wings wrote: Thu Dec 09, 2021 9:03 pmNot that.

tonguengroover wrote: Thu Dec 09, 2021 9:59 pm If we go down the whole world is going down with us. Their economies would tank without Americans buying all their products we should be making. Thus giving China the funds to advance their military.
I dont they understand that.

Eris wrote: Thu Dec 09, 2021 10:56 pm "could give organizations like the United Nations enough justification to step in"

And what exactly would the UN do? Send a strongly worded letter? The UN is toothless. Even when they raise a military force for "peacekeeping" they are dependent on other nations to send troops, and those troops are always useless. Look at how "effective" they were in preventing the massacre at Srebenica in Bosnia.

Eris wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 12:10 am That would be very unlikely. Why? Because our boomer fleet is still going to be out there with a shit ton of SLBMs waiting for anyone to try and invade. They won't just come into port and abandon ship just because things go bad in the US.

sig230 wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 7:40 am Yawn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is the largest military branch, and in the fiscal year 2020, the projected end strength for the Regular Army (USA) was 480,893 soldiers; the Army National Guard (ARNG) had 336,129 soldiers and the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) had 188,703 soldiers; the combined-component strength of the U.S. Army was 1,005,725 soldiers.

The Small Arms Survey stated that U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms. This amounts to "120.5 firearms for every 100 residents."

tonguengroover wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:40 am Consider these numbers of just our military soldiers. Anyone would have a tough go of it trying to take land in America.

Then add in the civilian population that is armed. Civilians are armed a huge percentage more than when we were during WWII and the Japanse would try and land an amphibious ship on our soil.

And I agree the UN is helpless. Plus it's on our soil and would be unable to do squat.

It is the largest military branch, and in the fiscal year 2020, the projected end strength for the Regular Army (USA) was 480,893 soldiers; the Army National Guard (ARNG) had 336,129 soldiers and the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) had 188,703 soldiers; the combined-component strength of the U.S. Army was 1,005,725 soldiers.

The Small Arms Survey stated that U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms. This amounts to "120.5 firearms for every 100 residents."

tonguengroover wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:40 am Consider these numbers of just our military soldiers. Anyone would have a tough go of it trying to take land in America.

Then add in the civilian population that is armed. Civilians are armed a huge percentage more than when we were during WWII and the Japanse would try and land an amphibious ship on our soil.

And I agree the UN is helpless. Plus it's on our soil and would be unable to do squat.

It is the largest military branch, and in the fiscal year 2020, the projected end strength for the Regular Army (USA) was 480,893 soldiers; the Army National Guard (ARNG) had 336,129 soldiers and the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR) had 188,703 soldiers; the combined-component strength of the U.S. Army was 1,005,725 soldiers.

The Small Arms Survey stated that U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms. This amounts to "120.5 firearms for every 100 residents."

FrontSight wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 10:13 am I have NO idea what the future holds, but my "spidey sense" tells me not to take our eyes off Putin for a minute. I consider Russia to still be the bigger threat. China may have the bigger economy, and larger military, and will certainly be the major international rival to the US as an external threat.

But Russia are the masters of sewing seeds of strife all over the world, and to my eye, Putin is just hitting his stride on that note. He has been KILLING it in Eastern Europe, and he is killing it in the US as well. RT news is all over with conservatives in the US, so they're now getting their news from Russia. Facebook and YouTube will force feed you Russia Times, and Russian propaganda all day long.

Putin knows his best weapon is to defeat nations from the inside out. China doesn't know how to do that, so they're only an external threat. But internal threats are always many times more dangerous.

sikacz wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:30 am I could see another depression. I could see an upsurge in violence as unemployed people run out of resources and nothing to fall back on. The wealth and power is controlled by a few, that won’t easily change.

Ridge83 wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 10:10 am I would also like for you to keep in mind how divided we have become already. I mean would you actually be willing to ruck up with a random group of possible Trumpsters to go fight the Chinese?

wings wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 10:27 am Some variation on the OP scenario has been circulating in the fringes of the right wing since the days of the John Birch Society, at least. It is a fantasy based on flawed premises, used to manipulate the more paranoid and reactionary sorts towards supporting the political and economic ends of the ultranationalist right.

Fallacy 1. "Give the UN justification to step in." They can't. We'd veto it.

The US is a founding member, and home to its headquarters. We hold one of five permanent seats with veto power on the Security Council. The UN was designed from the beginning to provide the victorious allies of WWII permanent voices and veto power on global security issues. Even though the US was the ONLY nuclear armed country at the time of the charter, all five have since developed nuclear arsenals with the explicit goal of deterring an existential threat due to invasion or nuclear attack.

Even if all four other permanent seats chose to ignore our veto and send troops - remember, that would include the UK and France, which seems implausible - the President of the US holds sole authority to launch nuclear weapons in retaliation, at his discretion, in scenarios ranging from a "get your attention" high altitude EMP strike to uploading non-deployed warheads onto Minutemen for a full-MIRV apocalyptic all-your-cities-will-burn revenge strike that returns the northern hemisphere to Ice Age conditions. This is called Mutual Assured Destruction, it's key to nuclear deterrence, and has prevented conventional invasions of all nuclear-armed states since 1945, border conflicts in Kashmir notwithstanding.

Now I suppose you could posit that the President, whether Joe or the other guy, could be somehow beholden to the invading forces and refuse to resort to nukes. That's okay! It's completely understandable! Nobody likes the idea of eating radioactive snow-cones in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. That's why we aren't right now. Let's assume that somehow France and the UK ignore our plight as they try to fight off the Russian invasion of Europe while our Pacific allies twiddle their thumbs. Consider the staggering logistical challenges involved in launching a land invasion of the United States.

Russia has a population of 148 million people, give or take. That's less than half of the US, and they're busy defending 16 land borders across Eurasia while occupying whatever slices of other countries Putin has taken a fancy to. While they could, in theory, attempt a crossing of the Bering Strait into Alaska, ignoring the fantastic difficulty of staging troops and materiel for an Arctic invasion - they don't have the manpower. So we're going to write off Russia's conventional forces, but assume that they provide support for China by way of logistics, intelligence, cyberwarfare and covert ops.

That leaves China. While they have three times the US population, their experience with modern naval and expeditionary warfare is limited. The largest invasion they have managed by sea in modern times was the island of Hainan, within sight of the mainland. Crossing the Pacific - sorry, America's Pond - in the teeth of the Pacific Fleet? Wow. Just no. Sure, Japan tried the Aleutian route in WWII, but they didn't get very far. And they managed a mainland invasion of China with 1/5th the population. Maybe Russia lets China use the Chukchi Peninsula to try crossing the ice into Alaska, but again - stupid stupid stupid logistical challenges.

North America is a freaking fortress. It took centuries of genocide and biological warfare for Europe to subjugate it. You can't just send troops over by jet, either. Even if you pack a 777-300 to the gills, you're talking 550 soldiers per one-way flight, and you can barely make it Shanghai-LA. What's a credible invasion force for LA County, with population of 10 million? We sent 300,000 into Iraq in 2003, a country of 25 million - so let's be generous and say 100,000 PLA troops could take Los Angeles. Only 200 flights that have to make their way through American air defenses, and we're going to be generous and assume the invading forces live off the land Napoleonic style.

Far easier to do this with the active cooperation of Canada or Mexico, preferably both. Preferably secret. Lots of logistic staging needed.

Even then. I haven't touched Fallacy 2.

chgowiz wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 10:24 am

sikacz wrote: Fri Dec 10, 2021 9:30 am I could see another depression. I could see an upsurge in violence as unemployed people run out of resources and nothing to fall back on. The wealth and power is controlled by a few, that won’t easily change.

Out of everything discussed, I see this far more likely.

TBH, I don't see a massive collapse happening suddenly. I see crumbles. Like a dam or dike slowly falling away. We'll adjust to the moment, not realizing the huge shift until later on in history class.

I think SHTF scenarios are mostly fantasy, more likely that climate change starts to occupy everyone's attention in the next decade, making these political games seem like window dressing to the real problems that will cause real crumbling and change.