American politics, which seems to dominate this section right now, is amusing and can have some interesting data to look at but it is fairly pedestrian when all is said and done. Some are also decrying 2020 as an absolutely awful year to live in (which to be fair is more amusing than "OMG celebrities dying" that apparently characterised some previous year that I can't even remember right now) but what if it is in fact just the start of the really fun times. To that end worrying which old guy with nominal power will fire up the money printer and where they will point it to kill us all is put aside to figure out what will likely kill us all in the mid term.
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it is an often spoken phrase, those who contemplate alternative histories are often better still at that one.
With that in mind a recent video I quite enjoyed
In it he details likely sources of conflict over the coming decades, most of which make the little riots and present fun in the US, or indeed even the wet dreams of those that want it to go hot, look like a schoolyard shoving match. Water wars, population ageing (China being especially prone to this -- a sizeable chunk of its population is 45-late 50s, and not necessarily the healthiest, one child policy also means one child became the fashion going forward. That said they are far from alone in this one with Russia not so far behind in many ways and most western countries doing little better though there it is more likely just a collapse of the pension system), US isolationism, failures of border states in central Asia (oh dear) and dubious borders made by incompetents (or maybe not...) that will struggle to keep going.
Speaking of wet dreams then running around the woods in a Hawaiian shirt and a tactical vest requires one to actually be able to run around in the woods. To that end those looking down the barrel, pun intended, of being able to be dragged into military service in one of the biggest conflicts the world has ever seen might actually need to be able to run around in the woods.
This might be rather harder if obesity hits 50%
https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(12)00146-8/fulltext
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6257099/
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1909301
Or more of a youth focused option if we are to be looking at the likely cannon fodder.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5876828/
Oh dear. Indeed every branch of the military has been warning of this for a while
(That being 2012 for those just watching the embedded version, and prepared before that).
Special forces discussions are equally fascinating here -- a lot are claiming massively hard times staffing roles here and running their teams under capacity as it stands today.
I don't know the extent the youth of the world are geared for it as well. There were some interesting reports coming out of China a while back as they attempted to spin up their military into doing a light war games/training mission type deal and it is a known factor otherwise ( https://www.rand.org/blog/2018/11/chinas-military-has-no-combat-experience-does-it-matter.html https://thediplomat.com/2014/01/chinas-deceptively-weak-and-dangerous-military/ ). Outside that and for elsewhere the rates of PTSD of those coming out and in civilian world those on head meds though do tell a story that might be worth looking at -- overprescription might be a thing but at the same time there are some underlying causes and while the physical can be solved (takes a while -- boot, basic and the like maybe taking a couple of years) the mental aspect is not to be overlooked.
On Africa then we are also heading into something of a nice space race part 2 in the coming years. Some predict this could be a massive source of wealth for it (being near the equator does rather drop your fuel costs, and when basically everything to do with space travel revolves around fuel costs and payloads...)
Discuss.
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it is an often spoken phrase, those who contemplate alternative histories are often better still at that one.
With that in mind a recent video I quite enjoyed
In it he details likely sources of conflict over the coming decades, most of which make the little riots and present fun in the US, or indeed even the wet dreams of those that want it to go hot, look like a schoolyard shoving match. Water wars, population ageing (China being especially prone to this -- a sizeable chunk of its population is 45-late 50s, and not necessarily the healthiest, one child policy also means one child became the fashion going forward. That said they are far from alone in this one with Russia not so far behind in many ways and most western countries doing little better though there it is more likely just a collapse of the pension system), US isolationism, failures of border states in central Asia (oh dear) and dubious borders made by incompetents (or maybe not...) that will struggle to keep going.
Speaking of wet dreams then running around the woods in a Hawaiian shirt and a tactical vest requires one to actually be able to run around in the woods. To that end those looking down the barrel, pun intended, of being able to be dragged into military service in one of the biggest conflicts the world has ever seen might actually need to be able to run around in the woods.
This might be rather harder if obesity hits 50%
https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(12)00146-8/fulltext
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6257099/
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1909301
Or more of a youth focused option if we are to be looking at the likely cannon fodder.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5876828/
Oh dear. Indeed every branch of the military has been warning of this for a while
(That being 2012 for those just watching the embedded version, and prepared before that).
Special forces discussions are equally fascinating here -- a lot are claiming massively hard times staffing roles here and running their teams under capacity as it stands today.
I don't know the extent the youth of the world are geared for it as well. There were some interesting reports coming out of China a while back as they attempted to spin up their military into doing a light war games/training mission type deal and it is a known factor otherwise ( https://www.rand.org/blog/2018/11/chinas-military-has-no-combat-experience-does-it-matter.html https://thediplomat.com/2014/01/chinas-deceptively-weak-and-dangerous-military/ ). Outside that and for elsewhere the rates of PTSD of those coming out and in civilian world those on head meds though do tell a story that might be worth looking at -- overprescription might be a thing but at the same time there are some underlying causes and while the physical can be solved (takes a while -- boot, basic and the like maybe taking a couple of years) the mental aspect is not to be overlooked.
On Africa then we are also heading into something of a nice space race part 2 in the coming years. Some predict this could be a massive source of wealth for it (being near the equator does rather drop your fuel costs, and when basically everything to do with space travel revolves around fuel costs and payloads...)
Discuss.