Quote from: Samsquantch on February 23, 2021, 01:20:43 PM

And yet COVID is the DeAdLiEsT pLaUgE eVeR! We HaVe To ClOsE eVeRyThInG aNd  RuIn ThE EcOnOmY oR wE aLl GoNnA dIe!!!!1111!!
People have very short memories... Like you say, it's a 50/50 bet and not at all uncommon.

Hasn't something half a million yanks died from it?
There's "stupid" and there's "gleefully stupid".

Twilight 2000 is a fucking awesome game, probably my favourite.

Of course it is pretty stupid. The nuclear powers only decide to shoot off just enough nukes to make the place "unpleasant" and not "ash". Of course this is using 1980s science so they didn't know back then that we'd still be royally fucked.
Also, when the Pakistanis threatened the Indians with "tactical strikes" the Indians said what was blatantly obvious to everyone: "any nuclear strike is a strategic strike and will trigger a strategic response". The Pakistanis immediately pulled their heads in.
And that's the problem, you don't shoot off one or two and hope the other side are gentlemen (and no one in the Cold War were gentlemen) or you end up being the dumb fucker with all your nukes destroyed in their silos.

That said, tooling around a nuclear Poland in a humvee is awesome. Of course that was written before we remembered what IEDs were.

I like 2300 but it has some really dumb shit too and it came out of the fact that it was GDW how diplomacy/strategy game so you get weird things like Australia and I think Argentina being close allies even though there's no reason for it to be that way, it was just because someone rolled a "6" and said "I take Oz as an ally!"

Quote from: Jim in Oz on March 12, 2021, 09:25:04 AM
Of course it is pretty stupid. The nuclear powers only decide to shoot off just enough nukes to make the place "unpleasant" and not "ash". Of course this is using 1980s science so they didn't know back then that we'd still be royally fucked.

No, junior. Even using using 1980s science we knew that we'd be royally fucked. Go look up Carl Sagan and Nuclear Winter.

And when you are done, you can mow the lawn you are stepping on.

Quote from: Jim in Oz on March 12, 2021, 09:25:04 AM
Of course it is pretty stupid. The nuclear powers only decide to shoot off just enough nukes to make the place "unpleasant" and not "ash". Of course this is using 1980s science so they didn't know back then that we'd still be royally fucked.

Yes, they did. Nuclear winter was one of the big worries of the 1980s, and if you want to see one of the most nihilistic movies on the consequences of a nuclear exchange, it came out the same year as Twilight 2000:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/ (Threads)

Quote from: Jim in Oz on March 12, 2021, 09:25:04 AM
That said, tooling around a nuclear Poland in a humvee is awesome. Of course that was written before we remembered what IEDs were.

No reason you couldn't put IEDs in your T2k game.

What I always find funny is how people agonise over the premise and background for a postapocalyptic game. The thing is: you don't need one. When the guys were fighting at Stalingrad, did they consider the particular details of how that came to be? How many people in present-day Afghanistan or Somalia would have an encyclopedic knowledge of the recent history of their countries?

"We're here in the shit. How do we get out of the shit?" The GM's job is to describe the shit, the precise details of the digestive process before the shit got dumped on the characters are not important.

"But how is that more nukes weren't fired off? And why isn't there a nuclear winter?" asks the annoying player.
"Interesting questions," replies the GM, "now how will your character Private Hillbilly from the 671st Infantry Regiment find out the answers to these questions? By the way, roll for wandering monsters - er, enemy patrols."

Quote from: BronzeDragon on February 22, 2021, 04:38:40 PM
In 2012 this was in the description of the Twilight, the war the obliterated most of humanity's records in the early 21st century:

"There was a general, yet limited, nuclear
exchange that occurred sometime in the period 2020–2030,"

"Other events during Twilight included a world-wide influenza
epidemic and several other pandemics, especially in the years
following the nuclear exchange. There is considerable evidence
that at least some of these plagues originated in the bio-weapons
labs of one or more of the belligerent nations."

Of course, this scenario is not exactly rare in science-fiction, in fact most sci-fi has some sort of cataclysm that overtakes mid-stage technological civilizations and ends up generating a new age of exploration.

Still, pretty interesting.

Soylent Green happens next year.

Quote from: Samsquantch on February 23, 2021, 01:20:43 PM

Quote from: Marchand on February 23, 2021, 09:38:07 AM
There were flu pandemics in the 1890s, 1910s, 50s, 60s, 90s and 00s. So, calling a flu pandemic in a given decade is roughly a 50/50 bet.

Hong Kong flu in the 60s is estimated to have killed between 1m and 4m people (COVID 2.5m and counting).

And yet COVID is the DeAdLiEsT pLaUgE eVeR! We HaVe To ClOsE eVeRyThInG aNd  RuIn ThE EcOnOmY oR wE aLl GoNnA dIe!!!!1111!!
People have very short memories... Like you say, it's a 50/50 bet and not at all uncommon.

COVID is the best 'Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste' ever. Democrats managed to convince everyone to shutdown their businesses for over a year for something that has a 99.5% survival rate. See common cold.

Quote from: Jim in Oz on March 12, 2021, 09:25:04 AM

That said, tooling around a nuclear Poland in a humvee is awesome. Of course that was written before we remembered what IEDs were."

My players were making IEDs whenever they came across appropriate components, although we just used the term improvised munitions.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll on March 13, 2021, 01:23:00 AM
Soylent Green happens next year.

I, for one, am anxious to get to know the taste of people paste.

Quote from: BronzeDragon on March 14, 2021, 11:56:15 AM

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll on March 13, 2021, 01:23:00 AM
Soylent Green happens next year.

I, for one, am anxious to get to know the taste of people paste.

Well, it varies from person to person.

Quote from: jeff37923 on March 13, 2021, 12:35:43 AM

Quote from: Jim in Oz on March 12, 2021, 09:25:04 AM
Of course it is pretty stupid. The nuclear powers only decide to shoot off just enough nukes to make the place "unpleasant" and not "ash". Of course this is using 1980s science so they didn't know back then that we'd still be royally fucked.

No, junior. Even using using 1980s science we knew that we'd be royally fucked. Go look up Carl Sagan and Nuclear Winter.

It's my understanding that Sagan's Nuclear Winter scenario has been largely discredited, due to observations of events such as volcanic eruptions and the burning of the Iraqi oil fields during the second Gulf War. Massive amounts of particulates were released into the atmosphere, but the chilling effects that Sagan predicted did not occur.

Quote from: Lurkndog on March 24, 2021, 11:28:05 AM

Quote from: jeff37923 on March 13, 2021, 12:35:43 AM

Quote from: Jim in Oz on March 12, 2021, 09:25:04 AM
Of course it is pretty stupid. The nuclear powers only decide to shoot off just enough nukes to make the place "unpleasant" and not "ash". Of course this is using 1980s science so they didn't know back then that we'd still be royally fucked.

No, junior. Even using using 1980s science we knew that we'd be royally fucked. Go look up Carl Sagan and Nuclear Winter.

It's my understanding that Sagan's Nuclear Winter scenario has been largely discredited, due to observations of events such as volcanic eruptions and the burning of the Iraqi oil fields during the second Gulf War. Massive amounts of particulates were released into the atmosphere, but the chilling effects that Sagan predicted did not occur.

Even Sagan admitted as such (in his book Demon-Haunted World). The amount of particulates you'd need to throw into the air, everyone would be dead anyways.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 24, 2021, 11:44:29 AM

Quote from: Lurkndog on March 24, 2021, 11:28:05 AM

Quote from: jeff37923 on March 13, 2021, 12:35:43 AM

Quote from: Jim in Oz on March 12, 2021, 09:25:04 AM
Of course it is pretty stupid. The nuclear powers only decide to shoot off just enough nukes to make the place "unpleasant" and not "ash". Of course this is using 1980s science so they didn't know back then that we'd still be royally fucked.

No, junior. Even using using 1980s science we knew that we'd be royally fucked. Go look up Carl Sagan and Nuclear Winter.

It's my understanding that Sagan's Nuclear Winter scenario has been largely discredited, due to observations of events such as volcanic eruptions and the burning of the Iraqi oil fields during the second Gulf War. Massive amounts of particulates were released into the atmosphere, but the chilling effects that Sagan predicted did not occur.

Even Sagan admitted as such (in his book Demon-Haunted World). The amount of particulates you'd need to throw into the air, everyone would be dead anyways.

Nuclear Winter may be largely discredited now, but it was not so when the game came out back then. The common thought back then was that a full nuclear exchange between countries would end the Earth's biosphere.

Quote from: jeff37923 on March 24, 2021, 03:21:27 PM

Quote from: Ghostmaker on March 24, 2021, 11:44:29 AM

Quote from: Lurkndog on March 24, 2021, 11:28:05 AM

Quote from: jeff37923 on March 13, 2021, 12:35:43 AM

Quote from: Jim in Oz on March 12, 2021, 09:25:04 AM
Of course it is pretty stupid. The nuclear powers only decide to shoot off just enough nukes to make the place "unpleasant" and not "ash". Of course this is using 1980s science so they didn't know back then that we'd still be royally fucked.

No, junior. Even using using 1980s science we knew that we'd be royally fucked. Go look up Carl Sagan and Nuclear Winter.

It's my understanding that Sagan's Nuclear Winter scenario has been largely discredited, due to observations of events such as volcanic eruptions and the burning of the Iraqi oil fields during the second Gulf War. Massive amounts of particulates were released into the atmosphere, but the chilling effects that Sagan predicted did not occur.

Even Sagan admitted as such (in his book Demon-Haunted World). The amount of particulates you'd need to throw into the air, everyone would be dead anyways.

Nuclear Winter may be largely discredited now, but it was not so when the game came out back then. The common thought back then was that a full nuclear exchange between countries would end the Earth's biosphere.

It probably would anyways, simply from the knock-on effects of disrupted ecological systems from blast, radiation, etc. I believe the update (Twilight 2013) actually limits the nuclear exchange to ensure SOME survivability.

As Wargames taught us, sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

The Kafers and their satraps the Ylli from 2300AD are a great representation of alien psychology.