WIP Discussion (Part 1!)

[dragoongfa]

All in all; the rules became a thing because we as a species are more than eager to kill each other en mass and if we are allowed to do that then we would probably render ourselves extinct in a manner of decades, a century at the most.

Has our history not been one long list of centuries where we could have eradicated each other, but didn't do it? Sure, there was war and there was conquest, but if no resources are in critical supply, humans tend to be remarkably peaceful left to their own devices. Organisations on the other hand are quite ruthless towards each other.

You don't have to look further than Tribal societies to see that Humans are hardwired to compete with one an other. Individual humans can and will leave each other at peace if one doesn't 'compete/annoy' the other, add inherent human Tribalism on the other hand and you get ingroup and outgroup bias and competitiveness.

It doesn't really matter if resources are abundant or scarce, the ingroup/outgroup tribal bias will induce competitiveness and violence. This tribal bias is for all intents and purposes hardwired into our basic instincts since before pre-hominids stood upright; in fact this tribal instinct seems to be hardwired into all advanced mammals and especially predators. A cohesive group with a strong ingroup/outgroup bias is by definition a far stronger group than a group without such a bias.

This tribal bias however isn't able to create extinction level conflicts, quite the contrary, the ingroup bias mandates that the group not take excessive loses in the pursuit of dominance over others as such loses weaken it to predation by other groups. In modern humans this can easily be seen in the 'ritualistic' style of tribal warfare exercised by Native American and African tribes. For all intents and purposes these tribes rarely if at all suffered true resource scarcity that would necessitate the risk of high losses in warfighting, as such their wars were more like 'rituals' of dominance where raiding for livestock and women were the common themes; with low casualties where the old and the weak were culled out. If a tribe got too big then the others would band together and bring them down while 'peace deals/alliances' were always marked by marriage between various tribe members.

The above tribal warfare doesn't mean that the tribals didn't hate each other, they did hate each other and had no compulsions in making the other side know about. Hate is a natural reaction to have to a 'competitor/enemy', it's simply there to overcome our natural empathy towards others and judging on how easy it is to hate the 'other' and thus fight them to the death it is a quite effective evolutionary tool to have. Especially if you are in a Tribal setting, or a pseudo Tribal setting (see the modern Hooligan and Ultra fan organizations for various sports clubs, these are by definitions 'Tribes' with a strong 'ingroup/outgroup' bias). It also bears notice that an other evolutionary trait we have is the ability to disassociate an 'Other' from being an enemy, it takes time but the instinct to remove the 'Other' from being an enemy is there, provided certain psychological conditions are met; these conditions often being respect and association through common tribal behaviors or physiological traits).

The problem rises when you take this hardwired Tribal bias and give it industrial and post industrial weaponry and abilities. It becomes all too easy and quick to kill en masse with such weapons and thus making it impossible for our natural tendencies to stop the bias by itself.

You don't have to look further back than the Rwandan genocide to see a grim example of a Tribal war devolving into an industrial era genocide. With guns, motorization and rapid communication it is extremely easy for a tribe moved by hatred to massacre an other tribe en masse. Nearly a million died in three months simply because one 'tribe' wanted to depose an other. I say tribe because that was and still is the driving mindset in Africa and other parts of the world (you don't have to go further than the various City-States of the West to see tribal examples in Western cultures). Such a mindset is all well and good, if not nearly harmless, when one fights with sword, spear and bow while traveling on foot and horseback but add industrial weaponry and it is all too easy to simply genocide an other tribe.

Which brings us to the root as to why we have instituted rules in warfare. Humans are by our nature tribalistic; we want to belong in a tribe and we want our tribe to be 'great' and 'respected'. This is hardwired to us and cannot be removed; attempt to remove the existing tribal apparatus and humans will invent others to replace them. Tribes will always fight one an other for resources, dominance and respect. These tribal instincts evolved over millions of years in which these conflicts were limited in scope and beneficiary from an evolutionary standpoint.

Now humans have species ending technologies while still having 'Tribal hardware' that dictates our instinctual behavior. We need the rules in place to ensure that we don't cross the lines and start massacring each other to the point of extinction. It's a neat 'trick' to control our natural tendencies to go overboard when hating an 'Other'.

Closing, I believe that any and all attempts to 'homogenize' humanity are doomed to failure. Homogenized Humans will simply create other tribes to differentiate themselves and the mere move to control this tendency will create a tribe whose sole purpose would be to counter said move. Best to juggle the current mess and impose societal 'controls' and 'laws' on the behavior rather than futilely trying to alter the behavior itself.

[Jagged]

Widely believed doesn't equal true, other historians argue that Hitler didn't allow the use in war fighting because he himself was gassed during WW1. Considering that the Germans didn't use gas in other, far more critical, battles later in the war and especially in the Eastern Front where it could have decided the war itself I doubt that they had planned in gassing a city at the height of their power.

No they don't. That was a headline widely reported on the internet, but not given any credence in academic circles.

[dragoongfa]

Widely believed doesn't equal true, other historians argue that Hitler didn't allow the use in war fighting because he himself was gassed during WW1. Considering that the Germans didn't use gas in other, far more critical, battles later in the war and especially in the Eastern Front where it could have decided the war itself I doubt that they had planned in gassing a city at the height of their power.

No they don't. That was a headline widely reported on the internet, but not given any credence in academic circles.

Same academic circles also fail to produce any hard evidence of the Nazi leadership planning to use gas in any military operation, despite the fact of the widespread use of gas to commit rear line genocide during the holocaust. I don't doubt that they did discuss it but these discussions never manifested into unexecuted warplans, discussing plans ranging from the sensible to the ludicrous is what leadership does in all wars. In contrast the US has been proven of having transported large quantities of gas weaponry in Italy for retaliatory reasons (see Bari air raid), thank God that the fascists of Italy of the time weren't as ruthless as they were in Abyssinia; for all his crimes Hitler never launched a gas attack against Nazi Germany's enemies and this is the truth. If this was down to pragmatism or vestiges of personal trauma and empathy is up to personal beliefs and interpretations.

I should point out that many of the signatories of the Geneva accord, signed them under the clause that they wouldn't be the 'first' to launch such an attack. The Nazi war machine was also extremely susceptible to gas attacks due to the extreme reliance on horses for their logistics chains, launching gas attacks on their logistics bases would have crippled the Wehrmacht in ways that would have ended the war in 1940.

In the end the Geneva accords regarding gas warfare were respected and kept despite the fact that both sides had ample reasons, opportunities and the stockpiles to use.

[Mk_C]

Now, gentlemen, while it's unquestionably hella fun to discuss the historic causes and effects of international humanitarian law concerning conduct of warfare, and the historic use and limitations of chemical WMDs (and I'm all giddy to go AKSHUALLY myself) - we're now clear past the Godwin's threshold, while it's literally the discussion thread for WIPs linked on the home page. We can always make another one for this sort of stuff.

[Sweforce]

In legalese a soldier may not dress as civilian to avoid capture but they are also legally bound to resist with any means necessary any and all forms of foreign occupation (legal authority may give orders for a stand down that would make further fighting 'illegal' but it all depends if such legal orders were given; in the Loroi case, they probably weren't as they fully expected to recapture lost territories).

The Geneva conventions require that resistance fighters be under some central authority, bearing arms openly and not concealed, and having some distinguishing device recognizable at a distance identifying them as combatants... all of which is complete nonsense to actual historical resistance fighting, which is by definition asymmetrical warfare, and that means breaking the rules. And while it's a fine line between insurgency and terrorism, I think that line does exist.

Also, I think there's a distinction between acts that invalidate the protections of the conventions to prisoners, and actual "war crimes." You can be executed by the enemy if you're captured performing espionage or sabotage out of uniform, but I'm pretty sure this is not a "war crime" that you can be tried for after the war is over.

State actors break the rules as well. In former Yugoslavia some british commandos dressed up as civilian medical personel to sneak into a hospital to apprehend a war criminal. I reacted to this because doing such things increase the risk that people will shoot at ambulances.

[Werra]

[...]Individual humans can and will leave each other at peace if one doesn't 'compete/annoy' the other, add inherent human Tribalism on the other hand and you get ingroup and outgroup bias and competitiveness.

It doesn't really matter if resources are abundant or scarce, the ingroup/outgroup tribal bias will induce competitiveness and violence. This tribal bias is for all intents and purposes hardwired into our basic instincts since before pre-hominids stood upright; in fact this tribal instinct seems to be hardwired into all advanced mammals and especially predators. A cohesive group with a strong ingroup/outgroup bias is by definition a far stronger group than a group without such a bias.

This tribal bias however isn't able to create extinction level conflicts, quite the contrary, the ingroup bias mandates that the group not take excessive loses in the pursuit of dominance over others as such loses weaken it to predation by other groups.

You are right that in-group preferences are natural to humans and that they can drive inter group conflict in the absence of scarcities. However, the rate of extinction level conflicts has slowed down considerably over human history. Conflict between small groups can be deadlier for the group than between large nations, as the loss of a few individual people with key skills can seriously harm a small tribe. So even just a relatively small power differential between two conflicting groups can mean one side has to flee, surrender or die off. Making extinction a very real possibility in a lot of small scale conflicts.
Yet even a small nation can spend hundreds of young men in battle and continue on fine. The Mesopotanian city states routinely made war upon their neighbours and subjugated entire populations just to subsume those tribes into their own people (on a low runk). The Egyptians did the same to the Jews. Rome mostly took only parts of the people she conquered.
What's important is that nearly all inter group conflicts in human history have been driven by some form of scarcity. If the pressing needs of the individual humans and the group they belong to are met, it's actually very likely that the only conflict will be low intensity. Living space or security of the group from potential threads can also be scarce, of course. Seriously, I can't stress how important space seems to be for humanities peace of mind. Compare the crime rates of rural and inner city US. A difference like day and night.

Modern, industrial tools haven't made humanity more warlike. In fact, war has become comparatively sparse. Enslavement, displacement or outright genocide has become nearly impossible. For a lot of nations it's even hard to pass laws that line up with the natural tendency for humans to be racist thanks to international pressure condeming such thinks harshly. That's why for nearly a century, genocidal conflict only appeared in the undeveloped parts of the world.
Actual genocide has become a logistical nightmare. Consider what effort would be needed to genocide say, the US. You'd have to bring in dozens of millions of foreign people, clothe them, feed them, give them housing. A task requiring decades to achieve and which would require making the native population of your target -as well as their leaders in politics and culture- complacent. What a ridiculous notion. Such a "genocide" would be more of a gradual replacement than a physical conflict. That's hardly feasible.

A group that can build and maintain a fleet of jet fighters is also a group so sophisticated and interconnected with others that most issues will be solved with non-violent means. Only groups that are given access to a technological level they themselves can't achieve are likely to commit to genocidal war.

SpoilerShow

With one exception, but that's a centuries old tradition for them by now.

[dragoongfa]

You are right that in-group preferences are natural to humans and that they can drive inter group conflict in the absence of scarcities. However, the rate of extinction level conflicts has slowed down considerably over human history. Conflict between small groups can be deadlier for the group than between large nations, as the loss of a few individual people with key skills can seriously harm a small tribe. So even just a relatively small power differential between two conflicting groups can mean one side has to flee, surrender or die off. Making extinction a very real possibility in a lot of small scale conflicts.
Yet even a small nation can spend hundreds of young men in battle and continue on fine. The Mesopotanian city states routinely made war upon their neighbours and subjugated entire populations just to subsume those tribes into their own people (on a low runk). The Egyptians did the same to the Jews. Rome mostly took only parts of the people she conquered.
What's important is that nearly all inter group conflicts in human history have been driven by some form of scarcity. If the pressing needs of the individual humans and the group they belong to are met, it's actually very likely that the only conflict will be low intensity. Living space or security of the group from potential threads can also be scarce, of course. Seriously, I can't stress how important space seems to be for humanities peace of mind. Compare the crime rates of rural and inner city US. A difference like day and night.

Modern, industrial tools haven't made humanity more warlike. In fact, war has become comparatively sparse. Enslavement, displacement or outright genocide has become nearly impossible. For a lot of nations it's even hard to pass laws that line up with the natural tendency for humans to be racist thanks to international pressure condeming such thinks harshly. That's why for nearly a century, genocidal conflict only appeared in the undeveloped parts of the world.
Actual genocide has become a logistical nightmare. Consider what effort would be needed to genocide say, the US. You'd have to bring in dozens of millions of foreign people, clothe them, feed them, give them housing. A task requiring decades to achieve and which would require making the native population of your target -as well as their leaders in politics and culture- complacent. What a ridiculous notion. Such a "genocide" would be more of a gradual replacement than a physical conflict. That's hardly feasible.

A group that can build and maintain a fleet of jet fighters is also a group so sophisticated and interconnected with others that most issues will be solved with non-violent means. Only groups that are given access to a technological level they themselves can't achieve are likely to commit to genocidal war.

SpoilerShow

With one exception, but that's a centuries old tradition for them by now.

You misunderstood my point and we have gone widely off-topic by now so I am going to keep this brief;

I am not talking just about 'ethnic' group extinction but societal sphere and species extinction with relatively cheap technologies. The reason why ICBMs and other nuclear delivery systems were so prolific in the Cold war was because a single Atom bomb would do the job of an army with a single strike. 10.000 A-bombs thrown out en mass would be by definition a genocidal war. The fun part, the creation and maintenance of said nuclear arsenal was far cheaper than the procurement and maintenance of the regular armed forces of each side. True mass murder is cheap and extremely efficient with nuclear weapons.
Now add biological weapons that even third world countries can easily produce with basic modern medicine know how; far cheaper and dare I say far more dangerous mass murder tool because bioweapons are by nature truly undinscriminate.
Somewhat less murderous but still extremely dangerous are gas weapons. Saddam tested his on the Kurds back in the 80s to great success as was reported.
In the end my argument is that true mass murder is extremely easy and outside of the logistic nightmare of standard war and militarized murder. Get regular access to space travel and one add the nightmare of Kinetic Kill Vehicles to the mix.

Mass murder is extremely easy with modern technologies, which is why the tools and means of said mass murder are regulated and a big no-no for all the big powers of Earth.

[Sweforce]

A really good reason to not gas your enemy is that those that you fail to kill are likely to answer in kind. Your own troops knows this so expect morale to plummet if you try that.

[Arioch]

Gas is not an effective battlefield weapon. It's a terror weapon that is useful mainly against civilian targets (which is how Saddam used it, if memory serves).

[Krulle]

Gas on the battlefield was pretty "effective" in WW1.

But the danger and costs of friendly fire (because the wind direction changed) was tremendous.

But you still couldn't conquer the enemies positions due to lingering gas (which the British learned the hard way, running into German trenches still filled with gas - the Germans also learned it the hard way). So no advancements possible while it lingered, and once it had dissipated, the enemy was back anyway. And the more important positions were secured with protective masks anyway.

Hence, it wasn't as advantageous as the planners thought it would be. But it was effective in depleting the enemies ranks (and your own due to accidents and wrong use).

I still hope it won't ever come back to use.
And if, then hopefully within the secure homeland bunkers where the planners decide to use it.

[Werra]

Using weapons whose purpose is to exhaust the enemies supply of manpower sounds exactly like the kind of strategy high birthrate species like Loroi and Umiak would come up with.

[boldilocks]

Sounds like it would be more useful for Umiak than Loroi, as Loroi still have to make a pretty substantial investment into their manpower.

[Arioch]

Gas on the battlefield was pretty "effective" in WW1.

Was it? How many battles did it win? You state yourself some of the reasons why it wasn't tactically effective, so it was simply a terror weapon... but once the enemy were outfitted with gas masks and using gas right back, even the psychological advantage was negated. It wasn't useful as an attrition weapon; google sources claim 90,000 dead from poison gas during the war, which seems like a lot until you consider that something like 10 million died in WWI from non-combat causes like disease and starvation. The only effective use of poison gas is, like the early V1 and V2, as a psychological weapon preferably used against concentrated civilian targets that can't gas you back.

If gas was an effective tactical weapon, armies would still be using it. The effects of gas are no more "inhumane" than being torn to shreds by machinegun fire or artillery shells. Many armies still have gas stocks, but this is purely as deterrent.

[boldilocks]

Were gas attacks used on civilian targets in WW1, though? They mostly seemed to be used on military targets, and that only seems to have been initially viable because enemy soldiers were holed up in trenches.
In some ways, gas seems more "humane" as a weapon than heavy artillery and machine-gun fire, at least for the poor sods who have to clean up the remains of their comrades afterwards. And you have something that you can send home to bury, and that something is recognizable and not several chunks of meat.

[Arioch]

Were gas attacks used on civilian targets in WW1, though? They mostly seemed to be used on military targets, and that only seems to have been initially viable because enemy soldiers were holed up in trenches.
In some ways, gas seems more "humane" as a weapon than heavy artillery and machine-gun fire, at least for the poor sods who have to clean up the remains of their comrades afterwards. And you have something that you can send home to bury, and that something is recognizable and not several chunks of meat.

No, I don't know of any gas attacks on civilians in WWI. Poison gas was a new weapon, and so they didn't really know the limitations of it when they started using it.

Even in the trenches, troops are spread out in a line over a large area. It's not like a town or village where you can affect a lot of people with just one placement.

[Werra]

Sounds like it would be more useful for Umiak than Loroi, as Loroi still have to make a pretty substantial investment into their manpower.

Just saying, Loroi are likely a lot more callous towards the value of life than Westerners expect from the way they look. I once knew this woman, grew up in a farming vilage in China. She was given away as a child to a better off family. Then returned after a month when she fell ill. The Chinese don't have nearly the potential fertility that the Loroi have.

Edit: To make this absolutely clear, she was returned like one would return a broken appliance.

[Mk_C]

Oh well.

Using weapons whose purpose is to exhaust the enemies supply of manpower sounds exactly like the kind of strategy high birthrate species like Loroi and Umiak would come up with.

Attacking precisely the strong point of your opponent is rarely a sound strategy. Trying to kill Loroi (or Umiak, for that matter) [wo]manpower faster than they can absorb this sort of losses is easily the single least efficient point of applied pressure. It's fighting against a runaway exponent, maintaining which costs them very little, as they breed fast, grow up faster and learn the basics extremely fast - while there are many other, much more sensitive limiting factors to the Loroi war machine. Right now, they are much more limited by how many fleets they can field through their industrial capacity rather than through how many crews they can provide for them - so losing ships hurts Loroi more than losing manpower. Hurting the industrial base, by targeting industrial worlds like Seren as the goal of any frontline breach, has been explicitly described as the backbone of current strategy for both sides. Chewing through Loroi senior officer corps by having them die with their flagships and fleets in encirclement with no chance of falling back has been very promising, as seasoned commanders take a bit more than sheer manpower to obtain - and not so great in reverse, when Umiak have seemingly little concern for or dependence on tactics.

In any case - exterminating the populace is very rarely a desirable goal, reliable mean or a functional outcome in the majority of any conflicts, for any side involved in it. Which is why laws on the conduct of warfare are a thing - wholesale extermination of civilian populations, devastation of infrastructure, culling of wounded and sick and salting of fields is almost never something either side can profit from in any measure (even if it's ideology preaches otherwise), and having a degree of certainty that both you and the opponent would not feel forced by the chaos of conflict to do anything that is almost certainly end up being a completely pointless tragedy effectively benefits everyone regardless of the outcome. It is only when indiscriminate use if WMDs becomes the definitive superior tactic that this kind of concern gives way to the necessity - such as it is in a hot thermonuclear conflict, or when glassing planets quick and dirty becomes not only the most sure, but also the most available thing you can do to cripple the opposition.

Also, Arioch is entirely correct on chemical weapons - they carry with them an almost intolerable amount of uncertainty, their effect inherently depending on the ability to achieve significant concentrations in air or on surfaces, and that being terribly dependent on weather, which is known to be a fickle bitch even when you're trying to divine her by running data from a hundred satellites and a thousand weather stations through a supercomputer in a comfy lab, and not lying in a ditch peering over a scribble-covered paper map with a 40 years old anemometer and a binder of out-of-date temperature readings doing wartime regulations quick maffs. Temperature affects aerosol dispersion and compound stability, air layers state affects the resulting cloud behaviour, sunlight dictates the contamination duration, and wind direction and velocity are actively out to get you in 90% cases. It can go the wrong way, it can go the VERY wrong way, it can refuse to envelop the enemy positions as you would prefer, it can contaminate areas or paths that you might prefer using, and the enemy can very effectively counter a great deal of the effects you would desire for it to have on him with some spooky masks, stupid rubber dresses and a gang of brushie-brushie bois who know what they are doing. Or any vehicles and fortifications with filter ventilation units. And don't even get me started on the logistics of their transportation, storage and deployment. All of which doesn't make chemical weapons harmless, but it makes them way too costly, situational and luck-based, which is not something you ever want in your weapon. And when you have the means of delivering effective amounts of V-gasses to enemy positions, it almost inevitably implies that you have the means of delivering an even more effective amount of explosives to the same location, and those tend to get the job done much more reliably without being easily countered or a tremendous pain in the ass for you to use. Even as a terror weapon chemical agents have always strayed way behind incendiaries. Their continued development and stockpiling had more to do with expectations of further developments and growing expertise keeping your own counter-measures up to date, and potential breakthroughs maybe finally making them truly viable - but that didn't happen, and by now they are largely going the way of Zeppelins as far as military applications go. Even during WW2, the largest limiter on chemical agents use was not the fear of retaliation, but rather the Interbellum experience of their use showing the full scale of their limitations to every user.

Oh, and biological weapons are even more of a meme at this point. I can only advise people not to take everything Alibekov writes without a metric ton of salt.

[Krulle]

Werra pointed out that Umiak and Loroi might have less inhibitions using it, as they can replace their own losses faster.
Especially when they learn the opponent has a lower reproduction rate.

They won't be using it against each other: for several reasons:
- in space it is a tremendously difficult to deliver weapon
- the opponent also has a high reproduction rate, so that won't work.

But against the allies of the opponent, this might be workable, _if_ fighting on a planet.




Also:

- In August of 1914 the French were the first to use poison gas as a weapon during WW1. They used grenades filled with tear gas (ethyl bromoacetate) that were not fatal but rather an irritant.
weapon but did cause many casualties who would suffer with horrible burn wounds.
- The Battle of Bolimov fought on January 31, 1915 saw the first large-scale use of gas during World War One. The Germans fired artillery shells filled with tear gas at Russian positions near Warsaw. However; the freezing cold weather actually froze most of the gas making the attack ineffective.
- On April 22nd of 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres, the German Army opened numerous chlorine gas canisters by hand and allowed the wind to carry the gas towards French positions. Unlike the Germans first large-scale attack, three months earlier at the Battle of Bolimov, this attack was very effective. Thousands of French soldiers died; chocking on the gas while others were forced from their trenches and shot down by enemy gun fire.

I always thought the Germans were first to use it. But then, I'm sure somewhere in the medieval times (or the huns) someone already used burning stuff and irritant smoke as a weapon.
So, the Germans learned from circumstances, and improved their use of it. So far that they didn't even have to shoot/throw the gas canisters anymore.

The reason why I put "effective" with the quotes, was that it was effective in killing when used correctly (mainly for flushing out positions, and then use the other weapons to shoot those who came out of the trenches where the gas would collect), but tactically it was not effective.

The first bilateral treaty banning the use of chemical weapons - poisoned bullets in this case - was signed in 1675 between France and the Holy Rome Empire, says Dr Joanna Kidd of Kings College London.

[...]

The Hague Convention of 1899 outlawed shells for the "diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases" even before they had been used on the battlefield. (The very first use of gas, in the form of grenades rather than shells, is thought to have been carried out by the French in 1914 - the attack was so ineffectual that few even knew it had taken place until the war was over.)

[...]

Other terrible weapons were developed at the same time. The flamethrower appear on the Western Front in 1915, two months before gas. Others weapons, like the machine gun, were honed to new levels of murderous perfection. The biggest killer of all was artillery. Yet it was only the use of all gas that was outlawed by the Geneva Protocol of 1925.

Exactly why gas was singled out is disputed. The Protocol itself makes the lofty statement that gas "has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilised world".

But the only reason countries were prepared to ban it, some argue, is that it was ineffective.

The last sentence says a lot about us Humans.

[spacewhale]

Why bother with unpredictable poison gas when you can just pop off thermobarics and turn your enemies extra crispy?

[Arioch]

Considering that many if not most of the combatants are going to be wearing armor that can be sealed, poison gas doesn't seem like it would even get anyone's attention in the Loroi-Umiak conflict. There are just so many much more dangerous things you could drop on enemy troops.