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Of course it’s always going to be too many of ‘them’. Wars are always about limited resources. It’s crazy to think the planet can handle exponential population

Of course it’s always going to be too many of ‘them’. Wars are always about limited resources. It’s crazy to think the planet can handle exponential population growth forever. At a certain point hard decision are going to have to be made, and I doubt anyone is going to volunteer to be culled. At the rate the climate hysteria is growing, we are going to have wars specifically aimed at culling large populations. Maybe biological sneak attacks, I mean accidental releases.

dougmwne 4y ago
Yup, that’s the stuff right there that makes this the radioactive topic. It’s just one teeny tiny step from it will happen to it should. A seemingly rational ideological conclusion. It has been tried before. A memorial stands on the spot in my Polish city and the ashes are still in the soil.
wizofaus 4y ago
Wars have historically never been a particularly effective method of population reduction though - I gather during WWII the number of humans killed on the battle field was pretty small compared to those who died from disease or natural disasters.
- jessaustin 4y ago
  Before people moved around a great deal, war was the most effective way to spread disease. USA's entry into WWI spread "Spanish" Flu from rural Kansas to the world, killing between 17 and 100 million.
  - kurupt213 4y ago
    Our #1 export is death.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Highly contagious diseases have inevitably spread worldwide for centuries now, ever since ships got fast enough. Wars only accelerate the process slightly, which hardly matters in the long run. There was another worldwide respiratory virus pandemic starting in 1889 which killed a lot of people despite the lack of large-scale wars. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lpm.2022.104111 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lpm.2022.104111 Assuming that the "Spanish Flu" originated in the USA (possible but unproven), it would have spread everywhere even if we never entered WWI.
    - jessaustin 4y ago
      That link appears to describe an earlier epidemic that did not coincide with a world war and killed far fewer people; what is the relevance of that? It is well known that "Spanish" Flu originated in Kansas. It certainly would have spread beyond in the absence of USA military action, but it also certainly would not have killed 100 million people. Exposure rate drives incidence rate, which in turn drives mortality. If only ten people in a location have been exposed and only one of those has become infected, the resources of that location are better able to cope with the epidemic than would be the case if 1M were exposed and 100,000 were infected. Both treatment and isolation are more successful with more resources. This was why Americans were urged to isolate in the initial stages of covid, to prevent a shortage of hospital beds. A very wrong way to handle an epidemic is to transfer tens of thousands of people to ground zero, expose them for weeks, and then transfer them to various other continents.
- vl 4y ago
  Soviet Union lost 20 to 27 million people during WWII, which amounts to 10-15% of entire population at the moment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the... And terrifying graph for percentage losses by country: https://topforeignstocks.com/2016/04/19/chart-world-war-ii-casualties-as-a-percentage-of-each-countrys-population/ https://topforeignstocks.com/2016/04/19/chart-world-war-ii-c...
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Yep, that does stand out as a historical exception. But even a once off 15% reduction over a few years isn't necessarily going to matter much in the face of sustained exponential growth - if it happened in Ethiopia, the population would recover within 5 years.
- futureshock 4y ago
  That’s why this line of thought is shunned. It’s because the best historical precedent for intentional population reduction is not war, it’s genocide.

dougmwne 4y ago

Yup, that’s the stuff right there that makes this the radioactive topic. It’s just one teeny tiny step from it will happen to it should. A seemingly rational ideological conclusion. It has been tried before. A memorial stands on the spot in my Polish city and the ashes are still in the soil.

wizofaus 4y ago

Wars have historically never been a particularly effective method of population reduction though - I gather during WWII the number of humans killed on the battle field was pretty small compared to those who died from disease or natural disasters.

jessaustin 4y ago
Before people moved around a great deal, war was the most effective way to spread disease. USA's entry into WWI spread "Spanish" Flu from rural Kansas to the world, killing between 17 and 100 million.
- kurupt213 4y ago
  Our #1 export is death.
- nradov 4y ago
  Highly contagious diseases have inevitably spread worldwide for centuries now, ever since ships got fast enough. Wars only accelerate the process slightly, which hardly matters in the long run. There was another worldwide respiratory virus pandemic starting in 1889 which killed a lot of people despite the lack of large-scale wars. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lpm.2022.104111 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lpm.2022.104111 Assuming that the "Spanish Flu" originated in the USA (possible but unproven), it would have spread everywhere even if we never entered WWI.
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    That link appears to describe an earlier epidemic that did not coincide with a world war and killed far fewer people; what is the relevance of that? It is well known that "Spanish" Flu originated in Kansas. It certainly would have spread beyond in the absence of USA military action, but it also certainly would not have killed 100 million people. Exposure rate drives incidence rate, which in turn drives mortality. If only ten people in a location have been exposed and only one of those has become infected, the resources of that location are better able to cope with the epidemic than would be the case if 1M were exposed and 100,000 were infected. Both treatment and isolation are more successful with more resources. This was why Americans were urged to isolate in the initial stages of covid, to prevent a shortage of hospital beds. A very wrong way to handle an epidemic is to transfer tens of thousands of people to ground zero, expose them for weeks, and then transfer them to various other continents.
vl 4y ago
Soviet Union lost 20 to 27 million people during WWII, which amounts to 10-15% of entire population at the moment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the... And terrifying graph for percentage losses by country: https://topforeignstocks.com/2016/04/19/chart-world-war-ii-casualties-as-a-percentage-of-each-countrys-population/ https://topforeignstocks.com/2016/04/19/chart-world-war-ii-c...
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Yep, that does stand out as a historical exception. But even a once off 15% reduction over a few years isn't necessarily going to matter much in the face of sustained exponential growth - if it happened in Ethiopia, the population would recover within 5 years.
futureshock 4y ago
That’s why this line of thought is shunned. It’s because the best historical precedent for intentional population reduction is not war, it’s genocide.