Speaking on purely theoretical terms - because this forum is probably not fit for the expression of some judgements -, while it is not a generally good strategy to just "wait and hope", one should not forget that pseudo-chance can go in more directions - some of which have been surprising in the region in the last hundred years. (Of course, no strategist would just embrace chance.)
Putin's successor is likely to be someone even less securely in power, and thus far less rational. I don't want to test our luck with what's left of the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
You never count on the successor of a strongman to be rational. S/he is the successor of a strongman for a reason. And that reason is probably not rationality.
>You never count on the successor of a strongman to be rational. S/he is the successor of a strongman for a reason. And that reason is probably not rationality.
Stalin's successor was Khruschev, who dismantled Stalin's cult of personality, and reformed Stalin's system to an extent that Khruschev was removed from power without an incident by his own system, and lived happily ever after in retirement as the power transitioned to the next ruler.
Being the only ruler of Russia, over the past ~1000 or so years, to achieve that, namely:
1. Being removed from power (by term ending, elections lost, etc - not by their own will)
2. The removal happening procedurally, and not by disorder/coup/murder
3. Leaving the former ruler to live a decent life in retirement
My greatest hope at this point is that much of the Soviet arsenal would fail to function at this point. That might be a pipe dream, but it's what I got.
Don't need to bribe them, the free market takes care of that.
There are reports that much of the tritium in Russian nukes has been stolen and sold on the black market. When you have a culture that is basically a kleptocracy, few internal controls, and tritium prices of $30K/gram, it doesn't take a genius to figure out where the incentives lie.
I think it's an open question on how many it would take to ruin civilization. Probably need to first define what 'ruin civilization' looks like. The idea of nuclear winter has already been pretty thoroughly debunked, we don't have anywhere near enough weapons to make that happen. But even one nuke would be enough to wreak havoc economically.
the UK's Strath report from the 1950s found that all it really took was 10 x 10-Megaton nuclear warheads to effectively send the UK back to the 1700s.
hit the 10 largest cities and it's basically over. big cities are also primary transport hubs of food and fuel, and with those gone everything else collapses. most people aren't farmers, and even if they were, no one is using pulled plows in the First World these days, so without gas and farming everyone starves. most of your best educated, most likely to govern smartly, are also in those 10 big cities; everything turns into Riddley Walker pretty quick.
the US or Europe or Russia or China are a big larger, but that just means you need 20-40 instead of 10. 100 nukes is enough for basically all of the West, or Russia, or China, etc. 1000 if you want to be sure, and have some redundancy / second-strike capability.
>the US or Europe or Russia or China are a big larger, but that just means you need 20-40 instead of 10.
I haven't inquired about the UK, but that is not even close to true for the US.
For one thing, at any given time, there's enough food stored on US farms to feed half the US population for about 3 years, which is probably enough time to restart mechanized agriculture or failing that re-open enough port facilities to import enough food from our friends to keep most survivors alive.
(This food stored on farms is mostly intended to be fed to farm animals, but it is food humans can live on even if they probably cannot thrive on it.)
A nuclear attack leaves most internal-combustion vehicles intact. The US produces all the oil it needs, and the attack necessarily leaves most of the wells intact because (like the vehicles) the wells are too spread out for an attack with even 3000 warheads to get even half of the wells.
The vast majority of comments on nuclear war on the internet are wrong, and it offends me that people are being so careless about spreading falsehoods. (Spreading these falsehoods does not make us safer.)
Please stop with this nuclear nonsense. There's enough nuclear warheads in EU to make sure nothing is left of major Russian cities in case somebody got too bald. Dictators aren't suicidal maniacs, they're "just" maniacs.
That's true for the most part, but there are plenty of suicidal maniacs in this world, and it is partially luck that none of them have yet managed to become dictators of countries with nuclear arsenals. It's not a given.
Is that the case? I'm not the most knowledgeable, but I was under the impression that Putin is only capable of his level of influence to his KGB background. He definitely seems like a lynchpin to me, but I'd be interested in hearing more.
He's a lynchpin in the sense that he consolidated power, but it isn't as though he's some kind of genius. He's just an extraordinarily successful criminal/gangster.
In fact, his playbook of installing a puppet regime and having them "voluntarily" integrate into russia isn't particularly original — the USSR did the same thing with the Baltic states in the 1940s.
So, others around him could certainly take the reigns and continue the status quo.
For peace and prosperity in russia and for russians, there would need to be a deep reformatting and denazification of the country.
That's the same type of rhetoric used to diss Trump and it did not work to keep him from gaining popularity. The same goes for Putin, he might not be everyone's idea of a great leader but he has proven to be capable of gaining and keeping power.
For those who wonder, no I am not comparing Trump to Putin, they are two totally different people with different personalities. I am referring to the ineffective rhetoric used by their opponents.
That's the way it seems to me as well. I've heard it remarked that one thing which never changes in Russia is the gulags. The Czars had them, the Bolsheviks and Soviets had them, now Putin has them. I think its worth considering that there might be some fundamental attribute of Russia, perhaps the geography, that gives rise to this repeating pattern in their leadership and social organization.
Muammar Gaddafi is a complex personage, a cruel dictator and a efficient benefactor. He was a force for the greater good with the Great Man-Made River Project, a project would not have been possible without him.
And it was gratious cruelty from NATO to destroy the pipes fabrication plant during the first Libyan civil war.
Nearly all dictators do some beneficial civil works and other actions though. After all how else can they keep the population just happy enough to avoid rising up?
You're also assuming that the GMMR would not have been commissioned by another Libyan government, and perhaps even been completed more efficiently, had Gaddafi not seized power and held onto it for decades.
While NATO's bombing of the Brega plant was controversial, it was in my view justified by Gaddafi's forces staging rocket launchers at the location. If you're staging active military assets inside civilian locations, and they're part of hostilities, those locations lose their protection under international law.
The Brega plant was also not critical to the ongoing operation of the GMMR, as there was a second plant at Sarir that was able to make the pipe sections and had sufficient capacity to handle maintenance and sustainment needs.
One loose analogy could be the death of Stalin. His main men got on fighting for a few years, with a few important ones like Molotov and Beria (initially considered something of a favorite) ending up sidelined or dead. The Cold War ultimately continued, though in a less total manner.
But Stalin's Soviets were comparable to N. Korea, than, say, modern Russia, in terms of regime and its complete grip on everything. So I'd say the result would be more chaotic, might be actually comparable to Libya.
It was very probably faulty stochastic language meaning "the median element of the group G", specifically felt by some after the naive proposal in some press years ago that there would be a revolt as a reaction to the war, and the subsequent presentation of data that went "actually, some support is there".
What they will tell you is -- up until the genocide against the Tatars (and other groups), the majority of its population was always solidly non-Russian.
And that its prior ownership by whichever colonial powers is entirely irrelevant to its current legal jurisdiction.
And when he flatly says "the population became 80-85 percent Russian", he's referring to the time period after the 1944 genocide (which he's choosing not to mention for for some reason). Before which the Russian population was, as he knows, always a minority. Moreover, essentially all of the influx of non-indigenous groups after 1783 was as a result of settler-colonialist policies of the Russian and Soviet empires. Before which the population was 93 percent Tatar, about 7 percent other groups -- with no Russian population to speak of.
Sorry Dang, but that was not related to nationalistic flamewar - I do not see how. Edit: well, it could have kindled fire with a different public, but you did a good job in educating this one...
About Crimea, it seemed that the poster proposed a clear-cut situation, to which I replied with a prestigious example of disagreement: Gérard Chaliand. That has nothing to do with any nationalism. It just happen to be a position (an intellectual position) that some nationalists will appreciate more than others - but that is just a coincidence. The intellectual in question is French; the rebuttal from Aguaviva is appreciated.
The latter part of the post from Romwell, I honestly and not without some reason mistook for a statement that "if you are a citizen for nation N, democratic, then you are responsible for the actions of your governments". Being that a twisted idea, that Romwell in the end does not hold but as I also specified later some people do hold, I countered it. Again, this does not seem to be to be especially tied to nationalism.
It seems to me that we all discussed in very civilized manner - rhetoric aside. (From my post replying to Romwell on, I mean.)
If I am missing any detail (as I seem to be), please indicate.
Edit: Dang, are you simply afraid that people will "trigger"? If so, I think this branch proves otherwise... It seems to show that we are able to discuss quite rationally (well, with these members we have been lucky).
Seconding this, and wanted to emphasize that I see no issue with your responses or questions (and don't really understand why you've been downvoted either — advice on style appreciated).
As I wrote in the other comment, my point of asking those questions was to get answers from the Russian person who asked what's wrong with them specifically, not from other people (as the subject I wanted to discuss was, ultimately, why people could see well meaning Russians as a threat based on responses to those questions).
But I didn't make it clear (and again, corrections on style were very welcome!), and the points mdp2021 brought up were valid.
As far as I can tell, we didn't disagree on anything.
mdp2021 lacked some of the context, but so would most people, including me prior to the 2022 invasion.
When the USSR was breaking apart, various parts of it held a referendum on whether to become independent, stay with what's left of the Union, or something else.
Tatarstan held such a referendum in 1992, and 3 out of 5 people have clearly and unambiguously chosen independence. Tatarstan was to become a sovereign state (as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan did).
This didn't happen. The results of the referendum were ignored. Russia has considered Tatarstan its territory ever since.
That highlights another form of bigotry: Russia's infamous referenda, held at gunpoint [12], that are used to give its annexations an air of legitimacy.
That includes Crimea[13]. "Anti-war" Russians are still prone to deferring to that sweet 95% "secede" vote. Even if that referendum were legitimate, curiously, Russians don't have the same overwhelming support of the results of the beyond shadow-of-a-doubt legitimate[14] referendum in Tatarstan.
As Putin's regime slowly eroded Tatarstan's sovereignty to zero, Russians did not object [15].
The question "Whose is Tatarstan" is not controversial by any measure either. It surely belongs to the Tatars, the people who live in Tatarstan.
One can argue that Tatarstan being a part of Russia, in reality, reflects what people of Tatarstan wanted: autonomy, not necessarily independence, secession, sovereignty. And if they did want this, then the current state of things is an acceptable, workable compromise.
It's a valid argument. And it's also valid for Crimea being a part of Ukraine, where it enjoyed an autonomy far stronger than that of Tatarstan today.
It also removes the "not a sandwich" objection, as well as the nonsense about "protecting the rights of the Russian-speaking minorities" in Ukraine that was used as a pretext for the 2022 invasion.
Aside from Russian being under no threat in Ukraine (as half the country still speaks it), surely Russian has never been threatened in Crimea as much as local languages in Tatarstan were outright suppressed.
That's before you realize that Crimea was never Russian in the first place, and today's 90%-ethnic Russian population is the result of the ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars, the natives of the peninsula (and, like people of Tatarstan, also Tatars), who were subject to mass deportations during the USSR time, as well as persecution under Russian occupation today.
Crimean Tatars — those who have returned after the deportations and their descendants — aren't big supporters of the annexation.
Tatarstan and Crimea can't be both Russian unless you have double standards on whose votes actually count in Russia.
Or, as Stalin said — who counts the votes.
----
Question #4 is the cherry on top of a pie.
By now, I hope most people are aware that Ukraine was left with one of the largest nuclear weapons stockpiles in the world after its split from the USSR.
The weapons, the planes, and rockets that Ukraine helped build. These weren't "gifts" or "inheritance", as Russian sources like to label this asset.
More of a property you get in a divorce.
Russia wanted it all. And the US — in what Clinton admits was a huge mistake [17] — pushed Ukraine to unilaterally disarm and send its nuclear weapons to Russia [18].
The logic was: the fewer nuclear-armed states, the better; the more stable and safe the world is.
All Ukraine got for its nukes was a security assurance that its sovereignty and territorial integrity will be respected. An assurance signed by the US, the UK — and Russia.
We all know by now that Russia's assurance wasn't worth the paper it's written on. Fewer people take time to think about what it means for the US to give such a promise, and then provide lackluster support that is always on the verge of being withdrawn (and, as far ...
I think it's fair to assume that by "Russians" they meant "the society within the Russian Federation, which as everyone knows is multiethnic, and which by and large supports or acquiesces both the dictatorship and the war, or at least says so when asked by pollsters" rather than "Russians" as an ethic group.
One could also say "The problem is with Americans, not Trump" and that would also not be interpreted as racist.
Unless the outcome of elections in Russia is completely controlled by Putin, people do carry responsibility for their government's policies to some degree.
I had to discuss for months with a mate, who insisted proposing that "Bolsonaro [would be] responsible for the actions of Lula, and Lula [would be] responsible for the actions of Bolsonaro" (actually much worse). And this is just a formulation that should show a paradox; other complexities exist that in the proposed idea of "responsibility" are overridden.
Looks like he has enough doubles to replace him for decades to come. The guys shown in TV have different wrinkles. Maybe it’s botox. But the behavior patterns are too different. One is shaking hands in the streets just like that. Other one has that mile long table and travels with a private army around.
I think the Western powers are quite nervous about what might come after Putin, and with good reason. A destabilised Russia, or one where an even more extreme leader comes to power, would significantly increase the risk of a nuclear conflict.
In retrospect, it seems like it was a bad idea for Western countries to assume that things were going to remain peaceful after the fall of the USSR. Glad to see the threat of war being taken seriously.
Unfortunately it not "just" about war now. The changing climate has also significantly increased the risk for major disruptions on social services such as fresh water supply, electricity, sanitation, and roads/track. We now also need to add those to the list of real risks to prepare for.
This reminds me of Department of Defense Climate Risk Analysis from three years ago where they remind us that there will be increased international conflicts due to the effects of climate change:
Interesting (and very plain, understandable, commonsensical) - but of course some running conflicts are not not strongly related to climate change.
Of course, when Niall Ferguson spoke, it looked at the contingency: he sees a possibility of catastrophic consequences that may come much earlier than the climatic "Armageddon". (Well, in some news peices today they spoke about "before Xmas"... It makes the order of events very definite.)
And look how bare the arsenals have become to the point where supporting Ukraine has become difficult. European NATO is dependent on a US that starting Jan 20 will sit this one out.
What "assumption" are you talking about? There has been continuous work (even if some of it mistaken) to reduce the chances of that happening.
Definitely some elements of some western countries are guilty of what you're alleging, but I don't think enough to justify saying the countries themselves did.
I never understood why the west didn’t help more with the legitimate government forces in Russia, even if it meant more spies and what not. It was clearly crumbling and that’s when stuff like crime and corruption breed, even more so than in the old USSR, but we just sat back and patted ourselves on the back instead of seeking out allies in Russia.
The West did prop up Yeltsin and his insane economic plan, because he was a useful idiot, and then at the eleventh hour, he named Putin his successor, just before he resigned due to... Taking a bribe of a few thousand dollars. Apparently (in a society full of grifters), that was enough to burn him, not attacking parliament with artillery and tanks and killing 200 people.
The problem wasn't lack of government power, the problem was that shock therapy was a fucking awful way to handle the transition, that Yeltsin was a shitty autocrat who carried out a successful, bloody coup (Which didn't stop him from enjoying Western support - which would overlook any autocratic power grab, as long as Russia under him underwent shock therapy. Friggin' Bill Clinton campaigned for him), and that NATO turned from a purely defensive alliance to an offensive alliance and started acting unilaterally in what Russia felt was it's sphere of influence. (After a few years of good relations and bilateral collaboration.)
All that turned out to be a great way to rebuild an antagonistic relationship.
If you really want to point fingers at, though, I suppose you could blame Gorbachev for failing to keep the USSR intact and resigning, handing over power to assholes like Yeltsin. Gorbachev was a far better statesman and general human being than his successors were.
Exceptionally well-armed NATO + JEF members, and Finland well within distance to use conventional artillery to turn St Petersburg to rubble. This is a public-awareness and support-building exercise rather than a real concern. This is like the RAF frequently issuing press-releases about intercepting Russian jets.
> conventional artillery to turn St Petersburg to rubble
Well, let's really hope not. (Let us hope that nothing of worth is ever destroyed, and let us not speak about destruction of universal goods lightly.)
Edit: let us be even more clear (possibly in light of the dismissing feelers who just passed by). If you are into destruction of the cultural heritage, you are the enemy. Complexities just come later.
Are human lives worthwhile to be destroyed? Are they not universal enough? Because I don't see much respect for those around the world... starting, but not ending there, with the russian soldiers themselves.
Some will be of the opinion that what may not respect cultural heritage may not have the same worth.
Sorry.
Edit: I will express it again, and to stress the point: some things are the fruit of the drive towards construction. Some other things may be destroyers. So, it all depends. No, we will not attribute worth to destroyers.
No such thing as cultural heritage if destroying it would achieve the war goal of significantly lower the enemy's morale, irrespective of what international law says about it.
It's not a matter of law, it's a matter of judgement: in front of a threat to what should be respected every cell in the world should become and antibody to erase what revealed as the lowlest scum from the actors.
If we turn St Petersburg into rubble, I doubt anyone will be worrying about a few trifling conventional weapons. NATO and Russia go at it, and we're all just sitting around next month waiting for the Chinese, Brazilians, Indians and South Africans to sort out who is responsible for which relief efforts.
Actually, now I think about it, that quad will probably be far more concerned with determining the disposition of the remaining NATO/Russian warheads. So even relief efforts might be impacted by their more pressing concerns.
In any case, the world would just be a mess for a good long while.
Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, there would be nations that survive a NATO/Russia war. Namely, any nation in the Southern Hemisphere not called Australia or New Zealand. Mother Nature's winds and Father Physic's half lives combine to give unaligned southern hemisphere nations the break of a lifetime. (Or of a species' lifetime I guess?)
All that said, you are absolutely right about "spoils". No one is gonna be thinking about "spoils". Probably top of everyone's list of questions will be, "How many warheads are left? And what remnants of NATO or Russia control them?"
We're talking about two groups who would have conclusively shown they are perfectly willing to use their nuclear arsenals to achieve their goals. That, combined with the fact that their goals would become a whole lot less lofty overnight makes me think the world would become a very precarious place.
why would Australia get hit? no where near Russia, not in NATO, no nukes, and too small of a military to mount a serious offensive
for that matter they're not going to be able to supply much relief effort, either. hopefully they'll pick a side - India or China - and ride out the eventual hegemonic war between those 2.
I'm assuming our Navy would harbor there when other ports were gone.
Maybe the Australians wouldn't allow that?
I guess I always assumed they would. Kind of like North Korea with Russian warships. I don't think we could take the chance that the Russian naval assets harbored in N Korea were harmless. Likewise, I'm assuming Russia wouldn't be able to make the assumption that American warships harbored in Australia were harmless.
I don't know? Maybe everyone's naval ships just surrender or something? I doubt it though. Your nation being destroyed is, in my mind, more reason to fight in those circumstances, not less.
I think the US leases bases in Australia. Given that a single aircraft carrier group contains more power than the ADF combined I would suggest any that limp back to Australia's shores would be able to continue using these ports.
Australia did contribute troops to most US-led military expeditions of the past century. Is it that unlikely that in the event of complete nuclear devastation of the Northern Hemisphere, they would be happy to tip the scales in favour of their allies among the survivors by dispatching a few tens of thousands of troops to mop up what is left of the Russian side, which would only be up against a few disorganised pockets of resistance with no supply chain to speak of?
Also, there is a chance that in the event of a full-blown nuclear exchange Russian leadership would see the showdown as fundamentally civilisational, and seek to take Australia down simply because it is unambiguously an outpost of Anglo-American culture.
I'd thought these days the signal would be "OK Boomer"?
(I'm still impressed that the РВСН has St Barbara as a patron saint. They claim that it's because they were founded on her day, 17.12.59, but I'd bet it has rather more to do with towers and lightning strikes as attributes, as well as her existing patronage over artillerymen, tunnellers, and explosives workers in general. They make severe waffle irons in Chelyabinsk: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OUQPxihQfQDuPE-8f8X1... )
when you have 30 000 warheads you might as well sprinkle them around for all allies of NATO for good measure. When you are doing a nuclear exchange that's the strategy anyway.
That's an old assumption. Modern modelling shows that the southern hemisphere gets it's share from the northern hemisphere relatively fast. Only the shortest lived isotopes won't make it down there. Then there is the dust/smoke/black carbon to consider. If there is much, that will make it down there, too. Causing weather weirdness, misharvests, and so on.
If NATO and Russia are doing a big nuclear exchange I don't think its a wild assumption that the US and Russia also nuke China, India, and any other country that might theaten to pick apart their carcass after the bombs stop going off.
Nobody is gonna be in a situation to reassert control.
In the past, things like volcanic eruptions have detectable effects on world temperatures and crop yields.
During the cold war, there was a widespread theory that an all-out nuclear war would produce a similar effect; there are, after all, a great many warheads out there. So it was theorised that even countries that didn't participate in a nuclear war would end up with crop failures and mass starvation. The so-called "nuclear winter" or "nuclear holocaust".
Thankfully this theory has not yet been put to the test.
Well, yes, but it is not some PR-influenced look good and like us on Facebook -thing for any of the Nordic nations.
It's about being prepared for all kinds of eventualities, whatever they might be.
For example, last year and early this year heavy winds fell trees on electric lines both in Finland and Sweden, cutting off electricity locally for many days. There was a pandemic not too long ago. Waterworks problems have happened in the past in Finland and also happened this year in Sweden. DDoSing happens here and there, it can impact banks and such.
In addition, grayzone/hybrid operations i.e. all kinds of stupid bullying are constantly conducted: for example, earlier today a submarine cable between Germany and Finland (C-Lion1) was cut, and later today another submarine cable between Lithuania and Sweden was cut as well. Such cables don't just snap by themselves.
Like the Finnish page says: "Prepared people cope better".
Your general points are valid, but undersea cables do fail for many reasons. A few moments of googling turns up industry failure statistics. Most are still due to human activity in some way (but unintentional, like an anchor drag) but plenty are due to the natural environment of the sea floor.
No need for artillery. Drop a big enough A-bomb in the right place in the Gulf of Finland, and it does nil in most of the gulf but it does send a tsunami straight up to St Petersburg. Thus the rationale for that causeway/seawall they built for the A118 thru Kronstadt.
Sure, but which is the cause, and which the effect?
Edit: Huh, a totally legitimate question that points directly at the underlying cause, and downvoted to the limit. Does it hurt that much to admit that people are getting exactly the government they want?
Wearing a helmet makes falling more likely? Vaccination makes disease more likely? Fire drills increase the chance of fire? Information about bear awareness makes bear encounters more likely?
Of course not. Civil defence is a good thing, sticking your head in the sand is not. Also, the brochure is not just about war but also about other crises. Sweden can experience 'interesting' weather which can leave people out of reach of rescue services for a while so 'be prepared' is just good advice.
I just watched Patlabor 2 last night, about a civil war in post-Cold War Japan. The main theme is the following: The thing about one-in-a-million events is that they are eventually going to happen once the other 999,999 occur. Thus a government which does not plan for one-in-a-million scenarios is truly derelict and incapable of survival.
> The thing about one-in-a-million events is that they are eventually going to happen once the other 999,999 occur.
Nitpick: I get your point, but phrasing it like this is basically the gambler's fallacy. That's not how probability works.
You could ask though if, given the changed environment, the one-in-a-million event still has the odds of one-in-a-million. Or if one-in-a-million is really such a rare thing if you make a billion draws...
The movie asks what is the point of JSDF if Japan isn’t under any threat … then somebody in an F-16 fires a TV guided missile into the Yokohama Bay Bridge. It’s a good movie, you should watch it.
yes, that doesn't suffer from gambler's fallacy, but actually surprises people and makes them forget about the issue you're talking about and focus on the probabilities that they don't understand and have no tools to understand... and that's when the 1 in a million event takes place, while they are distracted
“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
(The author is left as an exercise for the reader)
The literal title is "If the crisis or the war comes". Swedes and the Swedish language has a somewhat poetic tendency to refer to things in definite article, embodying them, when wanting to underline the seriousness.
If a war reaches Sweden in the next years, I think it's safe to say we know which war it will be.
It's like the Finnish defense forces. Their training exercises have the OPFOR, the imaginary opposing force usually designated with the color yellow for the sake of the exercise, approaching from the East. Funny that, wonder why.
Nothing new here, the Swedish government has been publishing this guide since the second world war [1] and updates it regularly. It is not directly related to an increase in international tensions and would have been published even if Putin and his cronies were out on the pony farm. The last update was published in 2017/2018 by the previous labour-led government, now that Sweden is part of NATO it needed an update to reflect that fact. Previous versions were published in 1943, 1952, 1961, 1978, 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991 and 2017/2018.
I still have mine from 2017 in a kitchen drawer, as an immigrant it was quite informative, it's how I've learned that Sweden will never surrender and any messaging about it is enemy agitation to be ignored.
The "Sweden will never surrender" part refers to the brochure warning against enemy propaganda which suggests that Swedish forces have surrendered and people should leave enemy forces unharmed. It is mentioned on page 5 of the English-language brochure:
So how do you enforce an armistice when the standing order is "never to surrender"? I.e. not "enemy propaganda" but government orders. You would have units disregarding it left and right.
I don't think it is a good idea to give the soldiers the impression that they will fight to the last man, since that encourages killing their officers at an earlier stage than they would otherwise. Preferably, you want to lure with some peace agreement that is just around the corner, such that the soldiers believe that there is hope for them.
Swedish defence is organised according to a system called 'totalförsvar' or 'total defence' which includes not only fighting forces (army, air force, navy, marines, etc.) but also civilian support forces. People who are included in this system - which can be anything from medical personnel to linemen and truck drivers - have assigned roles and a command structure or 'krigsplacering' (wartime assignment). The message that 'Sweden will never surrender' is aimed mostly at civilians who are outside of the military command structure but may be included in the civilian support forces. It is not aimed at keeping some bearded Swede with a rusty axe hiding in the north-western mountains for 30 years after Sweden has lost a war, it is aimed at the trucker who may be exposed to enemy propaganda.
If Sweden ever were to surrender in war it will most likely be broadcast by the prime minister and/or the king/queen (Sweden is a constitutional monarchy). Until such a time and until such a message is confirmed we'll just assume that Sweden has not surrendered.
> I don't think it is a good idea to give the soldiers the impression that they will fight to the last man, since that encourages killing their officers at an earlier stage than they would otherwise. Preferably, you want to lure with some peace agreement that is just around the corner, such that the soldiers believe that there is hope for them.
I think you are confusing Sweden with some other country.
It's part of the defence strategy to not allow quick capitulation due to enemy's propaganda, the idea is to form armed resistance on the vast Swedish forests as a last resort for insurgency.
Of course if pushes come to shove the reality is not black and white, no need to be an asshole about it because every adult understands that, quite juvenile of you to think they don't. Guess your kind of rhetoric earn points with the teens, no?
> no need to be an asshole about it because every adult understands that, quite juvenile of you to think they don't.
I am sorry. I agree most people 'get it'. The point I am trying to make is that those who don't 'get it' are a big problem if you have nifty slogans like that. Also in a non-total war setting.
> Guess your kind of rhetoric earn points with the teens, no?
I honestly believe that my rhetoric would score very low amongst teens.
A simple note: if you live sufficiently south for p.v., in a home, you can sustain services disruptions significantly:
- p.v. with storage means freezers operational, and freezers means food, protein in particular, for potentially very long periods
- even without p.v. a home in the wood means being able to heat in the winter sourcing wood in nature, uncomfortable but still heat, also usable to cook
- you have room to store water, from the aqueduct with a personal pump in home pipes, so with p.v. you get cold and hot water, potentially for a week or two, and in nature sources tend to be common at our latitudes
In an apartment in a dense city you can just keep a bit of water, but still much less than the countryside, next to zero chance for p.v. and energy storage, very limited chance to source water in nature, even issues to walk for many stairs if elevators have no energy. Long story short: you can't be resilient. Oh, and you might be targeted because hitting a city it's easy and some damages are assured, hitting the countryside is essentially wasting weapons. Remember as well: with wood you can cook various long lasting foods, like rice, beans, ... without wood or locally produced energy your cooking ability going down to zero.
Floods? Spread homes might be or not at risk, but they are still spread, meaning few per flooded are, so rescuing it's doable as temporary shelters, emergency food supply etc. Dense areas? The same in risk terms, but extremely hard to help simply because there are too many people hit together.
Earthquakes? Very similar, plus the fact that light homes tend to allow quick escape, tall buildings do not, and even if they might be well designed in seismic terms they are still very problematic. Fires? idem.
Long story short: it's pointless to publish such next-to-obvious recommendations, some could do something, many could not.
War and survival are communal activities. Tight dense communities tend to do better as people can support each other. Isolated dwellings are just ridiculously vulnerable in comparison. The next group of hungry/angry people who turn up will roll right over you. If you want to survive you should have neighbors and make friends with them.
Not in all known wars so far. In all wars we know cities are bombing, hungry, criminal while SPREAD (not isolated) areas are often simply ignored by the war and in nature you can both source and produce food.
Beside in spread area you have friends as well as in city, but there we are all collaborative even when we do not like each other much because we are few, in cities we are strangers in the crowd.
This is what I tell my family. If the worst comes and everyone is panicking, you need to keep calm and do not do things for the sake of doing something. If the worst comes, the greatest risk is falling and breaking a leg, infection, or getting accidentally shot. You can survive for two weeks without eating. You need to drink constantly. In modern times, I would rank the most important devices as the mobile phone and the automobile. One is for communication and the other is for evacuation. The other important things are identification cards, medicine, and cash.
>In modern times, I would rank the most important devices as the mobile phone and the automobile.
If you're referring to those being important in a major disaster, I'd disagree. Any major disruption can knock out celular networks and in a war they'd be deliberately targeted.
Instead, your best bet would be a predetermined plan for how to get in contact with loved ones if the comms and electrical grids collapse (where to meet, when, and where to leave notes possibly).
As for cars, maybe in certain scenarios, such as having an offroad vehicle stored in some isolated place that you can reach, but if an earthquake, flood, war or some other disaster suddenly strikes, roads will be one of its major victims, rapidly being damaged and in any case clogged with heavy traffic. A car of any kind inside a city would probably be next to useless after a serious disaster.
Instead, you would be better off with a few motorbikes/dirt bikes, or even better, bicycles safely and carefully stored against possible theft. Having these for your family, and possibly some kind of compact cart that can be hitched up for pulling supplies or anyone who simply cant ride their own bike would be much more flexible and usable no matter how badly your region's transport infrastructure is devastated. Bikes (motorized or manual) can cover nearly any terrain and don't need roads if they're even minimally built for off-roading.
You don't need to live that far south for this to work. I live in Sweden at around 60°N and the ~14kW of PV panels on the barn roof provide enough power for that purpose through most of the year, the period November-February excluded. In that period it tends to be cold so keeping food for a longer time is not a problem. I live in the woods and heat and heat the house with a wood-burning stove and a wood-burning kitchen stove (which I use year-round for cooking) as the only heat sources so we're not dependent on electricity. We have our own water well and our own wastewater facilities (not dependent on electricity like 'modern' versions are) so we can keep our standard of living with or without outside power and facilities.
It is not pointless to publish recommendations because it makes people consider the possibility of regular facilities not being available. While city dwellers may not be able to keep more than a week's worth of supplies before they need resupply or evacuation that makes them more prepared for such eventualities than those who think they will always be able to use their mobile devices to order from the plethora of restaurants their city offers. It can make the difference between organised chaos and disordered mayhem if that war or crisis were to occur.
Be Prepared! is not just the boy scouts of old motto - no idea what the modern watered-down version of that institution professes - but also just a good idea. It does not mean you need to become a prepper but it does point out the need for some self-reliance because that whole fragile house of cards which is the service economy may just come tumbling down some day.
171 comments
[ 6.2 ms ] story [ 211 ms ] threadSweden's 'Doomsday Prep for Dummies' guide hits mailboxes today - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42173777 - Nov 2024
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
You never count on the successor of a strongman to be rational. S/he is the successor of a strongman for a reason. And that reason is probably not rationality.
Stalin's successor was Khruschev, who dismantled Stalin's cult of personality, and reformed Stalin's system to an extent that Khruschev was removed from power without an incident by his own system, and lived happily ever after in retirement as the power transitioned to the next ruler.
Being the only ruler of Russia, over the past ~1000 or so years, to achieve that, namely:
1. Being removed from power (by term ending, elections lost, etc - not by their own will)
2. The removal happening procedurally, and not by disorder/coup/murder
3. Leaving the former ruler to live a decent life in retirement
Khruschev was a Ukrainian, see.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/what-happened-sovie...
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/post-cold-war-worl...
There are reports that much of the tritium in Russian nukes has been stolen and sold on the black market. When you have a culture that is basically a kleptocracy, few internal controls, and tritium prices of $30K/gram, it doesn't take a genius to figure out where the incentives lie.
a few hundred, maybe, and back in the day they had thousands.
hit the 10 largest cities and it's basically over. big cities are also primary transport hubs of food and fuel, and with those gone everything else collapses. most people aren't farmers, and even if they were, no one is using pulled plows in the First World these days, so without gas and farming everyone starves. most of your best educated, most likely to govern smartly, are also in those 10 big cities; everything turns into Riddley Walker pretty quick.
the US or Europe or Russia or China are a big larger, but that just means you need 20-40 instead of 10. 100 nukes is enough for basically all of the West, or Russia, or China, etc. 1000 if you want to be sure, and have some redundancy / second-strike capability.
I haven't inquired about the UK, but that is not even close to true for the US.
For one thing, at any given time, there's enough food stored on US farms to feed half the US population for about 3 years, which is probably enough time to restart mechanized agriculture or failing that re-open enough port facilities to import enough food from our friends to keep most survivors alive.
(This food stored on farms is mostly intended to be fed to farm animals, but it is food humans can live on even if they probably cannot thrive on it.)
A nuclear attack leaves most internal-combustion vehicles intact. The US produces all the oil it needs, and the attack necessarily leaves most of the wells intact because (like the vehicles) the wells are too spread out for an attack with even 3000 warheads to get even half of the wells.
The vast majority of comments on nuclear war on the internet are wrong, and it offends me that people are being so careless about spreading falsehoods. (Spreading these falsehoods does not make us safer.)
In fact, his playbook of installing a puppet regime and having them "voluntarily" integrate into russia isn't particularly original — the USSR did the same thing with the Baltic states in the 1940s.
So, others around him could certainly take the reigns and continue the status quo.
For peace and prosperity in russia and for russians, there would need to be a deep reformatting and denazification of the country.
a real life James Bond villain -- who won the game, and took over a country.
For those who wonder, no I am not comparing Trump to Putin, they are two totally different people with different personalities. I am referring to the ineffective rhetoric used by their opponents.
And it was gratious cruelty from NATO to destroy the pipes fabrication plant during the first Libyan civil war.
You're also assuming that the GMMR would not have been commissioned by another Libyan government, and perhaps even been completed more efficiently, had Gaddafi not seized power and held onto it for decades.
While NATO's bombing of the Brega plant was controversial, it was in my view justified by Gaddafi's forces staging rocket launchers at the location. If you're staging active military assets inside civilian locations, and they're part of hostilities, those locations lose their protection under international law.
The Brega plant was also not critical to the ongoing operation of the GMMR, as there was a second plant at Sarir that was able to make the pipe sections and had sufficient capacity to handle maintenance and sustainment needs.
But Stalin's Soviets were comparable to N. Korea, than, say, modern Russia, in terms of regime and its complete grip on everything. So I'd say the result would be more chaotic, might be actually comparable to Libya.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What they will tell you is -- up until the genocide against the Tatars (and other groups), the majority of its population was always solidly non-Russian.
And that its prior ownership by whichever colonial powers is entirely irrelevant to its current legal jurisdiction.
Which is unambiguously Ukrainian.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr5PRtnqaWI
Which he's also not telling you, for some reason.
See also: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lying_by_omission
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
About Crimea, it seemed that the poster proposed a clear-cut situation, to which I replied with a prestigious example of disagreement: Gérard Chaliand. That has nothing to do with any nationalism. It just happen to be a position (an intellectual position) that some nationalists will appreciate more than others - but that is just a coincidence. The intellectual in question is French; the rebuttal from Aguaviva is appreciated.
The latter part of the post from Romwell, I honestly and not without some reason mistook for a statement that "if you are a citizen for nation N, democratic, then you are responsible for the actions of your governments". Being that a twisted idea, that Romwell in the end does not hold but as I also specified later some people do hold, I countered it. Again, this does not seem to be to be especially tied to nationalism.
It seems to me that we all discussed in very civilized manner - rhetoric aside. (From my post replying to Romwell on, I mean.)
If I am missing any detail (as I seem to be), please indicate.
Edit: Dang, are you simply afraid that people will "trigger"? If so, I think this branch proves otherwise... It seems to show that we are able to discuss quite rationally (well, with these members we have been lucky).
As I wrote in the other comment, my point of asking those questions was to get answers from the Russian person who asked what's wrong with them specifically, not from other people (as the subject I wanted to discuss was, ultimately, why people could see well meaning Russians as a threat based on responses to those questions).
But I didn't make it clear (and again, corrections on style were very welcome!), and the points mdp2021 brought up were valid.
As far as I can tell, we didn't disagree on anything.
mdp2021 lacked some of the context, but so would most people, including me prior to the 2022 invasion.
So, dang's reaction seems unwarranted.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The third question is the simplest one.
When the USSR was breaking apart, various parts of it held a referendum on whether to become independent, stay with what's left of the Union, or something else.
Tatarstan held such a referendum in 1992, and 3 out of 5 people have clearly and unambiguously chosen independence. Tatarstan was to become a sovereign state (as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan did).
This didn't happen. The results of the referendum were ignored. Russia has considered Tatarstan its territory ever since.
That highlights another form of bigotry: Russia's infamous referenda, held at gunpoint [12], that are used to give its annexations an air of legitimacy.
That includes Crimea[13]. "Anti-war" Russians are still prone to deferring to that sweet 95% "secede" vote. Even if that referendum were legitimate, curiously, Russians don't have the same overwhelming support of the results of the beyond shadow-of-a-doubt legitimate[14] referendum in Tatarstan.
As Putin's regime slowly eroded Tatarstan's sovereignty to zero, Russians did not object [15].
The question "Whose is Tatarstan" is not controversial by any measure either. It surely belongs to the Tatars, the people who live in Tatarstan.
One can argue that Tatarstan being a part of Russia, in reality, reflects what people of Tatarstan wanted: autonomy, not necessarily independence, secession, sovereignty. And if they did want this, then the current state of things is an acceptable, workable compromise.
It's a valid argument. And it's also valid for Crimea being a part of Ukraine, where it enjoyed an autonomy far stronger than that of Tatarstan today.
It also removes the "not a sandwich" objection, as well as the nonsense about "protecting the rights of the Russian-speaking minorities" in Ukraine that was used as a pretext for the 2022 invasion.
Aside from Russian being under no threat in Ukraine (as half the country still speaks it), surely Russian has never been threatened in Crimea as much as local languages in Tatarstan were outright suppressed.
That's before you realize that Crimea was never Russian in the first place, and today's 90%-ethnic Russian population is the result of the ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars, the natives of the peninsula (and, like people of Tatarstan, also Tatars), who were subject to mass deportations during the USSR time, as well as persecution under Russian occupation today.
Crimean Tatars — those who have returned after the deportations and their descendants — aren't big supporters of the annexation.
Tatarstan and Crimea can't be both Russian unless you have double standards on whose votes actually count in Russia.
Or, as Stalin said — who counts the votes.
----
Question #4 is the cherry on top of a pie.
By now, I hope most people are aware that Ukraine was left with one of the largest nuclear weapons stockpiles in the world after its split from the USSR.
The weapons, the planes, and rockets that Ukraine helped build. These weren't "gifts" or "inheritance", as Russian sources like to label this asset.
More of a property you get in a divorce.
Russia wanted it all. And the US — in what Clinton admits was a huge mistake [17] — pushed Ukraine to unilaterally disarm and send its nuclear weapons to Russia [18].
The logic was: the fewer nuclear-armed states, the better; the more stable and safe the world is.
All Ukraine got for its nukes was a security assurance that its sovereignty and territorial integrity will be respected. An assurance signed by the US, the UK — and Russia.
We all know by now that Russia's assurance wasn't worth the paper it's written on. Fewer people take time to think about what it means for the US to give such a promise, and then provide lackluster support that is always on the verge of being withdrawn (and, as far ...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krymnash
[2] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/03/07/navalnys-policy-sh...
[2] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/04/26/most-russians-supp...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Russo-Ukrain...
[4] https://www.fpri.org/books/less-know-better-sleep-russias-ro...
[5] https://theintercept.com/2020/06/28/welcome-to-chechnya-gay-...
[6]https://imgur.com/gallery/enby-kyiv-ukraine-jul-sep-2023-fcj...
[7] https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2014-09-03/rus...
[8] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/26/russia-admits-...
[9]https://jamestown.org/program/levadas-last-poll-on-chechnya-...
[10] https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/09/my-country-ri...
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Tatarstani_sovereignty_re...
[12] https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/30/fictitious-annexation-fo...
[13] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/ukraine-russia...
[14] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/03/23/t...
[15] https://www.kyivpost.com/post/4906
[16] https://verfassungsblog.de/the-legal-status-and-modern-histo...
[17] [deleted] ↗ (comment deleted)
One could also say "The problem is with Americans, not Trump" and that would also not be interpreted as racist.
I had to discuss for months with a mate, who insisted proposing that "Bolsonaro [would be] responsible for the actions of Lula, and Lula [would be] responsible for the actions of Bolsonaro" (actually much worse). And this is just a formulation that should show a paradox; other complexities exist that in the proposed idea of "responsibility" are overridden.
I agree that posting flamewar generalizations about national groups is not ok on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
plus several in his inner-circle, and his likely replacements, are just as hard-line, in some cases moreso.
"si vis pacem para bellum"
in which he says that WWIII may be a more urgent risk. It's a race.
https://media.defense.gov/2021/Oct/21/2002877353/-1/-1/0/DOD... (1.5 MB PDF)
Of course, when Niall Ferguson spoke, it looked at the contingency: he sees a possibility of catastrophic consequences that may come much earlier than the climatic "Armageddon". (Well, in some news peices today they spoke about "before Xmas"... It makes the order of events very definite.)
Definitely some elements of some western countries are guilty of what you're alleging, but I don't think enough to justify saying the countries themselves did.
The problem wasn't lack of government power, the problem was that shock therapy was a fucking awful way to handle the transition, that Yeltsin was a shitty autocrat who carried out a successful, bloody coup (Which didn't stop him from enjoying Western support - which would overlook any autocratic power grab, as long as Russia under him underwent shock therapy. Friggin' Bill Clinton campaigned for him), and that NATO turned from a purely defensive alliance to an offensive alliance and started acting unilaterally in what Russia felt was it's sphere of influence. (After a few years of good relations and bilateral collaboration.)
All that turned out to be a great way to rebuild an antagonistic relationship.
If you really want to point fingers at, though, I suppose you could blame Gorbachev for failing to keep the USSR intact and resigning, handing over power to assholes like Yeltsin. Gorbachev was a far better statesman and general human being than his successors were.
Well, let's really hope not. (Let us hope that nothing of worth is ever destroyed, and let us not speak about destruction of universal goods lightly.)
Edit: let us be even more clear (possibly in light of the dismissing feelers who just passed by). If you are into destruction of the cultural heritage, you are the enemy. Complexities just come later.
Destruction of the Worth = bad.
I.e. it is part of what should be fought.
Sorry.
Edit: I will express it again, and to stress the point: some things are the fruit of the drive towards construction. Some other things may be destroyers. So, it all depends. No, we will not attribute worth to destroyers.
If we turn St Petersburg into rubble, I doubt anyone will be worrying about a few trifling conventional weapons. NATO and Russia go at it, and we're all just sitting around next month waiting for the Chinese, Brazilians, Indians and South Africans to sort out who is responsible for which relief efforts.
Actually, now I think about it, that quad will probably be far more concerned with determining the disposition of the remaining NATO/Russian warheads. So even relief efforts might be impacted by their more pressing concerns.
In any case, the world would just be a mess for a good long while.
Yes, exactly, that's why this isn't going to happen.
All that said, you are absolutely right about "spoils". No one is gonna be thinking about "spoils". Probably top of everyone's list of questions will be, "How many warheads are left? And what remnants of NATO or Russia control them?"
We're talking about two groups who would have conclusively shown they are perfectly willing to use their nuclear arsenals to achieve their goals. That, combined with the fact that their goals would become a whole lot less lofty overnight makes me think the world would become a very precarious place.
for that matter they're not going to be able to supply much relief effort, either. hopefully they'll pick a side - India or China - and ride out the eventual hegemonic war between those 2.
Maybe the Australians wouldn't allow that?
I guess I always assumed they would. Kind of like North Korea with Russian warships. I don't think we could take the chance that the Russian naval assets harbored in N Korea were harmless. Likewise, I'm assuming Russia wouldn't be able to make the assumption that American warships harbored in Australia were harmless.
I don't know? Maybe everyone's naval ships just surrender or something? I doubt it though. Your nation being destroyed is, in my mind, more reason to fight in those circumstances, not less.
I think the US leases bases in Australia. Given that a single aircraft carrier group contains more power than the ADF combined I would suggest any that limp back to Australia's shores would be able to continue using these ports.
Also, there is a chance that in the event of a full-blown nuclear exchange Russian leadership would see the showdown as fundamentally civilisational, and seek to take Australia down simply because it is unambiguously an outpost of Anglo-American culture.
2.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoal_Bay_Receiving_Station - Brrzzt!
3.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Defence_Satellite_C... - Sparkle!
One of the places that sends the "shoot 'em up boys* signal to the stealth nuclear subs.
I'd thought these days the signal would be "OK Boomer"?
(I'm still impressed that the РВСН has St Barbara as a patron saint. They claim that it's because they were founded on her day, 17.12.59, but I'd bet it has rather more to do with towers and lightning strikes as attributes, as well as her existing patronage over artillerymen, tunnellers, and explosives workers in general. They make severe waffle irons in Chelyabinsk: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/OUQPxihQfQDuPE-8f8X1... )
when you have 30 000 warheads you might as well sprinkle them around for all allies of NATO for good measure. When you are doing a nuclear exchange that's the strategy anyway.
Nobody is gonna be in a situation to reassert control.
During the cold war, there was a widespread theory that an all-out nuclear war would produce a similar effect; there are, after all, a great many warheads out there. So it was theorised that even countries that didn't participate in a nuclear war would end up with crop failures and mass starvation. The so-called "nuclear winter" or "nuclear holocaust".
Thankfully this theory has not yet been put to the test.
It's about being prepared for all kinds of eventualities, whatever they might be.
For example, last year and early this year heavy winds fell trees on electric lines both in Finland and Sweden, cutting off electricity locally for many days. There was a pandemic not too long ago. Waterworks problems have happened in the past in Finland and also happened this year in Sweden. DDoSing happens here and there, it can impact banks and such.
In addition, grayzone/hybrid operations i.e. all kinds of stupid bullying are constantly conducted: for example, earlier today a submarine cable between Germany and Finland (C-Lion1) was cut, and later today another submarine cable between Lithuania and Sweden was cut as well. Such cables don't just snap by themselves.
Like the Finnish page says: "Prepared people cope better".
https://www.suomi.fi/guides/preparedness
https://www.msb.se/en/advice-for-individuals/the-brochure-in...
Your general points are valid, but undersea cables do fail for many reasons. A few moments of googling turns up industry failure statistics. Most are still due to human activity in some way (but unintentional, like an anchor drag) but plenty are due to the natural environment of the sea floor.
Edit: Huh, a totally legitimate question that points directly at the underlying cause, and downvoted to the limit. Does it hurt that much to admit that people are getting exactly the government they want?
Of course not. Civil defence is a good thing, sticking your head in the sand is not. Also, the brochure is not just about war but also about other crises. Sweden can experience 'interesting' weather which can leave people out of reach of rescue services for a while so 'be prepared' is just good advice.
Nitpick: I get your point, but phrasing it like this is basically the gambler's fallacy. That's not how probability works.
You could ask though if, given the changed environment, the one-in-a-million event still has the odds of one-in-a-million. Or if one-in-a-million is really such a rare thing if you make a billion draws...
a one-in-a-million event that is tried a million times has a ~63% chance of happening.
Why are they not scholarized? What are they doing in the wild? There's an infestation and it is mentioned marginally, as opposed to red-level crisis?!
> while they are distracted
They should be trained towards the conditions for focus pre-emptively!
(The author is left as an exercise for the reader)
It's like the Finnish defense forces. Their training exercises have the OPFOR, the imaginary opposing force usually designated with the color yellow for the sake of the exercise, approaching from the East. Funny that, wonder why.
[1] https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_kriget_kommer
Oh ye, the outlawing of losing wars. Not very convincing for adults but I guess teenagers think it sounds cool.
https://rib.msb.se/filer/pdf/30874.pdf
I don't think it is a good idea to give the soldiers the impression that they will fight to the last man, since that encourages killing their officers at an earlier stage than they would otherwise. Preferably, you want to lure with some peace agreement that is just around the corner, such that the soldiers believe that there is hope for them.
If Sweden ever were to surrender in war it will most likely be broadcast by the prime minister and/or the king/queen (Sweden is a constitutional monarchy). Until such a time and until such a message is confirmed we'll just assume that Sweden has not surrendered.
I think you are confusing Sweden with some other country.
Of course if pushes come to shove the reality is not black and white, no need to be an asshole about it because every adult understands that, quite juvenile of you to think they don't. Guess your kind of rhetoric earn points with the teens, no?
I am sorry. I agree most people 'get it'. The point I am trying to make is that those who don't 'get it' are a big problem if you have nifty slogans like that. Also in a non-total war setting.
> Guess your kind of rhetoric earn points with the teens, no?
I honestly believe that my rhetoric would score very low amongst teens.
- p.v. with storage means freezers operational, and freezers means food, protein in particular, for potentially very long periods
- even without p.v. a home in the wood means being able to heat in the winter sourcing wood in nature, uncomfortable but still heat, also usable to cook
- you have room to store water, from the aqueduct with a personal pump in home pipes, so with p.v. you get cold and hot water, potentially for a week or two, and in nature sources tend to be common at our latitudes
In an apartment in a dense city you can just keep a bit of water, but still much less than the countryside, next to zero chance for p.v. and energy storage, very limited chance to source water in nature, even issues to walk for many stairs if elevators have no energy. Long story short: you can't be resilient. Oh, and you might be targeted because hitting a city it's easy and some damages are assured, hitting the countryside is essentially wasting weapons. Remember as well: with wood you can cook various long lasting foods, like rice, beans, ... without wood or locally produced energy your cooking ability going down to zero.
Floods? Spread homes might be or not at risk, but they are still spread, meaning few per flooded are, so rescuing it's doable as temporary shelters, emergency food supply etc. Dense areas? The same in risk terms, but extremely hard to help simply because there are too many people hit together.
Earthquakes? Very similar, plus the fact that light homes tend to allow quick escape, tall buildings do not, and even if they might be well designed in seismic terms they are still very problematic. Fires? idem.
Long story short: it's pointless to publish such next-to-obvious recommendations, some could do something, many could not.
Beside in spread area you have friends as well as in city, but there we are all collaborative even when we do not like each other much because we are few, in cities we are strangers in the crowd.
If you're referring to those being important in a major disaster, I'd disagree. Any major disruption can knock out celular networks and in a war they'd be deliberately targeted.
Instead, your best bet would be a predetermined plan for how to get in contact with loved ones if the comms and electrical grids collapse (where to meet, when, and where to leave notes possibly).
As for cars, maybe in certain scenarios, such as having an offroad vehicle stored in some isolated place that you can reach, but if an earthquake, flood, war or some other disaster suddenly strikes, roads will be one of its major victims, rapidly being damaged and in any case clogged with heavy traffic. A car of any kind inside a city would probably be next to useless after a serious disaster.
Instead, you would be better off with a few motorbikes/dirt bikes, or even better, bicycles safely and carefully stored against possible theft. Having these for your family, and possibly some kind of compact cart that can be hitched up for pulling supplies or anyone who simply cant ride their own bike would be much more flexible and usable no matter how badly your region's transport infrastructure is devastated. Bikes (motorized or manual) can cover nearly any terrain and don't need roads if they're even minimally built for off-roading.
It is not pointless to publish recommendations because it makes people consider the possibility of regular facilities not being available. While city dwellers may not be able to keep more than a week's worth of supplies before they need resupply or evacuation that makes them more prepared for such eventualities than those who think they will always be able to use their mobile devices to order from the plethora of restaurants their city offers. It can make the difference between organised chaos and disordered mayhem if that war or crisis were to occur.
Be Prepared! is not just the boy scouts of old motto - no idea what the modern watered-down version of that institution professes - but also just a good idea. It does not mean you need to become a prepper but it does point out the need for some self-reliance because that whole fragile house of cards which is the service economy may just come tumbling down some day.
Don't start it, in the first place. Not having an agressive stance also helps. /s