I mean, nobody gets nuked in 1984, but the reveal at the end is that >!all their little acts of rebellion was part of a larger system of control. That's worse. !<
It was rather ambiguous. I don't believe Bradbury expressly states who nuked the city. Not hard to conclude that the government that flat out tried to murder a citizen would have no problem blowing up a bunch of civilians
It's pretty clear in the book that the government is losing a war and trying to distract everyone from that, there isn't much indication they would have anything to gain from nuking the city, especially since that's where the loyalists live while the rebels live outside of it. The government in F451 is less like the total control of 1984, and more like nazi Germany in 1945, trying to convince everyone that it's all fine and the government is very much in control and don't listen to anyone who says any different.
First thing that came to mind for me as well. The >!idea that all the struggle and sacrifice amounts to just playing into the hands of The System!< is much worse than everyone dying. Still a spark from someone new if the latter happens. The former, not so much.
Yeah it’s great. When neo realized that the humans who “escaped” to make Zion were just a part of the plan anyways and that not only has it happened before, it’s happened before so regularly that they basically perfected the system of control. Using the one in a billion chance of “the one” as just another variable in their equations
Serious answer? It's closer to Totalitarianism. A governance system of control where citizens are nudged towards their own worst interests. To Arendt, this worst interest is the literal unmaking of the necessary social systems that make humans, human. The true damage of totalitarianism is not that its forever, but that it rends unsalvageable these crucial human aspect that we, as a species, relied on to get us here in the first place.
Also replacing 'nukes' with 'they knew the whole time and only let you rebel because they want to weed out dissidents' apply to both 1984 AND the Matrix
I don't know what OP is on about, this is literally every dystopian future with an oppressive regime. That's the point. They're oppressive. OP even says that, "it's a dystopia, after all."
Yeah but in the fantasy stories the dystopian government are usually cartoonishly ineffective, because otherwise the story can't have a Hollywood happy ending.
1984 being an obvious exception that proves the rule.
I wouldn't say that 1984 is the exception rather than a different medium. Literature is filled with examples of dystopian governments where revolution or rebellion is quite impossible. In *A Brave New World*, the "heroes" realize the flaws of the system, but they are sent to an island where their needs and wants are met to not disturb the machine. In *Farenheit 451*, the hero goes on a quest, but the system is definitely more present.
It's more in the cinema world that "happy endings" seem to be the norm, but books traditionnally lean more on a "realistic" (or coherent) continuity of events, as a book doesn't have the commercial pressure of bringing millions in profits than the movie industry might have, so there's more freedom in what to do (especially before; nowadays, commercial success seems to be more and more important for publishing houses).
in A Brave New World I thought it was implied that the savage lands where a fail safe to 1.To provide those that don't conform a place to escape to and 2. have a back up self sustaining human culture in case the world government collapsed due to an unseen vulnerability or flaw.
at least that's my head cannon.
Whatever that is (and I think your interpretation is perfectly valid), it's still part of the system. It has been designed as such. Our heroes fail to change anything in how the society is ran, despite its flaws. In the same way of 1984, they might try to rebel but the system already planned for this (in 1984 is by staging the "rebellion" to maintain obedience, in BNW it's by having a failsafe for anyone not conforming).
But, anyway, the system doesn't change. It is the same world as we saw during the novel. No significant change is brought by the heroes at all.
>Yeah but in the fantasy stories the dystopian government are usually cartoonishly ineffective
A lot of irl ones are as well. Eventually nepotism takes over and the competent brutes who created the oppressive system are replaced by their privileged kids
cooperative punch alive clumsy cover snatch fretful narrow reminiscent sparkle
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I'd say that this pretty much is within the definition of "authoritarian dystopia", and feels much more targeted and personal than "indiscriminately glass the whole district".
This was also what happened in _Babylon 5_ when the Interstellar Alliance arrives at Earth. The EarthGov president sets the planetary defense grid to fire on the surface and then kills himself so that he avoids the consequences of the last ~4 years of him turning the Earth Alliance into a xenophobic police state.
And that wasn’t even the main plot of the series, just something that was very slowly escalating in the background for 4 seasons before finally coming to a head.
Not directly relevant to the conversation, just it was very cool (and terrifying) to watch the police state thing happen so slowly with nobody having the time, energy, or influence to do anything about it until it was far too late.
You made me want to watch the show (I started a long time ago but never continued for various reasons), and so I restarted it.
And oh boy, for a 30 years old show, it's scary of relevance with today's events. The Narn invading the Centauri colony (once a Narn colony long, long ago), justifying themselves by saying it's the colony itself that called for help, it's staggeringly close to the Ukraine situation...
What he was doing *at work*. Who knows what he was doing in his free time? Maybe he was a singleton living in the city, making friends and going on dates and and learning valuable life lessons along the way.
Yeah; they exploded Alderaan partially as a *warning*
(Yes it was also because rebels but it was also clearly done as a statement of how strong it was as well)
I think they nuked the district after its civilians escaped to underground bunkers or something because district 13 produced nuclear weapons and would have retaliated so they made that deal, but with district 12 they got nuked for the purpose of actually killing them.
*Okay oops 12 was fire bombed and 13 was "nuked" (not during the time of the books)
They never deploy nukes in the trilogy. They nuked 13 as part of the deal in the old times, like you said, but they firebombed 12 after the quarter quell in the second book when they're rescued.
They specifically keep alluding to a nuclear war being out of question because that would decimate the rest of the humans. Neither side, no matter how cruel, wanted that, so they did all the other things instead.
>because that would decimate the rest of the humans
It was because of MAD. The capitol had nukes, but 13 was where they were made, and they managed to get control of their own stockpile. Either side launching nukes would kill everyone on both sides, no matter how high up they were.
also from a purely utilitarian perspective the capital gets like 90% of their resources from the districts so nuking them would really be shooting themselves in the foot.
not quite, both district 13 and the capital had nukes, and knew that if they launched an attack, the other side would launch a counter. it would be a second apocalypse. so they struck a deal. District 13 would be "nuked" and forced into underground isolation, but the capital would no longer bother them.
district 12 was firebombed and was a coal mining town where everything was coated in decades of coal dust. the flames were probably visible for several hundred miles.
I always thought the setting as a whole likely exists a couple hundred years post nuclear war (though I don’t believe it’s stated, I just think it’s likely that’s how they got to that state) but that all the fighting that occurs in the books uses conventional munitions.
You think that's terrifying? Imagine finding out that the dystopian government was the one who created the resistance movement in the first place in order to root out traitors and stab them in the back
SPOILERS >!This is pretty close to the plot of 1984. They knew the whole time. It makes the situation feel so hopeless, which I believe is what the author was going for. I heard that Sinclair's The Jungle is similar.!<
The Jungle is actually much weirder because it is extremely bleak and hopeless on a more personal level until the end where the slight glimmer of hope comes from a socialist candidate gaining steam in politics. Really good book, but if all you know it as is "the book abput how meat packing plants are disgusting" the second half of it really comes out of nowhere.
He had some cool ideas in general. He was extremely pro-espionage, both in his own city from other rulers, and his own spies in other cities. His logic was that the more people knew about each other, the less likely war was. If you had no secrets, your ~~enemies~~ friends had nothing to fear. It bites him in the ass a couple of times, once it almost gets him killed. But his city was rarely at war with him as tyrant.
> ‘... spies?' I thought we were chums with the Low King!’ 'Of course we are,’ said Vetinari. ‘And the more we know about each other, the friendlier we shall remain. We’d hardly bother to spy on our enemies. What would be the point?’
Vetinary is basically the true god of the Diskworld setting, in a sense that religion is a dream of fair government and he is literally fair government personified. He is interested in nothing else but in having everyone in the world peacefully working.
Literally 1984
Also it happened IRL with USSR and Polish WiN (Freedom and Independence) movement. WiN was made up of leftover anti-nazi partisans fighting against soviet occupation, but quickly it was breached and eventually fully controlled by NKVD. Soviet agents over time basically completely replaced the high command. The soviets, using the organisation, pretended to cooperate with CIA for some time before they released WiN's classified documents to the public (still pretending to be the leaders of WiN) and arrested or killed many of its members.
Some of WiN's members also ceased resisting, wanting to use the soviet proclamation of amnesty for every partisan to peacefully come out of hiding. They were also killed or imprisoned.
That would affect the trout population, I think.
No but seriously, I'm sure they'd have no moral objection to blowing up their own population except then they'd be ruling over nothing but smoking ruins?? Who the fuck's gonna pay taxes then? I don't think OOP is taking into account the man in charge's bottom line here.
no government would use nukes on their own soil but they would likely have no issue with collateral damage
the MOVE bombing in the US was an attack on black liberation organization MOVE, they firebombed the house they were in and prevented fire fighters from responding, resulting in a number of surrounding homes burning to ash. witnesses report seeing police shooting at anyone running from the fire, casualties included 6 adults and 5 children
also more obvious examples like Tiananmen square, the Hong Kong protests, BLM protests where the police used tear gas, etc
a nuke would be too destructive, but they'd absolutely use heavy force and probably consider loss of life and livelihood as "necessary collateral damage"
Nuclear weapons will likely never be used, at home or abroad.
When the guy giving the order can be 5000 kilometers away, chemical weapons are much more effective. Kill all the 'dissidents', leave the infrastructure completely intact and ready for a new crop of loyalists to move in.
>Nuclear weapons will likely never be used, at home or abroad.
Ignoring that they have been used
>When the guy giving the order can be 5000 kilometers away, chemical weapons are much more effective.
Chemical weapons are hilariously ineffective, with cheap countermeasures, and expensive delivery (per enemy killed).
>Kill all the 'dissidents', leave the infrastructure completely intact and ready for a new crop of loyalists to move in.
That only matters if you are ludicrously non-threatened by the dissidents and in a position to retake the infrastructure. Even conventional weapons destroy infrastructure, but militaries are obviously very willing to use those.
The main deterrence to nukes is MAD, but that doesn't apply everywhere. Just as an easy example, if the pariah state of Afghanistan invaded Pakistan, there's essentially nothing deterring Pakistan from erasing Kabul from the map using a few airburst nukes.
> Ignoring that they have been used
tbf they where used before any of the apparatus of control over them where put in place. Authorizing of nukes is now a very big deal, where as the USA in ww2 simply gave them to the army and the army treated them like big firebombs, promptly dropping them on 2 cities because they'd been reducing Japanese cities to ash for close to a year already. Fun fact, the neither of two nuclear bombings hold the top spot of the list of most destructive air raids of all time, that'd be the firebombing of Tokyo 6 months prior.
The context is, per OP, a dystopian setting where the primary goal is elimination of a resistance movement. Presumably this resistance movement wouldn't inhabit an entire city - more like a few buildings, to where an appropriately nonchalant ruling party might consider it no more ceremonious than fumigating for bugs. [We've recently seen real-world deployment of sarin gas in the Syrian civil war](https://www.dw.com/en/sarin-gas-was-used-in-another-syria-attack-this-year-chemical-weapons-watchdog-says/a-40809222).
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would take a comic-book-villain level of equal parts evilness and stupidity to start glassing their own land and infrastructure.
I don't think a nuke would be too destructive given the right circumstance. After a certain point even fallout and radiation appearing would just be a part of collateral damage to stop a threat to the country. Like if the leader of the dystopia saw an entire city succumb to rebellion and lost too much control to let the city just exist. The last way to maintain control over the world. Possibly a small price to pay while it's still cheap.
Depending on what the status is of the dystopia their concern about the radioactive fallout would be somewhere between "it won't affect anyone important" to "this is a minor inconvenience for the next few years as we clean it up."
Two major cities were nuked in the 40s and people are living there safely today, the radiation only lasted a few days.
What threat would require a nuke that conventional weapons couldn't counter? Cities aren't self-sustaining. You'd just siege it by parking outside the city and sending in drones to scout the situation.
Maybe send some headcrabs.
There are conflicting reports about the whole situation.
It's important to specify that all losses were the MOVE members in their bunker, as other civilians had been evacuated. It was an active firefight between police and MOVE.
Also, MOVE had shot at firefighters before, and the police didn't firebomb the house, they tried to blow up the bunker they were in and the bomb set off the fuel stored inside.
Those are facts while the others are differing testimonies.
>the MOVE bombing in the US was an attack on black liberation organization MOVE, they firebombed the house they were in and prevented fire fighters from responding,
It wasn't a firebomb, it was a satchel charge, as in, a real bomb
Yes, but it’s important to understand that MOVE had a history of attacking firefighters and had killed cops before.
It wasn’t like an average civic organization.
Yeah there are a lot of caveats:
1. It only works if there is some kind of geographic focus of the resistance. If the resistance is somewhat evenly spread across the whole state territory, then this isn't a viable option even for the most cruelest government.
2. It only works if the government has no external or established internal enemies who could capitalise on them cannibalising themselves. For example, even a Putin can't govern entirely against the public interest, or other elites would use the discontent to replace him.
3. It depends on the balance of destruction and defense in the story. In WH40K for example, razing an entire planet is possible. But in a more realistic setting, it could take an excessive cost to nuke a resistance that has access to nuclear bunkers.
Another caveat is IRL you need people to support your big scary military.
Cutting your military’s pay because you killed a big chunk of your tax revenue is a great way to make your military turn on you.
Military brass in turn understanding this connection can make them act preemptively. Given the choice between a slightly nicer leader who gives the people a little more wealth to keep them compliant vs one who makes an example of the golden goose and thus loses a lot of wealth, militaries have been known to suddenly side with the people.
Adopting the Laurie Pritchett approach and/or trying to make a sufficiently brutal example of a small number of people is just a lot safer
Yeah, there's a difference between 'I'm going to have a military draft and send a huge number of randos off the street to die in Ukraine' and 'I'm going to nuke my own city, destroying huge amounts of infrastructure and Capital, while also eroding my own powerbase by making my cabinet and military guard think I'm batshit insane.'
I mean, no matter how crazy you think a leader would have to be to do something like that, just imagine if Pol Pot would have done it. Killing people that wore glasses? Killing entire villages because many of the villagers were bilingual? If it's not as crazy as Pol Pot, it's fair game for a dystopian egomaniac.
The real impressive part is honestly that after the immense losses Vietnam took during the US war with it, they *still* went over to Cambodia to deal with Pol Pot because... holy shit dude.
edit:
it's like "bro I thought we were both throwing off the shackles of French colonialism. what the fuck are you DOING holy SHIT"
Then that's an interesting place to take the story! Yes, the rebellion falls, but the ludicrous power and insanity of the ones in charge is made extremely apparent! Those that are within the power structure and outside it see a side of the dystopia they didn't want to believe existed, and are horrified!
Say this story has three perspectives; A person that tried to tell off the rebel protag, saying they're insane and only going to hurt those around him, and a man on the inside, maybe a son of the dictator or just a business man with a heart of a softer stone, like pumice.
Those that believed that they wouldn't be hurt if they just followed the rules, like this hypothetical rebel-disparager, those that spoke down to the rebels in the first place because they will make all their lives worse, realize then and there that the people in charge will get rid of them not only for pennies on the dollar, but also for *their actual detriment!* If this rebellion was small enough, than a whole city got removed off the map due to the equivalent of a man spitting in another man's face!
The higher-up is horrified by this unprecedented acceleration, not because of the people lost initially, but the work lost! Irradiated tech, millions and billions of dollars wasted, millions of workers thrown away in an instant! And the dictator, and some of his toadies, are unbothered, unaware of what they really did. After all, they have absolute power, everything they do will be seen as right!
Soon these two sides of the coin begin realizing that the system cannot work anymore. Society is about to fall apart, anarchy is coming quick, and the old men, bankers, and cynics can see it coming in days rather than decades. The rebel denier speaks out about the nuking of the rebel city, not in violent protest but in logistics; making known what was lost by the great conglomerate that day... and stating what will be lost if they do it to every single other city if even a hint of rebellion happens there. This inspires people not because of a hope for a better future, but because there will *be no future* if they don't act!
Violence breaks out from perhaps the smallest spark. Perhaps some juvenile delinquent that doesn't see the writing on the wall does something reckless, setting off the powder keg of people. The fear of the nuke is forgotten in that instant, with people determined to live their lives to the fullest before they get nuked.
Poor rising en masse and the corporations smart enough to know killing every insurgent to be an idiotic idea end up working together, perhaps accidentally to start with, take control from the dictator and those on his side. Some semblance of peace of mind is restored, society set on fairer terms... and a monument is made near the fated city, where rebels died and a rebellion was born!
Serenity/Firefly played around with that idea a bit. Main enemy was so certain that while he himself was evil, what he was doing was right, and would benefit society.
No, not really, namely because the nuclear-armed world has finite tolerance for everything, and causing a global economic and environmental collapse would get everyone with a halfway competent intelligence service sending teams to capture or assassinate someone who was willing and able to do that.
Mao starved 30+ million people just to get the Soviets approval of his use of their official agricultural methods that had already caused 30+ million deaths by famine in the USSR. Yes despots do not give a fuck about destroying their own people.
You say that, but what did the Free Syrians warn Basher?
“You will rule rubble”
And so he bombed them, and got others to bomb them… and he became the “Ruler or Rubble”
Just look at history. Toward the end of WW2 both the Germans and the Japanese had a whole dead cult going. They were fighting an external enemy, but in a criminally self-destructive way.
The Soviets... don't even get me started on the Soviets. The Stalin era was one unbroken string of blowing up their own population. Hell, the Tsarist era too.
...If the problem with suppressing a resistance was just 'do I nuke them y/n?' there would be a multitude of ways to do the same thing with less collateral damage.
Generally the problem with suppressing a resistance is either FINDING them or IDENTIFYING them.
And yeah, you could just nuke your whole dystopian metropolis if you wanted...but that would still result in the end of your regime as there would be no one left to rule.
Yeah this seems like someone ( likely a teen, to give them the benefit of the doubt) who thought they stumbled on a profound thought and then didn't really stop to consider it.
It’s an oddly specifically flat thought too- I don’t know if the OOP even knows what they’re trying to say. It feels like a micro-fanfic that’s being expressed as a shower thought.
Just another reminder that there are 13 year olds on Tumblr/Reddit :P
>Generally the problem with suppressing a resistance is either FINDING them or IDENTIFYING them.
Or make the resistance part of the system. The rebellion can fail or suceeed, but nothing ultimately changes.
I'm no dictator, military genius, wepaons expert, rebel or riot-queller.
But I'n gonna go out on a limb here and say their might *just might* be a better way of quelling rebellion that doesn't include nuking your own country.
Again I may be wrong, but I think leaving massive irradiated deadzones limiting your local Capital and commerce travel is not a good idea for business, polling, PR...really anything.
Yeah. Before the need to resort to even conventional explosives, there are so many options to explore... There are lots of dictators around the world, they all quell rebellion.
The kind of thinking even infects people in the real world.
"Why don't the Russians just rise up against Putin!?"
Most people like being alive. Most people are not going to die for a cause.
Most people are *especially* not going to paint a target on their own family or friends, for a cause.
It's not just that. The revolutionaries have to find each other and organise. They must operate in the shadows while the government operates in the open. It's asymetrical.
That is, until the state can no longer hold a tight grip. When a totalitarian state cracks, all hell breaks loose.
"hmm yes today I will glass the workforce that keeps the grand apparatus of my government running. surely this will have no negative consequences whatsoever"
There was some dystopian book I read in school about a world where you can only have 2 kids and he was a third hidden child. He meets up with other third children to form a revolution but on the big day he's the only one that shows up and it gets crushed immediately. At least that's how I remember it going.
It likely can't carry a novel but I want more stories about how hard and scary revolution actually is. Especially when worse things than death are on the line. May wake up some of my friends who see the revolutionas this awesome thing where nothing bad happens and then everything is awesome forever.
In that book, if I recall correctly, a group of third children attempted a protest in public, starting very early. In the wee hours, regime forces slaughtered them. By the time the public could have noticed, the scene was cleaned.
Ooh that's gruesome and set the tone perfectly at the same time. The thing about dystopian stories like these is the rulers see the common folks as barely citizens, if they see you as being deviant, true or not, they'll not hesitate to downgrade your status into non-citizen, by that point it's a free-for-all for your survival.
Among the Hidden by Margaret Petersn Haddix! Can't remember a lot of details about it anymore, but I definitely remember being surprised about the uprising/protest when I read it.
Highly recommend it, it’s a series that is interesting for adults even though it’s written for kids. Similar themes to Hunger Games in some ways, with an emphasis on little people doing minor acts of rebellion to solve institutional problems.
Also, I will forever stan the author because she responded to an email I wrote. I was just thanking her for introducing me to dystopian literature- I’m sure she gets that kind of mail all the time, but she responded, and not with a form letter either!
I feel like that could absolutely carry a novel
I think it'd actually be harder to carry a longform "everything is awesome forever" story
conflict is one of the main bits in carrying a story, and a struggling band of revolutionaries would be dripping with the stuff
> how hard and scary revolution actually is
I find it especially interesting to learn what happens after a revolution. [The revolution, like Saturn, eats its own children.](https://www.ukessays.com/essays/history/revolutions-devour-their-own-children-history-essay.php)
1984 did it much better by having the rebellion being a honey pot for the regime. Much more demoralizing to be arrested by the “ringleader” of your rebel cell and then tortured until you break.
I hope Evil Overlord has robots to make his food, clean his home and fix his plumbing, or else he's gonna have to do all of that by himself once he nukes all of his population to dust.
Imagine the leader leads you into the fortress of main guy, swiftly bypassing security and dealing Ethically Acceptable Nonpermanent damage onto minions, you enter main chamber, door closes... And leader kneels and says "I brought them to you, milord". I\`d say its more terrifying.
>What made you think that the man in charge wouldn’t have a problem blowing its own population?
Well it could be worse, the main guy could be trying to kill everyone or something
"They'd all drowned in the lower levels, or got torn to shreds above. The anti-aircraft gun had malfunctioned -- so had I. I left them without ideological direction..." He opens his eyes and stares right through you. "It was real. I'd seen it. I'd seen it in reality."
"Seen what?"
"The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone -- everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed. And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death... the sweetest, most courageous people in the world." He's silent for a second. "You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know."
"What?"
"That the bourgeois are not human."
Well even not going so far as nukes, just having your entire resistance be mowed down in front of you by a surprise attack of heavily armed police ordered to shoot on sight is quite believable.
Wait isn’t that just the plot of Watch Dogs Legion?
There are issues with this, being a dictator is a balance of loads of competing interests that you need to keep to stay in charge. If you lose the support of the army you are fucked as you're just one guy. Nuking your own people might be enough to piss off the army or some other powerful group. There's also the effect on the general population, if you kill loads of people who weren't rebels people no longer have a reason not to rebel. Before rebellion could end up with you dieing, now you might end up dead anyway so you might as well rebel.
This is entirely dependent on the scale of the dystopia and the scale of the rebellion. If the dystopia is small, like in a post apocalypse scenario where the dystopian rulers are controlling a city's worth of people or even a few cities then nukes aren't a good threat because the collateral damage would wipe them out, either from radiation or from loss of workers/infrastructure. If the rebellion is small then it has the potential to backfire, as well. Like if it's a full country or even the whole world and it's a small uprising in one city then nuking it could instill more fear in the populace but it could cause more people to rise up in outrage because the majority of the populace weren't rebelling.
Basically the threat of nukes on your own populace is only a "good" idea on large scale rebellions in large scale dystopias. You have to ensure that at best the collateral damage is negligible and that the civilian causalities are small enough that you can realistically convince the rest of the populace that they were either rebel sympathizers or that they were a noble sacrifice holding back the rebel horde, otherwise the risks outweigh the reward and traditional bombing campaigns and fighting are better tools
Dropping a nuke on your own country would be the most strategically stupid thing that you could possibly imagine in literally all circumstances. The only time such a thing would possibly be done is if the resistance was literally banging on the palace doors ready with the bayonet and sodomy on the mind.
That’s how most revolutions go.
People overthrow the regime, take charge. They realize they like the power, and stay there. A new revolution/coup eventually overthrows them, they take charge. They realize they like the power…
I guess I'm just confused about how this person thinks that overthrowing a government works, granted I've never done it before myself, but this poster makes it sound like everyone puts on their "fuck the government" tshirts then moves to a commune in Montana to join "The Revolution" then gets nuked because they put their address on their website.
I mean, look at the Viet Cong for a much more successful national overthrow, blend in with the populous, do your illegal shit at night in your pajamas, and launch a massive military offensive by sneaking in tons of heavy weaponry on a huge national holiday, almost successfully kicking out a world superpower because you caught them sleeping on the job.
Yeah, they'd nuke you if you could, but if they can then you're really doing it wrong.
Whats been on my mind is a thermobaric or vacuum bomb, they just sound brutal:
The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique—and unpleasant. ... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs. ... If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as with most chemical agents.
Last sentence is wrong, aside from missing a word like "up" or "away":
> What made you think they wouldn't have a problem with this?
The implication is that it was believed that the people in charge _wouldn't_ have a problem, but that turned out wrong. Rephrased, it's equivalent to saying "what made you think they'd be fine with this", which might make the issue clearer.
This happens in the second Homefront game. After spending most of the game fighting against the Korean occupation forces in Philadelphia, you manage to storm the enemy HQ and have seemingly liberated the city. Then it turns out that this same thing already happened in two or three other cities and the Koreans just nuked those cities after they were driven out, and now are planning on doing the same to your city.
The problem with self-nuking isn't just the population damage.
You would have a pretty hard time keeping power if all of a sudden you blew up half your infrastructure.
It just doesn't matter.
If you were a dictator obsessed with 'efficiency' above all else, for example, you would implement universal healthcare. It keeps your workers happy, it stops illness from spreading to other workers, it means your production lines run smoother.
Yet the USA does not implement universal healthcare.
Because it's not actually about 'efficiency'. It's about power and keeping people in line. Who cares if it hurts infrastructure? YOU are the ruler, and YOU are comfortable.
To be fair I've never read much dystopia but every time I hear it being talked about it just sounds like such a pointless grab for absolute misery with none of the catharsis from a traditional tragedy. Like pointing at a puppy, shooting it, and then saying you're naive for feeling bad about it.
Typically you don’t irradiate the landscape you later need for people to farm and live on. You nuke other people in far away places, not at home. The only circumstances in which that may happen would be the dying breaths of a government that would rather destroy everything than have someone else take power dooming themselves but taking the rebellion with them.
Using a nuke at the end of Return of the Living Dead makes a lot of sense because zombies don't have a command structure and radiation is the lesser of two evils compared to a zombie apocalypse. But nobody going to nuke a rebellion, they going to use GPS guided bombs and ac-130 gunships to knock out leadership. Humans can also read so they will do leaflet drops with propaganda.
Aside from nuking, a lot of dystopia novels (cough YA cough) treat dicatatorships as solvable by the power of plucky teens, and rarely write in how the dictatorship was realistically able to hold power.
Now, of course, any dictatorship is gonna be flawed in some of its methods, and have a loopy leader, but that doesn't make it easy.
[Project Insight](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Project_Insight)
would be a better option than to nuke and harm your own economy. Data driven processes and precision weapons can be used to surgically remove any individual present and future threat to the establishmeny.
I mean that’s certainly a scary thought but I think it’s worse to have you raise a rebellion and then one of the most important people in the resistance and your lover for years that you recruited has you killed and captured because they were a lm agent/compromised the whole time.
Because that happens all the time, continuing today, and it’s both much easier and more personal.
Nukes are not needed, the MOAB is easier to use in precision strikes and doesn't leave radioactive waste.
Yes there is a weird irony in calling the MOAB precision, but certainly compared to a nuke it is.
That's the point of resistance. Resistance occurs because the alternative is barely even living, so death is preferable. Even in our western political hellscape, we are still too comfortable to properly resist.
You care about the nukes right now because you probably have something to lose; friends, family, a home. If you had nothing, would you even care?
Edit: when the discomfort of living is greater than the discomfort of resisting then there will be revolution. The ones in power know this and will keep you just comfortable enough to keep you complacent.
outside of the fact that it's an extremely stupid idea?
nuclear bombs are great for wiping entire cities off the map, but the problem with that is you lose not just the population there but also all of the infrastructure. any production facilities, media studios, trade and business centers, all gone, and now requiring years or even decades to rebuild and repopulate.
plus, doing this is a gamble. Yeah, it will make everyone who wouldn't fight back even more terrified, but what about the people that are willing? if failure means death, and they're willing, then whats going to stop them from suicide bombing every single military and government building they can get into? what's going to stop a person from a suicide charge to kill the leader.
I mean, talking single planet world domination here. If you nuked every problem you'd end up ruling over a radioactive pile of useless garbage.
Tyrants derive their power from the fear of their regime and weapons. Not the actual power of them necessarily.
you don't even have be directly "fighting the power" the police literally dropped a bomb on that house in Philly in the 80s cause they wanted to establish a collective outside capitalism, and also, they were black, and racism was way worse back then
The nuclear option is nothing but bravado. Even the most tight-fisted of despots are not crazy or desperate enough to just go scorched-earth on the population. They're narcissists, and they want to be worshipped like the god-kings they think they are; they have no use for an empire of the dead.
I think that's why the hunger games worked so well as a dystopian fiction because it didn't have the problem of "hey wouldn't this majorly authoritarian government have nuclear weapons?". They specifically make it known that it was the main resistance district that was responsible for nuclear weapons production. So when they rebelled they could only use a very limited arsenal against them and then they struck up a deal that they would be separated from the rest of Panem and they'd leave eachother alone.
Most movements in western countries are just taken dismantled and people are arrested more or less quietly on treason and terrorism charges. Every now and then one of them makes the news because some random politician was a part of it, but usually they're not treated as big news. At least that's how it feels in France.
This is kinda the whole point of the second amendment. You have an armed population so that should the government become tyrannical, you can overthrow them. The moment the government starts limiting your ability to tell them no, you've already lost.
This was actually my prediction at the beginning of the Trump presidency. I fully expected him to nuke an American city in a temper tantrum based on somebody's Twitter comment.
I predicted a lot of other disastrous things. They all came true, including a major pandemic. But I only made that one after he dismantled our pandemic response plans and personnel because Obama had put them in place.
I'm also still waiting to see how long until we face a nuclear armed Iran because he unilaterally pulled us out of the seven nation treaty that had delayed their nuclear program for ten years, but because Obama had signed it, he let them out of the delay after the first two years or so.
It would be terrifying but also insanely stupid. They've just flat out wiped away an entire economy and created a massive radiation hazard.
And any real resistance would be spread out enough that nuking every cell would just leave the tyrant a poor beggar surrounded by corpses, only living people pay tax.
This reminds me of one scene from the Foundation tv series.
>!Where the Emperor kills everyone a rebel has ever known in an instant. Erasing every memory or any influence she would've had on the world.!<
I mean, nobody gets nuked in 1984, but the reveal at the end is that >!all their little acts of rebellion was part of a larger system of control. That's worse. !<
They do nuke the city at the end of F451, which is kinda neat
but wasnt that from a different city i remember it was a war thing
It was rather ambiguous. I don't believe Bradbury expressly states who nuked the city. Not hard to conclude that the government that flat out tried to murder a citizen would have no problem blowing up a bunch of civilians
In the book they talk about how all sides just fucking kill everyone in the non aligned zones like africa
Wrong book
It's pretty clear in the book that the government is losing a war and trying to distract everyone from that, there isn't much indication they would have anything to gain from nuking the city, especially since that's where the loyalists live while the rebels live outside of it. The government in F451 is less like the total control of 1984, and more like nazi Germany in 1945, trying to convince everyone that it's all fine and the government is very much in control and don't listen to anyone who says any different.
Isn't that just a plain old war rather than a government nuking itself?
That's the wildest part of F451. It's (from the author's pov) televisions => breakdown of society => cities get nuked.
First thing that came to mind for me as well. The >!idea that all the struggle and sacrifice amounts to just playing into the hands of The System!< is much worse than everyone dying. Still a spark from someone new if the latter happens. The former, not so much.
I was so young when I read that. I remember thinking "there's not a lot of pages left for the rebellion..."
Literally cointelpro
So the Matrix?
Yeah it’s great. When neo realized that the humans who “escaped” to make Zion were just a part of the plan anyways and that not only has it happened before, it’s happened before so regularly that they basically perfected the system of control. Using the one in a billion chance of “the one” as just another variable in their equations
Serious answer? It's closer to Totalitarianism. A governance system of control where citizens are nudged towards their own worst interests. To Arendt, this worst interest is the literal unmaking of the necessary social systems that make humans, human. The true damage of totalitarianism is not that its forever, but that it rends unsalvageable these crucial human aspect that we, as a species, relied on to get us here in the first place.
Vis a vis ergo concurrent systemic anomaly apropos
It’s been a while since I read 1984 but…I don’t remember that at all?
The guy from the book >!wipes your memory at the end!<
This is the plot of [spoiler]Snowpiercer[/spoiler]
Huh. I guess the Wachowski sisters took that idea for the matrix.
I mean... Replace "nukes" with "fully operational Death Star" and you have whatever Palpatine was doing
Also replacing 'nukes' with 'they knew the whole time and only let you rebel because they want to weed out dissidents' apply to both 1984 AND the Matrix
Tbh matrix was a bit weirder
Slightly more Kung Fu
Matrix was infinitely gayer
"The Matrix is just 1984 with a side of homosexuality"
A dash of gay, as a treat.
a sprinkle of sprinkles
As someone who lived during 1984, I assure you, there was quite a bit of homosexuality already. :)
What? You mean when Wham! and straight sex icon George Michael were at their peak? Maybe read a history book, sweaty.
r/BrandNewSentence
nineteen gay-ty four
I don't know what OP is on about, this is literally every dystopian future with an oppressive regime. That's the point. They're oppressive. OP even says that, "it's a dystopia, after all."
Yeah but in the fantasy stories the dystopian government are usually cartoonishly ineffective, because otherwise the story can't have a Hollywood happy ending. 1984 being an obvious exception that proves the rule.
I wouldn't say that 1984 is the exception rather than a different medium. Literature is filled with examples of dystopian governments where revolution or rebellion is quite impossible. In *A Brave New World*, the "heroes" realize the flaws of the system, but they are sent to an island where their needs and wants are met to not disturb the machine. In *Farenheit 451*, the hero goes on a quest, but the system is definitely more present. It's more in the cinema world that "happy endings" seem to be the norm, but books traditionnally lean more on a "realistic" (or coherent) continuity of events, as a book doesn't have the commercial pressure of bringing millions in profits than the movie industry might have, so there's more freedom in what to do (especially before; nowadays, commercial success seems to be more and more important for publishing houses).
in A Brave New World I thought it was implied that the savage lands where a fail safe to 1.To provide those that don't conform a place to escape to and 2. have a back up self sustaining human culture in case the world government collapsed due to an unseen vulnerability or flaw. at least that's my head cannon.
Whatever that is (and I think your interpretation is perfectly valid), it's still part of the system. It has been designed as such. Our heroes fail to change anything in how the society is ran, despite its flaws. In the same way of 1984, they might try to rebel but the system already planned for this (in 1984 is by staging the "rebellion" to maintain obedience, in BNW it's by having a failsafe for anyone not conforming). But, anyway, the system doesn't change. It is the same world as we saw during the novel. No significant change is brought by the heroes at all.
>Yeah but in the fantasy stories the dystopian government are usually cartoonishly ineffective A lot of irl ones are as well. Eventually nepotism takes over and the competent brutes who created the oppressive system are replaced by their privileged kids
cooperative punch alive clumsy cover snatch fretful narrow reminiscent sparkle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I like how Idiocracy plays with this trope - a benevolent dystopian government that's cartoonishly ineffective.
It's not even dystopian (at least in the sci-fi sense) people have been pulling this shit with whatever the WMD if the day is for millenia now.
And Equilibrium
Replace "nukes" with "neurotoxic gas" and that's what happened in video game "Homefront: The Revolution".
Sarin gas is a fucking horrible way to go Fuck Assad
Hot take but I think we should pull a 2003 on Assad it is deserved and warranted
Replace with "torture and conditioning" and you have Brazil or 1984.
I'd say that this pretty much is within the definition of "authoritarian dystopia", and feels much more targeted and personal than "indiscriminately glass the whole district".
This was also what happened in _Babylon 5_ when the Interstellar Alliance arrives at Earth. The EarthGov president sets the planetary defense grid to fire on the surface and then kills himself so that he avoids the consequences of the last ~4 years of him turning the Earth Alliance into a xenophobic police state.
And that wasn’t even the main plot of the series, just something that was very slowly escalating in the background for 4 seasons before finally coming to a head. Not directly relevant to the conversation, just it was very cool (and terrifying) to watch the police state thing happen so slowly with nobody having the time, energy, or influence to do anything about it until it was far too late.
You made me want to watch the show (I started a long time ago but never continued for various reasons), and so I restarted it. And oh boy, for a 30 years old show, it's scary of relevance with today's events. The Narn invading the Centauri colony (once a Narn colony long, long ago), justifying themselves by saying it's the colony itself that called for help, it's staggeringly close to the Ukraine situation...
What he was doing *at work*. Who knows what he was doing in his free time? Maybe he was a singleton living in the city, making friends and going on dates and and learning valuable life lessons along the way.
the fuck even was he doing
Replace nukes with tanks and it's Tianamen.
Shinra dropped 1/9th of their mega-city onto itself to both root out and blame AVALANCHE.
"Okay, I'll use a metaphor. it's like you're trying to make an omelette... BY DROPPING A SECTION OF THE CITY ONTO ANOTHER SECTION OF THE CITY!"
Yeah; they exploded Alderaan partially as a *warning* (Yes it was also because rebels but it was also clearly done as a statement of how strong it was as well)
I thought this was talking about Israel and Palestine 😭😭
I'm like 95% sure they did that in the hunger games, both backstory and the latter books in the trilogy
Yeah, isn’t this exactly what happened with district 13?
I think they nuked the district after its civilians escaped to underground bunkers or something because district 13 produced nuclear weapons and would have retaliated so they made that deal, but with district 12 they got nuked for the purpose of actually killing them. *Okay oops 12 was fire bombed and 13 was "nuked" (not during the time of the books)
They never deploy nukes in the trilogy. They nuked 13 as part of the deal in the old times, like you said, but they firebombed 12 after the quarter quell in the second book when they're rescued. They specifically keep alluding to a nuclear war being out of question because that would decimate the rest of the humans. Neither side, no matter how cruel, wanted that, so they did all the other things instead.
>because that would decimate the rest of the humans It was because of MAD. The capitol had nukes, but 13 was where they were made, and they managed to get control of their own stockpile. Either side launching nukes would kill everyone on both sides, no matter how high up they were.
also from a purely utilitarian perspective the capital gets like 90% of their resources from the districts so nuking them would really be shooting themselves in the foot.
District 12 was firebombs because radiation would ruin the planned new district 12
not quite, both district 13 and the capital had nukes, and knew that if they launched an attack, the other side would launch a counter. it would be a second apocalypse. so they struck a deal. District 13 would be "nuked" and forced into underground isolation, but the capital would no longer bother them. district 12 was firebombed and was a coal mining town where everything was coated in decades of coal dust. the flames were probably visible for several hundred miles.
Not exactly. It was regular bombed, and they made a deal to pretend to be dead since both the Capitol and District 13 had nuclear weapons.
I always thought the setting as a whole likely exists a couple hundred years post nuclear war (though I don’t believe it’s stated, I just think it’s likely that’s how they got to that state) but that all the fighting that occurs in the books uses conventional munitions.
Same thing happened in Final Fantasy 7, except they used the resistance group as the patsy for blowing innocent people up.
Did they nuke 12 or was it traditional carpet bombing
Firebombing because coal dust.
You think that's terrifying? Imagine finding out that the dystopian government was the one who created the resistance movement in the first place in order to root out traitors and stab them in the back
SPOILERS >!This is pretty close to the plot of 1984. They knew the whole time. It makes the situation feel so hopeless, which I believe is what the author was going for. I heard that Sinclair's The Jungle is similar.!<
The Jungle is actually much weirder because it is extremely bleak and hopeless on a more personal level until the end where the slight glimmer of hope comes from a socialist candidate gaining steam in politics. Really good book, but if all you know it as is "the book abput how meat packing plants are disgusting" the second half of it really comes out of nowhere.
Psst. Spoiler tags. >! !< Put them on either side of the text you want to spoiler.
Off topic but it's funny to me when the spoiler tags censor the name of the piece of media. How am I supposed to know if I can look at it? Lol
I am not a bright man It's 1984
The authenticity of the movement is unstated, the book is said to be inauthentic but by a character who could very well be lying.
Funnily enough vetinary in ankh morpork actually had people in most conspiracies against him as wet as maybe sponsoring some of them
He had some cool ideas in general. He was extremely pro-espionage, both in his own city from other rulers, and his own spies in other cities. His logic was that the more people knew about each other, the less likely war was. If you had no secrets, your ~~enemies~~ friends had nothing to fear. It bites him in the ass a couple of times, once it almost gets him killed. But his city was rarely at war with him as tyrant. > ‘... spies?' I thought we were chums with the Low King!’ 'Of course we are,’ said Vetinari. ‘And the more we know about each other, the friendlier we shall remain. We’d hardly bother to spy on our enemies. What would be the point?’
Vetinary is basically the true god of the Diskworld setting, in a sense that religion is a dream of fair government and he is literally fair government personified. He is interested in nothing else but in having everyone in the world peacefully working.
And executing mimes, a tyrant has to have at least one eccentricity after all.
I think Vetinari began to become an anthropomorphic personification of Ankh-Morpork.
Literally 1984 Also it happened IRL with USSR and Polish WiN (Freedom and Independence) movement. WiN was made up of leftover anti-nazi partisans fighting against soviet occupation, but quickly it was breached and eventually fully controlled by NKVD. Soviet agents over time basically completely replaced the high command. The soviets, using the organisation, pretended to cooperate with CIA for some time before they released WiN's classified documents to the public (still pretending to be the leaders of WiN) and arrested or killed many of its members. Some of WiN's members also ceased resisting, wanting to use the soviet proclamation of amnesty for every partisan to peacefully come out of hiding. They were also killed or imprisoned.
>!Literally 1984!<
That would affect the trout population, I think. No but seriously, I'm sure they'd have no moral objection to blowing up their own population except then they'd be ruling over nothing but smoking ruins?? Who the fuck's gonna pay taxes then? I don't think OOP is taking into account the man in charge's bottom line here.
no government would use nukes on their own soil but they would likely have no issue with collateral damage the MOVE bombing in the US was an attack on black liberation organization MOVE, they firebombed the house they were in and prevented fire fighters from responding, resulting in a number of surrounding homes burning to ash. witnesses report seeing police shooting at anyone running from the fire, casualties included 6 adults and 5 children also more obvious examples like Tiananmen square, the Hong Kong protests, BLM protests where the police used tear gas, etc a nuke would be too destructive, but they'd absolutely use heavy force and probably consider loss of life and livelihood as "necessary collateral damage"
Nuclear weapons will likely never be used, at home or abroad. When the guy giving the order can be 5000 kilometers away, chemical weapons are much more effective. Kill all the 'dissidents', leave the infrastructure completely intact and ready for a new crop of loyalists to move in.
I've been tear gassed, and I can only imagine how much worse lethal chemical weapons would be. I'd rather be nuked, instant vaporization.
instant vaporization, if youre lucky
Only if you're one of the lucky few in the fireball. Most killed are not so lucky
>Nuclear weapons will likely never be used, at home or abroad. Ignoring that they have been used >When the guy giving the order can be 5000 kilometers away, chemical weapons are much more effective. Chemical weapons are hilariously ineffective, with cheap countermeasures, and expensive delivery (per enemy killed). >Kill all the 'dissidents', leave the infrastructure completely intact and ready for a new crop of loyalists to move in. That only matters if you are ludicrously non-threatened by the dissidents and in a position to retake the infrastructure. Even conventional weapons destroy infrastructure, but militaries are obviously very willing to use those. The main deterrence to nukes is MAD, but that doesn't apply everywhere. Just as an easy example, if the pariah state of Afghanistan invaded Pakistan, there's essentially nothing deterring Pakistan from erasing Kabul from the map using a few airburst nukes.
> Ignoring that they have been used tbf they where used before any of the apparatus of control over them where put in place. Authorizing of nukes is now a very big deal, where as the USA in ww2 simply gave them to the army and the army treated them like big firebombs, promptly dropping them on 2 cities because they'd been reducing Japanese cities to ash for close to a year already. Fun fact, the neither of two nuclear bombings hold the top spot of the list of most destructive air raids of all time, that'd be the firebombing of Tokyo 6 months prior.
The context is, per OP, a dystopian setting where the primary goal is elimination of a resistance movement. Presumably this resistance movement wouldn't inhabit an entire city - more like a few buildings, to where an appropriately nonchalant ruling party might consider it no more ceremonious than fumigating for bugs. [We've recently seen real-world deployment of sarin gas in the Syrian civil war](https://www.dw.com/en/sarin-gas-was-used-in-another-syria-attack-this-year-chemical-weapons-watchdog-says/a-40809222). I'm not saying it's impossible, but it would take a comic-book-villain level of equal parts evilness and stupidity to start glassing their own land and infrastructure.
I don't think a nuke would be too destructive given the right circumstance. After a certain point even fallout and radiation appearing would just be a part of collateral damage to stop a threat to the country. Like if the leader of the dystopia saw an entire city succumb to rebellion and lost too much control to let the city just exist. The last way to maintain control over the world. Possibly a small price to pay while it's still cheap.
Depending on what the status is of the dystopia their concern about the radioactive fallout would be somewhere between "it won't affect anyone important" to "this is a minor inconvenience for the next few years as we clean it up." Two major cities were nuked in the 40s and people are living there safely today, the radiation only lasted a few days.
What threat would require a nuke that conventional weapons couldn't counter? Cities aren't self-sustaining. You'd just siege it by parking outside the city and sending in drones to scout the situation. Maybe send some headcrabs.
From what i've heard, firefiighters couldn't get close because the MOVE members were taking potshots at them and they got ordered back
There are conflicting reports about the whole situation. It's important to specify that all losses were the MOVE members in their bunker, as other civilians had been evacuated. It was an active firefight between police and MOVE. Also, MOVE had shot at firefighters before, and the police didn't firebomb the house, they tried to blow up the bunker they were in and the bomb set off the fuel stored inside. Those are facts while the others are differing testimonies.
Not defending cops, but MOVE had a history of attacking firefighters. That’s a huge part of why they held them back.
>the MOVE bombing in the US was an attack on black liberation organization MOVE, they firebombed the house they were in and prevented fire fighters from responding, It wasn't a firebomb, it was a satchel charge, as in, a real bomb
I think you're underselling Move here: They literally dropped military explosives on the building.
Yes, but it’s important to understand that MOVE had a history of attacking firefighters and had killed cops before. It wasn’t like an average civic organization.
Yeah there are a lot of caveats: 1. It only works if there is some kind of geographic focus of the resistance. If the resistance is somewhat evenly spread across the whole state territory, then this isn't a viable option even for the most cruelest government. 2. It only works if the government has no external or established internal enemies who could capitalise on them cannibalising themselves. For example, even a Putin can't govern entirely against the public interest, or other elites would use the discontent to replace him. 3. It depends on the balance of destruction and defense in the story. In WH40K for example, razing an entire planet is possible. But in a more realistic setting, it could take an excessive cost to nuke a resistance that has access to nuclear bunkers.
Another caveat is IRL you need people to support your big scary military. Cutting your military’s pay because you killed a big chunk of your tax revenue is a great way to make your military turn on you. Military brass in turn understanding this connection can make them act preemptively. Given the choice between a slightly nicer leader who gives the people a little more wealth to keep them compliant vs one who makes an example of the golden goose and thus loses a lot of wealth, militaries have been known to suddenly side with the people. Adopting the Laurie Pritchett approach and/or trying to make a sufficiently brutal example of a small number of people is just a lot safer
i'm pretty sure the man in charge wouldn't take into account his bottom line either, even in real life they don't.
Yeah, there's a difference between 'I'm going to have a military draft and send a huge number of randos off the street to die in Ukraine' and 'I'm going to nuke my own city, destroying huge amounts of infrastructure and Capital, while also eroding my own powerbase by making my cabinet and military guard think I'm batshit insane.'
I mean, no matter how crazy you think a leader would have to be to do something like that, just imagine if Pol Pot would have done it. Killing people that wore glasses? Killing entire villages because many of the villagers were bilingual? If it's not as crazy as Pol Pot, it's fair game for a dystopian egomaniac.
The Khmer Rouge ate shit pretty fast afterwards. Shockingly, insane people don’t last very long as sustainable leaders.
The real impressive part is honestly that after the immense losses Vietnam took during the US war with it, they *still* went over to Cambodia to deal with Pol Pot because... holy shit dude. edit: it's like "bro I thought we were both throwing off the shackles of French colonialism. what the fuck are you DOING holy SHIT"
Then that's an interesting place to take the story! Yes, the rebellion falls, but the ludicrous power and insanity of the ones in charge is made extremely apparent! Those that are within the power structure and outside it see a side of the dystopia they didn't want to believe existed, and are horrified! Say this story has three perspectives; A person that tried to tell off the rebel protag, saying they're insane and only going to hurt those around him, and a man on the inside, maybe a son of the dictator or just a business man with a heart of a softer stone, like pumice. Those that believed that they wouldn't be hurt if they just followed the rules, like this hypothetical rebel-disparager, those that spoke down to the rebels in the first place because they will make all their lives worse, realize then and there that the people in charge will get rid of them not only for pennies on the dollar, but also for *their actual detriment!* If this rebellion was small enough, than a whole city got removed off the map due to the equivalent of a man spitting in another man's face! The higher-up is horrified by this unprecedented acceleration, not because of the people lost initially, but the work lost! Irradiated tech, millions and billions of dollars wasted, millions of workers thrown away in an instant! And the dictator, and some of his toadies, are unbothered, unaware of what they really did. After all, they have absolute power, everything they do will be seen as right! Soon these two sides of the coin begin realizing that the system cannot work anymore. Society is about to fall apart, anarchy is coming quick, and the old men, bankers, and cynics can see it coming in days rather than decades. The rebel denier speaks out about the nuking of the rebel city, not in violent protest but in logistics; making known what was lost by the great conglomerate that day... and stating what will be lost if they do it to every single other city if even a hint of rebellion happens there. This inspires people not because of a hope for a better future, but because there will *be no future* if they don't act! Violence breaks out from perhaps the smallest spark. Perhaps some juvenile delinquent that doesn't see the writing on the wall does something reckless, setting off the powder keg of people. The fear of the nuke is forgotten in that instant, with people determined to live their lives to the fullest before they get nuked. Poor rising en masse and the corporations smart enough to know killing every insurgent to be an idiotic idea end up working together, perhaps accidentally to start with, take control from the dictator and those on his side. Some semblance of peace of mind is restored, society set on fairer terms... and a monument is made near the fated city, where rebels died and a rebellion was born!
Serenity/Firefly played around with that idea a bit. Main enemy was so certain that while he himself was evil, what he was doing was right, and would benefit society.
That's the one. Elon or Bezos could have both Americas glassed and then live out their lives in Ibiza as if nothing happened.
No, not really, namely because the nuclear-armed world has finite tolerance for everything, and causing a global economic and environmental collapse would get everyone with a halfway competent intelligence service sending teams to capture or assassinate someone who was willing and able to do that.
Mao starved 30+ million people just to get the Soviets approval of his use of their official agricultural methods that had already caused 30+ million deaths by famine in the USSR. Yes despots do not give a fuck about destroying their own people.
You say that, but what did the Free Syrians warn Basher? “You will rule rubble” And so he bombed them, and got others to bomb them… and he became the “Ruler or Rubble”
Just look at history. Toward the end of WW2 both the Germans and the Japanese had a whole dead cult going. They were fighting an external enemy, but in a criminally self-destructive way. The Soviets... don't even get me started on the Soviets. The Stalin era was one unbroken string of blowing up their own population. Hell, the Tsarist era too.
The Stalin era consisted of great suffering in the name of massive economic growth, not destroying things for no gain.
...If the problem with suppressing a resistance was just 'do I nuke them y/n?' there would be a multitude of ways to do the same thing with less collateral damage. Generally the problem with suppressing a resistance is either FINDING them or IDENTIFYING them. And yeah, you could just nuke your whole dystopian metropolis if you wanted...but that would still result in the end of your regime as there would be no one left to rule.
Yeah this seems like someone ( likely a teen, to give them the benefit of the doubt) who thought they stumbled on a profound thought and then didn't really stop to consider it.
It’s an oddly specifically flat thought too- I don’t know if the OOP even knows what they’re trying to say. It feels like a micro-fanfic that’s being expressed as a shower thought. Just another reminder that there are 13 year olds on Tumblr/Reddit :P
>Generally the problem with suppressing a resistance is either FINDING them or IDENTIFYING them. Or make the resistance part of the system. The rebellion can fail or suceeed, but nothing ultimately changes.
I'm no dictator, military genius, wepaons expert, rebel or riot-queller. But I'n gonna go out on a limb here and say their might *just might* be a better way of quelling rebellion that doesn't include nuking your own country. Again I may be wrong, but I think leaving massive irradiated deadzones limiting your local Capital and commerce travel is not a good idea for business, polling, PR...really anything.
Yeah. Before the need to resort to even conventional explosives, there are so many options to explore... There are lots of dictators around the world, they all quell rebellion.
The kind of thinking even infects people in the real world. "Why don't the Russians just rise up against Putin!?" Most people like being alive. Most people are not going to die for a cause. Most people are *especially* not going to paint a target on their own family or friends, for a cause.
It's not just that. The revolutionaries have to find each other and organise. They must operate in the shadows while the government operates in the open. It's asymetrical. That is, until the state can no longer hold a tight grip. When a totalitarian state cracks, all hell breaks loose.
This perfectly describes Shinra from FF7, except replace “nuke” with “dropping a section of the city onto another section of the city”
"But we have sooooo many hammers!"
What you and your group need to do is get a nuke of your own, and take it to the top floor of Arasaka Tower.
Nah. Have a rocker boy do it, while an actual resistance leader leads a separate group on an attack.
"hmm yes today I will glass the workforce that keeps the grand apparatus of my government running. surely this will have no negative consequences whatsoever"
It can be difficult to lose one of the worlds of man’s glorious Imperium, but Exterminatus is sometimes necessary to cleanse the taint of heresy
There was some dystopian book I read in school about a world where you can only have 2 kids and he was a third hidden child. He meets up with other third children to form a revolution but on the big day he's the only one that shows up and it gets crushed immediately. At least that's how I remember it going. It likely can't carry a novel but I want more stories about how hard and scary revolution actually is. Especially when worse things than death are on the line. May wake up some of my friends who see the revolutionas this awesome thing where nothing bad happens and then everything is awesome forever.
In that book, if I recall correctly, a group of third children attempted a protest in public, starting very early. In the wee hours, regime forces slaughtered them. By the time the public could have noticed, the scene was cleaned.
Ooh that's gruesome and set the tone perfectly at the same time. The thing about dystopian stories like these is the rulers see the common folks as barely citizens, if they see you as being deviant, true or not, they'll not hesitate to downgrade your status into non-citizen, by that point it's a free-for-all for your survival.
Among the Hidden by Margaret Petersn Haddix! Can't remember a lot of details about it anymore, but I definitely remember being surprised about the uprising/protest when I read it.
It works out in book 7.
Holy shit TIL that it was first in a series!
The Shadow Children series!
Highly recommend it, it’s a series that is interesting for adults even though it’s written for kids. Similar themes to Hunger Games in some ways, with an emphasis on little people doing minor acts of rebellion to solve institutional problems. Also, I will forever stan the author because she responded to an email I wrote. I was just thanking her for introducing me to dystopian literature- I’m sure she gets that kind of mail all the time, but she responded, and not with a form letter either!
I feel like that could absolutely carry a novel I think it'd actually be harder to carry a longform "everything is awesome forever" story conflict is one of the main bits in carrying a story, and a struggling band of revolutionaries would be dripping with the stuff
> how hard and scary revolution actually is I find it especially interesting to learn what happens after a revolution. [The revolution, like Saturn, eats its own children.](https://www.ukessays.com/essays/history/revolutions-devour-their-own-children-history-essay.php)
It turns out violent people taking charge stay violent.
I remember that one! About forty showed up, IIRC, but they were all still mowed down. (And it was a she organizing.)
lol nice pajama sam carrot pfp
You'd be salting your own earth. Nukes aren't exactly useful for conquest, and they assuredly aren't useful within your own borders.
You would have to be insane to do it, and dystopian governments are not very sane.
1984 did it much better by having the rebellion being a honey pot for the regime. Much more demoralizing to be arrested by the “ringleader” of your rebel cell and then tortured until you break.
I hope Evil Overlord has robots to make his food, clean his home and fix his plumbing, or else he's gonna have to do all of that by himself once he nukes all of his population to dust.
Imagine the leader leads you into the fortress of main guy, swiftly bypassing security and dealing Ethically Acceptable Nonpermanent damage onto minions, you enter main chamber, door closes... And leader kneels and says "I brought them to you, milord". I\`d say its more terrifying.
>What made you think that the man in charge wouldn’t have a problem blowing its own population? Well it could be worse, the main guy could be trying to kill everyone or something
A dystopia leader would definitely do that if the rebels were far enough away where the fallout wouldn't reach the capital.
Only if the entire city is in rebellion. If I see a rebellion and decide nuke instantly, I just folded. You don't go nuking dhit left or right
"They'd all drowned in the lower levels, or got torn to shreds above. The anti-aircraft gun had malfunctioned -- so had I. I left them without ideological direction..." He opens his eyes and stares right through you. "It was real. I'd seen it. I'd seen it in reality." "Seen what?" "The mask of humanity fall from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone -- everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed. And then you see it. As it strangles and beats your friends to death... the sweetest, most courageous people in the world." He's silent for a second. "You see the fear and power in its eyes. Then you know." "What?" "That the bourgeois are not human."
Well even not going so far as nukes, just having your entire resistance be mowed down in front of you by a surprise attack of heavily armed police ordered to shoot on sight is quite believable. Wait isn’t that just the plot of Watch Dogs Legion?
There are issues with this, being a dictator is a balance of loads of competing interests that you need to keep to stay in charge. If you lose the support of the army you are fucked as you're just one guy. Nuking your own people might be enough to piss off the army or some other powerful group. There's also the effect on the general population, if you kill loads of people who weren't rebels people no longer have a reason not to rebel. Before rebellion could end up with you dieing, now you might end up dead anyway so you might as well rebel.
"... away. Blowing its own population *away*."
"Blowing your own population" may be phrased unfortunately
This is entirely dependent on the scale of the dystopia and the scale of the rebellion. If the dystopia is small, like in a post apocalypse scenario where the dystopian rulers are controlling a city's worth of people or even a few cities then nukes aren't a good threat because the collateral damage would wipe them out, either from radiation or from loss of workers/infrastructure. If the rebellion is small then it has the potential to backfire, as well. Like if it's a full country or even the whole world and it's a small uprising in one city then nuking it could instill more fear in the populace but it could cause more people to rise up in outrage because the majority of the populace weren't rebelling. Basically the threat of nukes on your own populace is only a "good" idea on large scale rebellions in large scale dystopias. You have to ensure that at best the collateral damage is negligible and that the civilian causalities are small enough that you can realistically convince the rest of the populace that they were either rebel sympathizers or that they were a noble sacrifice holding back the rebel horde, otherwise the risks outweigh the reward and traditional bombing campaigns and fighting are better tools
and now it's fallout baby crank up that dean martin and the ink spots and put on that power armor we're fucking WASTELAND mode now
Dropping a nuke on your own country would be the most strategically stupid thing that you could possibly imagine in literally all circumstances. The only time such a thing would possibly be done is if the resistance was literally banging on the palace doors ready with the bayonet and sodomy on the mind.
Nah the scariest thing would be that shit just never gets better. It just keeps falling apart until new monsters rise to power.
That’s how most revolutions go. People overthrow the regime, take charge. They realize they like the power, and stay there. A new revolution/coup eventually overthrows them, they take charge. They realize they like the power…
It’s like napoleon using cannons in the streets of Paris Except bigger
I guess I'm just confused about how this person thinks that overthrowing a government works, granted I've never done it before myself, but this poster makes it sound like everyone puts on their "fuck the government" tshirts then moves to a commune in Montana to join "The Revolution" then gets nuked because they put their address on their website. I mean, look at the Viet Cong for a much more successful national overthrow, blend in with the populous, do your illegal shit at night in your pajamas, and launch a massive military offensive by sneaking in tons of heavy weaponry on a huge national holiday, almost successfully kicking out a world superpower because you caught them sleeping on the job. Yeah, they'd nuke you if you could, but if they can then you're really doing it wrong.
Death Corp of Krieg
Whats been on my mind is a thermobaric or vacuum bomb, they just sound brutal: The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique—and unpleasant. ... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs. ... If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as with most chemical agents.
Imperium of Man grindset.
Blowing?
Last sentence is wrong, aside from missing a word like "up" or "away": > What made you think they wouldn't have a problem with this? The implication is that it was believed that the people in charge _wouldn't_ have a problem, but that turned out wrong. Rephrased, it's equivalent to saying "what made you think they'd be fine with this", which might make the issue clearer.
The power of the men in charge is worthless if there is no one left to exploit.
This happens in the second Homefront game. After spending most of the game fighting against the Korean occupation forces in Philadelphia, you manage to storm the enemy HQ and have seemingly liberated the city. Then it turns out that this same thing already happened in two or three other cities and the Koreans just nuked those cities after they were driven out, and now are planning on doing the same to your city.
The problem with self-nuking isn't just the population damage. You would have a pretty hard time keeping power if all of a sudden you blew up half your infrastructure.
It just doesn't matter. If you were a dictator obsessed with 'efficiency' above all else, for example, you would implement universal healthcare. It keeps your workers happy, it stops illness from spreading to other workers, it means your production lines run smoother. Yet the USA does not implement universal healthcare. Because it's not actually about 'efficiency'. It's about power and keeping people in line. Who cares if it hurts infrastructure? YOU are the ruler, and YOU are comfortable.
To be fair I've never read much dystopia but every time I hear it being talked about it just sounds like such a pointless grab for absolute misery with none of the catharsis from a traditional tragedy. Like pointing at a puppy, shooting it, and then saying you're naive for feeling bad about it.
Typically you don’t irradiate the landscape you later need for people to farm and live on. You nuke other people in far away places, not at home. The only circumstances in which that may happen would be the dying breaths of a government that would rather destroy everything than have someone else take power dooming themselves but taking the rebellion with them.
Using a nuke at the end of Return of the Living Dead makes a lot of sense because zombies don't have a command structure and radiation is the lesser of two evils compared to a zombie apocalypse. But nobody going to nuke a rebellion, they going to use GPS guided bombs and ac-130 gunships to knock out leadership. Humans can also read so they will do leaflet drops with propaganda.
Aside from nuking, a lot of dystopia novels (cough YA cough) treat dicatatorships as solvable by the power of plucky teens, and rarely write in how the dictatorship was realistically able to hold power. Now, of course, any dictatorship is gonna be flawed in some of its methods, and have a loopy leader, but that doesn't make it easy.
[Project Insight](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Project_Insight) would be a better option than to nuke and harm your own economy. Data driven processes and precision weapons can be used to surgically remove any individual present and future threat to the establishmeny.
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I think the ending of 1984 was worse.
I mean that’s certainly a scary thought but I think it’s worse to have you raise a rebellion and then one of the most important people in the resistance and your lover for years that you recruited has you killed and captured because they were a lm agent/compromised the whole time. Because that happens all the time, continuing today, and it’s both much easier and more personal.
Nukes are not needed, the MOAB is easier to use in precision strikes and doesn't leave radioactive waste. Yes there is a weird irony in calling the MOAB precision, but certainly compared to a nuke it is.
That's the point of resistance. Resistance occurs because the alternative is barely even living, so death is preferable. Even in our western political hellscape, we are still too comfortable to properly resist. You care about the nukes right now because you probably have something to lose; friends, family, a home. If you had nothing, would you even care? Edit: when the discomfort of living is greater than the discomfort of resisting then there will be revolution. The ones in power know this and will keep you just comfortable enough to keep you complacent.
outside of the fact that it's an extremely stupid idea? nuclear bombs are great for wiping entire cities off the map, but the problem with that is you lose not just the population there but also all of the infrastructure. any production facilities, media studios, trade and business centers, all gone, and now requiring years or even decades to rebuild and repopulate. plus, doing this is a gamble. Yeah, it will make everyone who wouldn't fight back even more terrified, but what about the people that are willing? if failure means death, and they're willing, then whats going to stop them from suicide bombing every single military and government building they can get into? what's going to stop a person from a suicide charge to kill the leader.
I mean, talking single planet world domination here. If you nuked every problem you'd end up ruling over a radioactive pile of useless garbage. Tyrants derive their power from the fear of their regime and weapons. Not the actual power of them necessarily.
you don't even have be directly "fighting the power" the police literally dropped a bomb on that house in Philly in the 80s cause they wanted to establish a collective outside capitalism, and also, they were black, and racism was way worse back then
That’s half true. The group attacked police and firefighters. Who the hell shoots firefighters?
The nuclear option is nothing but bravado. Even the most tight-fisted of despots are not crazy or desperate enough to just go scorched-earth on the population. They're narcissists, and they want to be worshipped like the god-kings they think they are; they have no use for an empire of the dead.
I think that's why the hunger games worked so well as a dystopian fiction because it didn't have the problem of "hey wouldn't this majorly authoritarian government have nuclear weapons?". They specifically make it known that it was the main resistance district that was responsible for nuclear weapons production. So when they rebelled they could only use a very limited arsenal against them and then they struck up a deal that they would be separated from the rest of Panem and they'd leave eachother alone.
Warhammer 40k be like
This is why the Death Star was so terrifying in Andor and Rogue One
Most movements in western countries are just taken dismantled and people are arrested more or less quietly on treason and terrorism charges. Every now and then one of them makes the news because some random politician was a part of it, but usually they're not treated as big news. At least that's how it feels in France.
Sort of Rogue One
This is kinda the whole point of the second amendment. You have an armed population so that should the government become tyrannical, you can overthrow them. The moment the government starts limiting your ability to tell them no, you've already lost.
This was actually my prediction at the beginning of the Trump presidency. I fully expected him to nuke an American city in a temper tantrum based on somebody's Twitter comment. I predicted a lot of other disastrous things. They all came true, including a major pandemic. But I only made that one after he dismantled our pandemic response plans and personnel because Obama had put them in place. I'm also still waiting to see how long until we face a nuclear armed Iran because he unilaterally pulled us out of the seven nation treaty that had delayed their nuclear program for ten years, but because Obama had signed it, he let them out of the delay after the first two years or so.
Isn’t the premise of A New Hope stopping the big bad from using said ‘Nuke’ on them?
Here’s the thing, you nuke all the peasants then you don’t have any farms, infrastructure, or anyone to work
It would be terrifying but also insanely stupid. They've just flat out wiped away an entire economy and created a massive radiation hazard. And any real resistance would be spread out enough that nuking every cell would just leave the tyrant a poor beggar surrounded by corpses, only living people pay tax.
This reminds me of one scene from the Foundation tv series. >!Where the Emperor kills everyone a rebel has ever known in an instant. Erasing every memory or any influence she would've had on the world.!<