ProudestMonkey

Seriously? Research?

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Ilan Bouchard

Military history has proven that only superior strategy trumps superior technology. When two opponents with equal strategy face each other, the one with superior technology always wins.

As Hodge said, machines are already being implemented into warfare to save lives and costs. (The U.S. Army's slogan for a short while was "working every day to unman the front lines," whilst showing off their remote-controlled tanks and planes.)

Instead of breeding these humans to be soldiers, why not breed them to be engineers? An engineer can produce far more destruction than a jarhead.

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Hodge

Doesn't really matter, considering it's going to take far too much time to be useful either way.

Yes, and we'd have done so much better in all those conflicts if we hadn't had helicopters, tanks, artillery, and other machines to help us out.

I bow to your infinite wisdom—truly, the fighting styles involving karate and swords displayed in anime is the way of the future!

What shitty logic. Learn to argue, please. By your logic, antibiotics must also be useless because people still die from disease. Here's a little secret about the real world: it's not black and white. Shocking, I know, but if you get rid of that immature all or nothing mentality, you might actually learn a thingor two about it.

Right. If you had actual experience you'd know the role of machines in combat and wouldn't go off spouting incredibly stupid statements like the one I previously quoted. My guess is you're yet another irritating teenager posing as a 58 year old "criminal" in order to make your words carry more weight.

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Science

lin

Uh, oh, you got me thinking here. Big mistake.
I don't normally like to lay plot material on people, but you're here just asking for it, right?

So far we haven't a seen a state get into wholesale eugenic breeding. Hitler talked it a little, but didn't really breed people. Even Peking hasn't come up with the balls for telling people who to screw. (There are rumors about N. Korea, but who knows?) The only place I have ever seen anybody telling people who to marry and who to breed with is religious cults. I'm thinking of the Children and God and Love Family, but how about Moonies?

OK, now. People started talking about ideological war during the mid-cold war, the late fifties. But face it, that was mostly about property and economics, like wars had been since the feudal times. But NOW?!?!?! We are actually seeing ideological war (thanks to your tax dollars and grant from Halliburton) in which waves of kids are sent blindly out to kill and die.

(At risk of citing movies again, "Blood Diamonds" has a chilllingly accurate, realistic portrayal of what these child armies are like, by the way: so now stir in a little fatwah and wild-eyed religious fervor and voila. And in some of these conflicts they're several generations deep into reproducing, so like I said it can take care of it's own expenses and logistics.)

So you could have a religious cult that promotes selective breeding that is rewarded in paradise as well as on earth, competitions and sort of violent bar mitzvahs for the kiddos, the aim being to spread the word among, as usual, the heathens.

And you might have something kind of cool. Sort of ripped from today's headlines.

Good luck

lin

You grasp what I said...but not what I'm saying. Yeah, we would have done better in Nam and Somalia without the fancy ordinance. But I'm not going to continue this. You have no idea what you're talking about. Sorry, no blame. Everybody grows up in different worlds.

lin

Oh GOD, how I wish that were so.

Hodge

Oh, of course! Because it's not like it was a war of attrition and we only lost because we weren't willing to continue killing for what amounted to little more than ideology. Oh no, we lost because we just had too much technology!

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Science

lin

An oversimplification. But also a zort of koan.

Guess you had to be there. Read the part about the mechanical obsession of Americans leading them into human error again. Then read a few newspapers. Then think about awhile.


In answer to one of your previous questions, by the way, which was "what happens when you're soldier when a machine kills him, I'd pose another question: What happens to your machine when some kid destroys it?

Look, go ahead and stroke yourself on this one. You're out of your depth and I'm not going to continue screwing around with you. The whole plot thing that started the thread is more interesting. Perhaps you could turn your mind to that.

Actually try that thinking awhile thing, though. Seriously. We can see the little time things here and know if you took any time to think it over. (Well, actually, you can tell without that)

Look back at your posts and try to figure out what the hell you're doing here. You aren't discussing something, you're ranting. You don't like somebody disagreeing so you cast around frantically and accuse them of lying about their age when they joined the forum so they could sneakily win this obscure ego-battle with you. Does that makes sense?

No. It doesn't. Have you got anything to say about this guy's story?

Hodge

Producing a gun is oh so hard that it's entirely feasible that some kid would destroy them all! Right. If you're in a position to destroy a gun or a tank or a helicopter, then you're also most likely in a position to kill the people who operate them. And if you're not, then you've just used time, effort, and resources to destroy something that can be rebuilt rather than people who can not be.

You don't know what you're talking about. The Vietnam war ended with the U.S. having lost about 60,000 soldiers after having over a million Vietnamese. Again, that was a war of attrition. We pulled out not because we didn't have the ability to take out the enemy, but because the American public could not see any real point in killing so many people for a cause that was dubious at best.

But go ahead. Keep arguing that our technology was worse than useless and actually caused us to lose. I'm sure if we all rushed in with samurai swords we would have won, because those darn kids would have had a hard time sneaking into our bases and breaking our swords!

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Science

archer88iv

Try not to insult the entire country at once, Iin; I'm American too, after all.

More on topic, there actually have been examples of this sort of selection in armed forces of the past. Romans had a height limit for soldiers in their legions. As for why some computer nerd couldn't conceivably blow them away, I ask: Why couldn't they simply shoot back?

There is a certain assumption of technological prowess involved in arguing that robots will replace living creatures on the battlefield--an assumption that, as an onlooker rather than the author, you cannot afford to make. Perhaps these societies lack the industrial base or simply the know-how? And yet mankind was breeding animals back in the stone age.

In the end, I'm going to have to ask why you feel it's appropriate to argue about the validity of a concept when one of your fellow writers has simply asked for assistance with the execution thereof.

...speaking of which, we can call that my suggestion for the time being. Create a world in which, for reasons either economic, political, religious, or hokuspokus, living flesh is a more effective choice. It's not hard to come up with an excuse.

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lin

All good points. Sparta, by the way, made the Roman selection process look like a Sweet Sixteen. As seen in "300" along with some cool visuals and a fairly warped history.

I'd say we are living in such a world (or did you notice) but you're right. A good example is in Dune, where the shields people wore made firearms useless, but knifes effective.

Creator

Whoa! So there is a certain issue about "farming people"

Well in Alpha Omega, the so-called good people which are of course the ones that spread genetic discrimination are about to do "genetic cleansing" of the real good guys[those who are victims of genetic discrimination]. However they used humans in machinery to attack them but the machines were easily picked off my highly skilled Angels. I won't tell you what kind of skill is that....

But then in Epsidoe 2, they decided to use the "Drones", they are farmed combat effective humans anyway, starting the WW3, or the Gene Wars.

The Drones are like Spartan except they are very obedient[they were breed this way] compared to their "older generations" or "ancestors"

and of course it may take some time to grow them, but genetic engineers can come into play!

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Archduke Robert of France

Watch GATTACA if you want to see genetic discrimination. They wouldn't let the naturally-born kid into school becuase they were afriad he's cut himselfm get an infection and die and that the parents would sue the school.

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Shawn

Ha! Looking at the budget, I'd say the slogan is:

"Working every day to unarm the front lines."

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Mike C

Late in the discussion but here we go:

There's no need to farm or genetically modify humans to make soldiers of them. We've spent the last million (or 5000 if you're a creationist) years evolving into the nastiest killing machines going.

Superior technology doesn't always win out. It's only any good against a traditional army, which is why the Iraqi war was 'won' so quickly - it's easy to dismantle an inferior conventional force. However, All the technology is no guard against car bombs and suicide bombers. Iraq is the first war in history where the victors have lost more troops after winning the war than during it.

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