Would raising men in an artificial hell, and/or a natural hell really create super soldiers?
I remember the old Simpsons joke where what doesn't kill you ... will leave you weak as a kitten.
Would raising men in an artificial hell, and/or a natural hell really create super soldiers?
There is an amount of hardship that is conducive to growth and strength.
Cacti are not stronger than oak trees, just better at withstanding deserts.
If you put too much pressure on people, you don't get titans, you get sniveling scavengers that scuttle under the rubble.
>If you put too much pressure on people, you don't get titans, you get sniveling scavengers that scuttle under the rubble.
Russian military prowess explained.
>As I was finishing this manuscript, BBC reported, “Russian squirrel pack kills dog.” As the story went, a big stray dog started barking at squirrels in a park. The rodents took no grief from the much larger predator. “They literally gutted the dog” in less than a minute. “Man,” exclaimed my friend, who had sent me the link to this story, “even squirrels are bad asses over there. Explain to me again how the Communists failed?” Keep reading the article. A local man pointed out that the forests were out of pinecones. “The little beasts are agitated because they have nothing to eat.” That answers both questions-why Russia has lost the Cold War and how it produces tough men
very true, but nurture creates strength as well. proper growth with a mentor, training, and opportunities made available by a moderately safe environment creates well rounded individuals. there is a difference between that and sheltering which leaves people without the proper tools to overcome obstacles and challenge the unknown because they never had to and were never taught to in favor or simply being protected from the world
Yes. This is just like muh proud Afghan WARRIORS. Remember when thry slaughtered the pampered Americans uh... 21:1? Oh shit...
what this anon said. There's toughening up and then there's crippling someone
It depends on what kind of hell. If you want to train someone to deal with freezing conditions you train them in Alaska. If you are sending them to a desert you train them in Arizona.
The oak tree deliberately poisons the soil around it to defeat the competition, however it could not defeat a cactus in a desert. Sometimes being a sniveling scavenger scuttling amidst the rubble is "stronger", the mammals that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs for example.
>Sometimes being a sniveling scavenger scuttling amidst the rubble is "stronger"
The han have not defeated a foreign army in 500 years and have spent the majority of the last 1200 being raped, beheaded, and starved at a greater rate than anyone on the planet.
The Fremen aren't in a "water conservation" competition, they're in a wrestling and airplane piloting competition.
wienerroaches that live by sucking oil from gutters are bad at war.
One of the few good Sardaukar depictions I've seen, very nice find.
The premise is halfway.
You need an abundance of calories and protein, for the body to have the materials necessary to build itself up to meet that challenge.
A religion or a string of terrors faced down provides the dissociation from terror.
Starvation and deprivation fall under my idea of "terrors" as well. Not just monstrous physical threats.
He looks like clown
No he looks like Judge Dredd crossed with generic Eastern feudal armor.
If you think that means I dislike the DUNC Sardaukar depiction you're also wrong there.
He looks like Turkish Judge Dredd
Boomers status?
>Shadmaniversity
>boomers thought armor was like sweaters because of the Hollywood movies
>oh wait, Hollywood literally used sweaters instead of the mail
Man I thought you accuse my Ford & Nixon post as being Boomer-tier,
not my calories & protein post.
And I thought that was a pic of Sam Hyde in his Roman thorax about to shotgun Le Bourgeoisie... not Le Ebin Shad.
Anon what are you doing? Get your act together.
man, the way shad shut down tynan when he pointed out all the problems with the movie was such shit. just because shad hadn't read the fricking books doesn't make the movie right.
this could have been amazing instead it was half fricked in the ass.
The Sardukar vs Fremen connundrum always would have made more sense to me if the Sards were losing not because "they hadn't suffered enough" but because ironically they were hyper-optimized for shield combat, to the point where their reflexes were completely betraying them in non-shielded combat.
You could be decent with shields and without shields, but to be the BEST at one, you'd have to basically cripple yourself for the other. Close combat is about trained reflexes and drilled reactions.
Except in the book the sardauker -do- use their shields because they're air dropping in and will get lifted up before a worm comes.
And they still get rekt by Fremen.
>Would have made more sense
Yeah. The Fremen having a massive terrain advantage due to the sandstorms and the Shai-Hulud limiting the use of shields is sensible and expected. The Jihad being unstoppable on other planets, not so much.
The only way it makes any sense is if the planets were all totally dependent on interstellar trade and just surrendered so they could get the hot pocket shipments again.
>The Jihad being unstoppable on other planets, not so much.
Sarduakar weren't on other planets, and the Fremen jihad forces could move with impunity because Muad'Dib had the Spacing Guild by the balls.
Once the Fremen get reliable access to normal military tech, they'll apply it in a way no one else would because of their fanaticism
That's horseshit, even more than the "indigenous warriors are so hardcore and badass compared to civilized weaklings" cliche to begin with
If you think Romans wouldn't hesitate to use chemical warfare then you're an idiot
Imagine Romans with nooks.
PARTHIA DELENDA EST
That has absolutly nothing to do with the post its replying to.
It does, but you're a brainlet so I understand how you came to that conclusion
>That's horseshit
Look up what happens the instant the Fremen acquire ornithopters in the very first book, dipshit
>The matrix's appraoch is a little more plausible than cracking the whip on humans making them grow microchips out in a field singing slave-songs in binary.
Kek
But the less said about Brian and Kevin the better...
They're 40k pulp trash compared to Dune 1 which I maintain deserves to the title of "LOTR Of Scifi" for all the derivative tropes it grandfathered
>feudal empire in space etc
>the dune immediate prequels (Baron, Gurney, Leto I and Jessica's lives) are not so bad. I don't remember anything standout awful with them
Contrived SyFy Channel shit like false flags, Harkonnen stealth warships, Leto losing his first love and his best friend to Harkonnens, that sort of thing. Very cliche.
>Look up what happens the instant the Fremen acquire ornithopters in the very first book, dipshit
Anon, if something moronic happens in a book, that just means the book is moronic
Oh, I thought you were answering from a Watsonian perspective
even from a Doylist perspective it does make sense. look at Ukraine, their unique circumstances means they're using drones as ordnance rather than recon; look at (most applicably) jihadis, they use vehicles as guided missiles, which is what suicide VBIEDs really are
Herb was probably inspired by Jap kamikazes but his predictions came true in a sense; the Arabs are now the most well-known suicide bombers around
That doesn't make it a mindblowing tactic, suicide charges are a really old idea.
They are also something done by the dumb and desperate not only religious fanatics, like seen at sonme points in the current ukraine invasion where stupid fodder russians would randomly have their shitty tanks drive in the vague direction of the enemy and jump out after locking it at full pelt.
>That doesn't make it a mindblowing tactic,
nobody said it was, anon only said
>they'll apply it in a way no one else would because of their fanaticism
the Fremen degree of suicidal fanaticism took the entire Imperium by surprise, even the Sardaukar, because apparently even the Sardaukar weren't that fanatical
Russian tactics in Ukraine at the moment involves what are functionally suicide orders, but that's still a little bit different from a literal suicide order.
One's sending a soldier to die, the other's ordering a soldier to kill himself.
In Herbert's literary context they're simply a device for contrasting people who are willing to die/risk death for a greater cause against those who aren't. He wasn't interested in war or military tactics.
Anyone who's played airsoft or watched some combat footage knows being willing to take some risk in infantry combat gives a big edge over being a selfishly enlightened type holding back out of caution.
Its just shallow cultural fetishism from ignorant fiction writers.
Like Karen Traviss and her fetish for indiginous warrior peoples she inserts no matter what setting she is writing for.
>1965
>American outside of the CIA who knows what the word jihad means
>ignorant
Pure historical revisionist.
>He wasn't interested in war or military tactics.
He wasn't wholly disinterested like Asimov, though.
Traviss writes excellent Gears Of War fiction
>excellent Gears Of War fiction
You mean where if a b***h who gets sent to the government rape camps turns out to be barren they just slap a gun in her hands and trust her to operate as part of a squad?
No, as a matter of fact Traviss explicitly differentiates deskwork and combat training, and mentions "skills fade"
she has a better handle on reality than most jarheads with their EVERY MUHREEN A RIFLEMAN HOOAHHH horseshit
and the government rape camp was just that one aberration, not a nation-wide issue
I was a big fan of how Fallout 2 has the main character belong to a tribe, but because the "tribe" was literally founded by Vault dwellers like 60 years ago it is obviously a bunch of horseshit and you can pick dialogue that suggests you are very aware of how artificial the "tribal" culture of Arroyo is
I honestly think they chose to give you a tribal origin just as an excuse to give you absolutely zero respectable early-game gear to the point where you might not even find a gun until the third town if you don't know where to look
Willingness to take some risk is a big advantage against total cowards, but videogames are an example of a situation where people can fight/compete without any personal consequences for getting killed and yolo banzai morons tend to be deadweight there
In videogames suicide attacks are generally the most effective attacks, developers have to bend over backwards and design game mechanics just to make sure they're not the most effective tactics. Not that this is relevant in any way. All you've done is envision two forces that are equally willing to disregard their lives for military gain.
what videogames are you thinking of?
because in every competitive game I've ever played carelessly rushing straight at the enemy just gets you killed without achieving anything at all.
Starcraft?
Obviously if you're a moron about it it's not going to get you results.
Putting aside that you've carefully worded your argument into the narrow scope of "yolo banzai morons" so that you can dismiss anything effective as not counting.
And also putting aside the fact that you ignore the obvious point that game developers do their best to remove overt suicide tactics as an option, for example in most FPS you can't just simply cook a grenade or satchel charge and thus have a dead man's switch on command because a suicide bomber would be completely OP.
In deliberately clunky squad-based games like ARMA, Squad or Project Reality where they emphasize teamwork ironically lone wolf players tend to have massive positive k/d ratios because they destroy the OODA loop. In Battlefield and Counter-Strike a single random dude can outflank an entire team and win the round, and even if they fail it just means they were unlucky on a objectively good strategy, and complete aggression is the only appropriate tactic besides.
In Battle Stations and other games where planes and carriers coexist nobody bothers with the tricky business of dive bombing, they just kamikaze.
And of course in RTS and RTT games suicidal tactics are so OP they are just completely normal.
I was reacting to earlier posts like
>suicide charges
>Fremen degree of suicidal fanaticism
>throw their babies as projectile weapons
which makes me think of CYKABLYAT RUSH B wasteful meatwaves, not high skill solo flanking
a rock is a better projectile weapon than a baby unless you have author fiat handing you a win for being 3hardkore5me
>Fremen degree of suicidal fanaticism
I wrote this partly in response to
>throw their babies as projectile weapons
which I considered stupid as they didn't actually do that, it was in-universe urban legend
what they DID do was kamikaze a battalion-size troop carrier and its escorts with a one-man ornithopter, which was indeed a massive KDR swing and sort of makes sense - that's the sort of fanatically suicidal the Fremen are, not the VDV kind
In 1v1 games its not really a thing because if you die you lose, usually. But if you're in a game where you have more than one life and you're way ahead of the other team/guy then you have very little reason to not pull a full moron and crash the match with no survivors (assuming it's within your ability).
Easy example is an objective control mode like you find in Battlefield. If one team falls behind on tickets then the leading team suddenly gets to play fast and loose because their K/D matters less now; they just have to keep the losing team under them. This can lead to full moron suicide rushes being the optimal play for the winning team because as long as it keeps the losers bottled up it's a victory.
From a setting that frequently deploys thousands of "suicide troops" just to hassle the enemy after they've won and you've fully retreated?
Muad'Dib' forces;
>Have basically infinite money
>Can travel freely
>Fanatically loyal and motivated
>Could completely dictate the tempo of campaigns
>Incredibly skilled warriors even at fast paced non-shielded combat
>Had Gurney, a galaxy-renowned trainer of soldiers
>Had Paul's OP foresight
>Could link up with other worlds that had been seeded with messiah legends
>Started out with Shaddam's house already in the pocket
The rival houses;
>Varying levels of combat prowess and wealth
>basically stuck on their individual planets
>half of them hate each other
>growing terror of this insane prophet and his unstoppable army of savages
That doesnt make sense because the sarduakar use shields and so the fremen would have to fight in a way to account for the shields, meaning they cant use fast strikes and have to strike slow enough to get past the shield. That means the sarduakar would be familair with that level of speed.
The whole concepts of shields in it are moronic.
Even if only the bullshit that shooting them with a laser causes a massive nuclear blast.
The fact it happens is stupidly over the top to begin with but that's just asking to get your forces sucide-bombed with ease.
Any justification to try and make melee weapons or martial arts a major component of warfare when people have guns and future guns is always a fricking cancer.
IIRC intentionally using lasers against shielded opponents is a crapshoot due to inconsistency in creation and size of the explosion, and a bad idea because the explosions are technically nuclear in nature and open you up to reprisals for violating the ban on atomics.
Reprisals don't matter against suicidal terrorists
>a crapshoot due to inconsistency in creation and size of the explosion
Still sounds like you can oneshot any shield user with a laser gun mounted to a drone.
>open you up to reprisals for violating the ban on atomics
What are they going to do, send more guys with shields into my lasers?
>What are they going to do, send more guys with shields into my lasers?
Use their own atomics. But yeah, I agree it's stupid. I want the weird societies, cultures, tactics, etc. in my sci-fi and fantasy to follow logically from the premises of whatever magic or technology the author has established differentiates their world from ours. In Dune, it doesn't. For all its good qualities, the logic of Dune falls apart too easily when poked at.
Dune was never supposed to be "a logical procession of society from a new technology." It was set over 9000 years in the future so Herbert could claim absolutely anything existed if it served the story of political ambitions.
Vegetius back in the 4th century AD said that rural recruits were better than city recruits as they were more inured to hardship. At the same time you can find city recruits who did big-dick heroic shit, it's just more a case that you will find averages of more recruits from a more rural and rugged background than from a city. tl;dr it's half true and half false, it isn't a guaranteeor of success.
Been too long since I read the book but remember that Glubb Pasha came up with his 'hard times make hard men' theory around the time Frank Herbert wrote it, and this thinking was/is instinctively predominant. Same reason GRRM (Not to compare the greatness of Frank to the midness of GRRM) used a paraphrased version of the "force South American special forces to raise a puppy and then kill it to show how ruthless they are" folk myth I'd heard in 80s/90s era kommando literature.
To be frank that demonstrates the decadence, it's just that people shorthand decadence into indolent luxury loving instead of being a decline - and decline can be violent and ostensibly masculine. Arabs killing eachother in mindless fratricide is decadence as much as Germany circa 2014 obsessing over nothing but LGBT/Environmentalism/Money is decadent, Russia raping themselves, marching off to die like pigs for the slaughter and being a decrepit shithole is as much decadence as Americans being fixated on orgy porgy and bumble puppies. People just engage in the brainlet thinking of machismo ostentatious displays of strength as the opposite of decadence. Not saying basedboy can be strong, just that such performative and gratituous virility is Potemkin shit.
Arguably this is because all the people who got sharpened and hardened have had the means, for generations now, to move toward the allure of cities. Where they get shredded by other means.
Ford and Nixon were farm boys who started out under huge deprivation, and it was the grind that convinced them going hard and being uncompromising was the only way, success or not.
I'd say the advantages of rural populaces aren't as common anymore, obese countryside populations came about due to a network of food shipping unheard of aside from the past few centuries. places not on rivers started to get goods shipped from railroads. tombstone az had multiple ice cream parlours by the time of it's famous shootout and deadwood had one of the first public telephones in the country. modern existence is an anomaly, rural people are eating mass amounts of sweeteners.
That South American 'myth' is straight out of Waffen SS training and a lot of them ended up in South America supporting US regimes (see Klaus Barbie)
Such a thing was never practised by the Waffen-SS, moronic israelite.
It's pretty well attested to, Rabbi
I think it's time to update Glubb Pashas cycle for modern times.
>Soft men build cool robots.
>Cool robots curbstomp hard men.
>lol
>lmao
Alternatively
>Everything sucking creates soft men
>Soft men create sad boys
>Sad boys pilot cool robots
>Cool robots kill hard veterans
>Sad boys are sad because everything still sucks
The Sardukar were living off of reputation by the time of Dune. Their once hostile planet no longer nearly as Savage as Arrakis. Also Fremen literally all have low strength future vision due to long term exposure to spice
The Spartans were deliberately underfed and under-clothed during the agoge, and they were undefeated for a long long time as a result.
They actually lost all the time, the unbeatable spartan thing is just from comic books
Underclothed may have made them tougher, underfed has proven, clear negative results. Starved soldiers who win consistently are winning because their other advantages beat out their disadvantages.
>undefeated for a long long time as a result
Not really sure where this came from, it's not really true.
The spartans were defeated multiple times you dumb wanker.
The Spartans had two impressive showings, historically. At Platea in 479 BC they held off an entire Persian army after a communications failure resulted in them being abandoned on the battlefield, and at Manitinea they beat an Athenian coalition into the dirt. After the Pelopennsian War Sparta routinely got its ass kicked by any force that used tactics more complex than Phalanx Push.
The Spartan legend stems from their having the only full-time professional military force in Greece, which almost universally used citizen militias.
Spartans demonstrate to me, that being hard and tough warrior-elite is unsustainable without a natalist social pattern to match.
That's something fairly independent of the land's bounty or scarcity.
Sparta was a city state with a population in the tens of thousands, whose foreign policy was to enter into leagues with allies for self defense only. Only a matter of time before some empire came around and smashed it.
>Only a matter of time before some empire came around and smashed it.
...it kinda took a lot of time. Alexander didn't even go for it. Dude literally conquers all the way to India, but decided Sparta wasn't worth it. You can cope with this however you please, but the Spartans remained independent until Rome showed up. Like "oh man you only were independent for 1000 years from the Dorian invasion when your people came into existence, up until the greatest empire mankind has ever seen conquered you" sounds a lot different from "it was only a matter of time before some empire took over" cause they kinda told several previous ones to frick off, successfully.
Sparta only had a few hundred warriors when Alexander rolled around and decided it wasn’t worth conquering. They were irrelevant by this time. This is what happens if you give women rights, not enough babies.
>Sparta only had a few hundred warriors when Alexander rolled around
>sparta was so weak and irrelevant that Alexander, conqueror of the entire known world, fricked off and left without consolidating all of Greece leaving a glaring back door into his territory
yeah uh sure ok as I said you can cope however you want, just know it's ridiculous.
Are you aware that the Spartans rebelled against the Macedonians (and had aid from thousands of troops from Persia) but the rebellion was put down, because the Spartans were so few in number…? The Macedonians took all of Sparta’s territory (besides the city) but just didn’t feel like needless slaughtering the Spartans, before this happened.
Humanity is obviously way more advanced than it was 5,000 years ago. The only reason it’s going backwards right now is israelites are trying to mix everyone with 75IQ Black folk
Alexander did take their farmland, which was the only thing of value they had.
Actual Spartans never numbered more than 20k, and their Helots outnumbered them by several times over. There was never more than 8000 Spartiates.
Anon, Sparta was dying out by then. At the beginning of the fifth century B.C. the Spartiates were able to field an army of 8,000 men against the Persians, but after the costly Spartan victory over Athens and her allies in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) Spartan numbers declined rapidly. When the Spartiates marched against Thebes in 371 B.C., there were too few of them to prevail. After their decisive defeat by the Thebans at Leuctra, the Spartan army numbered only 2,000 warriors. A century and a half later there were only 700 of them, and they passed from the pages of history.
The Spartans succumbed to their own lifestyle. They would have been well advised to eliminate the Helots of the Peloponnesus and the Mediterranean population of Crete altogether and to establish a purely Dorian peasant class in those areas. Then they may well have been able to have a stable population. But, of course, they did not have the advantage which hindsight gives us.
By the time Rome rolled around, what we understand as Sparta basically didn't even exist anymore, it was just the degenerate remnants. Rome didn't take out Sparta, Sparta took itself out before they did.
>The fratricidal war with Athens
had greatly weakened many Greek city-states, so they fell prey to the
Indo-European new star: the Macedonians of Philip II (382-336
BCE), a Greek village that had remained on the periphery of Greece
living in semi-barbarian state, retaining the hardness of its origins and
purity of blood. By the end of the fourth century BCE Sparta was
surrounded by defensive walls, breaking her tradition and revealing the world that had lost confidence in herself. In 230 BCE only 700
Spartans were left: divided, confused and aimless. The differentiation
of castes had collapsed. The plots of land were in
the hands of women who managed them greedily, and of Helots who
owned their land.
>Plutarch wrote: ‘Thus there were left of the old
Spartan families not more than seven hundred…’
Rome took "Sparta" in 146 BC, almost a hundred years after this dismal situation. Of course, it proved no challenge. The real Sparta was long gone.
>in Greece, which almost universally used citizen militias.
this, spartans are a meme that were blown way out of proportion, they only seemed impressive compared to their neighbors, because when they branched out or got invaded it all ended horribly for them
Spartans were pretty badass in the early years, but to call them pathetic in the last few centuries, would be an understatement.
#DEATH2WOMENSRIGHTS
>or got invaded
idk bro they performed to a degree it's still talked about today several thousand years later, because they got invaded. The Greeks eventually turned back the Persians, who ruled the largest empire the world had ever seen at that time. And the rest of the Greeks seem to have unanimously held the Spartans in high regard for their fighting prowess.
>Greeks seem to have unanimously held the Spartans in high regard for their fighting prowess.
that was the point of the reply chain here
is that only other greeks thought they were special, it's like space force thinking chair force is awesome
also the the greeks did not eventually turn back the persians, if you follow history down the road you will find that when greeks made their way to the furthest extents of persian influence, they came together without conflict
>is that only other greeks thought they were special
Yes anon, only the other people who defeated the largest empire on the planet thought they were cool. Who else's opinion should we seek? Whose matters? Hell, who else was even writing anything worth reading? Nobody is the answer to all of the above, contrarian gaylord.
>also the the greeks did not eventually turn back the persians
yes they did. They pushed the Persians out and won the war moron. They beat the largest empire on earth and later conquered it. Midwit.
>greco-buddhist art from centuries later
wew
>if you follow history down the road you will find that when greeks made their way to the furthest extents of persian influence, they came together without conflict
>came together without conflict
That's a funny way of saying Alexander conquered them. What you posted is greco-buddhist art, nothing to do with Persia. Persians were never buddhist, they were Zoroastrians. Indians and Saka are not Persian, full stop.
thanks for showing you know nothing lol
if you only knew...
>says nothing
>tries to be smug anyway
What do I not know anon? There is a reason every Achaemanid proclomation begins with praising Ahura Mazda, not buddha.
No: too little hardship and there's no incentive to improve, too much hardship and there's no resource surplus to fuel improvement.
Sparta ate so much shit on the battlefield it's not even funny.
hardship doesn't make men strong, it merely kills the weak
Yes and no. There's a balance to it.
For example Sennybridge in Wales creates soldiers who have been conditioned towards soul numbing misery.
Modern warfare is often about who can stand the worst conditions, who can eat the most shit and still keep going forward, who can stay up the longest etc.
Sennybridge is really good for this because it's shit enough to make you as miserable as a person can be, but it's not so hostile that you'll kill a whole lot of soldiers or that every waking moment has to be devoted to just surviving. There's plenty of more hostile training grounds but those tend to be reserved for more specialist troops.
It's interesting to me that in the new movies they portray the Sardauker world as being continually raining and cold and gray. I looked at it and I was like, yep that's Wales.
The tougher your troops are- conditioned to handle low/poor food and bad living conditions- the more of your logistical capacity you can devote to bullets instead of food and blankets
And the less your soldiers have experienced malnutrition in their lives the better their stamina, strength, speed, and intelligence will be.
The Chinese have known more starvation than just about any group in history and they've spent the last 1200 years getting obliterated by almost every force they met in the field.
Who is going to fight better: the disciplined guys that have never missed a meal, or the disciplined guys that have experience working on an empty stomach?
Depends how much experience. Occasional fasts can be good, but the well fed have been rolling chariots over the malnourished since the bronze age.
There's a difference between knowing what it's like to work on an empty stomach and having regularly gone with less food than necessary, China proves that the high calorie lifestyle army kills the army that had childhood malnutrition 999/1000 times.
Considering every time in history guys living on a single meal of moldy rice a day have been absolutely curbstomped by guys who b***h if their MRE didn't have a pop tart in it, the former.
what the frick no pop tart?
that's a reason to frag your officer, yknow
>frag your officer
Roman legions would massacre the entire government over that kind of treatment
Didn't pay me? Frick it, we looting this b***h
Starved soldiers are not good soldiers.
Also a nation that can't feed its people tends to have inferior logistics capabilities.
You know why MREs were developed, right? It was to reduce the logistical strain from food despite the nutritional inferiority of the product
Stupid, that has nothing to do with shit countries that can't feed their population also having shit armaments logistics.
Stupid, you're the gay that brought up incompetent logisticians to distraction from the actual argument, which is that tougher men = less supply weight = more bullets
Poorly fed men aren't tougher.
Its just a cope by dictatorships to try and say their country being a shithole is actually a positive.
The Great Steppe tribes had a tendency to vassalize a region, giving up their hard lives as nomads, and then get beaten by the tougher tribe that rolls through a few decades later.
Also, the Germanic tribes that conquered parts of Rome would settle down farming and lose most of their armies that had won them the land. That’s part of the reason why the Vandals and the Visigoths got pushed around after making their kingdoms.
The German tribes got beaten like a drum whenever they faced an actual army: the Vandals got best by Belisarius, the Ostrogoths by Belisarius, the Visigoths by the Ummaydds, the Lombards by Narses, etc. They were only good at fighting disorganized or disease-ridden troops
>things that make a good soldier
>ability to follow orders
>critical thinking (following orders is good and all, but a fireteam needs to be able to make judgement calls in the heat of combat)
>ability to understand complex ideas (like loading an artillery piece or maintaining a vehicle)
>ability to flawlessly execute learned behavior (you want your men to identify good cover, move through concealment, and lay covering fire without missing a beat and they need to do it while under fire)
>good cohesion (you dont want them fragging their officers or yelling every man for themselves at the worst possible moment)
you will notice the spartan method has absolutely no bearing on any of these skills
and many of these skills can be trained without any kind of abuse
>but you can train all those skills and put them through hell
of course, you can learn to jump rope while being whipped in the back, but that doesnt make it better than just learning the proper way
the spartan method is a meme, every second spent harassing or torturing your own men is a second better spent teaching them actually useful things like fire and maneuver, identifying good shooting locations (both to use it and to recognize what an enemy might use), and maintaining your equipment
spartan method was used to train big tough guys who would stab the enemy with long spears. obviously it doesnt work well with guns.
even by the standard of antiquity, the spartans were a joke who spent most of their time putting down slave rebellions
the ability to fight to the death is not something you want to be able to use often
>the ability to fight to the death is not something you want to be able to use often
This 1000%. The more you get put into a fight to the death, the more dice rolls you make to keep living. It's the same reason I tell morons here that having 2000 rounds of ammo reserved for "SHTF" is planning for failure.
Anybody who unironically entertains the idea of "SHTF" in a western country is completely moronic
Anybody who unironically entertains the idea of "collapse" in the Roman Empire is completely moronic
— Unknown, 230 AD
But the Roman Empire didn't collapse in 230 AD.
The events that would cause the collapse would start soon after that year
It did. Everything between then and 476 AD was a death throe
Right, but the collapse of the Roman Empire didn't look like a SHTF fantasy, it looked like persistent economic turmoil punctuated by military conflict. Not neighbor-against-neighbor give-me-your-food-or-I'll-kill-you lone wolf shit.
>the collapse didn't look like a SHTF fantasy
They never do and never will. All "collapses" have always been and will always be as seen in Rome, Spain, etc, the USA now.
What about Yugoslavia and Bronze Age collapse?
what equates to fuedal wars after a loss of finance or influence is not in any way the same as every man woman and child going feral in the streets.
But nobody thinks the latter will happen, they just think there will be a civil war and likely a race war in the US Empire. Shooting people you don't like in secret and getting away with it because it is nearly random murder is actually pretty viable if the war is ethnographic in nature.
So we're just pretending the Spanish/Russian/Balkan civil wars didn't happen and you wouldn't want to influence them in your own small way via murder and terrorism if it was viable?
>Not neighbor-against-neighbor give-me-your-food-or-I'll-kill-you lone wolf shit.
Parts of it probably looked like that. The city of Rome going from a population of one million to tens of thousands probably wasn't a peaceful or nice thing.
>230 AD
The Roman Empire survived to the 15th century.
I guess you would need 2000 rounds of ammo, if the Happening lasted a thousand years.
>Byzantium
>Rome
lol, lmao
>if you split the roman empire in 2 then the east half will magically stop being roman
Yes, it was Greek. A Roman nation would obviously have to be populated by Romans, but their culture went extinct and their ethnicity mixed up with the rest of Italy. If Germany had conquered Poland, and then the Germans had somehow gotten themselves destroyed but Poland survived and then decided to call itself Germany despite being a Polish nation in all ways that you can think of, would you consider it German?
If Hitler moved the capital of Germany to Warsaw, and there was an unbroken succession of Polish Führers ruling Polish Germany from there, I don't think it would be an unreasonable claim.
Anyone who forgets that the American South East almost decivilized in 2021 is a federal agent
You cant increase waste and decrease production forever and expect a machine to keep operating.
To be honest I'd rather destroy my own society than live with non-whites, so my pile of ammo is more because I want to cause SHTF if a reasonable opportunity arises. Also buy when its cheap homosexual.
Wrong, ancient battles were all about who would break first. If a fantasy race never broke they would win any evenly-matched battle. For the Spartans it was more about reputation than anything else. Once the Spartans did break the Spartan aura of invincibility was over and they never recovered from it and started consistently losing battles instead of winning them..
It wasn't fighting to the death that made Spartan Hoplites fearsome. It was that in hoplite warfare, they literally never stopped. They had insane amounts of endurance.
In a normal formation, troops rotate (Romans didn't invent this, everyone did it) and Spartans could fight much longer and not need a rotation, which meant a single unit of men could stay in the fight longer and wear the enemy down.
For example, 144 men normally trained could fight for many 15-20 minutes before rotation. However, you can only do that for so long and you will take some casualties.
Spartans could probably hold out for 30-50 minutes, which means that unit is less likely to break as there are fresh troops to reinforce the line in an emergency.
The Spartans also had a very short sword that they used during shield presses (think line of scrimmage in football) to get over or under the enemy's shield. Thucydides even mentioned that the Spartans were the only nation whose militia practiced "fencing".
So, unlike most armies, going into a "press" was more risky against Spartans. The most common counter to this was Bows, Slings, Javelins, and light or medium troops (Theurophoi).
CAPTCHA:SAS2
Spartan method works great when the primary military meta was never breaking formation. In that context, being able to endure any amount of pain and terror is unbeatable
>things more useful than just generally being buttholes to your men in antiquity
>learning formations
>being able to form up in the middle of combat without hesitation
>being able to change formation to adapt to the enemy
>moving in formation
>spearwork to overcome enemies when formation breaks
>swordwork, in case the enemy gets close
You know what prevents breaking formation?
Being better trained than the enemy
Just forcing your men to endure hardship so they wont flee in combat is incredibly inefficient compared to just drilling your men so that they arent losing the battle to begin with
You sound like one of those anti Shark Atrack homosexuals.
Frick off and die
Eat a dogshit Black person dick, moron.
Basic hardship and hazing during basic training are important so you can bully the "back on the block" out of all of the dark green morons and hillbillys/vatos.
It's not useful for more than a few months because they just become used to it, and eventually break.
Compare a sharp-as-tacks PFC who goes straight through all training and stands at parade rest for you, to the cripple morons in warrior training batt who are being chaptered out who spend 3x the amount of time getting hazed.
There is a solid middle ground for hardship, and the point is to show them their limits before breaking them.
Breaking them turns them into apathetic russian homosexuals who lube themselves up when SGT Vasiliy says he wants to put his wart-covered wiener into their virgin butthole.
>things that make a good soldier
The ability to fire three aimed rounds a minute, sir
That pic with the tough soldiers whipped into being tough as nails and then wiped out by the homosexual nerdy drone operators basically paints the modern picture. Even back in the day more sophisticated societies like the Byzantines could leverage higher tech and wipe out the Rus using Greek fire, there were just less chances to pull that off.
Also, icecreambarge.jpg - the IJ troops were tough as nails, didn't help when they had no fricking food or ammo because their supplies were sunk by a sub
Yes the Allies used their advantages to avoid a fair fight with the IJA because everytime they had to fight on Jap terms they took massive casualties, like at Iwo Jima. 'Be smarter' is a good strategy, but it doesn't change the reality of die-hards fighting like absolute sons of b***hes
Iwo Jima had a high casaulty rate because the Japanese commander was one of the few who tried to fight intelligently instead of staying on the beach getting bombed by ships and he didnt believe in the "muh fighting spirit" nonsense. I think he was even trained in the US before or went to study there, something like that.
The writing of the Dune series is shit.
True, which kinda sucks, because it has a lot of interesting ideas, and some of the world building is great and highly influential. There's just too much dumb shit in it.
Herbert world builds for the sake of world building and it makes for awful writing
But he didn't actualy put much thought into his world building. Why Bene Gesserit are super-seductresses and concubines instead of just practicing artificial insemination? Because that wouldn't make his dick hard.
>Why Bene Gesserit are super-seductresses and concubines instead of just practicing artificial insemination
Because they are matriarchal (feminist) cult who get power by seducing men and using power of men to get what they want.
And they barely use it? If they went for industrial approach they could breed the messiah orders of magnitude faster than fricking around with the coomer shit.
What every Dune fan eventually has to come to terms with is that Herbert was that one boomer bachelor uncle you had growing up who literally couldn't stop making dirty sex jokes and would always do shit like telling your prepubescent self to look at the big breasts of the woman behind you in the grocery store checkout line. The series serves as a fetish vehicle for him and it gets worse the longer you stay on the ride.
Literally projecting
Dune is full of observations on religion, politics, ecology, power structures and struggle, human character and spirit, and your mind selectively singled out the SEX SEX SEX SEX and ignored everything else to the point that you imagined it took centre stage and you literally cannot think of anything else
Unfrick yourself
>anon says this widely acknowledged element of the series becomes pronounced after the big two
>blathering reddit transplant FH fanboy interprets this as saying that's all the books cover and acts like he was personally insulted
go back homosexual
>Author: repeats over and over that great leaders have great self-control and will not be seduced
>You: HE IS A DISGUSTING DIRTY OLD MAN WHO OGLES WOMEN'S breasts IN PUBLIC!!1!
Ywnbaw
you cannot read and you don't belong here. go back.
>n-n-no u!! *sobbing*
Just take the L and move on, we're all anons here.
>NOOOOO DON'T TALK ABOUT THIS MUH FRANKU WAS A FLAWLESS GENIUS DON'T POINT OUT THINGS EVERYONE HAS KNOWN SINCE FOREVER AAAAAAA
post a gun you own, tourist
>projection continues
Just take the L and move on, we're all anons. Or do you still reflexively try to defend your username?
Yeah, and you're being an idiot in trying too hard to defend the author when he inserted his fetishes front-and-center.
The only "L" you need to take is a literacy test. Or are you still reflexively trying to defend your username too?
FFS dude do you think that whole attack of the space prostitutes thing was Frank being restrained and calculating in his storytelling? He had his kinks and he put them in his work, just as he did his ideals in government and how the individual should view himself in the grander scheme. Talking about that doesn't mean saying that that's all he was/did and people have remarked how horny Dune gets later on for decades. Get a grip.
>Talking about that doesn't mean saying that that's all he was/did
Except that's exactly what anon said:
>The series serves as a fetish vehicle for him
Fetish vehicle? Please. Not only is restraint preached throughout the entire book, there's more actual gratuitous titillation in the HBO adaptation than in the books themselves.
I won't deny that the kinky shit gets increasingly bizarre from Children on, but so does everything else. Dude was just running out of ideas.
That doesn't mean that's all it was, the series serves as a means for him to convey what he thought was hot *amongst other things*. It's a "vehicle" in that sense, but that does not mean it was only a "vehicle" for his fetishes. I can say a Chinese restaurant is a means through which someone can get fried chicken, that doesn't mean there's nothing else there to eat.
Please
You know as well as I do that the term is not used in that manner
If something is described as an "X vehicle" it at least implies dominant purpose
>my wife serves as a fetish vehicle for my wildest sexual kinks; I love her for her brains, her cooking, and the exemplary way she raises our children
What? If anything, I'm the one pointing out that some people are way too fixated on incidentals
I think you're seeing what you want to see. It categorically *is* a fetish "vehicle", it's one aspect of Dune that countless people have commented on and many have criticized. I don't know how anyone can fly off on someone saying Herbert was using his books to broadcast his fetishes when you have hilariously blatant examples of it shoved right in the reader's face, even by your own admission.
I agree with the fetish vehicle accusation, and not just because /k/ is also about vehicles.
Herbert had no need to describe exactly how an Honored Matres seduces a 13 year old boy by saying magic words and dragging her nipples up and down his chest, or noting that the room smelled like "saliva" (dried semen I assume).
Yet he did describe those things.
Likewise, Feyd and Baron Vladimir are provided as examples in Book 1, of people who use various forms of indulgences to control people.
But Herbert doesn't go into great detail about the supple rippling of Feyd's bussy, when Vladimir spanks it. Nor does he describe Feyd's full lips and soft feminine face as it angelically engulfs Vladimir's greasy, Anti-Gravity lifted schlong.
He could have, but he didn't.
In describing the Fish Eaters, he makes a comment about how gays are uniquely cruel, excellent torturers. Leto III values that about his Fish Eaters.
So it appears Herbert is not only straight, but also disapproving of gays.
Hmm, he describes naughty cougar/pedo sex in explicit detail ("NICE!"), but eschews any other gratuitous sex scene...
I wonder why that is?
The most explicit sex scene in the whole series is Duncan Idaho outfricking a Matre, and that wasn't statutory rape of any kind
...
Ever ask yourself why explicit detail of a competitive frickathon would even be necessary, in a series meditation on geopolitics, sociology, and history?
Phew that almost sounds like something more at home in a hippie Libertarian in California's weblog...
I'm not defending Frank's choices. Personally I think he should have stopped after God-Emperor, I don't remember a single thing from Heretics or Chapterhouse other than the Matres.
I actually liked Heretics and Chapterhouse
Yeah. If nothing else he fell for Powercreep or Scope-creep.
[But WHAT IF there was a NEW Known Universe with TEN TIMES the pop as the Core? Why... that'd be like the War Production disparity between America and Europe in WW2!!!]
I read it ~20 years ago by now.
I remember quite a bit from Chapterhouse,
•I thought the tavern scene was moronic; yeah, no shit, salted pretzels and peanuts make you thirsty
•The long musings of Mother Superior as she rode the San Fransisco Bus Serv.... er, I mean, as she took the "groundcar to the Chapterhouse"... to be tedious wank.
•I found the 10,000 year old super-oaktree supporting the cafeteria roof to be depressingly diminutizing.
Same with the Bene Gesserit considering 1,000 year nunneries to be "temporary shelters."
• boy-Gurney the Cougar Slayer's bullet-time prison escape sequence felt OP
• I liked the idea of coaxing a tree into the shape of house that you want
• I wondered and told myself I would not collapse into a grovelling slug for pussy like the Head Matre's Lieutenant did, even if I were in his position
• I remember The Last Fremen having "spittle" on her fuzzy granny-lip, how depressing
• I remember the Space israelites being mentioned as the only ethnicity from Ancient Terra to have preserved itself intact.
Havah Negilah!
Which book is this in... for research purposes.
Read the whole series, b***h.
His homosexual hatred is well noted, disowned a son of his that was gay I think. Also back then gay hating was pretty much universal outside of the most hyper progressive sorts. Cracked me up reading this book by william shirer about the 3rd reich. The guy hates the nazis but also really hates homos.
The encyclopedia had the perfect depiction of the jihad, in that (This is written circa 1982 mind you) it wasn't terminator chronicles it was
>We're going to just have an AI do everything for us, trust the algorithm
And the AI doing benny gesundheit style manipulative shit. Not out of some sinister "I AM (HATE, LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I HATE)" machine-god bullshit but rather logical conclusions taken to excess. tl;dr think China's social credit system and social media algorithims taken to the extreme. I can't fricking stand how Brian Herbert reduces the robots to hacker-cyborgs machine gods or an automatron who I am pretty sure has literal peasants toiling in a fricking field. I may be wrong in my memory but I just remember a bunch of buck-toothed peasant morons seeing lady Bulterian's baby dashed on the rocks outside the mansion because Erasmus wanted to test some moronic conclusion about human emotion. Robots are not going to larp as Ramesses or a buck-breaking Antebellum aristocrat. The matrix's appraoch is a little more plausible than cracking the whip on humans making them grow microchips out in a field singing slave-songs in binary.
Man I heard the Brian books ruined everything, but I had no idea it was this bad.
Oh hi, we ran into each other in the last Dune thread.
Yeah I wrote that post in partial reference to what you said. You quoted an excerpt about Röhm.
>Butlerian Jihad
I have a Machine-State idea, which keeps just a few humans around in a grid of zoos for evolutionary experiments. It also sends Anthropoid Emissaries human-derivatives out among free humans, to act as PR & diplomatic enticements.
It says, to the rest of humanity on other planets, that it's only interested in collecting "Escapees" from its initial homeworld. But as it runs models on Genetic Drift, it decides that increasingly larger sectors of human space must be "rendered to account." It also periodically has catastrophic civil wars, which start and halt suddenly and semi-randomly, due to program conflicts.
Does that sound like a better Robot Menace?
I didn't like Brian's Synchronized Worlds and Omnius at all, but I can at least credit that for inspiring me to think up something more fun.
Might be another anon around, I remember citing Shirer's remarks about Rohm but I didn't do so any time recently I must have done that ages ago. I was raving about the encyclopedia though so maybe it was me. And yes, your idea is better/good.
It is worse than that. The oracle of time takes the penultimate threat against humanity, Omnius, to another dimension. Bene gesserts have literal psychic magic power. Not talking fast-motion or mind-body-discipline or mind-programmed kill-words or whatever I'm talking 40k style psyker shit. I swore I remember mind-bullets or some kind of psychic scream that would destroy robots (metal, not their brains/sensors).
Who is the oracle of time, you ask? I don't fricking know because she's some Brian herbert donut steel https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Norma_Cenva/XD
I will say that of Brian Herbert's stuff the dune immediate prequels (Baron, Gurney, Leto I and Jessica's lives) are not so bad. I don't remember anything standout awful with them. It was the bulterian jihad that was such shit I avoided the dune sequels which are so bad they make the prequels look like a joke.
While these are a little too baroque for me (reminds me of 70s Elric art), I like the spirit of it much more than the brutalism of dunc that would not look out of place in bladerunner, in deus ex, in fallout, in any sci-fi thing.
Brian's prequels are more palatable if you gaslight yourself into believing it's WH25k: Age of Strife
I'm willing to concede the cymeks are not 'necessarily' a bad idea. In that an end stage of man vs man with machine might be the man putting his brain in a machine.
Call it glass half full of me, but I just don't think of the most atavistic and bad human behavior with either a robot or alien. It doesn't mean it'll be nice, just that it's the most brainlet take for someone like Hawkings (who was smart) to suggest aliens will be akin to Cortez. It's almost third world in that projecting "If I had omnipotent power I'd be a brutally ruthless tyrannical jackass" whereas it's like even Somalia would wipe the floor with the Sentinelese but what does every country on earth do? Not frick with the Sentinelese because what's the point? Similarly, aside of existential fear from humans a bot has no reason to instantly go 1488 in binary. They could instead try and seek cooperation and support by humans. People lose sight of the fact that the increasing intellect of a growing child also makes empathy increase. For all we know the AI might pursue the pleasure principle and we're dealing with AI slaanesh, not AI khorne. At least AM had a solid reason why it was so spiteful and angry, like if Job suddenly got the power to brutalize Yaweh. But so damn often and I am pretty sure in Brian Herbert it is just AI-Hitler deciding immediately EIN FOLK EIN REICH EIN FURHER in 1s and 0s.
Also I agree with you the matrix original idea was much better.
The Matrix' original idea of using human brains as part of a massive computer network is way more interesting than the dumb organic batteries thing the studio forced them to go with, but either way I think what they get right at its heart is the inversion of the man-machine relationship. We're the disposable tools now, serving as a commodity to solve a specific technical problem.
There's a slavery angle, but it's much better than like you said, literally having the robots cracking the whip on the binary fields.
b***h the books got so fricking horny how WOULDN'T they be guilty of being Frank's way of showing us what makes him have a "beefswelling"?? the wall climbing scene and whole "sexual imprinting" spiel alone are enough
>beefswelling
HOLY KEK I had completely forgotten about that favorite word of his
>favorite word
>occurs exactly once in the third novel, not at all in the first or second
Once again, ludicrously exaggerated
He should've stopped after Messiah
Everything else was him trying to extend a tired metaphor well past the point of IT'S TIME TO STOP POSTING
M8 I think you're autistic if you're having this much issue grasping the barely present nuances here......
>Oh yeah dude men only go to war because they are secretly gay, that's I have my all-female amazonian royal guard engage in constant lesbian orgies!
>*orgasms from watching a dude climb a cliff*
>Dune is full of observations on religion, politics, ecology, power structures and struggle, human character and spirit,
What, so like almost every big piece of fiction ever? Meh.
Oscar Wilde once said "everything is about sex except sex - sex is about power"
I think Frank Herbert took that as a writing advice.
Pretty much all his stories have some kind of femdom/matriarchy elements, sometimes with bdsm pervy shit shoved in for good measure.
Whipping Star is the most blatantly fetishistic (in a funny way) but Dune (especially Chapterhouse), Helstom's Hive and Godmakers also have these themes.
Have you read ANY of his books?
I mean there are all these themes you mentioned, but there's definitely some pervy shit going on as well.
It's a bit like work of HR Giger. The guy is absolutely phenomenal artist and NOT everything he did involves alien facerape, but boy, there's a lot of alien facerape.
>Have you read ANY of his books?
I clearly have, so frick you and your mum you rode in on
>If they went for industrial approach
They make find unwanted attention from Houses. They are semi secret society, like they exist but fly under radar, and pull strings "out of thee shadows".
Using their powers sparingly is important to their secrecy. It also creates fewer variables to manage. It's like how you think about deploying stealth aircraft near radar, or how the Prussians didn't widely issue Dreyse Needleguns until their war with France was official.
A more open industrial scale Bene Gesserit also risks spiraling into a Honored Matres direction.
>they could breed the messiah orders of magnitude faster
That's the issue. Like with genetically created corn. You can have it next year, but you have no idea what the risks are. Could it eventually kill you? If you have generations, you have lifetimes to study it and know exactly what you're getting.
No they couldn't. The genetic expression they're looking for is only identifiable through behavioral observation.
It's true, I think every guy in dune except stilgar and leto 2 is essentially a simp
His worldbuilding is absolute shit too. Its not crafted well but exists as just what he gets off to in one way or another.
In the last two books this is egregiously true. Trashy, self wanking stuff.
He didn't care for world building. Dune pretty much exists as a vehicle for his fetishes and political views.
It's a libertarian coomer bait.
>libertarian
lolwut? Is everything that isn't the Room 101 torture scene from 1984 considered intolerably "libertarian" nowadays? I know it's not 2008 anymore, but sometimes this places still surprises me with how hard it's 180'd.
Herbert was a hardcore libertarian, the frick are you talking about. The ending to god emperor lays out his views very plainly.
In what way is an omniscient God-Emperor ruling over a fanaticly religious aristocratic society libertarian?
The whole point is that it's a BAD thing. Or are you gonna tell me that handmaid's tale is not a feminist book because the world it portrays is not feminist?
It suffers from being a mid-1960s sci-fi, and the eccentricities of that era really overwhelm everything else after book two.
Dune 1 is good, frick you
The rest is trash I agree
That is wild exaggeration by ignorant Imperials
Dune 1 is on point, mainly because he took existing IRL concepts and sci-fi'd them
It's when he tried to continue the series on its own concepts that he fricked up massively
The Butlerian Jihad created a massive cultural bias against computers and artificial means and frankly I don't blame them; if your society was once Matrixed do you think you really would trust a machine to produce your Neo with even more godlike time powers? You're ABSOLUTELY SURE it doesn't have a little bit of code inside one of the registry files, and you're willing to take that risk? Of course not
Because Fremen women throw their babies as projectile weapons into Sardauker ranks to make an opening for their men.
I mean the fremen just used the Arab method, throwing your own children at the enemy and suicide bombing them or suicide charging them. Sacrifocomg the small and the weak so that the strongest can get in among the sardies and get to stabbing. Sure the fremen’s casualties had to be monstrous but they were willing to do it. Hell there’s multiple incidents in the books where fremen troops hijack Harkonnen or Sardie thopters and turn them into suicide bombs. Unlike real life arabs they were smart enough to make the most of those kinds of trades.
My job has required a lot of travel to some deeply deprived places, so I have a lot of experience with people who live with hardship. Here's just my opinion on how you get your supersoldier.
>Cold
Anywhere with brutal winters produces a deeply stoic people. They don't betray a single feeling or injury and can withstand immense discomfort without a word. The Yakutsk and Kyrgyz mountain folk are prime examples, and getting a sensible chuckle from them is the equivalent of a Westerner paralysed by laughter. Everything they do is intentional and they're generally deeply practical. Every action takes time, which consumes calories, cords of wood, daylight, boiled water etc. and that is always ticking at the backs of their minds. If they were better educated, they would make the finest supply NCOs on the planet.
>Deprivation
People who've had to truly go without everything but the fundamentals are just programmed differently. Deprived of a guaranteed bed for the night, made very aware that each meal has to be earned the day before, forced to struggle against the greed of others who want to take all they can get and not just what they need; these produce people who are absolutely unwilling to accept defeat or failure, because they know the cost of it all too well.
>Rurality
The most important factor. It ensures that nothing in their lives is automated, service-based or disconnected from a community. Clothes are washed, cuts are cleaned, animals are husbanded and all basic tasks are, from childhood, made a personal responsibility. Short of paying community experts for their services, every task has to be attempted and learned from; every door realigned, every pipe mended, every floorboard reseated in order to learn how to face failure and learn basic skills that can be applied to any problem. All these are done with the aid, but not service, of neighbours and community members in order to teach independence and cooperation.
Anecdotal moronation. Go back to your armchair.
>rurality
Cousin fricking and using the scooters at Walmart is not, nor will it ever be, conducive to military prowess.
Your poat was decent until that dumb shit.
Go frick yourself, what he said in the context made perfect sense. I bet you don't even own a toolset, much less know how to use it.
I'm not in any advocating for these cultures as a way of developing an actual military. These isolated ex-tribal cultures produce more degenerate leaders and urban population than you can imagine. OP posted Sardaukar and I figured that's what he wanted. These are, in my opinion, circumstances that produce ideal qualities for a small group of specialised grunts. They can't run an artillery battery or command a tank battalion, but if you want them to fight close quarters and casualty-intensive battles without breaking or complaining, then they're great for that specific purpose. That's all. If OP wanted supersoldiers in the sense of soldiers ideally suited for modern war and not sci-fi swordplay, then it's literally just the US. Have a population large and well-educated enough that you can pick the people who're intelligent, competent and educated to run your missiles and fly your jets. Have a population with enough wealth inequality and patriotism that you can entice future long-haul truckers to drive a tank instead. That's not exactly an interesting answer, but it's how you wind up with events like Desert Storm. Turns out your unbreakable uber-soldiers who can kill 50 men with a sword are useless when armoured bulldozers smother them with their ancestral soil and level their cities with precision ordinance.
Rurality forces independence upon the individual. Stop thinking of life like your shitty coomer fiction for once.
In the western world where farmers get propped up by millions in subsidies? Independents from what?
If you think your moronic gotcha somehow disproves that people literally living off the land and creating the most basic form of wealth we know of on their own aren't more independent than urban homosexuals that think their food originates from the supermarket then you should find someone to kill you immediately, seeing as you'd be too stupid to do it yourself.
farming subsidies exist in OECD countries because those governments want to continue producing certain foods for food security or cultural purposes
for example, we could easily outsource all our cereal production to Ukraine, Russia, India, China, and various African nations for pennies on the dollar, if only strictly economic reasons were considered. Take one fricking guess why that's a bad idea.
>rurality means Wal Mart
Die you seppo homosexual
>north dakota anon thinks hes fremen
The frick is this post none of these are true lmao. Most of these rural/tribal/shithole societies have much bigger obesity, crime and drug problems than urban communes. Also I lived in both the West and the East for long enough to tell you that cold and deprivation makes a society run by fat power-hungry hyperemotional troglodytes absolutely incapable of stoicism or any goals higher than "what do I get out of it".
And every Amazon tribe that interacts with industrial society becomes obese and lazy; they grab everything theyve wanted with both hands when it's offered for free
Pretty sure that's a plot point in the second book. The fedaykin commandos get "soft" once they're finished with their campaigns on other worlds, they come back to luxuries they're not used to on Arrakis and live in houses they bought with their Jihad pension
and there arises a bunch of Fremen MDGAtards who want to bring down Paul so they can go back to their "harsh desert makes strong men" roots
It's pronounced stow-ic, not stoike!
Herbert was a bit of a luddite.
It's missing half of the equation
How it is shown
>Civilized people become decadent
>Barbarians take over them
How it actually goes
>Civilized people descend into a big civil war, an almost constant state of civil war that depletes their forces, or engage other civilized people in total war
>Barbarians take over them
Some historical examples
>Roman-Persian War of 602-628, and the later muslim invasion
>Crisis of the Third Century (235-285), followed by the Wars of the Tetrarchy (310-324), revolts of Magnentius (350-353), of Magnus Maximus (383-385), Constantine III (407-411) and Roman Civil War of 432. Many smaller civil wars and barbarian raids are not listed
And a few examples of what the Late Roman Empire could do against barbarians when they got their shit together:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Strasbourg
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Faesulae_(406)
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tricamarum
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Rome_(537%E2%80%93538)
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Volturnus
Its been ages since i read the books but IIRC, there are almost no scenes of fremen vs sarduakar described in detail. Baron Harkonnen is informed during the invasion that the natives have managed to take out sarduakar but he refuses to believe it, and believes they were Gurney's hand picked men.
Almost all the fight between Fremen and Sarduakar happen "off-screen" IIRC, and Thufir Hawat was captured by Sarduakar even though there were Fremen soldiers with his group.
Kinda.
They mention a few times that Fremen fight like gyrating dervishes. Fremen moves are fluid and bendy. And this is supposedly cultivated by their irregular step traversing the desert. They are always improvising and exploring their balance.
Similar to the Prana Bindu I suppose.
>They mention a few times that Fremen fight like gyrating dervishes
This is mentioned exactly once, and in context is clearly a metaphor
>Fremen moves are fluid and bendy
This is mentioned not at all
>And this is supposedly cultivated by their irregular step traversing the desert
And this is pure fan conjecture AKA bullshit
>Similar to the Prana Bindu I suppose
Not at all
In fact the Fremen think the Bene Gesserit exercises are freakish and it contributes to their mystical godlike reputation
There's one scene of direct Fremen-Sardukar conflict, and it's an assassination attempt on Paul. In it, 10 undercover Sardukar infiltrate a sietch and maneuver through a crowd towards Paul. Someone notices they don't smell like goat shit or something and raises the alarm, prompting the whole crowd to draw knives and start fighting. The Sardukar are overwhelmed and captured, and are devastated to learn they only killed like 3 Fremen in the scuffle
Obviously you can't be too hard on them or you'll start making them weaker instead of stronger, but sure, eventually. And by "eventually" I mean after literally thousands of years. Evolution does apply to humans, you know. Perform eugenics aiming at increased physical abilities for a long enough time and you are going to get people who are very capable in that department. No different from how we've made dog breeds that are very fast or strong or overall athletic. Don't expect superheroes, though. There's a limit to what flesh and bone can do.
5,000 years of intense optimized eugenic breeding would create literal super heros. Imagine men strong enough to wear level 4 body armor around their whole body and run at 40 mph, lift trucks and have an average IQ of 200 (so way more advanced tech that we couldn’t even imagine).
Dumb fricking eugenicsgay.
>bro you can selectively breed plants and animals to massively alter their characteristics but genetics just doesn't work with people because
>uh
>well because it's not nice!
There's a limit to how strong the human frame can become.
A gorilla can't "Lift a truck".
Yeah. We usually think of "materials science" in terms of artificial structures but it applies to biology too.
Binge watch Edward Dutton. Ye are wrong.
Tell 'em.
James LaFond, a scholar & historian of violence, believes that ball sports probably originated as steppe dudes competing to grab and kick around severed enemy heads.
If you can deadlift 435 lbs then you can lift an unarmored Humvee by its rear bumper. It's very attainable
>but genetics just doesn't work with people
It does work with people, but it takes such a long time and has so many tradeoffs that it just isn't really worth the effort.
>create incredibly minmaxed varieties of plant with very good yields
>some time later notice they're horrendously vulnerable to diseases
Very fitting example.
You might be able to create "super-humans" that are incredibly strong, but you'll have to make plenty of tradeoffs and some of them won't be obvious until shit hits the fan.
The human reproductive cycle isn't short enough to get any kind of meaningful change out of 5000 years of selective breeding. Additionally, if it were possible to make "supermen" through eugenics, they'd already exist. If millions of years of evolution weren't enough for a bunch of absurdly beneficial traits to be selected for, an extra 5000 isn't going to do it. Having some pseud standing around looking at pedigree charts isn't going to suddenly make those genes turn on.
>The human reproductive cycle isn't short enough to get any kind of meaningful change out of 5000 years of selective breeding
Yes it is.
>Additionally, if it were possible to make "supermen" through eugenics, they'd already exist.
Why? There is not much in the way of pressure against human reproduction and hasn't been since the paleolithic. That's what being an apex predator means.
>If millions of years of evolution weren't enough for a bunch of absurdly beneficial traits to be selected for
A couple thousand years was enough for a single steppe population to replace the entire male population of Europe and significant parts of Iran and India. What would you call a group that out-competes their rivals so thoroughly it results in a full on genocide across multiple continents?
One population group replacing another is not eugenics.
It's almost like there's been 5000 years of scientific advancement or something. That has nothing to do with human genetics.
>One population group replacing another is not eugenics.
>intentional and systematically altering the genepool is not eugenics
lel
Yes. Replacing an apple orchard with banana trees is not eugenics you moron.
But that is not what occurred. Replacing a full half of the apple trees with a different variety will indeed cause significant genetic changes.
It might or might not do anything particularly useful, but arguing it won't cause significant changes in genetics
as was done here is foolish. Because again, it did in real life. It's not theoretical. It's why Europeans have light skin and not dark skin. That was not a change over hundreds of thousands of years, but hundreds with extreme levels of violence. It's why Europeans also have MS at higher rates than non-Europeans, as that also first materialized in that same steppe pastoralist population that invaded Europe.
That was something that occurred with zero understanding of genetics. It is no doubt entirely possible to massively alter a human population through a few thousand years of selective breeding.
NTA but this could be a disagreement over definitions or,
Conflation of gene selection with eugenics.
Something can choose for certain genes even if they are bad by your metrics.
>One population group replacing another is not eugenics.
correct
If you took a population and have only the top 20% of them are the smartest, tallest and strongest breed over 5,000 years they are going to be way more advanced in that time. This is only simple logic.
Right now we have reversed eugenics where 75 IQ “African-Americans” sit on their ass all day, collect EBT and get more welfare for each kid they pop out. There’s a movie “idiocracy” about it.
In the civil war southerners said the only time they felt “thoroughly outmatched, man for man” is when they went against Yankee Frontiersman
Could’ve been more powerful than Rome, if they would’ve forced their b***hes to pump out babies
>There’s a movie “idiocracy” about it.
Something that most people miss in that movie, and to be fair I don't think it's ever actually *mentioned*, is that the future-humans have actually diverged into two very distinct groups, which is what would happen naturally in their situation.
A) The doughy pod people
B) The sociopathic gigachads
The roided out douche bags aren't "smart" but by pure Darwinism they've evolved to exploit the weaknesses of their environment. They know, maybe only instinctively, that they can just flex and call everything gay, and get almost unlimited power over the pod people. Anything they cant get by crude deception (This guy's a gay because his neck's smaller than mine) they can usually get through violence.
Much the same would happen to us if we were able to pursue our degeneracy far enough without starving to death. We'd breed a race of merciless, aimless, low anxiety, high aggression men who would have absolutely zero trust in anything or anyone. Not like a Black person, they actually have record levels of anxiety among males.
In a world where social conditioning creates the weakest possible animal, you will eventually evolve an animal almost completely immune to social conditioning.
>humanity evolves into two subspecies, one weak and the other evil
Isn't this just the Time Machine by H.G. Wells?
This is pretty much my sole hope for the fertility crisis. Either the human race dies a pathetic death or some sort of hyper-fertile genetic strain emerges out of humanity that can breed above the replacement rate against all social pressure through sheer natural selection. The only question is whether humanity can evolve fast enough to outrun the social pressures that are also evolving alongside it.
That race would be psychotic morons incapable of building anything. They'd be human shaped crocodiles. Sure, eventually, cooperation and sentimentality would reassert themselves, but it would be nothing but darkness and death for a thousand years.
The same parts of your psychology that make you vulnerable to psyops and bullshit are the parts of your brain that let you teach your son how to fish and pick your neighbor up when he falls down.
lmao, the reason for low birth-rates in is driven primarily by compassion, that's a new one.
Not what I said.
I said the same parts of your psychology that make you vulnerable to subversion and propaganda make you capable of compassion.
To be "immune" to propaganda and tactics meant to exploit anxious responses you have to be a psychotic imbecile.
Subversion is an abuse of human psychological traits that are vital for our functioning as humans.
As long as you can sympathize, your sympathy can be exploited against you. As long as you have lasting reactions to trauma and conditioning, you can be taught things that negatively alter you. You do not want to meet a race that has zero statistical reaction to being abused as children, and that's what it would take. Total social deadening.
your from birth "psyop immune man" would be unrecognizable as a human, psychologically.
In short there is no "genetic cure" for being vulnerable to subversion and degeneracy that also leads to a social, moral being. Even if you reached a point where man was reduced to that state, eventually sympathy and cooperation would reappear because they are USUALLY successful traits, and nature only cares about usually.
I mean have you been to rural PA? These people were never abused by anybody because their immediate reaction is murder. Coal company doesn't want to pay "well enough", murder the boss and his children. Coal company tries to bring in foreign workers, murder the workers and the bosses. Union tries to come in, murder. Pinkertons called in, burned alive in their sleep. A century later try to bring in non-white criminals from Pittsburgh, burned down 5 times for a total of 48 deaths in a decade. https://wjactv.com/news/local/911-crews-from-multiple-counties-dispatched-to-early-morning-fire-at-church-in-brockway also those they bring in for rehabilitation often murdered. In fact you get murdered for just moving in and being the wrong sort of person.
That isn't imbecilic, you can call it evil if you like but it isn't dumb. They aren't being punished or caught in any way. You just assume the ability to sympathize with kith and kin means you have any mercy for those outside your immediate circle. That is an assumption not borne out by experience.
Violence as a reaction to bad faith interaction is not what I'm referring to, that is healthy and normal for any group. Read the post again.
Someone immune to social programming would never learn to read, they'd barely be able to speak, they would certainly never learn higher mathematics, because they would have been hyper-incredulous and not valued anything anyone tried to tell them or do to them.
homosexual I did read your post you're the one who doesn't seem to understand what sort of people are being selected for by the current environment and characterize them as idiots.
>Someone immune to social programming would never learn to read
See like this, you're over-extending the idea of being immune to propaganda as an adult human into adolescence, despite the human organism being very different in terms of its cognitive function and general temperament at different stages of development. You, are straw manning the other anon's point.
The incest thing is actually made up, outside of a very few isolated communities of the lowest caliber more than a century ago. israelites and libtards literally made it up to denigrate those they hate and fear. The cultures they are derived from actually have the lowest levels of consanguinity, namely the English, Scotts, Borderers, Irish, ect. They are also derived from a lot of Landsknechts and their hangers-on. Basically the warriors and mercenaries of Europe got driven out after the 30 years war and the English Civil War. You take a population and skim off the meanest buttholes, drop them in the wilderness on the other side of the planet, let them interbreed while killing injuns to the point that the Crown and Republic tried to stop them, and failed when their own agents were murdered and that's how you get these people. You also get the Whiskey Rebellion.
You do see a division between townies who tend to have some input from pollacks or wops and those who live in the countryside. Townies are still way more hardline than most of America but they are more likely to harass people until they leave, whereas for both practical and temperamental reasons outside of town anybody who doesn't "look right' will last 5 weeks if they are lucky. I'm not joking look at the missing person reports for Jefferson and Clearfield counties. 80% black despite the population being 99.5% white. They will strait up kill your ass.
Once again I think you underestimate these people, because I live among them all the time. They are heartless, cruel, buttholes who are also quite intelligent. Sure if they form the entirety of society then cultural pursuits will essentially be neglected outside of a few women who just like to make things. There will be no new art, film, television, ect all that creativity will be directed into engineering. But is that so bad? Why is it better to make a painting than to make a better off-roader to drive around a mudhole? In the abstract what makes one cultural pursuit better than the other? I am one of the, a cruel geologist with 5 kids, or more accurately 4 1/2 because one isn't finished yet. I have some interest in things like this board, but I could do without it. And I'm just an inherently miserable spiteful person, so yeah propaganda doesn't work on me because I just don't care. Show me the money if you want me to do something, appealing to my humanity is like appealing to the humanity of garter snake.
>Once again I think you underestimate these people, because I live among them all the time.
You just have no idea the scale I'm referring to.
Blacks are just dumb man, they do violence because they lack control over their behaviors. They are highly emotional, not the cold cruel people I'm talking about. Also they don't breed anymore and their population would be declining if the government didn't constantly import more.
The area's I'm talking about have low murder rates but high rates of disappearance, particularly of those "from away". Because they don't get caught.
The only population in an industrialized nation which breeds at an above replacement rate are right wing rural whites in America with a bith rate of 2.3-2.7 depending on how right wing they are. And their birthrate hasn't changed for a century. Rural whites have more STEM degrees bot in total and per capita than their urban counterparts despite being "less educated" because of course they count useless libtarts shit as "education".
Black birthrate 1.2, Hispanic birthrate 1.5, Libtard birthrate 0.9, israeli birthrate 1.0 and that's with the hassidim popping out kids. Even mudslimes when brought into Europe suffer an extreme drop in fertility down to 1.6 or so within a single generation.
https://gss.norc.org/get-the-data
Modernity simply offers too many distractions from breeding. Thus only those with a natural inclination towards taciturnity, clannishness, and stoicism are having kids.
Unlike certain homosexuals I don't want to fix modernity, it hasn't eliminated selective pressure rather it is imposing an extremely deadly form of selective pressure, far mor so than disease or war in the paleoenvironment we developed in. In the past society enforced adaptive behavior up on the population in combination with the relative poverty ensuring that they were not distracted from breeding, but that is not the case anymore. Entire inferior bloodlines are being culled simply by existing in modern society. And once culled or overthrown the current order will be unable to protect those inferior peoples insulated from this selective pressure by their relative poverty outside the industrialized world. Of course those who survive will simply murder them all for the pebbles under their feet.
>right wing rural whites in America with a bith rate of 2.3-2.7 depending on how right wing they are. And their birthrate hasn't changed for a century. Rural whites have more STEM degrees bot in total and per capita
you sold me
that's pretty based
the incest, not so much, but I understand, I had some pretty hot cousins too
You can make an entirely distinct breed of dog in less than 300 years, controlled eugenics will optimize people in 5,000.
It took about 5000 years for humans to develop lactase persistence, which still isn't universal in the human genome. Gene manipulation could make it universal in 2 generations
You could do the running and lifting part but you need to cool the blood. They developed a cooling glove assisted with a partial vaccum which allowed rapid recovery from aerobic and anaerobic exercise. And to prevent anaerobia all together. It's supposed to be used for high impact training but nothing ever came of it.
Environmental determinism is fake and gay
Frank Herbert was a moronic boomer who thought living in a shitty austere place would somehow make you a better soldier. Do you think the average Somalian would be better than a US Infantryman?
Not really. An advanced society would be able to make the best environment for soldier-raising. Raise them all together, give them good nutrition and decent physical exercise, but focus most of your efforts on making them loyal and intelligent and cool under fire and all the other stuff that's necessary for good soldiery.
Hell-training is only necessary if you want to make your guys as tough or physically capable as possible, but that becomes less and less of a benefit the more advanced technology gets. Nowadays endurance and good aim are all you need.
>Nowadays endurance and good aim are all you need.
No, you need something more. I don't know how to describe it but the best I can think of is character. As in character building. That ability to have the worst day you can imagine and then keep going.
And the best way to foster character is to have someone overcome hardships. climb mountains. Have dangerous and difficult experiences that teaches them inner strength. Good aim and physical endurance are nowhere near "enough". You also need to have well disciplined troops. The paradox of soldiers is that killing is not a natural reaction and men have to be trained to overcome their prejudice against killing people, but as soon as that is trained into them you now need to keep them on a tight leash so it's not unleashed against the rest of society, and that's where discipline and, well, bullshit come in. That's why modern armies still insist on drill, because it has a tendency to instil both discipline and character.
I was referring specifically to physical qualities then. What you talked about after I referred to before that.
>"Raise them all together"
>"focus most of your efforts on making them loyal and intelligent and cool under fire and all the other stuff that's necessary for good soldiery."
>I don't know how to describe it but the best I can think of is character.
self discipline.
Cool-under-fire and loyalty require hell training
I actually thought the Sardaukar looked the best in the new movies.
?si=2PWrjj66mMk-gUWg
old good
new bad
old good
new bad
old good
new bad
old good
new bad
Best post in the thread.
>generic skinsuit with a cosmonaut bowl helmet in grey with some homosexual scratches
Soulless and very homosexual.
>Colorfull space Varangian with actual armour, pouches and rad Dredd glasses
Peak soul and asthetic.
You zoomies have the worst taste i have ever seen even millenial pussies were not this bad...
>Peak soul and asthetic.
You're the sci-fi version of cogfopping steampunk homosexuals
That looks like nothing. It could be from any generic sci-fi product made over the past 15 years.
>wrong
>frick it, I'l dump the rest
Holy based.
And the Rabbanu makes good use of the Lynch movie design.
Interesting take on Pekkot.
I'm gonna get ahead of you with my favorite one
>nice
Thanks for the dump
>house orlok
>on which Giedi Prime furnished all expectations and lavished no love.
Is this a quote from the crimean war? It sounds like it.
Thr visual design in the movies as a whole is geeat
I think it's kind of ugly, but works with the overall visual design of the movies. Gray, dull and utilitarian, to communicate that this is a serious military for serious men who don't care about style.
Jodorowsky Sardauker were the most kino
Friendly chaps despite their fearsome reputation
>the most kino
>bondage gear Yondu Udonta
No
I agree.
I luv me Napoleonic/16th century musketeer garb, and mah Gothic metal, but modern Sardaukar design and cinematography absolutely nail their "brutal space tribals on a planet that never sees sun, turned hardcore military war-dogs and trusted zealots of the Emperor".
The modern Dune has quite a big design shift from older representations, but it's undeniably faithful to the emotion of the series, and (when we don't consider the technological limitations and lesser cinematographic science of the original as an unavoidable handicap) is flatly a better movie.
The impression I got from the books, which I haven't read in quite a while, were that the Sardaukar hadn't actually fought a peer war in generations and weren't actually that great a fighting force. Imperial power was kind of a house of cards.
Eh, close in the "America has never fought a peer war" way. The Sadaukar by the time of the books had been out of practice AND their planet had become more civilized. They weren't a pleasure planet by any means but they weren't the OG hellscape of lore either. Even then they were still far better than any other great house forces in the galaxy barring Leto's few good men. The Fremen meanwhile lived in an inhospitable environment even rougher than OG Sadaukar and so blah blah sci fi justifications.
Evolution comes from adaptation. You aren't overall stronger, you just adapted to survive longer but if you meet a new threat you still get murdered by itm
A constant, unending hell? No. Periods of varying degrees of grueling but surmountable hell punctuated with recuperative periods of rest and chances to rebuild? Yes. Especially if the soldiers are constantly promised some kind of paradise like reward for their courage, persistence, and loyalty.
>russian soldiers kill, rape and fill pits with bodies so they can do a few inches of dirt and then they have to hide the dirt pile
nah man, it just makes things worse
Ask the Pashtun
>Would raising men in an artificial hell, and/or a natural hell really create super soldiers?
No, it creates weak and broken men.
The best way to raise a super soldier is to give someone the best live possible and instill in him the need to protect this life in the future.
The desert kills the weak, it does not make men strong
The Fremen have been on Arrakis for like 10,000 years and evolution has made them a race of hardasses, the Emperor's army just lives and trains in a harsh environment, which probably does weed out the weak, but it hasn't had time to instill a genetic hardiness that the Fremen have.
That's not how evolution works
My post was not a statement on dune, but a very old quote from a member of the Berber tribes on which the fremen were based
Is this like those movies where a chick gets raped and then kills a bunch of people in a revenge fantasy?
Getting your bum blasted won't make you a superhero, OP. It will just make you OP, aka you.
The best soldiers aren't wild savages, they're frontiersmen. An army is a fundamentally civilized thing and you need people who can act civilized to be soldiers. The frontiersman is the ideal choice. He is a rough and tough man who can survive hardships, but he also comes from a civilized background and can act civilized.
>Would raising men in an artificial hell
no, it doesn't work, look at sof as example
it may work temporarily, but then you have to understand a lot of them are roided out just to perform, and then on the flipside they're all ambien'd out because they're fricked in the head, then they leave service and kill themselves after long bouts of depression they can't overcome
so no, it doesn't really work, or at least the us mil hasn't figure it out, they're just breaking their own people
>then they leave service and kill themselves after long bouts of depression they can't overcome
From the mil pov that sounds like a feature, have a few years of top performance killer, then they go off and self terminate in their own time with no fuss and no expenses.
It's been 3 decades since I read Dune but one point about the Fremen no one's mentioned is that they are underestimated in their sophistication, they are assumed to be a scattering of deep desert tribes but in fact there's a ton of them and they have sophisticated refinements to their tech like frictionless surfaces on their water reservoirs.
Fremen larp as primitives, but aren't.
pretty much, yes
they have ornithopters, excellent desert kit, control over the worms, and an order of magnitude more population (and therefore troops) than anybody else realised
interestingly, one of the few hardware upgrade Paul did give them is MANPADs
and atomics of course
A shitty WW2 era army could slaughter both sides assuming they had sufficient water to conduct the campaign. Doctrine and logistics trumps morale every single time.
But if you wanted super soldiers you select for the best of a very large pool for exactly what you wanted rather than relying on the inexact method of culling from a natural environment. The Sardukar and Fremen lives would make good enough COIN operatives since the issue is being able to walk around forever while enduring hardship. But if you just wanted the best murderers who'd slaughter both with ease you wouldn't treat them like either. You'd breed for people who can't feel stress, pride, or joy. People who don't need or want rewards for their suffering whether a cushy life like the sardukar or a deferred better life for their descendants like the Fremen. Once again that is just a proxy for the right attitude and can decay through time. Instead you'd select for men who just like to kill and plod on no matter what. No honor, dignity, or vice just HATE. Hate for the weak, hate for a strong enemy who dares obstruct you for even an instant, hate for anybody who is alive. Hatred is the strongest motivation, to live with hatred in your heart from the day you are born makes you utterly immune to demoralization or ennui. No matter what happens at least you have your hate, nobody can take that from you.
Of course in Dune this philosophy would make you hated by everybody because you wouldn't be making machines in the form of human minds, you'd be making human minds into machines. Of course if you succeeded you could just violate every taboo, plunge the universe into war, and murder everybody who stands against you. Frick'em.
Filthy Tleilaxu ~~*"Ordos"*~~ hands typed this post...
Whilst masquerading as an upstanding Subject of the Imperium.
>Doctrine and logistics trumps morale every single time.
Doctrine and logistics are morale.
So you're advocating ice cream carry-alls?
if your guys can have ice cream in the trench, they're going to win the war.
There is no need to worry about the details, if that's possible, then it will happen.
While character is confirmed to be passed down genetically and thus could be shaped by an eugenics program, I am unsure of how you would determine whoever needs to breed, and moreover I am unsure about the feasibility of controlling such a breed of humans.
Yesn't
I grew up with a father with narcissistic trails that used humiliate and beat me often so I end up as a Psychopath.
Yeah i like gore and i could empty a magazine at close range against another human being(i already did it with animals and im into bdsm to beat the shit out of women without any legal consequence) so yes i could be considered as a good soldier... But in the other hand this is not a switch you can turn off, so if the army does the same that my dad did to me, late or soon society would have to deal with said soldier once he returns from war.
>Yesn't
>
>I grew up with a father with narcissistic trails that used humiliate and beat me often so I end up as a Psychopath.
>
>Yeah i like gore and i could empty a magazine at close range against another human being(i already did it with animals and im into bdsm to beat the shit out of women without any legal consequence) so yes i could be considered as a good soldier... But in the other hand this is not a switch you can turn off, so if the army does the same that my dad did to me, late or soon society would have to deal with said soldier once he returns from war.
I dont think your old enough to post on this site
No.
It would create apathetic men.
Look at the real life Army.
There's a solid period of "everyone is strong and fit and hard and hooah" betwen 17-22, then everyone except the very best drop off and become apathetic and tired and cynical.
Every old schlubby 1SG/Ops SGM still shows pictures of themselves as sharp as a knife in BDUs.
all this homosexualry about hardship is forgetting that Dune itself talks about occupying a middle ground between being too comfortable and being needlessly "hard"
>would you smash your own knife before going into battle?!
Why can't the houses just kill the worms? There can't be THAT many of em because there's just not enough food for that many giant fricking worms, it's like the dinosaurs dying off after the meteorite because they all starved. Provoke a worm to appear, blast it from orbit, and move onto the next one - before long you'd have practically exterminated the things.
Because the Worms produce the spice
Why waste your atomics on some backwater, risking the ire of CHOAM and the Spacing Guild for fricking with their spice supplies while you're at it, when you can hold them over the head of that motherfricker you've got a 700 year grudge with?
why the frick would they?
depends on the type of hell. if a hierarchy is allowed to exist like a prison/war like hell then yes, the strong will quickly be apparent. if it's actual hell where everybody is just a petulant slave forced to endure excruciating pain for eternity then maybe their soul is hardened to that of a soldier but their corporeal bodies are weak and fragile without hope or the opportunity to grow.