On the Africa situation I just had an interesting realization. It's natural selection in action. Environment can't support that huge amounts of people, so nature fixes it itself, leaving the strongest individuals alive.
If I were a betting man, my money would be on Ryo.
It'll be at least another 20-30 years before we see signs of other nations catching up to the U.S. in terms of military technology. It's feasible though, especially on the Russian side. Remember that even our allies are several decades behind us in theory, not to mention application. Russia, again, is another story.
If China's economy takes off like it is looking that it might, Russian tech will flow quite easily over the border.
The problem with China's military is its size, or rather the size of infantry. It takes a lot to move a force like that, and the U.S. probably couldn't even do it. That leaves them very strong on defense and border skirmishes, but not so good on a sustained and distant conflict. Another problem is food. It would be a dirty tactic I know, but if one were inclined to bomb two or three dams a good chunk of the Chinese military and population would starve.
They have the muscle for sure, but muscle doesn't mean much with the advances in area denial weapons and artillery. But if they had Russian artillery......
Russia is already gearing up for major weapons sales. They just produced a new factory to churn out Hind and Jordanian upgrades to their T-90 tank (turret and autoloader assembly mostly) look curiously in form like a lighter version of the M1A1.
Not sure about the megaton bomb in New York, unless we stop lookin' or shielding technology gets a lot better. The jump from fissile to fusion weapons, although documented quite well, is not an easy one and requires a bit of infrastructure.
<!--QuoteBegin--Zel+Sep 18 2003, 05:58 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Zel @ Sep 18 2003, 05:58 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> its a sick thought but what else are you gonna do with an overpopulated planet. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> I have a great idea for population control. It is brilliant! We can cook newborns. Think about it, we take a newborn, cook it, and serve it to many people and keep them fed, while it is one less person growing! It is the best population control idea.
I hope you realize that was sarcasm (and also a reference to a wonderful piece of literature history.. two points if you can name it).
The annual Fortune brainstorm conference had a question posed to members: What will be the superpower in 2020? 30? 50?
Most of the answers (and these are the the supposedly best thinkers) were that the U.S. would be a big power until 2020 but starts to phase out. Thats when China kicks in.
Think about it - China has everything going for it - Military, economy and even humanitarianly. Those of you who still call China communist are fools - Its only "officially" communist - its been evolving into a mega-complex ultra urban super TURBO society. whatever.
Africa: By 2014 Africa was facing a medical crisis that was approaching plague proportions. The AIDs virus had continued it's rampant spread throughout the continent to the point where entire countries were infected. 2014 saw a virilant form of influenza arrive in South Africa via an airline passanger from Russia. To most of the world, the disease was a minor annoyance. For Africa's AIDs weakened population, it was devestating.
Between 2014 and 2016 seven eighths of Africa's population was wiped out; over 875,000,000 people. Most of the African states simply ceased to exist. Only one state, Egypt, was able to emerge from the slaughter. Images of abandoned cities, some slowly burning down, others the scenes of lawless rioting and looting, remain potent today. Refugees swarmed north from the diseased sub-Saharan zones but found only starvation in the north, with no refuge from the plague. Egypt survived by draconian measures including the shooting of anyone attempting to cross their borders. Almost total anarchy ruled Africa for all of 2015 and 2016, and even today the remaining communities attest that the vast majority of Africa's land remains uninhabited and lawless, with a few corperate mines and oilwells the only signs of civilisation.
The remaining survivors, concentrated in the Niger river basin in West Africa and surprisingly inside South Africa itself, tried slowly to restore some resemblance of order to their societies. A successful AIDs vaccine, developed in 2021, was flown into the remaining pockets of human population by UN aircraft. This could not help many of the survivors who remained HIV positive, but it did give some communities hope. Regional governments were created under UN supervision that aimed to simply provide adequate food at first. The Republic of Niger, the South African Federation and Egypt are the 3 remaining political entities left in the Africa of today. Together they lay claim to only 13% of Africa's total landmass. The remainder is under UN control, and the organisation leases out sections of the abandoned lands to various corperations. The money gained from such leases has given the UN much needed funding.
The effects of the African Plague hit global economies as well. Major corperations were forced to move centers of manufacturing elsewhere, many chosing China. Others decided to remain in Africa, moving their operations to the Niger basin or Southern Africa where they were able to find ample supplies of workers. A few companies have taken to establishing small outposts in the UN controlled outback regions, and whilst some have met with commerical success, others have vanished without a trace.
Today Africa's remaining population has, in many ways, a brighter future than their ansestors of 50 years ago. Food is no longer a problem and almost total employment has lead to wealthy and healthy societies. This does not mean that Africa is a world leader economically, but it is slowly growing. The challange for the leaders of Africa today is to ensure that their new populations never again face the problems their forefathers faced.
South East Asia: Africa however was not alone in their struggle with AIDs. In Thailand, the influenza virus hit the country hard in 2014. Large sections of Indonesia, India and Malaysia were also affected. The plague was not as devestating as in Africa however. Whilst Thailand was the worst hit, with 27% of it's total population dying between 2014 and 2016, the rest of South East Asia emerged from the crisis fairly intact. China simply closed it's borders during the epidemic and continued it's vigerous policy to eradicate AIDs within it's own country.
By 2021, with the AIDs vaccine now availible, the threat of AIDs in South East Asia had largely passed. However, whereas the plague in Africa had, although in a nightmarish fasion, solved the problems of food supply and overpopulation, in India and Indonesia the problem became worse. Immigration to Australia increased from 2003 to 2024 when Australia, with a population of 32 million, finally announced that the country could support no more immigration. Immigration focus switched to the United States and China, but both countries were soon finding it hard to cope with the influx. The eventual adoption of a Chinese style "one child policy" in Indonesia helped ease the problem, but for India it's population continued to grow, reaching 1.5 billion by 2030.
The India-Pakistan conflict of 2031 was in many ways a response to India's population problems. The government was becoming increasingly desperate for a solution, yet religion and culture both inhibited the spread of contraceptives and small family policies. A bad harvest in 2030, caused mainly by El Nino effects but also by increasing pollution from China and India, placed millions of Indians in threat of starvation. Hordes of Indians tried to cross the border into Pakistan, where the situation was little better. Pakistan responded by closing it's border with India, but more Indians continued to try and cross. On May 14th 2031 a Pakistani captain, faced with a crowd over over 13,000 Indians, panicked when a shot was fired. His nervous troops fired into the crowd on his order. Machine guns and tank shells tore into the unprotected refugees, killing or maining over 2,000 of them.
India was furious over the incident and demanded an immediate apology along with thousands of tonnes of grain as "compensation". Pakistan refused outright, instead calling on India to control their own people. The Indian response was to bombard the border post at the site of the massacre with artillery. Pakistan responded with an air strike in Kashmir against an Indian air base. India then mobilised it's armed forces and began to move its' forces on the border against Pakistani positions. Two massive battles resulted, with each side taking casualities in excess of 50,000 men. By the end of May, India and Pakistan were locked into a war that had been brewing for decades.
Despite international pressure to end the conflict immediataly, neither side was willing to co-operate. Both India and Pakistan had eagerly bought up Russian military hardware in previous years and as such they were fairly evenly matched. After an intial Indian charge that penetrated 50 kilometers into Pakistani territory, the battles stagnated. What neither side was able to do was break the defensive fortifications of the other. Russian SAM systems had advanced to the point where virtually any aircraft could be targetted and destroyed, and as such the skies over the India-Pakistani armies cleared after a few weeks. Tanks, even the massive Russian T-128s could be easily defeated by computer guided anti-armor artillery shells, such as the Chinese Sky-Fire system that showered the battlefield in thousands of depleated uranium rockets that homed in on upper tank armor. Anti-tank weapons for infantry had also greatly advanced, including the RPG-45 fire-and-forget missile that packed a fuel explosive warhead. The result of such weaponry was a gigantic version of the First World War fought with 21st century technology. However, unlike the First World War each side in the India-Pakistan conflict possessed the means to break the stalemate. For the watching world, it became a question of which side would use their nuclear arms first.
What eventuated was not however the apocalyptic scenario that the world had expected, but it came very close. On Augest 23rd 2031 US satellites detected major activity at the main Indian nuclear missile silos. Analysis of the images showed conclusive proof that India was fueling and arming it's ballistic missiles. The US administration, whilst technically neutral in the conflict, did not want an atomic exchange on the Indian subcontinent. The US ambassador to India relayed a message to the Indian government indicating that they would be very displeased with a nuclear attack on Pakistan. The Indian government replied that it would use it's own weapons how it wished. When the US heard this, the administration made a decision that ended up saving countless millions of lives.
At 2:17am, August 27th, the Indian Prime Minister was woken to be informed that an "unknown attacker" had completly devestated India's nuclear arsonal. Repeated radar sweeps of the skies could find no trace of the attackers, nor could any sign of a ground force be located. Incredulous, the Indian government was then even more surprised when one of its' satallites showed that Pakistan's silos and storage bunkers had also been destroyed. Stunned, both governments paused for a few days to reassess their situation. On August 31st the Indian Prime Minister sent a request for a cease fire to the Pakistani Premier. It was immediatly accepted. Over the following weeks each side withdrew their forces back to pre-war positions and an uneasy peace settled over the two countries. There was a sence on both sides of knowing just how close they had come to total annihilation.
To today, India and Pakistan have remained at peace. Neither side has rebuilt their nuclear weapons, and under a treaty due to be signed later this year neither side will ever again possess them. The war's human costs were, for the scale of the conflict, fairly low: India's total casualties were around 349,000 whilst Pakistan suffered over 197,000 dead or wounded. Apart from the actual sites of the conflict both countries remained mainly intact, due in most part to the lack of major air activity. India still faces problems with it's massive population, but it is slowly solving itself. Advances in crop genetics in particular have yeilded greater crops yeilds per square metre, and this has gone a long way to solving India, and to a lesser extent China's population levels.
And I don't really know much about South America so this ends here <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> Thanks for the good feedback guys <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> Wow you should try to get that stuff published in some magazine it's good. Very good.
Ryo-Ohki: wonderful prose. I agree with ElectricSheep, you really should consider getting your stuff published.
elchinesetourist: what other games would you recommend out of the "oldies" section ? I'm interested because ss2 (along with deus ex and syndicate wars ) is one of my favourite games. I haven't tried fallout yet so I may give it a go.
Comments
<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
It'll be at least another 20-30 years before we see signs of other nations catching up to the U.S. in terms of military technology. It's feasible though, especially on the Russian side. Remember that even our allies are several decades behind us in theory, not to mention application. Russia, again, is another story.
If China's economy takes off like it is looking that it might, Russian tech will flow quite easily over the border.
The problem with China's military is its size, or rather the size of infantry. It takes a lot to move a force like that, and the U.S. probably couldn't even do it. That leaves them very strong on defense and border skirmishes, but not so good on a sustained and distant conflict. Another problem is food. It would be a dirty tactic I know, but if one were inclined to bomb two or three dams a good chunk of the Chinese military and population would starve.
They have the muscle for sure, but muscle doesn't mean much with the advances in area denial weapons and artillery. But if they had Russian artillery......
Russia is already gearing up for major weapons sales. They just produced a new factory to churn out Hind and Jordanian upgrades to their T-90 tank (turret and autoloader assembly mostly) look curiously in form like a lighter version of the M1A1.
Not sure about the megaton bomb in New York, unless we stop lookin' or shielding technology gets a lot better. The jump from fissile to fusion weapons, although documented quite well, is not an easy one and requires a bit of infrastructure.
I have a great idea for population control. It is brilliant! We can cook newborns. Think about it, we take a newborn, cook it, and serve it to many people and keep them fed, while it is one less person growing! It is the best population control idea.
I hope you realize that was sarcasm (and also a reference to a wonderful piece of literature history.. two points if you can name it).
Most of the answers (and these are the the supposedly best thinkers) were that the U.S. would be a big power until 2020 but starts to phase out. Thats when China kicks in.
Think about it - China has everything going for it - Military, economy and even humanitarianly. Those of you who still call China communist are fools - Its only "officially" communist - its been evolving into a mega-complex ultra urban super TURBO society. whatever.
Africa: By 2014 Africa was facing a medical crisis that was approaching plague proportions. The AIDs virus had continued it's rampant spread throughout the continent to the point where entire countries were infected. 2014 saw a virilant form of influenza arrive in South Africa via an airline passanger from Russia. To most of the world, the disease was a minor annoyance. For Africa's AIDs weakened population, it was devestating.
Between 2014 and 2016 seven eighths of Africa's population was wiped out; over 875,000,000 people. Most of the African states simply ceased to exist. Only one state, Egypt, was able to emerge from the slaughter. Images of abandoned cities, some slowly burning down, others the scenes of lawless rioting and looting, remain potent today. Refugees swarmed north from the diseased sub-Saharan zones but found only starvation in the north, with no refuge from the plague. Egypt survived by draconian measures including the shooting of anyone attempting to cross their borders. Almost total anarchy ruled Africa for all of 2015 and 2016, and even today the remaining communities attest that the vast majority of Africa's land remains uninhabited and lawless, with a few corperate mines and oilwells the only signs of civilisation.
The remaining survivors, concentrated in the Niger river basin in West Africa and surprisingly inside South Africa itself, tried slowly to restore some resemblance of order to their societies. A successful AIDs vaccine, developed in 2021, was flown into the remaining pockets of human population by UN aircraft. This could not help many of the survivors who remained HIV positive, but it did give some communities hope. Regional governments were created under UN supervision that aimed to simply provide adequate food at first. The Republic of Niger, the South African Federation and Egypt are the 3 remaining political entities left in the Africa of today. Together they lay claim to only 13% of Africa's total landmass. The remainder is under UN control, and the organisation leases out sections of the abandoned lands to various corperations. The money gained from such leases has given the UN much needed funding.
The effects of the African Plague hit global economies as well. Major corperations were forced to move centers of manufacturing elsewhere, many chosing China. Others decided to remain in Africa, moving their operations to the Niger basin or Southern Africa where they were able to find ample supplies of workers. A few companies have taken to establishing small outposts in the UN controlled outback regions, and whilst some have met with commerical success, others have vanished without a trace.
Today Africa's remaining population has, in many ways, a brighter future than their ansestors of 50 years ago. Food is no longer a problem and almost total employment has lead to wealthy and healthy societies. This does not mean that Africa is a world leader economically, but it is slowly growing. The challange for the leaders of Africa today is to ensure that their new populations never again face the problems their forefathers faced.
South East Asia: Africa however was not alone in their struggle with AIDs. In Thailand, the influenza virus hit the country hard in 2014. Large sections of Indonesia, India and Malaysia were also affected. The plague was not as devestating as in Africa however. Whilst Thailand was the worst hit, with 27% of it's total population dying between 2014 and 2016, the rest of South East Asia emerged from the crisis fairly intact. China simply closed it's borders during the epidemic and continued it's vigerous policy to eradicate AIDs within it's own country.
By 2021, with the AIDs vaccine now availible, the threat of AIDs in South East Asia had largely passed. However, whereas the plague in Africa had, although in a nightmarish fasion, solved the problems of food supply and overpopulation, in India and Indonesia the problem became worse. Immigration to Australia increased from 2003 to 2024 when Australia, with a population of 32 million, finally announced that the country could support no more immigration. Immigration focus switched to the United States and China, but both countries were soon finding it hard to cope with the influx. The eventual adoption of a Chinese style "one child policy" in Indonesia helped ease the problem, but for India it's population continued to grow, reaching 1.5 billion by 2030.
The India-Pakistan conflict of 2031 was in many ways a response to India's population problems. The government was becoming increasingly desperate for a solution, yet religion and culture both inhibited the spread of contraceptives and small family policies. A bad harvest in 2030, caused mainly by El Nino effects but also by increasing pollution from China and India, placed millions of Indians in threat of starvation. Hordes of Indians tried to cross the border into Pakistan, where the situation was little better. Pakistan responded by closing it's border with India, but more Indians continued to try and cross. On May 14th 2031 a Pakistani captain, faced with a crowd over over 13,000 Indians, panicked when a shot was fired. His nervous troops fired into the crowd on his order. Machine guns and tank shells tore into the unprotected refugees, killing or maining over 2,000 of them.
India was furious over the incident and demanded an immediate apology along with thousands of tonnes of grain as "compensation". Pakistan refused outright, instead calling on India to control their own people. The Indian response was to bombard the border post at the site of the massacre with artillery. Pakistan responded with an air strike in Kashmir against an Indian air base. India then mobilised it's armed forces and began to move its' forces on the border against Pakistani positions. Two massive battles resulted, with each side taking casualities in excess of 50,000 men. By the end of May, India and Pakistan were locked into a war that had been brewing for decades.
Despite international pressure to end the conflict immediataly, neither side was willing to co-operate. Both India and Pakistan had eagerly bought up Russian military hardware in previous years and as such they were fairly evenly matched. After an intial Indian charge that penetrated 50 kilometers into Pakistani territory, the battles stagnated. What neither side was able to do was break the defensive fortifications of the other. Russian SAM systems had advanced to the point where virtually any aircraft could be targetted and destroyed, and as such the skies over the India-Pakistani armies cleared after a few weeks. Tanks, even the massive Russian T-128s could be easily defeated by computer guided anti-armor artillery shells, such as the Chinese Sky-Fire system that showered the battlefield in thousands of depleated uranium rockets that homed in on upper tank armor. Anti-tank weapons for infantry had also greatly advanced, including the RPG-45 fire-and-forget missile that packed a fuel explosive warhead. The result of such weaponry was a gigantic version of the First World War fought with 21st century technology. However, unlike the First World War each side in the India-Pakistan conflict possessed the means to break the stalemate. For the watching world, it became a question of which side would use their nuclear arms first.
What eventuated was not however the apocalyptic scenario that the world had expected, but it came very close. On Augest 23rd 2031 US satellites detected major activity at the main Indian nuclear missile silos. Analysis of the images showed conclusive proof that India was fueling and arming it's ballistic missiles. The US administration, whilst technically neutral in the conflict, did not want an atomic exchange on the Indian subcontinent. The US ambassador to India relayed a message to the Indian government indicating that they would be very displeased with a nuclear attack on Pakistan. The Indian government replied that it would use it's own weapons how it wished. When the US heard this, the administration made a decision that ended up saving countless millions of lives.
At 2:17am, August 27th, the Indian Prime Minister was woken to be informed that an "unknown attacker" had completly devestated India's nuclear arsonal. Repeated radar sweeps of the skies could find no trace of the attackers, nor could any sign of a ground force be located. Incredulous, the Indian government was then even more surprised when one of its' satallites showed that Pakistan's silos and storage bunkers had also been destroyed. Stunned, both governments paused for a few days to reassess their situation. On August 31st the Indian Prime Minister sent a request for a cease fire to the Pakistani Premier. It was immediatly accepted. Over the following weeks each side withdrew their forces back to pre-war positions and an uneasy peace settled over the two countries. There was a sence on both sides of knowing just how close they had come to total annihilation.
To today, India and Pakistan have remained at peace. Neither side has rebuilt their nuclear weapons, and under a treaty due to be signed later this year neither side will ever again possess them. The war's human costs were, for the scale of the conflict, fairly low: India's total casualties were around 349,000 whilst Pakistan suffered over 197,000 dead or wounded. Apart from the actual sites of the conflict both countries remained mainly intact, due in most part to the lack of major air activity. India still faces problems with it's massive population, but it is slowly solving itself. Advances in crop genetics in particular have yeilded greater crops yeilds per square metre, and this has gone a long way to solving India, and to a lesser extent China's population levels.
And I don't really know much about South America so this ends here <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> Thanks for the good feedback guys <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Wow you should try to get that stuff published in some magazine it's good. Very good.
elchinesetourist: what other games would you recommend out of the "oldies" section ? I'm interested because ss2 (along with deus ex and syndicate wars ) is one of my favourite games. I haven't tried fallout yet so I may give it a go.
[Cult]Creep.