(January 28, 2016 at 1:24 pm)Gawdzilla Wrote: The US would invade Albania.

But the republicunts aren't even in office.

(January 28, 2016 at 7:21 pm)Napoléon Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 2:15 pm)Nymphadora Wrote: Um no. It was two skyscrapers, the Pentagon and heroes on a single airplane who cause that plane to go down in a field in Pennsylvania, rather than at the terrorists target.
We lost thousands that day, please get it right. It was so much MORE than a single building.

Still not even in the same league as an entire city being wiped off the map with a nuke, which was Capn's point.

Thank you Napo.

Yeah, duh I know what happened on 9/11. Don't know why I typed a single building. It's still not even remotely comparable to a nuclear weapon going off. That's why I'm curious as to what the social changes would be like from a much more massive event. Would the US by necessity drop a nuclear weapon on someone, even if it were an Al Queda like group who got a hold of a Nuke and somehow detonated it?

(January 28, 2016 at 6:39 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 6:12 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: An untested terrorist nuke is far more likely to fizzle, and serve only to focus ferocious attention on the perpetrator, then to actually detonate properly and kills hundreds of thousand of people.

And Osama just got lucky when he flew planes into the twin towers.  People do get lucky.

Non sequitur.

(January 28, 2016 at 7:24 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 5:27 pm)Excited Penguin Wrote: Hopefully the right people will represent America if that scenario ever plays out.

lol, as if there are any right people, and as if any government listens to them.

If the word right is to have any (practical) sense, then there surely are. I hear too much whining and too little serious thinking. From everyone. You're not going to attract an utopia by throwing your hands up.

(January 29, 2016 at 12:25 am)CapnAwesome Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 7:21 pm)Napoléon Wrote: Still not even in the same league as an entire city being wiped off the map with a nuke, which was Capn's point.

Thank you Napo.

Yeah, duh I know what happened on 9/11. Don't know why I typed a single building. It's still not even remotely comparable to a nuclear weapon going off. That's why I'm curious as to what the social changes would be like from a much more massive event. Would the US by necessity drop a nuclear weapon on someone, even if it were an Al Queda like group who got a hold of a Nuke and somehow detonated it?

My guess is (when) if this happens, it will be a jihadi controlled government who will nuke not one city, but as many as they have the resources to nuke and they'll officially declare the end of the world in the process of doing so. If we survive that, we'll bomb them into oblivion, and any other similar threat of that scale directly associated with them(we, meaning the world). I'm not so sure America will be singled out either. They've got grievances with Europe as well, for example.

If that happens we'll all live in a policed world for a while, and needless to say it will be hell on earth. The effect of that kind of thing, and more to the point, the effect of the aftermath, will be catastrophic(but it could also be potentially very good in the long run). These kinds of intense, violent changes, tend to put everything in perspective and progress into overdrive, as many wars did, if I'm not mistaken(I'm not exactly a historian)- I'm thinking more about the world post-Napoleon and post-WWI&WWII.

Of course, this is not to say this is what we want to happen, but I've got a strong feeling it will happen like that and PC culture and regressive liberalism is to blame for it at its most basic level, as these are mostly well-intentioned people who should know better than to oppose any sort of progress at all in fighting this vicious ideology(of Islamism).

But back to progress. What will happen after such atrocities take place?

Well, people will start giving a fuck about the world, for a change. The world will move more determinedly towards a universal political and economic unity of sorts, if not even a de facto world government. This would all be very well, but I can't imagine that happening with religion still around and as ubiquitous as ever. Therefore, I actually imagine that religion will have more or less totally lost its grip on the more civilised parts of the world by then(which "developed" world might include more statal entities by then).
But this is on the brighter side of things. On the darker side, we'll have just lost tens of millions of people, at the very least, of course. The economic implications cannot be foreseen, economics itself struggling as a science as it is. But perhaps we'll have a better understanding of it in the years to come. In any case, I don't think this would spell the end of human civilisation, I think that would need to be the work of far bigger powers than a few Islamist states, which I can't reasonably imagine happening either. But we could lose some of our knowledge about the world in the process of such disturbances, although, given our current capabilities of preserving knowledge, one has to wonder how much would actually be lost(only very little and recent amounts of progress at the most, one could reasonably assume).

This is a fascinating topic to think about and one could write entire books about it. I'm wondering whether any (futuristic dystopyan) non-fiction works of the sort are known to any of you. I'm asking for a recommendation.

(January 29, 2016 at 2:57 am)Excited Penguin Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 7:24 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: lol, as if there are any right people, and as if any government listens to them.

If the word right is to have any (practical) sense, then there surely are. I hear too much whining and too little serious thinking. From everyone. You're not going to attract an utopia by throwing your hands up.

Nor will you build a new order by belittling realism.

(January 29, 2016 at 3:28 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(January 29, 2016 at 2:57 am)Excited Penguin Wrote: If the word right is to have any (practical) sense, then there surely are. I hear too much whining and too little serious thinking. From everyone. You're not going to attract an utopia by throwing your hands up.

Nor will you build a new order by belittling realism.

What you call realism I call my default position. I'm well beyond it at this point. I was talking about planning, in effect. Planning shouldn't focus on an assessment of things as they are or even as they're likely to be, but for your involvement.

(January 29, 2016 at 3:40 am)Excited Penguin Wrote:

(January 29, 2016 at 3:28 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Nor will you build a new order by belittling realism.

What you call realism I call my default position. I'm well beyond it at this point. I was talking about planning, in effect. Planning shouldn't focus on an assessment of things as they are or even as they're likely to be, but for your involvement.

Planning for the future without taking current stock, and that demands a realistic outlook -- well, go on ahead and do it. But the best-laid plans of mice and men aft go agley, I'm told.

(January 29, 2016 at 3:46 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote:

(January 29, 2016 at 3:40 am)Excited Penguin Wrote: What you call realism I call my default position. I'm well beyond it at this point. I was talking about planning, in effect. Planning shouldn't focus on an assessment of things as they are or even as they're likely to be, but for your involvement.

Planning for the future without taking current stock, and that demands a realistic outlook -- well, go on ahead and do it. But the best-laid plans of mice and men aft go agley, I'm told.

That's not what I meant. At which point do you actually start planning, though, and be satisfied with what you know about the current state of things? Being too much of a "realist" can be a bad thing. You'll start sustaining that reality at some point and inadvertently keep it going as it is.

(January 28, 2016 at 7:21 pm)Napoléon Wrote:

(January 28, 2016 at 2:15 pm)Nymphadora Wrote: Um no. It was two skyscrapers, the Pentagon and heroes on a single airplane who cause that plane to go down in a field in Pennsylvania, rather than at the terrorists target.
We lost thousands that day, please get it right. It was so much MORE than a single building.

Still not even in the same league as an entire city being wiped off the map with a nuke, which was Capn's point.

I'm aware of that. However, my pointing out that it was more than a single building was because I felt that stating it was a single building, minimized the impact that day had on the citizens of the US. I wasn't trying to compare it to a nuke, but rather I was saying it was and remains a significant part of our history that reached far beyond bringing down a single building.

Look at how strict travel by plane has become since then. When I fly to Florida, I have to arrive at the airport two hours early just so I make it through the security checks. And I'm not even leaving the country. But this is the way things have become now. I can imagine things will only get worse with time or with another major disaster.