Godammed SDN

[Zod]

Sure.

TBH, most of the complaints I heard were from the locals whose soils where contaminated for the centuries to come by toxic heavy metals, with all the associated health problem and photo of malformed babies. But they are brown people so who cares.

On the other hand, you hear a lot of disgruntled 1st Gulf War veterans talking about how DU gave them the "Gulf War Symptom". That's a shitstick PR-wise to sell back home.

It's not guaranteed that abandoning DU would mean that future battlefields would be "clean". The same tungsten alloy that would be used in a DU replacement was found to be extremely carcinogenic in rats. Inhalation wouldn't be as big a problem, but the long-lasting contamination might still be a significant issue. Hell, huge deposits of lead aren't a great thing to have lying in the soil, not to mention the problem of unexploded ordnance. War is going to leave environmental scars with or without DU, although I'm not going to say DU is vitally necessary for waging war.

It's morbidly interesting that so many modern efforts to kill tanks (advanced armor penetrators, cluster bombs, radiation bombs) have been proven dirty to some extent. For the purposes of reducing environmental contamination, it might ultimately be far more effective to try and draft a treaty to ban tanks and other heavily armored vehicles. You don't need DU/tungsten rounds or cluster bombs to kill infantry or light vehicles, and it would probably be difficult to conceal the production or maintenance of large armored divisions.

i dunno but something about the thought of banning certain types of weapons to make war 'cleaner' doesn't sit well with me

[Dooey Jo]

maybe we can ban war


incidentally, i was looking up if there was any evidence behind the claim that "stone age people executed 10% of their male population every generation for being aggressive". there wasn't, but i also somehow stumbled across the egalitarian revolution of 7200 BC

that's probably the most fascinating shit i've read all month

[thejester]

Sure.

TBH, most of the complaints I heard were from the locals whose soils where contaminated for the centuries to come by toxic heavy metals, with all the associated health problem and photo of malformed babies. But they are brown people so who cares.

On the other hand, you hear a lot of disgruntled 1st Gulf War veterans talking about how DU gave them the "Gulf War Symptom". That's a shitstick PR-wise to sell back home.

look buddy

next thing you're going to tell me that agent orange had unintended side-effects

[adr-admin]

so the internet told me that kubrick wasn't trying to make an anti war movie with full metal jacket

he just wanted to show the way war is

i saw it as an anti war movie

[Aaron]

That's the inevitable result.

[Oxymoron]

so the internet told me that kubrick wasn't trying to make an anti war movie with full metal jacket

he just wanted to show the way war is

i saw it as an anti war movie

The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, though...

"See, War is Hell, and this is why we should avoid it."

[starku]

Lol

[Oxymoron]

Also, don't forget : "Dr. Strangelove" is not in fact a movie against nuclear weapons.

[adr-admin]

i haven't seen that one yet

letia has it though

prolly gonna watch it in a couple weeks

[uraniun235]

i dunno but something about the thought of banning certain types of weapons to make war 'cleaner' doesn't sit well with me

*shrug* It already happens. We don't use nuclear weapons or nerve gas. Many (though not all) nations have signed a treaty to abstain from the use of cluster bombs.

It occurred to me too: the notion that, hey, we should remember that we shouldn't be using this shit at all if possible. But, if reducing environmental contamination is a serious enough goal, then it seems like banning armored vehicles are a natural conclusion of that effort. Even if the weapons themselves weren't toxic, I remember hearing about how destroyed tanks are pretty damn toxic themselves.

I'm certainly not arguing that accomplishing such a ban is at all feasible in the foreseeable future.

[starku]

It's the difference between shep thinking any method is fine to get 'victory' and the idea that war is at least half posturing to an end

[timmy]

Layered and nuanced. The Hague Convention at the end of the 19th century banned the use of hollow point ammunition as designed to make soldier death inevitable(removing the chance of them being merely wounded and repatriated), and then on the other end of the scale you've got countries that are signatory to the landmine ban treaty reclassifying ordinance as 'anti-personnel devices'

[Aaron]

i dunno but something about the thought of banning certain types of weapons to make war 'cleaner' doesn't sit well with me

*shrug* It already happens. We don't use nuclear weapons or nerve gas. Many (though not all) nations have signed a treaty to abstain from the use of cluster bombs.

It occurred to me too: the notion that, hey, we should remember that we shouldn't be using this shit at all if possible. But, if reducing environmental contamination is a serious enough goal, then it seems like banning armored vehicles are a natural conclusion of that effort. Even if the weapons themselves weren't toxic, I remember hearing about how destroyed tanks are pretty damn toxic themselves.

I'm certainly not arguing that accomplishing such a ban is at all feasible in the foreseeable future.

There is a tonne of shit in an afv that once it catches fire you should just avoid it. From the paint to the massive amount of rubber and electronics to the POL. Its just bad ju ju. In a just world we would clean it all up, employing,train and pay locals, giving them valuable skills as a result.

[Veef]

can we use magic space jets with arms instead of tanks then ( ^w^) ;

[timmy]

The way they dismantle tankers and freighters in Bangladesh is a model for that kind of work.

[Aaron]

The way they dismantle tankers and freighters in Bangladesh is a model for that kind of work.

I would like to know more.

[weemadando]

Sure, you sell your old arse rust bucket ship to a company. They beach the ship in Bangladesh where thousands of slowly dying workers get exposed to every nastiness under the sun as they tear the ship apart by hand...

[timmy]

Christ, I once read a National Geo article with fantastic pictures that presented it as a bastion of economic stability for the area... But now all I can find googling is sites like this one

[Oxymoron]

This is a giant beach

covered in tankers, cargo, and all kind of boats

as far as the eye can see

all beached
all rusting

people crawling around them like ants tearing apart carcasses thousands of time bigger than them


This is an awe-inspiring sight


(my memories may or may not be romanticized)

[Aaron]

Sure, you sell your old arse rust bucket ship to a company. They beach the ship in Bangladesh where thousands of slowly dying workers get exposed to every nastiness under the sun as they tear the ship apart by hand...

See, I mean that we should train and equip them as if we were doing it.

[timmy]

...which is apparently economically unviable. The reason these sort of things got done in the third world before media exposure raised awareness if not actually doing anything to stop it(as always)

[Zod]

Sure, you sell your old arse rust bucket ship to a company. They beach the ship in Bangladesh where thousands of slowly dying workers get exposed to every nastiness under the sun as they tear the ship apart by hand...

See, I mean that we should train and equip them as if we were doing it.

We can't possibly pay those savages as much as we do god fearing white men!

[weemadando]

Giving them modern equipment means giving them electricity and running water. You want them to have that? Then they might think they're real people!

[Ohma]

incidentally, i was looking up if there was any evidence behind the claim that "stone age people executed 10% of their male population every generation for being aggressive".

funny enough that almost reads like what the three of us over here frequently joke about wars being

just minus the part where it transitions into a rant about gross beardy old men who want all the phat lewts for themselves

[Losonti Tokash]

it's pretty funny we're having a decent discussion of me in sdn testing while the thread in gaming is just people whining about the female characters being too attractive