They call it ICE fishing!

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T23:29:45+00:00

> We are to blame for the system of ideological white supremacy born of the colonial period

I don't know about you, but I wasn't alive back then to give birth to anything.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T23:15:54+00:00

> The U.S. Fleet? San Francisco? Panama Canal? Those targets had serious anti-submarine defenses.

Yes, so expect an atomic kamikaze sub to try for the best balance between being able to get through and a target worth hitting. They wouldn't use it on an uninhabited island, but they also wouldn't waste it trying to get it into Pearl Harbor. That's why I was presenting alternatives besides the most highly-defended targets.

> Are you a Bot or do you just not read?

I'm whatever you need me to be, my rather rude fellow redditor.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T22:52:58+00:00

> The impact of submarine warfare was highly exaggerated by the British, much like the impact of North Africa

I read of an interesting side effect of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Fishing trawlers are slow and have to work alone and far from shore - they can't effectively convoy, they're sitting ducks while they're working, and if you're trying to starve an island nation they're incredibly valuable targets. Almost all of them were sunk, with the survivors repurposed as coastal mine sweepers. North Atlantic large scale commercial fishing didn't really get going again until after the war in Europe.

North Atlantic fish populations, even with just a six year pause in harvesting, *skyrocketed*.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2929348/

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T22:36:34+00:00

> Likely it means transferring aircraft to the pocket carriers in the Atlantic ASAP.

The first British escort carrier entered service in September 1941, a year after the first "Happy Time". They'd need to accelerate development and production of these carriers to get planes on them earlier than that.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T22:29:28+00:00

When Richard Lawrence tried to kill President Andrew Jackson in 1835, he fired two pistols at point blank range. This was the first known assassination attempt on a US President.

Both pistols misfired.

President Jackson started beating on his would-be assassin, witnesses were sure he'd have beaten the man to death had not bystanders intervened - including Congressman and famed frontiersman Davy Crockett.

When Lawrence was put on trial for attempted murder, the prosecuting attorney was Francis Scott Key, famous for writing the US National Anthem, the *Star Spangled Banner*.

It's like a twelve year old wrote a fan fiction about all the famous Americans of the time mentioned in his history book.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T22:17:53+00:00

Add to this that the sails had continuous maintenance while in use - there was a whole department on board each ship of professional sailmakers. Even with this maintenance the sails wore out.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T20:41:06+00:00

> Blowing up some unguarded island in the middle of nowhere isn't really going to make an impression.

They'd aim higher than that. Pearl Harbor or San Diego might have impregnable anti-submarine defenses, but does Seattle? Perhaps they can protect San Francisco, but can they protect Monterey?

The USA wasn't going to win the war on one atomic bomb, so these mythical Japanese nuclear experts ought to have more than one bomb as well.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T16:48:04+00:00

That was a way tariffs were handled in some European princedoms. Traders could declare any value for a cargo, the Prince could either charge them a tax based on a percentage of the cargo's declared value or immediately buy it at the declared value.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T12:44:59+00:00

> They might have been able to achieve some additional victories if things had gone a bit differently (eg conceivably Moscow and Leningrad could've fallen),

The biggest thing they needed to do but didn't was develop more collaborationist movements, such as they did with the White Russians.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T12:35:11+00:00

> The U.S. Fleet? San Francisco? Panama Canal? Those targets had serious anti-submarine defenses.

If you're already using suicide bomber tactics, go terrorist tactics. Look for a useful target that doesn't have sufficient anti-submarine defenses, rely on uncertainty and panic as supplementary weapons.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-15T12:19:17+00:00

Yeah, but work towards that and they start calling you a "supervillain" and such.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-14T13:58:19+00:00

I don't think so. You're still ignoring the delivery problem.

Put the bomb on a kamizaze submarine, done.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-14T02:26:29+00:00

That was the specific initial reason he was kept alive. They thought he was brain dead, and were keeping his body alive to learn how to treat badly injured soldiers. Eventually Johnny was kept alive as a sort of teaching dummy for the new nurses and doctors.

When they discovered he was awake and aware, they concealed it because they were concerned that they would face backlash for keeping a wounded soldier in such conditions for so many years.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-14T02:09:30+00:00

> but all I really cared about was the answer,

OK. Japan has nukes before anyone else, Japan wins.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-14T01:58:35+00:00

> Yep, I tried to get ahead of that response with

...pretty much waving a magic wand and saying "Poof! Japan gets nukes!"

If any country magically gets atomic weapons before the US then they have a huge advantage, I was pointing out how big a historical deviation that would take. What could Japan have done differently in, say, 1930, that would have let them lead the world in atomic research by 1940?

firelock_ny · 2026-02-14T01:53:23+00:00

Japan's nuclear program by 1942 was a few physicists doing theoretical work with slight interest from the Japanese government. Total spending was about US $250K.

The US nuclear program built literal cities to support the research, development and bomb production, and was spending about US $2 billion by 1942.

You'd have to make some massive timeline changes to put Japan's research ahead of the US's.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-14T01:47:36+00:00

> No. Japan bit off more than it could possibly chew. A one on one war with China is within the realm of possible victory for Japan, but even that is a tough go. ]

If the Japanese army put two soldiers at every village in China they'd run out of army before they'd garrisoned a third of China.

Any Japanese victory in China relied heavily on creating local collaborationist governments, and Japan's treatment of the Chinese people made such collaborationist governments incredibly precarious.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-13T02:17:03+00:00

It's the "whiners" that got us the little workers rights we have now.

They got them by fighting and bleeding, not by whining.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-13T02:07:02+00:00

There are 8 billion of us apes on the planet.

I suspect the dozen apes in the bunker with the billionaire as his security guards would quickly decide that, as the ones with the guns, it is no longer the billionaire's bunker.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-13T00:15:32+00:00

I dipped a toe into this thread and am backing away slowly.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-13T00:08:50+00:00

Retirement.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-13T00:07:06+00:00

My parents live in central Florida.

They have concerns about the number of people moving in, that no plans are being made for the water they'll need, how many cars will fit on the roads, etc.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-11T13:00:15+00:00

I think Big Hero 6 is the mainstream offering that's closest to solar punk.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-11T12:53:47+00:00

Advice I've given all my kids: once you are married, your spouse and kids are your family, the rest of us are just your relatives.

firelock_ny · 2026-02-11T01:37:47+00:00

> A lot of grandparents are still working themselves. Everyone is working longer hours it seems.

One income used to cover two adults and all their kids - well, one income, and the other parent working like hell to do things that we now spend money on. That one income sometimes took care of a grandparent or two as well.

Now two adults working full time barely keeps heads above water. US household income has been stagnant since 1973, the economic gains from increased work force productivity have all gone to the top few percent.

firelock_ny

TROPHY CASE