cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
Happy Veterans' Day RIU!
While our #riuhistorian, now BarnBuster, has already posted about them on the two appropriate threads, this is a jubilee day, and I decided to give it its own thread.
The Great War (which we call World War One now, showing that this was simply the first half of the great conflict of our grandparents' times) was the first war in which the speed of technical development changed how war works. The static entrenched fronts, high-explosive artillery and practical machine guns turned the campaign into a vast killing field that left an estimated 15-19 million dead, of which 7 million or so were civilian casualties.
The end of the war saw remobilizing technologies (improved aircraft and motorized armor broke the trenches) that really blossomed in the sequel, which came in less than twenty-one years and then left us with a long cold war guaranteed by thousands of strategic nukes that could kill a nation quickly and completely.
But that war did not go hot, and we survive to this day. I wish to honor the Great War's dead and (now all deceased) wounded. Their sacrifice laid the foundation for our current, arguably prosperous but certainly lively world of humanity.
While our #riuhistorian, now BarnBuster, has already posted about them on the two appropriate threads, this is a jubilee day, and I decided to give it its own thread.
The Great War (which we call World War One now, showing that this was simply the first half of the great conflict of our grandparents' times) was the first war in which the speed of technical development changed how war works. The static entrenched fronts, high-explosive artillery and practical machine guns turned the campaign into a vast killing field that left an estimated 15-19 million dead, of which 7 million or so were civilian casualties.
The end of the war saw remobilizing technologies (improved aircraft and motorized armor broke the trenches) that really blossomed in the sequel, which came in less than twenty-one years and then left us with a long cold war guaranteed by thousands of strategic nukes that could kill a nation quickly and completely.
But that war did not go hot, and we survive to this day. I wish to honor the Great War's dead and (now all deceased) wounded. Their sacrifice laid the foundation for our current, arguably prosperous but certainly lively world of humanity.