One sentence sums it up-an enormously huge and pathetic waste of human life and resources and all because of a handful of deranged lunatics.I'm still wondering what we could have done with the resources and energy that was used in the war.

The War! Sorry, but I thought all wars were a waste of humanity. Surely the First World War cost more lives?


<IMAGE SRC="http://www.bermuda-online.org/RemembranceDay.jpg" ALIGN RIGHT>

If WWII never happened, the odds are it would have been fought later against the Soviets.

There'd be no UN, but still a League Of Nations.

There would be half billion people more on Earth, by now.

Society would have thought radically different, who knows how many Freuds, Einsteins or other geniusus were killed during the Holocaust or the war at large.

The British empire would still remain.

There's a chance that the US and UK may have gone to war. (British war plans between the two wars had actually been designed for a naval conflict between the States and Britain.)

That's a few suggestions.

P.S. Good posts Omegaseven, keep up the good work.

Much of our current technology would not exist without the advent of World War II.

What we lose in life, we gain in ability.

I tend to agree with spankyface. It is a sad comment upon our species that most of our technological advances have come in the pursuit of how to better kill our fellow creatures. But it true none the less.

A WW2 gem.

Also, quite a bit about what we know of typhus, extreme starvation, and other maladies brought about by cramming so many people into confined, unsanitary conditions such as exists in many underdeveloped countries (and some quite developed ones) we gained in expediency via WW2.

Biggles-Yes, WW1 had the highest human cost of any war fought in America's time (since 1776). I don't know how it stacks up against other wars before then.

If the war hadn't been fought, I think Hitler would have wheedled his way into Britain. He really didn't want to fight the UK. He felt a kinship to the British, apparently through the royal houses and eons of saxon-celtic intermingling. I think he would have taken his time (most likely to the frustrations of his generals) and found a sneaky way to get his agenda in the door. Prior to the declaration of war from the UK, he was trying to work his way in diplomatically. Hess just jumped the gun when he pulled his stunt. It would have taken a few more years of recovery from the great expenditure of war before Nazi Germany could have been able to cross the pond and put any kind of decent foothold in the Americas. He most likely would have used the Japanese to keep us expending our resources until he could sink his teeth in. After taking the entire Western world, he would then, of course, set his sights on the Orient. I don't know why, but I don't think he would have succeeded in that endeavor.

I do know that if the war had never have happened, my dad would have been stuck working in a copper mine, never would have been on leave in San Jose, never would have fallen in love with the town, never would have moved there, never would have met my mother, and I wouldn't be typing this right now, and you wouldn't be reading it. I owe a great deal to the war. I think it created as many new human beings as it destroyed, if not more.

I think of war like a natural forest fire. When a forest gets too overgrown, fires spread more quickly and do more damage. New life springs up from the ashes. When the population gets too overgrown, wars are more likely to start, which cuts down on the population, and new life springs from the ashes. That is, provided we don't nuke ourselves into oblivion. I don't think forests do that to themselves... (Look out! The Chinese Elms have nuclear capabilities!)

In general, war might be just another part of human nature. It could be a natural counterbalance to mans need for procreation.

WWI didn't cost that many American lives. The Civil War was resoponsable for more American deaths than the first and second World Wars.

If war might be a 'natural counterbalance', then it is a rather poor one. All you have to look at is the world's population increase during the nineteen hundreds. Up ... up ... up!

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

curly- I was referring to the human cost in general, not just the Americans. It only stands to reason that the American Civil War would cost more American lives than those form any other nation because it was mostly Americans who were fighting it. I mean, how many Americans died in the Spanish Civil War compared to how many Spaniards?

World War 1 cost the most lives across the board, thanks in large part to Verdun and the Somme. What sort of asinine tactic was that? Everybody stay out there killing each other until there's only one side left. No tactical retreats, no falling back to reassess the plan, in fact there didn't seem to be a plan at all. I think I read somewhere that after the battles of Verdun and the Somme that the commanders decided that it wasn't such an important piece of ground after all.

Almost as bad was the fact that the flying forces flew without parachutes. Aerial command thought it would be "bad for morale". They felt that it instilled in the air crews that there was a possibility that they might get shot down. Gee, how about that?:rolleyes:

Compare the tactics of World War 1 to modern warfare and you'll see that we may still be stupid enough to have wars, but at least we're a little smarter about surviving them.

Of course, I'm also reminded of the Redcoats having their collars so rigid that they couldn't see the guy next to them getting shot. Just like the parachutes, the commanders thought it would be bad for morale if the troops thought they might actually get hit.

My favorite tactic? From Biloxi Blues:
What would you do if the whole Japanese army was coming at you?
Surrender and get some sleep. :)

Chagur,

How may more would there now be if there were no previous wars?

No idea ... Unfortunately, I'm not psychic. ;)

tooo bad.

Well, how many people died in the wars of the last two centuries? Try multiplying those numbers by the average number of offspring typical for each war generation. Then multiply that number by the average number of offspring typical for each postwar generation. Continue to multiply each new generation forward with the average offspring for each. When done, I think you would find a substantial increase in the total population.

It's not a perfect counterbalance, but I think it fits into the natural order of things--right there with desease and other natural calamities

Here's a thought. If the WTC had not been destroyed and the 4000+ victims were still alive, how many generations/years would be required before their lineage reached one billion?

Yeah, war is okay in terms of population control. I would personally prefer compulsory euthenasia though. Logans Run here we come. Any ideas on the criteria for deciding who faces the axe?

CC,

The above is just an observation. As for your question, young males are always the first to go--when you thin out a population of deer, your hunting tags authorize you to shoot only bucks.

Hess just jumped the gun when he pulled his stunt.

Its now thought he was planing a co-invastion with the IRA, as the Germans did with the Russain regarding Poland, in cooperation for there help the Germans would give ireland back to the irish.

We would have to screen people over a period of years, based on cultural worth, intellectual worth, creative worth, etc. and send them to space, or to colonize Mars, or some other unstable situation. Whatever we'd do, it'd be in essence killing them, and our generation would be instantly damned for the betterment of future generations.
Mutiny, then, would be the main concern, of course.

A great deel of people in this world have very little impact as a culture or factor on international concerns, and yet they make up fourths and fifths of the world population. They become so numerous that they become a burden to their homeland, and do little else than represent those numbers.

Until the world is united in cause, and people allocated according to their worth, any control would never work. But then that borders on Communism, I guess, and the levels one would need to pass would become higher and higher.

I think though, that before we outgrow the planet, we'll have moved on to another heavenly body, and so on. There may be another war, and that war be prompt us into colonizing somewhere else, and so the pressure will eventually be stifled.

Another thing that would help are plagues, and those will come about naturally, soon enough, unless our technology outruns them.

<hr><i>Here's a thought. If the WTC had not been destroyed and the 4000+ victims were still alive, how many generations/years would be required before their lineage reached one billion?</i>
<hr>


Okay, okay, okay. This has my interest.

keeping the below example simple, I'm assuming that each of the 4,000 people lost in the WTC disaster on 9-11 would have produced two children, and that their following generations would have done the same by age 25. Also, I didn't account for the life expectancy of each generation.

4,000 x 2 = 8,000
8,000 x 2 = 16,000 (25 years)
16,000 x 2 = 32,000 (50 years)
32,000 x 2 = 64,000 (75 years)
64,000 x 2 = 128,000 (100 years)
128,000 x 2 = 256,000 (150 years)
256,000 x 2 = 512,000 (175 years)
512,000 x 2 = 1,024,000 (200 years)
1,024,000 x 2 = 2,044,000 (225 years)
2,044,000 x 2 = 4,088,000 (250 years)
4,088,000 x 2 = 8,176,000 (275 years)
8,176,000 x 2 = 16,352,000 (300 years)
16,352,000 x 2 = 32,704,000 (325 years)
32,704,000 x 2 = 65,408,000 (350 years)
65,408,000 x 2 = 130,816,000 (375 years)
130,816,000 x 2 = 260,632,000 (400 years)
260,632,000 x 2 = 523,264,000 (425 years)
523,264,000 x 2 = 1,046,528,000 (450 years)

spankyface,

Birthcontrol. One child for each parent. It's the only REASONABLE way to control the numbers.

Benji-

Really? That would have been an interesting move. I had thought about something like that before, like wondering why Hitler hadn't opted to recognize Ireland's sovereignty just to keep things mucked up on England's diplomatic front.

Personally, I think Ireland belongs to the Irish. I'm not too educated on the whole deal, though. I also think Scotland belongs to the Scots, but I'm half Scots myself, so that's a little personal bias talking, there;).

<b>WWII Statistics
WWII Death Count Per Country:</B>
<table border=2><tr><th>Country</th><th>Military</th><th>Civilian</th><th>Total</th></tr><tr><td>USSR</td><td>12 million</td><td>17 million</td><td>29 million</td>
</tr><tr><td>Poland</td><td>597,000</td><td>5.86 million</td><td>6.27 million</td>
</tr><tr><td>Germany</td><td>3.25 million</td><td>2.44 million</td><td>5.69 million</td>
</tr><tr><td>Yugoslavia</td><td>305,000</td><td>1.35 million</td><td>1.66 million</td>
</tr><tr><td>Romania</td><td>450,000</td><td>465,000</td><td>915,000</td>
</tr><tr><td>Hungary</td><td>200,000</td><td>600,000</td><td>800,000</td>
</tr><tr><td>France</td><td>245,000</td><td>350,000</td><td>595,000</td>
</tr><tr><td>Italy</td><td>380,000</td><td>153,000</td><td>533,000 </td>
</tr><tr><td>Great Britain</td><td>403,000</td><td>92,700</td><td>495,000</td>
</tr><tr><td>United States</td><td>407,000</td><td>6,000</td><td>413,000</td>
</tr><tr><td>Czechoslovakia</td><td>7,000</td><td>315,000</td><td>322,000</td>
</tr><tr><td>Holland</td><td>13,700</td><td>236,000</td><td>249,000</td>
</tr><tr><td>Greece</td><td>19,000</td><td>140,000</td><td>159,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>Belgium</td><td>76,000</td><td>23,000</td><td>99,000</td</tr></table>

<b>Death Distribution Of Both World Wars</B>
<table border=6><tr><th>War</th><th>Military Dead</th><th>Civilian Dead</th></tr>
<tr><td>WWI</td><td>95%</td><td>5%</td></tr>
<tr><td>WWII</td><td>33%</td><td>67%</td></tr></table><p>

47,200,000 dead?

47,200,000 * 2 (= 94,400,000 children) + 47,200,000 (parents)
ttl = 141,600,000 (ppl)

25 YEARS--
94,400,000 * 2 (=188,800,000 children) + 94,400,000 (parents) + 47,200,000 (grandparents)
ttl = 330,400,000 (ppl)

50 YEARS--
188,800,000 * 2 (= 377,600,000 children) + 188,800,00 (parents) + 94,400,000 (grandparents)
ttl = 660,800,000 (ppl)

Well...that's 1/2 billion people--even with a 160 million margin for error.

here's an interesting link for you conspiracy buff's:
http://users.pandora.be/dave.depickere/Text/secrets.html

Source...
http://www.worldwar2.be/

Wow...

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html

http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/pcwe

http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw

http://www.prb.org/Content/NavigationMenu/PRB/AboutPRB/Population_Bulletin2/World_Population_Futures.htm

http://www.populationinstitute.org/

wow. Did I kill this thread?

Actually I think it was the numbers. Statistics don't really mean anything. They can be twisted to suit any situation. Case in point, California's smog law advocates will happily point out the proven fact that half of the smog caused by automobiles comes from "gross polluters", which are cars and other vehicles whose emission levels exceed a certain limit defined by the EPA.

Did you catch that?

"...half of the smog caused by automobiles..."

Automobiles aren't the only source of smog. They aren't even the largest source of smog. In fact, they're among the least of the smog creators.

Of the total amount of smog floating around in California's air, automobiles as a whole only cause about 3%, which leaves gross polluters causing only about 1.5% of the smog out there. The rest comes from factories and other industries as well as from natural sources (which accounts for almost half of what's left, or about 43%).

Natural smog comes from dead and decaying plant and animal matter, animal droppings, and other things associated with the cycle of life and death in the natural world. Of course, the EPA can't outlaw farting, crapping, or dying, so they go after industry, which has lawyers, lobbyists, and money. That cuts in to their profits so they go after we the people and our cars. We are small, we are voiceless, so we are easy prey. Ultimate law of the jungle, eh?

I also get a kick out the population clock that shows how many people are supposedly being born and what the current population of the planet supposedly is at any given moment. This clock conveniently phases out the fact that people die almost as fast as they are born from any number of causes. They will gleefully shore up their claims of overpopulation and the need for population control by showing you pictures of crowded cities. Why don't they bring their cameras out to places like Vernalis, Welty, or Grayson, California? The populations here are so small that you can not only count them, you can name them!

It's going to take us a looooong time before we fill up this rock. Thanks to natural causes, disease, violent crime, and war, we can count ona thinning out of the herd when things get too intense.

<i>"This clock conveniently phases out the fact that people die almost as fast as they are born from any number of causes."</i>

I believe that they do account for deaths and subtract those from the number of births. I could be wrong where the <i>clock</i> is concerned. I noticed that they had been accounted for elsewhere.

Interesting...

World Vital Events Per Time Unit: 2001
(Figures may not add to totals due to rounding)
-------------------------------------------------
Natural
Time unit Births Deaths increase
-------------------------------------------------
Year 131,571,719 55,001,289 76,570,430
Month 10,964,310 4,583,441 6,380,869
Day 360,470 150,688 209,782
Hour 15,020 6,279 8,741
Minute 250 105 146
Second 4.2 1.7 2.4
-------------------------------------------------


Well, that looks like crap. Try the link below...

http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/popclockw

That was a pretty big looking number that they threw up on the screen. I wonder, does that number account for the 5000+ in the WTC? Do you know what the formula is that they use (with all variables in place?)?

As you said, they can't account for all of the variables.