Two more RFA, please!

[Targan]

Targan

To give you an idea of how bad HW would be lets simulate it on Australia - now I could give you a long description of disasters - or you could just go watch the latest Mad Max movie to get a good idea of what would be left of civilization there given an HW/Kidnapped type scenario played out there where maybe 1/16 of the population is left or less

and yes I highly recommend that movie if you are an action junkie but I miss Mel

I recall a thread probably a couple of years ago now where we talked about the devastating effects of literally a handful of ICBMs being targeted at Australia in the Twilight War. Because our major population centres and industrial areas are so geographically concentrated, Australia as a nation would pretty much cease to exist. I didn't like reading it, but the logic was inescapable. I think you'll find that acceptance of being the underdog runs strong in the Australian psyche. During WWII there were a couple of years there where we were staring down the barrel of a full-scale Japanese invasion and potential subjugation. Admittedly we never had to fight our colonial masters for our independence, but we've been living on the edge a long time.

Past episodes of climate change are a known fact, there's no disputing that, and human involvement in them was somewhere between miniscule and nil. What's happening to the climate now is mostly to do with CO2 levels in the atmosphere rising very quickly. We know how much carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere and where it's coming from, and we know how the greenhouse effect works. Human-induced global warming doesn't require your acceptance or belief to be true.

I find it simultaneously amusing and deeply concerning that some of the most vocal deniers of human-induced climate change come from North America, and North America during the last century and into this current century was one of the greatest contributors to increasing the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Having said that, on a per-capita basis Australians have been some of the worst contributors in recent times. Once again there are psychological factors at play for many Americans and Australians alike. It's easier to deny that we're the cause than taking responsibility, and to really meaningfully try to fix the problem we'd almost certainly have to dramatically hurt our industries and our lifestyles, with no guarantee that the up and coming major polluters like China and India will hold back at all.

Just finally, Howling Wilderness never explicitly states that the disrupted rainfall patterns over the US were permanent, or even long term. There's nothing stopping a GM having the rainfall patterns starting to normalize for the 2002 growing season.

[Ancestor]

My grandad served in the US Army in Australia in 1942-43. He jumped into New Guinea in 1943 and, after his unit won the engagement, he suffered malaria that kept him in bed until late 1944, sparing him from his unit's jump into Normandy and probably ensuring my existence. When he died shortly after I joined the Army he gave me a thin, grey wool blanket that he purchased in Australia in 1943 (as stated on the tag) and I've taken it every time I go TDY or have deployed. I can't decide if I want to have it wrapped around me when I die or if I want to give it to one of my sons. At any rate, he did not talk about the war much but he did mention the desperate straights that the Australian's felt in 1932-43 a couple of times.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Although the proposal for a Japanese invasion of Australia remained just that, the Australia government of the day feared that it was on the Japanese agenda and took steps to deal with it. They knew we could never hold onto all of Australia so one proposal for dealing with an invasion was to abandon everything north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
Essentially, all Australians and removable assets would be brought south of the Tropic and everything else would be destroyed - as in "scorched earth". Although there's no official records of it (as it was never officially adopted), there was lots of talk. Later day historians appear to have downplayed it as a misunderstanding or something that was never proposed but they're wrong in one respect, it was definitely talked about at the time - my grandparents lived through WW2 and my maternal grandfather told me in the 1980s (long before the current trend for "revising" history became popular), about scorched earth and the plans to deny northern Australia if the "Japs" invaded.

So yeah, some of us do actually understand the idea of having our homeland devastated and it's just as distressing for us because it would have been by our own hand. While we wouldn't necessarily have had the USA as portrayed in T2k, we would have had something sort of like Red Dawn with a partitioned nation and the enemy right on the doorstep.

[swaghauler]

Although the proposal for a Japanese invasion of Australia remained just that, the Australia government of the day feared that it was on the Japanese agenda and took steps to deal with it. They knew we could never hold onto all of Australia so one proposal for dealing with an invasion was to abandon everything north of the Tropic of Capricorn.
Essentially, all Australians and removable assets would be brought south of the Tropic and everything else would be destroyed - as in "scorched earth". Although there's no official records of it (as it was never officially adopted), there was lots of talk. Later day historians appear to have downplayed it as a misunderstanding or something that was never proposed but they're wrong in one respect, it was definitely talked about at the time - my grandparents lived through WW2 and my maternal grandfather told me in the 1980s (long before the current trend for "revising" history became popular), about scorched earth and the plans to deny northern Australia if the "Japs" invaded.

So yeah, some of us do actually understand the idea of having our homeland devastated and it's just as distressing for us because it would have been by our own hand. While we wouldn't necessarily have had the USA as portrayed in T2k, we would have had something sort of like Red Dawn with a partitioned nation and the enemy right on the doorstep.

US Army had several NG and Reserve Artillery units selected for Area Denial Missions. The 4/92 my old disbanded Reserve Unit was one of them. We used to practice the "Deployment of Nuclear Weapons" (20KT 155mm rounds) at Erie and Pittsburgh PA, Cleveland OH, and Buffalo NY to prevent occupation and use of resources by enemy forces occupying the East Coast of the US. It was a little unnerving to practice destroying those cities with Tactical Nuclear Weapons.

[Ancestor]

US Army had several NG and Reserve Artillery units selected for Area Denial Missions. The 4/92 my old disbanded Reserve Unit was one of them. We used to practice the "Deployment of Nuclear Weapons" (20KT 155mm rounds) at Erie and Pittsburgh PA, Cleveland OH, and Buffalo NY to prevent occupation and use of resources by enemy forces occupying the East Coast of the US. It was a little unnerving to practice destroying those cities with Tactical Nuclear Weapons.

That is amazing info! I wonder if, in the T2K world or similar timeline, those units/missions would have been brought back once the Soviets crossed into Alaska

[rcaf_777]

There a Mint at West Point too not a large one but a mint

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Point_Mint