprehension, since I'm pretty sure I was arguing that fighting a tyrant directly is stupid, not that fighting them at all is. Try and get through the whole post before commenting.
The only thing you seem to be concerned with is short term well being.
I am concerned with more than my own well being, as I believe my posts show. In this particular case, I'd be concerned for the well being of anyone who fought an oppressive government. I'd want to see them survive, and succeed.
The tactics best used for fighting tyranny do not involved hoarding guns in your basement. That might have worked a century ago, but not today. The disparity of firepower between a civilian, however well armed, and a soldier, is too great.
Look at every uprising that actually drove an occupying force away, or at least weakened them to the point where an external opponent could defeat them. The people, like yourself, who sat upon hoards of guns and fought in their homes, died early and did little. The people who would stick to guerrilla warfare, who'd bomb and sabotage the enemy, and who'd feed intelligence to external allies concerning the disposition of the tyrants armies, those are the resistance fighters who made a difference.
I find this attitude contemptible. If you would like to meet I will tell you the same thing in person.
I'll take you up on that. Or I would if I thought for a moment that some anonymous person on the net actually meant it.
Find where I said fighting an occupying force doesn't work. Oops, I didn't say that. Guess reading comprehension isn't working today.
I said their best chance at survival lay in retreat. Which is 100% factually accurate. I also said having guns would not have saved them. Also true.
And that small arms do not aid overly in insurgency. Not two posts up from yours I remarked that the best insurgent tactics involve sabotage, explosives and indirect warfare.
Want to fight a tyrannical government? Build bombs. Hoarding guns gets you nowhere.
Want to avoid being killed in a genocide? Flee.
You'll note that neither option is exactly courageous. But they work. The European Jews who survived WWII largely did so by getting away from the Nazis, while the myriad resistance movements had the best success the further they strayed from direct warfare.
If the rebels in the Warsaw Ghetto accomplished nothing simply because they lost, then neither did the Third Reich.
Yes. They didn't accomplish their goal of conquest.
What did the Third Reich accomplish? It killed a great many people. It changed the geopolitical landscape of the day, though not for the better. It caused untold misery and suffering.
These are accomplishments? Crimes, maybe. Accomplishments... not so much.
Losing a fight is not an accomplishment. Fighting to the bitter end isn't either. Had the Warsaw Uprising resulted in the victims escaping death, or halted the advance of the German army, then I might call it an accomplishment.
They had no choice in the matter, and I'd have done the same in their position. Doesn't change that they lost. And would have just as surely lost no matter how well armed they were; from a tactical standpoint, once the enemy has you surrounded and cut off from retreat or reinforcements, you are most likely screwed.
Maybe to you the possibility of fighting back seems hopeless, and compliance--or even collaboration--is the only answer.
-1 flamebait right there buddy. Oh, and there ought to be some Godwin variant that applies here; surely such a tasteless remark deserves it. Frankly, you ought to be ashamed for even making such a remark. I doubt you'd have the courage to say as much to anyone to their face.
I never said resistance accomplishes nothing. I'm saying having guns ready for when the government comes for you accomplishes nothing, except your own demise in a shootout.
Resistance is best accomplished through other means. If you must resist violently, explosives are a better choice than firearms, sabotage a better choice than a direct fight. Look at every successful uprising, and tell me I'm wrong.
Cultural glorification of violence is not a motive. Greed, hate, revenge, or any number of other causes, are another matter.
Why do some countries have a higher murder rate? You could point to a higher disparity of wealth, a higher incarceration rate, or an absence of adequate law enforcement. Any one of which would serve as a better explanation than "cultural glorification of violence", not least of which because you can draw a connection between the act of violence and the circumstances I just listed that might motivate it.
That's not to say culture isn't a factor, but it is to say that as factors go, it's way down the list. The simplest explanation that accounts for all the evidence is usually the right one.
I'd say that even in a utopia wherein such injustices are uncommon, you'd still have violence, simply because of human nature. The varying rates of violence we see in the world today are an intersection of that violent nature with very real, practical motives to use it - in some places, people have more reasons (or excuses) to resort to violence than in others.
Who, you'll note, aren't using guns most of the time. Roadside bombs are their main weapon.
Besides, I'm not sure the comparison stands. They're up against the US, a country that's notoriously unwilling to accept casualties, and that's bound by rules of engagement. When they break those rules, the troops that do so find their atrocities plastered all over the newspapers.
The people targeted by Nazi Germany were up against a fighting force that had no moral limits on what they could do. Inflicting a few casualties with booby traps would not serve as a deterrent, not when the German military was suffering thousands of casualties on the front lines.
The places where insurgency tactics worked in WWII were locations where the locals could weaken the military forces from the rear, while friendly troops attacked from the front. Iraq is different; the insurgency tactics are intended to make an occupation to expensive and politically nonviable to maintain.
I know of it. I thought of it when I posted. My point stands.
What you're overlooking is that the uprising was a total loss. The Jews were still killed, if not during the fighting, then afterwards. As a last stand on principle, it was a good thing, but from a practical perspective, it accomplished nothing.
Would it have been so easy for the Nazis to round up their victims if they faced such a battle every time they had tried?
Every time they tried? Wouldn't have happened.
The Warsaw Ghetto was packed. The people there had nothing to lose. Hell, they barely had any guns, and still made a fight of it. Sheer numbers were their weapon.
Most of the victims of the holocaust didn't have the numbers to make that stick. A few Jews in their homes with pistols would not have staved off the SS when they arrived. Especially not when their supposed "countrymen" were supporting the SS most of the time.
Yes, if everyone who the SS tried to round up had been armed and fought they'd have had a harder time of it. Most likely, the SS would have simply responded with escalating force of their own. A few civilians might stave off a death squad consisting of green troops with SMGs, but they'd be hopelessly outmatched by even one armoured vehicle.
Slashdot Mirror
The centre of the sun is less dense than you might think, owing to thermal and radiation pressure.
The energy from the aforementioned fusion counteracts the pressure from the outer layers pushing in. This state is one of equilibrium; reduce the rate of reaction and the core contracts, speeding fusion, increase the rate of reaction and the core expands, slowing the fusion back down again. The estimated density of the sun is much, much lower than the density would be for a non-fusing body of the same mass. If anything, this discrepancy will be more noticeable in the core, where the temperature is highest.
If no fusion reactions were occurring, which is what will happen when the fuel runs out, the core would contract until it became electron-degenerate matter, the material of a white dwarf star. With a more massive star, the contraction would continue past that point until neutron degeneracy took over (leading to a neutron star), or it passed the Swartzchild radius (leading to a black hole).
Look to Thief 2. 3 was something of a letdown; 1 was still a new idea (and therefor somewhat unrefined). 2 was easily the zenith of the series to date.
What was missing from 3? Large open levels, multiple solutions to each problem, and the varied mission objectives. Thief 3 at least got the sneak, stab and sap aspect of the game right, to its credit, and they included the requisite gadgets and arrows. As long as these things remain for 4, the game will be, at a minimum, adequate; done right it can be something more.
One of the things all three games got right was story. Atmosphere, character, plot and background are the series strong points, so they need a decent writer on staff (one familiar with the previous games). For the best of the series atmosphere, look to the Shaleridge Cradle section in Thief 3.
Final detail. Garret, whatever else he is, is one of the game's selling points. There is something to be said for a cynical misanthropic kleptomaniac with a bludgeoning tool and bills to pay. Keep those aspects of his character, and you'll go far; the last thing anyone wants to see is the writers trying to turn him into anything "better" than he is.
Against military rounds? Yeah, it will leave a hole. Pistol calibre rounds are another story, but he was talking about soldiers.
Also, even with body armour, being shot with a gun is nothing like being tagged with a marker. Gunshots that kevlar can stop still impact with enough force to fracture ribs and leave extensive bruising. The worst welt I ever got from a marker was from being bunkered at point blank range with a marker set too high - it left a bruise on my arm the width of a shot glass. Nothing major, and I recovered by the next match.
So, I am not a retard. You, on the other hand...
He did say "went along with" the Nazis, which is a bit different.
Switzerland still doesn't want to admit they did business banking for the Nazis, so I can see where he got them from. The Catholics turned a blind eye to the holocaust, so they make sense. I'm not sure where he got the Netherlands though.
Oh, I should clarify. I'm under no illusions as to the usefulness of paintball skills in a gunfight. If you reread my post, you'll see that was kinda the point. Someone can't just train on a marker, get a real gun, and go on a shooting spree. Or, they can, but they won't do any better than if they just skipped step one.
No, my reason for mentioning that I've fought people with real training and won on a paintball field is more to show how little that training relates to the sport. The best player I know has no training of any kind, though he does have hyperfocusing from ADD and a fondness for shooting.
Perhaps I should have said "yards" to make it consistent :-)
You can hit a man-sized stationary target with a rifle at a distance of tens to hundreds of yards easily. Doesn't even take much training, beyond how to fire it.
You can hit a man-sized stationary target with a paintball marker at a distance of tens to hundreds of feet with a little luck. More if it's a good marker.
It's the kinda thing that defeats the argument that one is much like the other.
It can serve as a form of combat training, especially for close-quarters combat. I used to play with some soldiers on an Army base who would train with paintguns for just that reason. They said that the military laser systems were rampant with cheaters and they also wanted the soldiers to feel the sting of being shot. (This was 10 years ago, maybe they have improved the laser systems since then.)
I'm sorry, feel the sting of being shot? Paintballs leave welts. Gunshots leave holes. That doesn't just "sting".
Unless you meant that as more along the lines of denying cheaters the opportunity to claim they weren't hit, which happens much too often in airsoft matches. With paint or lasers though, it isn't about the sting of being hit, so much as it is about there being physical evidence of a hit.
Paintball really honed my snap shooting skills and I have found that directly translates to shooting real firearms. I find that shooting trap or skeet with my shotgun is almost exactly like shooting a paintgun at a moving target. I also think that it improves defensive pistol shooting where you aren't carefully aiming at a target, but just trying to draw and hit it quickly.
Snap shooting, maybe. Marksmanship, no. And I can get you three guys who know more of shooting than I who I've paintballed with to back me up on this.
Over short distances the difference is lead and dip is going to matter less. You'll be off be a few inches. Medium range, it's more like a few feet. With a shotgun, that might matter a bit less, though (given enough spread).
And anyone used to shooting a paintball marker is going to be in for a rude shock when a shotgun kicks them hard enough to dislocate their shoulder. Recoil control is a really big deal with guns.
I get where you're coming from, but from the sound of it, most of your marksmanship skills come from actual firearms. Somebody who trains on a marker isn't going to have that.
I know Germany keeps the velocity low (210??), but it's 280-285 in the US at insured fields, and a lot of people who play on their own fields turn it up to 300 fps.
We're still talking a full order of magnitude lower than a rifle though, and less than a third the muzzle velocity of a pistol.
That said, I totally agree that in paintball, cooperation is key. The angry or solo players are usually taken out early... unless they are really good.
Which, conveniently, makes the whole "oh, it'll train psychos" argument even more lame. I'd kinda think that paintball would give the loners a chance to make friends with like-minded people. Teamwork can be good for that sometimes.
If every group of soldiers suffered just one serious casualty for every group of jews or whatever group they were assigned to bring in, morale would plummet to the point of mutiny pretty quickly.
Or, they'd get pissed off enough to fight harder. These are soldiers were talking about here, and in wartime to boot.
How bad did it have to get up at the front lines before morale broke? I'd say it was a hell of a lot worse than one casualty for each engagement.
I'll deny it. The best way to save lives would have been for good men to not let it even take root and begin.
True, but who could have done what earlier?
The German people could have rejected Hitler. They didn't.
The Allies could have intervened earlier. Too early and it'd probably have made things worse, but the US could have gone in in '39. They didn't.
Who exactly do you think should have acted to prevent the evil from taking root, and when?
By the time period we're talking about, resisting the SS by helping their targets escape really is just about the best thing the people could have done.
I wasn't talking about "fighting" in the metaphorical sense in the post you quoted originally.
I was talking about literal, blood and guts, fighting. "Going down fighting" in this context means battling to the bitter end.
And in that sense, no, Gandhi didn't fight. Nor did his followers. That's how they won, by taking the moral high ground and sticking to their principles.
Since the original discussion was Nazi Germany however, you bringing up Gandhi is pretty pointless. His methods would have earned him a quick death there.
Come on, look at Kristalnacht. Or the murder of countless Jews openly, either by mob or by SS. They started building the camps because it was taking too long, not to hide what they were up to.
What you're talking about isn't ignorance, it's denial. Big difference.
Now, in the occupied nations, I'll grant your point. But those are also the places where the population resisted the SS, typically by hiding the Jews, helping them flee, or just being silent when the SS came knocking. In places where antisemitism was already rampant, the SS had all the local support they needed.
I don't really understand what you mean by "war by proxy", or more relevantly, what that has to do with the discussion. It doesn't really matter how these civilians--and in the examples you conveniently provide, the combatants were by and large civilians--obtained their guns. The point is that they had them, and when it came time to use them, they did. And it may not have been armed populaces alone that managed to defeat their oppressors in these cases, but so what? They certainly played a critical role in these victories, in that if the general populace had been completely disarmed there would hardly have been any opposition at all.
Wikipedia is your friend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_war
Short version:
In Afghanistan, when they were fighting the Soviets, the US supplied them with missiles, guns, training and logistical support, as part of the cold war efforts. The rest of the Mujahadeen's weapons came from the Soviets themselves, in the form of captured weapons.
Afghanistan would not have had a prayer of fending off the Soviet army on their own. Nor would Vietnam have had a hope against the US by themselves. Which is exactly my point. What I'm asking you for is an example where this didn't happen. What we're arguing here, lest we lose sight of it, is whether an armed population can fend off an oppressor. If the oppressor's enemies weigh in, even if they do so for the wrong reasons, is it really an uprising anymore? Or is it just another proxy war?
Sorry, but the numbers just don't agree with you. In the Warsaw Ghetto, it took 2000 German soldiers equipped with rifles and tanks nearly a month to suppress a few hundred Jewish rebels. If it had been a few million rebels instead of a few hundred, it would have taken far more manpower than the German army was able to commit to quash that resistance, even assuming the Warsaw uprising was particularly successful.
Well, first off, those rebels were up against a wall. People always fight hardest when they have nothing to lose.
Second, they were fighting on their home ground. Also a benefit. The Ghetto was theirs by that point, had been for some time.
Since neither of those situations was repeated elsewhere in German occupied Europe, I don't see it as a valid point of comparison. Let's say there were a million armed men fighting to avoid the camps. Spread out over many nations, threatened by the people who would turn them in - they'd be dead. Not all at once, but part of what the SS did well was dividing and isolating their victims.
Granted, they'd take some SS with them, which would be worthwhile. But fleeing the Nazis was always their best bet.
Consider that at least 11 million people were ultimately executed by the Nazis. Do you seriously believe that had these 11 million people been armed and prepared to fight, the death toll would not have been less?
We're arguing here what might have been, which is always a tricky business. But essentially, yes. I do not think their armament or lack thereof would seriously affect the outcome.
It takes more than just a gun to make a soldier. Many of those 11 million were women, children, elderly. Hell, quite a few were disabled; the Germans killed anyone "less than whole". And they weren't all Jews; 5 million belonged to many different groups, all seen by the Nazis as "subhuman", but otherwise having nothing in common. It's hard to arm and coordinate such a disparate group.
Had they been armed, but uncoordinated, I'll tell you what I think would have happened. Most wouldn't fight. The ones who would fight, would do so poorly, and die for it. Some people who did survive the holocaust by fleeing occupied territory would have stayed instead, and died in the process. The SS would isolate them, would pay people to rat them out, and finally would kill them.
Would a few more survive by war
Going down fighting has never done anyone the slightest bit of good; you have to have a chance of winning to make the fight worth your life.
Tell that to Ghandi.
Ok, I was laughing really hard there for a second. But I'm done now.
Gandhi? Are you out of your mind.
Gandhi didn't fight. That was the whole point of what he did - non-violent resistance. The notion of Gandhi "going down fighting" is hilariously ignorant of history. He'd have gone down peacefully, and he'd have won by doing so. He did, really, in the end, though not til after he'd won.
His methods worked in no small part because he was up against an opponent who fancied themselves as "civilized". The Brits couldn't kill him, or cart him off to a concentration camp. Fighting him, when he wouldn't fight back, only strengthened his movement in the eyes of the public.
I concede that. But I'll also point out that the "good men" who were making a difference were generally doing so by methods like hiding the Jews, or getting them across borders. We generally don't think of those methods as resistance, since they didn't bring the war any closer to the end, but it's undeniably the best way to save lives in their position.
Not sure what you're not getting here, but I'll take a stab at it.
Here are my points, separated for your convenience.
1) If you are the target of a genocide, flee. You can't win by fighting. Genocide doesn't happen just anywhere, you need a the support the majority to pull it off. If the people being killed do not have the support of their countrymen, they haven't a prayer of victory through arms.
2) If you are resisting an occupying force, fight, but indirectly. Standing your ground hasn't worked in a long time. You will lose a "fair" fight, so fight dirty instead.
Being armed, which seems to be your thing, helps in neither case. In the former case, you can't win by fighting, and in the latter case, your best bet isn't arming in advance, for a long list of reasons I've already gone over.
Per the first point I keep seeing people state that the Jews could have fought the SS and escaped. They couldn't. Or more accurately, any situation in which they could escape, they could better do so without fighting. Remember that the methods they had which worked best depending on keeping a low profile and either hiding or crossing a border. I'm basing this on what the survivors did, since the people who didn't survive obviously weren't as lucky.
Per the second point, my statement is based on my knowledge of history. The resistance movements that eventually found themselves free of occupation largely did so by fighting dirty and receiving help from outside (and helping the allies in turn, through espionage).
You're more likely to be successful with a gun than without one. If not, why would anyone want to have a gun in a fight?
Having a gun in a fight works if the fight is nearly fair. Two men with pistols each have a decent chance of winning a gunfight. We aren't talking about that here. We're talking about a civilian against soldiers, plural. Guns don't help there. Other weapons do.
Yes, I did. And yes, I do. If you were given the choice between fighting a corrupt power in a battle you believed to be hopeless and collaborating, you have made it very clear what you would choose. And how you would justify it to yourself.
Didn't I say I would fight? Several times. Again, you need to work on reading comprehension.
I wouldn't fight a battle I believed hopeless unless all other methods of fighting it were exhausted. Given a choice, however, I'd fight it on my own terms instead of letting a tyrannical government choose where and how it would be fought. By "fight on my own terms" I'm talking about guerrilla warfare, sabotage, assassination, that sort of thing. Methods that have been shown to work historically against a larger force.
Note that the people at Warsaw had no choice. In their position, I'd do what they did. But I'd also have been trying, up until that point, to get into a better position to fight.
Is it so great between a government and an armed populace that outnumbers the army by several orders of magnitude?
Yes. And has been for a century, at least.
If you wish to dispute this, I invite you to show me an example of an armed population taking down a conquering or oppressive army (domestic or invading) through force of arms. Do so with a nation who has access to a modern military.
Wait - you were going to say Vietnam vs. the US or Afghanistan vs. the USSR, right?
Here's why I disagree with those. Examples like that involve an "armed population" that is being supplied by a modern military power to fuel a war by proxy. I guarantee you they would not have succeeded without outside aid.
You're making the mistake of assuming the people "hoarding guns" and the people securing victories against tyranny through other means weren't one and the same. Look at the American Revolution, for example.
I was wondering when the revolution would enter this discussion. I'll grant you that your argument held weight in 1775. Does it hold weight today? I do not believe so.
Plus, don't overlook French involving in the revolution. This was their war by proxy. Without the French Navy, the colonists might not have won. So it wasn't just an armed populous.
At any rate, the people who evaluated whether to fight or surrender on the basis of whether they were certain they'd win the battle won very few battles.
Hmmm, I'll concede the point. Though I think I used the phrase "hope of success" instead of "certainty of success".
Would the people evaluating a fight do so if they had a hope of winning? Yes. Even if it wasn't certain. When they have no hope, the best choice is either to fight through other methods, or flee. Surrender isn't a good choice for individuals up against governments.
You can send me email at guidodelconfuso@gmail.com if you're genuinely interested in continuing this discussion offline. I assure you that I am. If you're in New York by any chance, I'll meet you this weekend.
Wow, I didn't expect that. I can be reached at my slashdot user name plus the word "backupaccount" at gmail.com. I'm nowhere near New York though.
No he's right, the 11 million+ figure is correct for the holocaust. People keep forgetting that while there were 6 million Jews killed, there were also at least 5 million other minorities killed as well. Possibly more, depending on whether you go by bodies and records, or people missing after the war ended.
Most of the people who did escape did so through other means. Having a gun is a liability if you're trying to sneak over a border; it identifies you to the forces trying to keep you from escaping.
The best thing to arm yourself with if you were a Jew trying to survive the holocaust would have been fake identification.
Yes, they should try to fight when they're out of options. But ideally, if you're the target of a genocidal purge, your best bet isn't to fight in the first place. It's to flee.
The lucky ones were the ones who got out of the way. The poor souls who didn't, or more often couldn't, had their options taken away until the only choice left was to fight and die.
The lesson to be taken from this is not that they should have armed themselves. The same outcome would have happened if they did.
If anything, the lesson we failed to learn in WWII is that when a tyrannical power is engaged in genocide, the other powers in the world need to intervene early and quickly. Waiting for them to finish is not a morally viable choice. The quote about how all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing comes to mind.
Your definition of "accomplishment" is bizarre and self-serving. If the only thing that makes anything worthwhile to you is immediate success in the endeavor, then we have no common ground on this matter.
Not immediate success, no. To give a counterpoint, the resistance movements against Nazi Germany in countries like France obviously accomplished something, just not immediately.
Put another way, it is worthwhile to stand up and fight a tyrannical government. Doing so may result in it's destruction or removal.
It only remains worthwhile if the tactics you use to stand up against them have a hope of success. If you take up arms against an occupying power, know that you must do so in a manner that will lead to victory, even if it doesn't do so immediately. Fighting to the bitter end is poetic, but doesn't effect change.
I stand behind everything I've said.
You likened my response to the collaborators in WWII. If you "stand by that", then you are scum. Nothing more.
Oh, and you fail at reading comprehension, since I'm pretty sure I was arguing that fighting a tyrant directly is stupid, not that fighting them at all is. Try and get through the whole post before commenting.
The only thing you seem to be concerned with is short term well being.
I am concerned with more than my own well being, as I believe my posts show. In this particular case, I'd be concerned for the well being of anyone who fought an oppressive government. I'd want to see them survive, and succeed.
The tactics best used for fighting tyranny do not involved hoarding guns in your basement. That might have worked a century ago, but not today. The disparity of firepower between a civilian, however well armed, and a soldier, is too great.
Look at every uprising that actually drove an occupying force away, or at least weakened them to the point where an external opponent could defeat them. The people, like yourself, who sat upon hoards of guns and fought in their homes, died early and did little. The people who would stick to guerrilla warfare, who'd bomb and sabotage the enemy, and who'd feed intelligence to external allies concerning the disposition of the tyrants armies, those are the resistance fighters who made a difference.
I find this attitude contemptible. If you would like to meet I will tell you the same thing in person.
I'll take you up on that. Or I would if I thought for a moment that some anonymous person on the net actually meant it.
Ugh, this is getting out of hand.
Find where I said fighting an occupying force doesn't work. Oops, I didn't say that. Guess reading comprehension isn't working today.
I said their best chance at survival lay in retreat. Which is 100% factually accurate. I also said having guns would not have saved them. Also true.
And that small arms do not aid overly in insurgency. Not two posts up from yours I remarked that the best insurgent tactics involve sabotage, explosives and indirect warfare.
Want to fight a tyrannical government? Build bombs. Hoarding guns gets you nowhere.
Want to avoid being killed in a genocide? Flee.
You'll note that neither option is exactly courageous. But they work. The European Jews who survived WWII largely did so by getting away from the Nazis, while the myriad resistance movements had the best success the further they strayed from direct warfare.
If the rebels in the Warsaw Ghetto accomplished nothing simply because they lost, then neither did the Third Reich.
Yes. They didn't accomplish their goal of conquest.
What did the Third Reich accomplish? It killed a great many people. It changed the geopolitical landscape of the day, though not for the better. It caused untold misery and suffering.
These are accomplishments? Crimes, maybe. Accomplishments... not so much.
Losing a fight is not an accomplishment. Fighting to the bitter end isn't either. Had the Warsaw Uprising resulted in the victims escaping death, or halted the advance of the German army, then I might call it an accomplishment.
They had no choice in the matter, and I'd have done the same in their position. Doesn't change that they lost. And would have just as surely lost no matter how well armed they were; from a tactical standpoint, once the enemy has you surrounded and cut off from retreat or reinforcements, you are most likely screwed.
Maybe to you the possibility of fighting back seems hopeless, and compliance--or even collaboration--is the only answer.
-1 flamebait right there buddy. Oh, and there ought to be some Godwin variant that applies here; surely such a tasteless remark deserves it. Frankly, you ought to be ashamed for even making such a remark. I doubt you'd have the courage to say as much to anyone to their face.
I never said resistance accomplishes nothing. I'm saying having guns ready for when the government comes for you accomplishes nothing, except your own demise in a shootout.
Resistance is best accomplished through other means. If you must resist violently, explosives are a better choice than firearms, sabotage a better choice than a direct fight. Look at every successful uprising, and tell me I'm wrong.
That leaves motive.
More or less my exact point.
Cultural glorification of violence is not a motive. Greed, hate, revenge, or any number of other causes, are another matter.
Why do some countries have a higher murder rate? You could point to a higher disparity of wealth, a higher incarceration rate, or an absence of adequate law enforcement. Any one of which would serve as a better explanation than "cultural glorification of violence", not least of which because you can draw a connection between the act of violence and the circumstances I just listed that might motivate it.
That's not to say culture isn't a factor, but it is to say that as factors go, it's way down the list. The simplest explanation that accounts for all the evidence is usually the right one.
I'd say that even in a utopia wherein such injustices are uncommon, you'd still have violence, simply because of human nature. The varying rates of violence we see in the world today are an intersection of that violent nature with very real, practical motives to use it - in some places, people have more reasons (or excuses) to resort to violence than in others.
Who, you'll note, aren't using guns most of the time. Roadside bombs are their main weapon.
Besides, I'm not sure the comparison stands. They're up against the US, a country that's notoriously unwilling to accept casualties, and that's bound by rules of engagement. When they break those rules, the troops that do so find their atrocities plastered all over the newspapers.
The people targeted by Nazi Germany were up against a fighting force that had no moral limits on what they could do. Inflicting a few casualties with booby traps would not serve as a deterrent, not when the German military was suffering thousands of casualties on the front lines.
The places where insurgency tactics worked in WWII were locations where the locals could weaken the military forces from the rear, while friendly troops attacked from the front. Iraq is different; the insurgency tactics are intended to make an occupation to expensive and politically nonviable to maintain.
I know of it. I thought of it when I posted. My point stands.
What you're overlooking is that the uprising was a total loss. The Jews were still killed, if not during the fighting, then afterwards. As a last stand on principle, it was a good thing, but from a practical perspective, it accomplished nothing.
Would it have been so easy for the Nazis to round up their victims if they faced such a battle every time they had tried?
Every time they tried? Wouldn't have happened.
The Warsaw Ghetto was packed. The people there had nothing to lose. Hell, they barely had any guns, and still made a fight of it. Sheer numbers were their weapon.
Most of the victims of the holocaust didn't have the numbers to make that stick. A few Jews in their homes with pistols would not have staved off the SS when they arrived. Especially not when their supposed "countrymen" were supporting the SS most of the time.
Yes, if everyone who the SS tried to round up had been armed and fought they'd have had a harder time of it. Most likely, the SS would have simply responded with escalating force of their own. A few civilians might stave off a death squad consisting of green troops with SMGs, but they'd be hopelessly outmatched by even one armoured vehicle.