Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

[Blade]

The government rarely needs to cover it up completely. They just need to make sure that the official version is convincing enough and that it's hard to prove the true version until it's too late.

You can have people publishing books about what really happens, you don't even need to do anything to prevent this, as long as you can just state that it's not true and have nobody be able to prove you wrong without a doubt.

The NSA mass-surveillance was something that many people suspected, but until Snowden it wasn't official. Many people said that the US intel about Irak MDW was bogus, but nobody could completely prove them wrong...

[RobbyPants]

Or is there really no practical metric by which we can know how well the government manages to cover shit up or otherwise keep big things secret?

All I know of is individual stories, but without any number of successful cover-ups to measure that against, it's hard to tell how effective they are. Are we learning about most of them or just a handful of them?

Side note: I just learned yesterday that some poor old guy stumbled upon the Manhattan Project, and apparently they were going to draft him to cover it up. I'm not sure if the goal was "get him killed in service" or "keep him away from the press". Either way, the dude was 60, so that didn't work.

[deaddmwalking]

I read that Cracked article, too. I happen to live near Oak Ridge TN (the Secret City where Uranium was refined for use in the Manhattan Project). It was a massive project and it really couldn't be a real secret but the government successfully disguised the PURPOSE of the project. It was officially an Army Corps of Engineers Training Base, so it kind of made sense to be putting up a bunch of buildings, but the sheer scale of the project made it impossible to hide.

Obviously the government has some non-zero number of secrets, a number of which have been released even though they had sought to prevent that. Since we can't know how many secrets remain undisclosed we can't really know how effective the government is at keeping these things truly secret.

From those that we do know about, we can make some extrapolations. Firstly, it seems that projects that involve a large segment of the public tend to come out eventually. Secrets that involve an individual come out much more rarely (identity of a American Spy, for instance). Lots of secrets from the American People are known by people in power - especially through the power of the purse. Secret projects need to be funded and outside of Men in Black the government doesn't have secret sources of revenue, so in the accounting, most of those things are found out. Generally, these secrets remain secret because most people trusted to know them are in agreement that they should be kept secret. Development of weapons usually falls into this category - they're known but not largely, and they're generally kept under wraps until the weapon is complete and released to the public.

So basically they're good at keeping secrets that most people are okay not finding out about, and not as good at keeping secrets that you'd feel a moral imperative to share with a wider audience (whistle-blowing).

[Chamomile]

So, aliens show up and annex Earth. But they're pretty chill about it and for the most part don't really care what we do on our planet, they just need a shipyard in Earth orbit for strategic reasons. Terraforming is really expensive and having an already habitable planet to build a shipyard in orbit of is very handy. So Earth orbit is now patrolled by a small battlefleet of alien cruisers who only care about our politics insofar as they want to make sure we don't completely destroy the planet. A handful of environmental reforms are forced through under threat of orbital bombardment and they promise to side against anyone deploying WMDs of the sort that might threaten the planet's overall habitability if used on a massive enough scale, or of the sort that might threaten to end human civilization altogether, since they don't want to be stuck cleaning up our potentially habitability-threatening messes after we're all dead (even if mother nature will sort out those messes on her own in a few million years, the aliens would really rather have their shipyard over a habitable world now and not a few million years in the future).

With MAD off the table, war between major powers is presumably back on the table. How does this affect international politics? If WW3 breaks out, what's it going to look like politically as well as tactically? What does a battle between, say, Russia and the EU look like? How much will things have changed since WW2 once you factor out nuclear weapons?

[angelfromanotherpin]

I can't really comment on what an all-out conventional war would look like in the 21st century, but I'm not sure that MAD is off the table at that point. Just because the stealth bombers and ICBMs and such don't have nuclear payloads doesn't mean they won't still ruin your day and also country.

[Eikre]

No. Conventional weapons can level as many Hiroshimas as you want, but nukes can annihilate the human species. We didn't always understand it this way, but the modern consensus is that even the fraction of the world's nuclear battery which could be feasibly employed in a projected pre-emptive/second-strike trade would be enough to leave our ecosphere completely devastated. Planet earth would not remain habitable. This isn't an eventuality that you could reach with firebombs.

WW2 was the impetus for vast revisions of combat doctrine and notable leaps in military technology. In some sense, you could say that there hasn't really been very much new put on the table since then, but there are plenty of innovations from that period that were nonetheless introduced too late, too little, or too unevenly to have really been fully realized in that period. WW3 would not be a repeat, in the material sense.

People are probably going to stand by squad infantry tactics and combined arms. But ICMBs, computers, satellites, and nuclear subs mean that you can deliver a surgical strike to anywhere, from anywhere. Those systems were developed for nukes, where the necessity for strict accuracy is low and the return on a single munition is very, very high, so if you can't rely on that payload then it is likely not economical to try to level Dresden from a hemisphere away. If, however, you just want to make a weapon that can level the White House while the triggerman remains in the comfort of your Siberian launch facility, you can very likely just do that. So, while you would probably have excellent results with a clone army of John Basilones, the seventy years of development since his death will warp some of the expectations you can reasonably have about higher-value targets.

Aircraft carriers, for example, are an interesting study; everyone understands that they've displace battleships as the firmament of a shooting navy, but as nice as they are for parking off coast and harassing developing nations, it's actually pretty likely that real world powers could furnish sufficient imposition with stealth subs or autonomous land-to-high-seas weapons to make the floating concentration of 6,000 souls a pretty moronic practice. So does that just mean that you distribute back to bunch of tinier ships and build a cloud of defensive firepower? Or does it mean that the high seas are just terrifically vulnerable and people start getting antsy to put a chunnel through the Bering Strait?

[hyzmarca]

With MAD off the table, war between major powers is presumably back on the table. How does this affect international politics? If WW3 breaks out, what's it going to look like politically as well as tactically? What does a battle between, say, Russia and the EU look like? How much will things have changed since WW2 once you factor out nuclear weapons?

It doesn't. MAD hasn't been the primary deterrent against war between the major powers since the 80s. Now days, the deterrent is economic interconnectedness. That, and everyone still remembers World War II, which was the primary deterrent in the late 40s and early 50s. Basically, if World War III breaks out, everybody loses. No one wants to start it, so no one will.

[name_here]

ICBMS can be off target by miles, actually. They're not good for destroying a particular target with a weapon that needs to land in the same city block. I'm also dubious people would stop using aircraft carriers; firstly you just outright need a big ship if you want to launch big planes from somewhere in the ocean and that looks to be basically mandatory for an intercontinental invasion against someone with land-based aircraft, and secondly carriers are also good for launching sub-hunting planes, radar planes to spot for Aegis ships, and various other things you want in your cloud of defensive firepower. The countries which have carriers will make them the centerpiece of their fleets and deploy them with heavy escort fleets.

But honestly the naval side is "US and teammates win". The US military is generally on top overall, and Russia and China don't focus on their navy very much. The US has 11 of the world's 22 carriers, 22 of its 28 cruisers, and 74 of its 149 nuclear subs. Russia has one carrier, six cruisers, and 49 nuclear subs, China has one carrier and 9 nuclear subs. There's a reason the USN's primary budget concern is wanting more small ships for pirate hunting.

[Chamomile]

Now days, the deterrent is economic interconnectedness.

This is an effective deterrent for the US and China, certainly, but is it really universally effective? Wars are almost always done in five years even when they're catastrophically large, are all modern nations so interconnected that they don't have one worthwhile target whose trade they could do without for the duration of a war?

[name_here]

I honestly doubt economic interconnectedness is really enough to stop wars from happening all by itself. Someone might get the bright idea that maybe instead of trading with someone they should simply annex them. Not like that hasn't happened in the past.

I mean, that's a stupid reason to engage in a lengthy and brutal war, but people have this habit of going to war expecting a quick victory and being unpleasantly surprised.

[hyzmarca]

Now days, the deterrent is economic interconnectedness.

This is an effective deterrent for the US and China, certainly, but is it really universally effective? Wars are almost always done in five years even when they're catastrophically large, are all modern nations so interconnected that they don't have one worthwhile target whose trade they could do without for the duration of a war?

It is when combined with the mores that came out of World War II, specifically the big no-no against wars of aggression.

I honestly doubt economic interconnectedness is really enough to stop wars from happening all by itself. Someone might get the bright idea that maybe instead of trading with someone they should simply annex them. Not like that hasn't happened in the past.

I mean, that's a stupid reason to engage in a lengthy and brutal war, but people have this habit of going to war expecting a quick victory and being unpleasantly surprised.

Annexing other countries is no longer legal. If you try, everyone else teams up to kick your shit in.

Anyway, Modern wars are pretty much universally between minor countries, or major countries invading minor countries. The major powers have decided not to fight each other because the costs far outweigh the profits.

The fact remains, World War II didn't involve nukes until the very end, and it ended up with over 60 million people dead. No one wants a repeat of that.

[name_here]

The thing about a conventional war is that people can plausibly convince themselves they won't be on the receiving end of a WWII situation because they're more powerful and will win. People don't start wars they don't expect to win, and history has proven people can be delusional about their odds. Nuclear weapons are a much more effective deterrent because it's known no one wins in a nuclear war.

[Chamomile]

No one started either of the world wars. Austro-Hungary invaded Serbia and expected to blitz them before Russia could get going, and Hitler invaded Poland expecting that France and the UK wouldn't honor their treaties with them for fear of starting another Great War.

[name_here]

Both of those are examples of someone choosing to start a war against someone they thought they could take. And in WWI it wasn't a particular secret that Austro-Hungary invading Serbia would result in Russia, France, and the UK fighting Austro-Hungary and Germany. Germany anticipated quickly defeating France and mopping up the other two with ease.

[Username17]

The current paradigm has means to carve countries up, but not really means to put them back together again. The hope was that the EU was going to do the job of federalizing everything, but that didn't actually work. They are going to figure out a way to put South Osetia into the Russian Federation. Crimea was the blueprint for that, and it's going to be repeated many times. First by Russia, and then in Africa.

The whole "no wars of annexation" thing has worn out its welcome. Countries need to grow sometimes, and the EU alternative didn't work.

-Username17

[deaddmwalking]

The fact remains, World War II didn't involve nukes until the very end, and it ended up with over 60 million people dead. No one wants a repeat of that.

I think the estimate of 100 Million is far closer to reality, but even that isn't enough to turn people off of the idea of a war. World War I was known as 'The War to End All Wars'. While the casualty totals were perhaps only 20 Million, they were very concentrated among belligerent populations. France mourned a lost generation. And yet, a generation later, there was a larger war that many scholars contend was simply a resumption of the unfinished conflict. I guess 30 years wasn't enough to 'cool off'.

And today, people long for a conflict like World War II. Nazis are our favorite bad guys. There was a belief that the United States, as a nation, was great because we stood up against unapologetic evil. We like playing the role of the 'good guys' and it's hard to do so without a conflict like that. Further, as the 'world's largest military' spending more than the next 10 nations combined, it looks a lot like we're picking on the little guy, which doesn't fit our mental image of what a nation should do.

I don't know if I can imagine a global conflict today that involves the G8 and/or China in full-scale war, but if war is avoided, it isn't because there aren't people that want it.

[Eikre]

ICBMS can be off target by miles, actually.

They can also be as close as 100m. That's the over/under for the Peacekeeper and Trident II systems (surface- and naval- based, respectively), the former of which entered service in 1886 and the latter in 1990. And while I can't promise you that 25 years has done terrifically much for improving ballistics (which is to say, the accuracy of a projectile whose trajectory is set at launch), I can tell you that it's done plenty for computers. Which is, incidentally, the technology you need to lean on when you desire the guided precision to shove your device right up a guy's butthole. The need for it isn't very great when you're exploiting a nuclear blast radius; nonetheless, more recent thermonuclear platforms (to be fair, most of them being short to intermediate range) have gotten the CEP down to like 20 meters. A purpose-built cruise missile can, of course, just hit an unmoving bullseye like it ain't no thang.

But honestly the naval side is "US and teammates win". The US military is generally on top overall, and Russia and China don't focus on their navy very much.

They are, in fact, focusing on land-based area denial munitions with the hopes of making aircraft carriers irrelevant.

[Prak]

So apparently this question is mostly asked by/answered for cishet women... so I know exactly who to bring it to, the Den.

I've been seeing someone for about three months. We're both genderqueer, but they're dfab. What is an appropriate Valentines gift for a three-four month old relationship?

[name_here]

Chocolates are traditional.

[Maxus]

Chocolates are traditional.

I'd vote a Ghiradelli assortment. Not too expensive, and they're pretty nice.

[tussock]

Aircraft carriers, for example, are an interesting study; everyone understands that they've displace battleships as the firmament of a shooting navy, but as nice as they are for parking off coast and harassing developing nations, it's actually pretty likely that real world powers could furnish sufficient imposition with stealth subs or autonomous land-to-high-seas weapons to make the floating concentration of 6,000 souls a pretty moronic practice. So does that just mean that you distribute back to bunch of tinier ships and build a cloud of defensive firepower? Or does it mean that the high seas are just terrifically vulnerable and people start getting antsy to put a chunnel through the Bering Strait?

China is of the official position that carrier fleets are rather like throwing spearmen at machine-guns. Literally a multi-billion dollar joke that anyone can sink in under ten minutes with a few tens of thousands of dollars in missile tech that you could probably build in your garage in a couple weeks with parts found in typical apple stores. The Russians prefer supersonic torpedos, but the end result is the same, all the ships at the bottom of whichever sea they were in when the war started, quite possibly before they got their orders.

Now, real armies that you'd fight a world war with, millions of men, are supplied by ship and rail or not supplied at all. Aircraft are much more vulnerable to modern missiles than ships are, for the simple reason that they are big and flimsy and full of fuel. There is no rail line from the US to Europe or Asia, so the US can't even take part after the first day, at least not in any sort of hurry.

Not to mention that the combined air power of NATO is currently doing fuck all of nothing against an army composed of guys in light utility vehicles who can't even shoot back.

Then it's a matter of who is fighting, and how they keep their supply lines intact when the missile weapons have such incredibly long ranges. To some extent it only takes a few days for the Russian army to conquer Europe at walking pace and they don't even need supplies, but they'd go slow and take less casualties instead. Invading Britain is essentially impossible and those guys are fucking annoying to your occupation forces and still a potential staging site for the Americans because you still can't fence them off or get good targeting on Atlantic shipping to the west coast (give or take for spy satellites, which are very easily destroyed with the slight problem of chaining out to destroy all the useful satellites as well, so goodbye GPS and most phone/TV networks).

And what's the end-game if the conquered people say "fuck you" and down tools? A country means nothing now without the support of the public, and propaganda isn't magic. There's always divide-and-conquer and rule-by-fear, but that mostly makes hellscapes full of crazy people and not anything useful to rule over, like Iraq.

WWIII? No nukes? We go technologically backward, world trade ends, and bootstrapping local manufacturing is found to be stupidly difficult and expensive, so everyone just agrees to stop it and go back to having peace instead, minus all the big ships, warplanes, and everything else that proved obsolete in however long that takes.

So: day one, everyone's iphones go offline. Day two, the governments of the world apologise and set about fixing that, which may take a very long time.

[erik]

Wow. I can't find a single paragraph not full of wrongness. That post is like a running gosh gallop. I guess pick your favorite/strongest and I'll tear that apart. Don't got time to deconstruct the whole thing.

TIWAE

Just leaving that there as a reminder.

[deaddmwalking]

I'll take a stab. First off, China is a very populous country with a large and quickly growing economy. But the GDP per capita in China is less than $7k. The GDP of the United States is over $53k. If you were to consider certain costs as fixed relative to your population, obviously having fewer people with more individual income leaves you with a larger disposable income. Building carriers is extremely expensive. Other nations besides the United States are interested in having carrier fleets - but they simply can't afford them. Even the nations that do have one or more carriers often don't have 'super carriers' that carry large numbers of fixed wing aircraft. But if China's official policy were that carriers are a waste of money, they wouldn't have committed to building a new carrier. The only carrier they currently have is a training vessel built on a Soviet chassis.

The point of having a carrier is to be able to apply forward pressure. It allows you to project power far outside of your normal ability based on the location of friendly bases. Disregarding the United States, I think looking at the Falkland War shows how this works. That conflict, minus a carrier, would have looked very different, indeed.

Now, fighting a conventional war far from supply bases does pose huge logistical problems. Since this is a theoretical conflict, we don't know who is fighting who and what territorial gains matter, but we would expect the bulk of fighting in Eurasia. Obviously the United States doesn't have any land-based supply routes to Eurasia - especially if we're going to have an ice free arctic, even in winter. But I think you're discounting the huge amount of global commerce that is carried by ocean-going vessel. Further, among belligerents that share a landmass, any form of land-based shipping is more easily subject to confiscation. If you know the rail route and you're able to put a force on that route, you can potentially capture and use those supplies. At sea, it is usually easier to destroy the supplies but harder to use them yourself.

In a non-ICBM war, any nation that wants to defeat the United States will want to put troops on the group in North America. With the US domination of the oceans, that's a particularly difficult task to accomplish. I don't know you can set out a 'victory condition' for the war, but if occupation of territory by an enemy force is the victory condition, the United States has a huge advantage over most opponents.

[Shrapnel]

Did Kaelik get his own custom title? I just noticed it.

[RobbyPants]

Did Kaelik get his own custom title? I just noticed it.

I think fbmf referred to him as that, once. Him getting the title doesn't surprise me.