Quote: (07-26-2018 12:39 PM)Contagion Wrote:
And World War Three might need large army masses. Don't underestimate how big of a role hacking will play in the war. If your technology is rendered useless by hacking, even if for just certain time periods until the side that's hacked can get the servers or technology up and running again, people are going to have to fight in war the old fashioned way.
You mention your grandpa, and you don't have to expand any further if you don't want to. But, if you do want to expand, what changes in particular was he talking about?
I'm assuming the demographic and cultural changes? Perhaps more violence? The government and big brother playing an ever increasing role in people's lives? The regular monthly allah akbars?
That's a very good point about hacking. One of the biggest deciding factors in the next one (and I agree with you that there will be another one simply because it's 'due') will be each side's resilience to having their tech compromised. Any advantage, however short-lived could be decisive.
Regarding my Grandad, I was just a kid but I remember how even though he was a very easy-going soul, he would get incensed every now and again at stuff on the news and things going on outside his window.
Yeah, it was mainly everything you said. Demographics, definitely. He was born in 1920! Despite what revisionists say, England was racially homogenous back in his day, so as he saw this change it must have troubled him. Yes, he'd inevitably be called racist nowadays, but that rings hollow to me. I can't remember him being verbally abusive towards other races, just more his repeated expressions of foreboding about the fact that we weren't all going to get along and that his country was now a time-bomb.
He hated Germans and Japanese! Couldn't stand to see them on TV. Everytime a war film or anything with a German came on TV he (and Grandma) would launch into stories about what 'they happened in the London Blitz'. They lived in London at the time.
Looking back, I'm certain they wouldn't have known (or cared about) the full horrors of allied bombings on Dresden, Hamburg etc. That's what I mean about people of his generation being easy to control. They really only knew what the newspapers, radio and TV showed them. This obviously happens today even more, but at least (for now) we have access to alternative information.
With the Japanese, it was their treatment of prisoners of war that he liked to go on tirades over.
In terms of violence and crime; football (soccer) violence was a huge deal back then and that would aggravate him. Drugs were becoming prevalent. Everyone (incl women) were getting tattoos. Locally, there was a glue-sniffing craze going on! I remember being told not to sniff glue in the woods with the bad lads and I used to wonder what the fuck they were talking about.
You know what? The subject of Muslims didn't really come up with him. That's something that came later and he missed out on. The beheadings, the bombings, the rapings. He would be going absolutely ballistic at the TV if he were still alive today. In fact, typing this out really hits home at how fast life has changed in just the short time since he's been dead.
I can totally understand why some old veterans wonder whether it was worth it. After fighting and winning a world war (or two) you should be living in some sort of utopia as a reward. You should never have to pay taxes again for a start! Or to put it another way, why does winning a war make some feel as though they actually lost it?