Barbarossa wasn't "pointless". It had a point - neutralize the last remaining obstacle to total and lasting German hegemony in Europe, and establish Germany's "thousand year world empire". It was a massive gamble with terrible consequences but it wasn't pointless. In fact, I would argue that a massive conflagration between German-dominated Europe and the Soviet Union was inevitable as soon as WWII began. Hitler and Stalin both knew that the Pact was not a lasting treaty of friendship but was a promise not to fight in the near future.
The top ten worst decisions in history
- Thread starter Byzantine fanatic
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Yeah, the entire Sicilian campaign reads almost like a deliberate Athens-screw... First Nicias doesn't want to lead the expedition, but the Athenians make him commander anyway. So Nicias deliberately exaggerates the men and ships he thinks he'll need, hoping the Athenians will think "No, we can't afford that, let's call the whole thing off." Instead, though, the Athenians vote him everything he asks for, turning what would have been a limited expedition into a huge resource-sink. Then Alcibiades defects to the Spartans, both depriving the Athenians of an able commander and giving the Spartans details of the expedition's strength and goals. Then when the expedition does get to Sicily, Nicias is too cautious and throws away the opportunity for a quick victory, giving the Syracusans time to organise their defences. Things start going pear-shaped, but instead of going home, Nicias sends another request for huge reinforcements, since surely now the Athenians will think "No, we can't afford that, let's call the whole thing off." Instead, though, the Athenians once again vote him everything he asks for, turning a huge resource-sink into an absolutely massive resource-sink, the loss of which would be catastrophic for Athens' war-making capacities. Then when things don't get better, the Athenian expedition finally decides to retreat, but at the last minute Nicias decides to wait an extra month, during which the Athenian fleet gets destroyed, stranding the land forces in Sicily and leading to their surrender shortly afterwards. And so what should have been a limited expedition in support of one of Athens' allies ballooned into a huge too-big-to-fail enterprise, which failed and ended up causing massive damage to Athenian power.
I would go farther than that, from Hitler's point of view it was overdue. Among Hitler's unchanging beliefs were "Avenging Versailles" and "Wiping out 'Jewish Bolshevism'" . He could hold them off for a while but sooner or later he had to do so. Not doing so would go against everything he believed in. Of the two the latter was actually more important for him. If he had to pick only one it would be to "Wipe out the Slavic Jewish Bolshevik Horde".
To not mention how Nicias, in all his exaggerations, actually failed to point out that Athens needed cavalry for this sort of enterprise, which he found himself in dire need of when operations really started on the island. Either he thought Sicily would have been more supportive, and perhaps with Alcibiades around it could have been a possibility, or he must have really hoped any sort of difficulty would get the thing called off.
I don't know, perhaps over the next 1000 years we don't reproduce enough, because we're sitting on the internet typing on keyboards. Very possibly we haven't invented it yet.
The threat of nuclear annilation has gone down in the short term, but can you tell me that in the 500 years there won't be another standoff between powers like the cold war? We might not Nuke ourselves but have would India and Pakistan nuking each other be a good thing?
Pollution has gone down for now, but a civilization wide systems collapse similar to the Bronze Age Collapse, only with nukes, pollution, new diseases, lack of confidence in our society etc create a thousand cuts. Yeah, we might have survivors but with all the new ways of killing ourselves, we as a species might not make it.
I skipped to four because it had the relevant points.
Out there, people are starting to move. People are questioning our leaders, need I go on?
I think the point is, if we don't rethink how we do things, we're begging for our own destruction.
I thought you were worried about overpopulation not underpopulation. If it becomes a worry I am sure the various governments will do things like increase tax deductions for children and other things to encourage people to have them.
India and Pakistan nuking each other would not be good thing but not a world ending catastrophe. Besides 500 years is a LONG time in the modern world. Only 200 years ago slavery was the rule world wide, now it is wiped out. I don't worry about 500 years from now as that will be handled in 500 years whether I worry about it or not.
A Bronze Age collapse is very unlikely as we gone through the scientific revolution. We now have a clue on how the universe works, they didn't. This kind of speculation is at least 200 years old if not more. People have questioned their leaders forever, that is nothing new.
I have rl to deal with for the next 12 hours or so, so if someone else wants to chime in feel free.
On the contrary, something on the level of the Bronze Age collapse is neither implausible nor something to be scoffed at. The world is so interconnected that one part of it collapsing would adversely impact the rest of the world. Take the US during the Great Depression, for example. The collapse of the US banks and the depression it fell into devastated Europe. But it could be worse than that. You ask how we could destroy ourselves? Like @Kerney says, there could be another standoff between superpowers. There could be new technologies that are invented that are far worse than atomic bombs. India and Pakistan nuking each other would arguably be a massive crisis. Millions of people dead or displaced. Countries around the world forced to take sides. Retaliatory strikes. This is possibly one of the few times in history that humans have so many plausible ways of wiping themselves out/getting wiped out.
All of this doesn’t even take into account broader factors, like unsustainable exploitation of the environment or the possibility of a superbug wiping us all out.
I won’t deny that a lot of good things haven’t come with sedentary civilization. I have to thank it for making my life possible. I’m just saying, even though we can’t go back to that, maybe we shouldn’t unilaterally praise it and ignore its problems, and ignore the positives of being a hunter gatherer. We should be able to discuss this without shutting the idea down as “get off your computer and hunt your food”.
The Great Depression basically sent the modern world back a generation or two. They lived little worse, if not better than their parents and grandparents. What devastated Europe was WWI, not the Great Depression. After WWI it was living on borrowed time. IMO the direct effects of WWI didn't end until the 1950's-1960's .
I didn't say India and Pakistan nuking each other wouldn't be a massive crisis, it would be. It isn't that I want Pakistan and India to have a nuclear war. What I said is that wouldn't be a world ending one. Why would countries have to take sides? My guess is everyone would sit on the sidelines watching the Indians and Pakistanis devastate each other.
How exactly is our exploitation of the environment "unsustainable" ? We are running out of precisely nothing. Even fossil fuels will last a century or more and are better replaced by uranium anyways. A superbug is extremely unlikely to "wipe us out". One of the advantages of a huge population is the ability to take a big hit. What is more likely is some hard core quarentees in areas would have to take place.
I agree that WWI (and don’t forget the Spanish flu too) was ruinous towards Europe. However, the Great Depression hit Europe hard, too, especially Germany, since they were still paying obscene war reparations. IIRC it was a cause of the rise of the Nazis, or at least a factor in sustaining their power.
I would be skeptical that regional powers would sit idly by as two of the most populous countries in the world Nuke each other. Even now, there are border tensions between Pakistan, India, and China. Who’s to say China won’t get involved? Bangladesh? Russia? Even the US? Like WWI, entangling alliances and pent up resentment might draw many more countries than might be thought into war.
Fossil fuels and uranium will eventually run out. Uranium is not an infinite resource. Besides, even if they didn’t run out, the rate at which we are putting out pollution is... unhealthy to say the least. Even the way we mine and farm is horrendous to our domesticated animals, wild species, and the land as a whole.
A superbug could wipe us out. I’m not saying it’s going to, or even that it’s all that likely, just possible. Antibiotic resistant, virulent, and deadly diseases like antibiotic resistant tuberculosis and MRSA are becoming more and more common, and drugs, even strong ones like amoxicillin, are becoming less effective. The world is so densely populated and interconnected nowadays that a plague could spread to every continent from one place on earth. Ironically, we’d be safer from a plague as dispersed, unconnected hunter gatherers than we are now.
Again, I’m not saying that adopting agriculture is a bad decision, just that we should take a good look at its effects before concluding definitively that it’s a good one.
Anyway, I’d like to suggest another one: Lenin letting Stalin come into power rather than Trotsky. Not that any of them were good necessarily, but Stalin... he’s got his own level of nastiness.
If you're using breeder reactors you're not going to run out of uranium for millions, if not billions, of years. Given that this is a timeframe long enough for the Earth itself to significantly change and humanity itself to undergo major evolution from purely natural forces, non-renewable resources that would take this long to deplete are to all effects and purposes unlimited.
That being said, breeder reactors have major technical and economic challenges that may make them infeasible as an energy source--but there are plenty of other options that could be used to provide energy, could at least in principle be done with existing technology (if not always economically), and also have little chance of being "depleted" over any remotely reasonable timeframe. So running out of energy should not be an issue for future civilizations.
I wouldn’t assume that there would be no issue with finding solutions to having more energy, and those solutions might be a hydra: solve one problem to grow two more.
Points taken, though. You clearly know more than I do in this.
Another terrible decision was the allies’ treatment of Germany after WWI. They forced huge reparations and humiliating semi-occupation on Germany, then sat back and did nothing as Germany slowly violated parts of he Versailles treaty and grew more and more belligerent. They set the stage for a strongly revanchist, militarized, United Germany to make war on them, needlessly destroying tens of millions of lives and ruining Europe. Again.
There are at least two paths to breeder reactors, thorium and plutonium. There are some technological issues that have to be worked out but nothing that should take more than a decade or two if we put money in it.
Gen IV nuclear reactors provides for essentially unlimited energy and they don't melt down and can "burn" medium half life radioisotopes which are the only real problem. Short term radioisotopes are damn deadly but don't last long. Long term radioisotopes last practically forever but are harmless. It is the mid ranged stuff that causes the problems.
Why keep a land no longer worth to keep, if they let go of Luzon, they can focus on getting back Maluku from the Dutch.
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This is an incredibly blasé, overconfident, full of hubris, and lacking historical awareness and insight into human nature, comment.
@Hegemon is entirely right to warn that we are not so superior as to imagine ourselves immune to the same danger of collapse that countless civilisations before us have been through. If history teaches us anything, it is that it would be naive to imagine that things will continue forever as they are now. That's simply not in the nature of things. There is nothing inevitable about human progress, and @Hegemon was also right to point to over-exploitation of resources and the evolution of disease as major danger points that could easily throw us back into the dark ages.
I'm not sure it's even worth debating this. I refuse to believe you are unaware of the overwhelming evidence of the unsustainability of man's exploitation of the planet. Either you have been living in a cave for the last 40 years with no contact with the outside world, or you are deliberately ignoring the evidence for political-ideological reasons.
Some analysts argue that we have already passed peak oil. The history of civilisation has been powered by increases in the efficiency with which we extract energy. That ratio is now in decline, and there is no viable alternative to cheap oil that comes anywhere close to meeting present and future energy needs. I still have hope that alternatives will be developed, but we may not have time in any case.
80% of the increase in food production since the industrial revolution was powered by oil. It follows that the demise of oil will reduce global food supply by 80%, if no action is taken to find an alternative. Even in the best case scenario, with global population set to reach 9 or even 12 billion, it doesn't take a genius to see that we could be headed for mass starvation.
Add to that the fact that global warming is destroying the viability of agriculture across some of the most densely inhabited areas of the globe, notably India and China due to melting of the Himalayas which means both countries' rivers are drying up, an increasingly unstable and uninhabitable Middle East where temperatures are soaring (and there is evidence the war in Syria was caused by climate change), plus regions like the Nile becoming a hotbed of future conflict over water, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
I'm not saying we are necessarily doomed, at least in the short run, but I certainly am saying you can afford to be a lot less blasé about the challenges facing global civilisation in the years ahead.
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