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points

by pigpop8 hours ago |

comments

by __MatrixMan__1 hours ago|

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I feel like we agree: The amount of force necessary to be an effective bully is independent of population.

And its pretty obvious that the amount of oil necessary to run an economy is population dependent.

So one is a constant and the other is a function with positive slope. The lines cross at some point. To the left of that point you get investment in renewables, to the right of it you get war. Therefore whether or not people will consider waging war over oil is population dependent, since its a choice between the two.

I mean, this is all given some totally awful blend of shortsightedness and cruelty. But that does seem to be the blend our leaders are using these days.

by bluefirebrand6 hours ago|

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> Why did we need more bombs when there were less people

Bombs don't really scale with #people do they? I'm not a military expert of any kind but I would expect the number of bombs required to end humanity is really more a function of how much landmass people occupy?

Eg if you have a nuclear bomb that levels a city block it does not matter if 100 people live there or 10000, it pretty much just kills everyone there?

by nradov5 hours ago|

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The number of nuclear weapons needed is more a function of reliability and accuracy than of population density. The older delivery platforms were much less accurate. That doesn't matter for targeting entire cities but it matters a lot when targeting hardened military sites that might survive a near miss. Now accuracy is much better so fewer weapons are needed to achieve the same deterrence effect.