Would a Global War make for a better world afterwards?

Hitchens

Millions would die fairly quickly but everyone alive now will die anyway.

Cities would be demolished completely but the rebuilding would mean no unemployment.

So perhaps the survivors and future generations would benefit from a vastly reduced population.

All humanity equal afterwards.............. hopefully?

Then a great peace for a long time................. maybe?

MRnotlob606

How many usernames mention Hitchens? Is his cult still strong?

PARlance

It's definitely worth a shot.

cormie

Only if religion was wiped out and replaced with teachings of compassion for all living things.

_Kaiser_

Well straight-off I'd suggest having a look at WWI and II and the effects that the aftermath of the former had on leading to the latter in regards your last 2 points.

The notion that millions (or maybe billions with modern warfare tech) dying so as to thin the herd a bit is a tad extreme don't you think, but we get full employment is it?

Riiight!

KomradeBishop

Would the use of all/most of the worlds nuclear weapons make for a better world afterwards?

saabsaab

A full nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter and result in huge starvation & disease world wide not to mention nuclear contamination for centuries. A few pockets of survivors would eek out an existance in out of the way places back to stone age really.

Iwasfrozen

saabsaab wrote: »

A full nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter and result in huge starvation & disease world wide not to mention nuclear contamination for centuries. A few pockets of survivors would eek out an existance in out of the way places back to stone age really.

I wonder how long it would take us to reclaim lost technology, a new renaissance in a way.

Cee-Jay-Cee

It would only be worth it if those who caused the war all died and innocent people didn't suffer.

Del2005

Just don't give the Apes guns

saabsaab

Probably as long as the last time. (10 to 20 thousand years, depending on the way it pans out) Knowledge would become legends in the new stone age world as survival would be all people can think about.

GreatDefector

Sounds like the plot of a dan brown novel TBH...

aaronjumper

Might make a better world for whoever wins.

Duiske

So the way to World Peace is to blow half the planet to **** in a nuclear war ? And the way to stop mass killings in religious wars is to start a war against the religious and kill them all. Probably makes sense to someone.

_Kaiser_

<SNIP - re-reg>

Arnie (as always) has the answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CeiPJaHuoQ

MRnotlob606

Male to Female ratio in Russia has still not recovered due to effects of World War II. A serious indication of how nasty and brutish wars are.

the evasion_kid

Could have sworn I had a post here....then vamoosh?!?

Iwasfrozen

MRnotlob606 wrote: »

Male to Female ratio in Russia has still not recovered due to effects of World War II. A serious indication of how nasty and brutish wars are.

Huh? Why would the effects still be noticeable?

WW2 ended in 1945, even if a person was 12 then. The very earliest I imagine a boy would have been fighting in the Russian army in 1945, they would be 83 now and probably dead.

So wouldn't the lost generation have fixed itself by now?

Pherekydes

the evasion_kid wrote: »

Could have sworn I had a post here....then vamoosh?!?

I think the mods removed some of the more inflammatory posts and their replies.

Capt'n Midnight

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

I wonder how long it would take us to reclaim lost technology, a new renaissance in a way.

No time at all.

We have things like books and disks and there'd be examples of high tech all over the place.

However, there aren't that many places that can do stuff at 22nm or smaller, or do large LCD screens so you'd have to live without new tech for a while.


Give it a decade or so and we should have printable flexible displays so lets wait till then before taking the gamble.


After the black death people got individually richer because of inheritances and better wages because of the labour shortage. But it was still a smaller pie, but with far less people sharing it.

The_Valeyard

Not a world war. We need an alien invasion. That would unite us.

seamus

Large wars don't automatically result in a period of peace and prosperity afterwards. The world was completely ****ed between WWI and WWII. This is basically why WWII happened in the first place.

And six years after that started we dropped the first nukes. Imagine if for whatever reason WWII hadn't started until 1949, when the US and Germany had already invented nuclear weapons.

The world is better now, 70 years later, but it was still pretty ****ed up by WWII till the late 80s.

luftmensch

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Not a world war. We need an alien invasion. That would unite us.

If there's a hostile civilization that is advanced enough to invade another planet, or in our case solar system, then a unified resistance would be futile. Might as well kiss our arse's goodbye.


If we're going to reduce population, then we should bunk off of all the idiots. Facebook would be a good hunting ground. :P

Discodog

Previous wars are no guide. In WW1 & WW2 whole continents were pretty unaffected apart from losing men. WW3 would affect the whole World.

Del2005

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

We have things like books and disks and there'd be examples of high tech all over the place.


Give it a decade or so and we should have printable flexible displays so lets wait till then before taking the gamble.

Try getting data off a 5.25" floppy today, give it a few years and it'll be impossible. With companies pushing everything to the cloud a few EMP weapons will have us back in the stone age, but with very few people able to survive.

Hitchens

cormie wrote: »

Only if religion was wiped out and replaced with teachings of compassion for all living things.

If we could ditch religion and just leave it at that.

wes

Another global war would probably result in the extinction of Humans.......

wakka12

Discodog wrote: »

Previous wars are no guide. In WW1 & WW2 whole continents were pretty unaffected apart from losing men. WW3 would affect the whole World.

whaaa? unaffected? As many civilians were killed as soldiers in ww2..entire european cities were literally burnt to cinders..75% of jews were killed in europe.. some continents were unaffected yeah like north and south america but the continents where the real war was happening such as europe and east asia were hardly 'unaffected'??

wakka12

I think you'd be right if the war didnt involve nuclear weapons, but theres no chance of that really. Nothing positive will ever ever come of nuclear war for anybody, maybe the planet itself hundreds of years later when we are all dead and the radiation goes away but thats it

mickrock

Hitchens wrote: »

Cities would be demolished completely but the rebuilding would mean no unemployment.

The following scheme would work better and there'd be no bloodshed.


Scheme for Full Employment

Recommends that:
1.Jobless people be employed as security guards
1. in their own homes.
2. They have official-looking uniforms.
Benefits:
• Reduces the number of unemployed.
• They no longer sit around all day doing nothing.
• Instead, they sit around all day maintaining the
security of the premises.
• Fosters social responsibility.
• Increases self-respect (from wearing nice uniform).
• Develops skill-set.
• Reduces neighbourhood crime/terrorism.
Alternative role:
• For those who prefer not to be security guards, we
recommend employment as Home Administrators.
Funding:
• To be funded by the government (ie public funding).
Why should the government fund it? Well, the government already spends billions of pounds of public money funding job creation – eg schemes such as the New Deal, Regional Selective Assistance Grants, etc. Why not go a small step further to fight the evil of unemployment?
And, anyway, would you prefer public funding of idleness? Surely it's better to fund respectable jobs.

http://www.anxietyculture.com/scheme.htm

jimgoose

Didn't work the last two times.

wakka12

jimgoose wrote: »

Didn't work the last two times.

Well, ww2 did help bring europe together and make it as peaceful as it is today

130Kph

Uncle Jim received the wet package on Monday
The green chicken has left the coop
The coal train leaves for the East at 11pm
The pink rabbit has returned to the hutch

Duiske

MRnotlob606 wrote: »

Male to Female ratio in Russia has still not recovered due to effects of World War II. A serious indication of how nasty and brutish wars are.

I think there may be other causes for that. Search "Russian Dashcam" on youtube.

Your Face

No thanks.

Calibos

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

I wonder how long it would take us to reclaim lost technology, a new renaissance in a way.

Never.


In a post apocalyptic scenario bad enough to 'Lose technology', we'll never get it back. Doesn't even matter that we'd lost all the expertise. A few hundred years of archaeology and research and population rebuilding would solve that aspect. No the problem is that our modern society has already consumed all the easily accessible resources and now we need heavy industry and high tech to access whats left deeper down etc That industry and tech was initially built on the easily accessible resources. We'd be stuck in a catch 22. You need the resources to redevelop the industry and tech but you cant get at the remaining resources without already having the industry and tech.

If something happens to knock us back to pre-industrial tech levels globally we'll be stuck there forever more.

Capt'n Midnight

seamus wrote: »

And six years after that started we dropped the first nukes. Imagine if for whatever reason WWII hadn't started until 1949, when the US and Germany had already invented nuclear weapons.

It would have been the Brits with the bomb rather than the Americans. They only let the US know about Tube Alloys and other fancy technology because their backs were to the wall.

By 1949 the UK, Canada and Oz could have built the bomb.

The Tizzard mission also gave the US the jet engine and the cavity magnetron.

Radar won the war. It's what allowed the UK to defeat the Italian Navy and German surface fleet and later on the US to defeat the Japanese Navy and both to defeat the U Boats. And the whole Battle of Britain thing, as well as allowing bombing in bad weather. And allowed proximity shells for anti aircraft.

Code breaking helped but the Allies codes weren't that strong so it balanced out. Radar was the key technical difference , and having more resources.


Anyway wouldn't happened. Germany was bankrupt from rearming, it would have imploded by '49 even if Stalin hadn't invaded in '42 or '43

Samaris

We've tried this before many times. Didn't work then, probably won't work another time.

StudentDad

What a daft thread. It makes me think of a 6 year old going, 'mommy, mommy, I do want another sweetie.' Only in this version he's going, 'Mommy, mommy, only an 'ickle war, please mommy, just a 'ickle war. It'd be so much fun.' Etc etc

SD

milehip

MRnotlob606 wrote: »

Male to Female ratio in Russia has still not recovered due to effects of World War II. A serious indication of how nasty and brutish wars are.

Russian men die on average 12 years younger than Russisan women. Something to do with alchool consumption it reckoned.

luftmensch wrote: »

If there's a hostile civilization that is advanced enough to invade another planet, or in our case solar system, then a unified resistance would be futile. Might as well kiss our arse's goodbye.


If we're going to reduce population, then we should bunk off of all the idiots. Facebook would be a good hunting ground. :P

Maybe we could defeat them with bird flu or something.(the aliens not the facebook hordes)

Arghus

I'd rather not try Nuclear Annihilation, just on the off chance that things might turn out okay afterwards.

topmanamillion

Interesting premise to a thread.
The world is over populated and it's only going to get worse.
I can only guess that at some point in the not to distant future a world strategy on reducing births will be needed.
Whether that will involve all nations uniting and agreeing to promote family planning/education and all the things that naturally reduce birth rates or whether it will require a mushroom cloud/epidemic is anyone's guess.

The world at the moment faces a lot of challenges, such as over population, hunger, climate change etc.
A reduction in the world's population due to a global conflict may well serve to address those issues but at a very high price.
There were certainly many benefits to WW2 such as platforms for peace between previously hostile nations such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Britain.
Of course I don't need to mention the many negative consequences of that war.

BuilderPlumber

No. The current enemy are not nation states. They are drug cartels like ISIS hiding behind religion. They can drug their dirty work doers up to the eyeballs to do anything and the doer thinks they have 7 virgins and feel a painless death while high on cocaine. 9/11 is proof of that. Even Hitler did not have that idea - he was reliant on rational men. If a war started, the drug dealers win. They did 9/11 to coax them to start that rubbish in Iraq and Bush fell for it. So did low level drug dealer bin Laden. That idiot should have known his life was limited after he agreed to take the blame for the cartel's initial attempts to dominate the world. But I guess that clown thought he was invincible (I hope the same egotistical flaw exists with his bosses too). The drug dealers could of course get people stoned to deliver dirty nuclear devices to kill millions and get rid of cities. The West/East could respond with anything from conventional to nuclear but the drug dealers would get more of their doped idiots to do worse and shout Allahu Akhbar despite being 100% atheist. Mad Max 100% .. without Max is the outcome.

Capt'n Midnight

BuilderPlumber wrote: »

Mad Max .. without Max is the outcome.

:eek:



Like waterworld :eek::eek:

DoozerT6

Has the OP never seen 'Threads?'

I don't think we'd need a global war to thin the herd. Just turn off the electricity for good.

I remember seeing a documentary (probably on Nat Geo or Discovery) about what would happen if for some reason the electricity system failed worldwide and could not be restored (kinda like that fictional series 'Revolution' on Sky a couple of years back). Initially, after a few days of being able to cope, society worldwide would break down, there would be rioting, looting, killing, all that stuff. This would continue for some time and basically the weak would die either from violence, or eventually starvation as food ran out. Basically the world would be a very very bleak place for a long time (typical post-apocalypse) but they surmised that eventually society would start to recover, the remaining population would become pretty much completely agrarian and begin to form societies based on co-operation and trade. Cities would become large kitchen gardens, old homesteading skills would have to be relearned from books, and once society reached an equilibrium those who were left could start to try to figure out how to get industry, commerce and production started again on a larger scale. I think they even figured out how to turn the leccy back on again in the end (after a couple of generations I think?) Does anybody else remember this programme, or what it was called?

KomradeBishop

mickrock wrote: »

The following scheme would work better and there'd be no bloodshed.


Scheme for Full Employment

Recommends that:
1.Jobless people be employed as security guards
1. in their own homes.
2. They have official-looking uniforms.
Benefits:
• Reduces the number of unemployed.
• They no longer sit around all day doing nothing.
• Instead, they sit around all day maintaining the
security of the premises.
• Fosters social responsibility.
• Increases self-respect (from wearing nice uniform).
• Develops skill-set.
• Reduces neighbourhood crime/terrorism.
Alternative role:
• For those who prefer not to be security guards, we
recommend employment as Home Administrators.
Funding:
• To be funded by the government (ie public funding).
Why should the government fund it? Well, the government already spends billions of pounds of public money funding job creation – eg schemes such as the New Deal, Regional Selective Assistance Grants, etc. Why not go a small step further to fight the evil of unemployment?
And, anyway, would you prefer public funding of idleness? Surely it's better to fund respectable jobs.

http://www.anxietyculture.com/scheme.htm

The thing I don't get about this, is that there really is no lack of worthwhile jobs that can be created for the unemployed to work in, or be trained into - so I don't see why that site makes the suggestion satirically.

On the one hand it makes a lot of good/obvious points about why a Full Employment program is better - on the other hand it makes a bit of a wasted satirical point, by implying that there aren't worthwhile jobs/work to be done.

A proper Full Employment (i.e. Job Guarantee) program, if made possible politically, pretty much is one of the best things that could possibly happen for a country - it'd make all economic crises way easier for people to weather.

KomradeBishop

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

...
Anyway wouldn't happened. Germany was bankrupt from rearming, it would have imploded by '49 even if Stalin hadn't invaded in '42 or '43

Germany had no shortage of funds for arming themselves - they literally printed money, to sidestep economic restrictions on rearmament prior to the war - so long as Germany had the physical resources and labour (the availability of which expanded as they advanced more), finding the money to put the two (resources + labour) together wasn't hard - it's when either resources or labour becomes scarce, that it becomes a problem, as no amount of money will fix that.

Germany understood properly and was willing to use the full power behind money, better than any other country before or since - a country armed with that knowledge, can't go 'bankrupt', because they control their own currency - their central bank head early on, Hjalmar Schacht, was a genius, who unfortunately paved the way for the war that followed.

Capt'n Midnight

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Germany had no shortage of funds for arming themselves - they literally printed money, to sidestep economic restrictions on rearmament prior to the war - so long as Germany had the physical resources and labour (the availability of which expanded as they advanced more), finding the money to put the two (resources + labour) together wasn't hard - it's when either resources or labour becomes scarce, that it becomes a problem, as no amount of money will fix that.

You can't buy Russia Oil or Romanian Oil with printed money nor Swedish iron ore or manganese or chromium or rubber or coffee or ...

KomradeBishop

In Germany's case, they used it internally as a parallel currency - and no other country had any problems accepting the national currency (which the parallel currency was effectively a mirror of).

The prevalent myths about 'printed money' (it's all fiat/printed now...), are more than a century old and out of date.

Timberrrrrrrr

saabsaab wrote: »

Probably as long as the last time. (10 to 20 thousand years, depending on the way it pans out) Knowledge would become legends in the new stone age world as survival would be all people can think about.

Care to elaborate?

Skylinehead

wakka12 wrote: »

Well, ww2 did help bring europe together and make it as peaceful as it is today

I guess you missed the whole Iron Curtain bit.