r/interestingasfuck • u/Red_Lotus_Alchemist • 2d ago

/r/all A Chinese earthquake rescue team deployed drones to light up the night and aid search and rescue operations after the devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar.

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u/BolunZ6 2d ago

People said the same when they first invented machine gun. "If only one person can fire at the rate of 100 peson, we don't have to send 99 person to the war thus saving life"

Yeah we already see how it turned out when ww2 with machine gun technology

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u/magicalfruitybeans 2d ago

But it’s kind of true. Warfare has changed since the invention of the machine gun. It’s allowed for different tactics. We now don’t send in thousands of soldiers at a time wall to wall. We sent in specialized units. Less people at risk

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

I prefer old school battles. Zalgiris(Grunvald) battle was one of biggest medieval battles with 25-80k people. It lasted 2 days.

Now, there is already about a million russians killed and who knows how many ukrainians. And as you can see from videos, a lot of kills are done when you sre hiding and somewhere, suddenly a buzzing sound appears - its a drone, and you are dead.

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u/hazelize 2d ago

Yeah let’s go back to the old days of cavalry charges. Way less gruesome and bloody.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/DeathByLemmings 2d ago

They were not lol, they were stood on a hill watching for the mostpart

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/DeathByLemmings 2d ago

Yeah, 261 is not as large an amount as you are picturing

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u/joehonestjoe 2d ago edited 2d ago

I actually agree with this, I was expecting far more especially since that list covers like 2700 years , at minimum, and monarchs were much common historically, and their reigns much shorter, in general.

For example, Leinster in Ireland had over 100 monarchs in that period, a geographically quite small area of a fairly small (no offence, Ireland) island, and given that 261 include Kings of Essex, I think that's fair to count all monarchs. This is before you realise that Kingdom didn't exist for like 20% of that time window I mentioned before.

So in 2700 years, 261 monarchs died in battle, not even one per decade on average worldwide. That's not very many. Probably more likely to die falling off a horse riding to the battle.

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u/DeathByLemmings 1d ago

Indeed, I wasn’t going to pick their point apart much further but if you notice at the list there is a sharp drop off of people listed after 1300

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/BedBubbly317 2d ago

Moving the goal posts? You’re the only one who did that. The only thing it’s clearly too early for is your reading comprehension.

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u/DeathByLemmings 2d ago

Moving goalposts? You what mate? Sorry to rile you up I guess, maybe don't chat shit online if you don't like it when people disagree?

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u/Grimour 2d ago

And you are not trying to move any goalpost? Those who died afterwards are not included for a reason.

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u/Galaxator 1d ago

Because they never sent groups of soldiers after the monarch who was watching from afar, that would never happen, no it can’t be… both of you are right? That can’t happen on Reddit

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u/Luk164 2d ago

You watch too many movies

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u/DarthChimeran 2d ago

"I refuse to invade Asia until my safety is guaranteed!" - Alexander

"We'll start the invasion as soon as someone finds my armor. I'm not taking an arrow to the knee because of some cute klepto Kipchak with a fast pony." - Temujin

"There's Richard! Everyone Run Away!" - Henry

"This river is too deep. Let's go back." - Julius

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u/Hawtre 2d ago

If people would get off their asses and fight for what's right at home, they wouldn't need to march off to wars in foreign countries

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u/Boowray 2d ago

It’s exactly as gruesome and bloody, have you ever seen a shrapnel wound? But the people dying have an opportunity to defend themselves, fight for their survival, and most importantly there are no civilian casualties. If you’re engaging in the open field, the only people who die are the people standing there fighting. Cavalry charges don’t exterminate schools filled with children. This isn’t to say there were no atrocities in historic battlefields, but comparing something like a napoleonic army firing in ranks to a modern war in Ukraine or Palestine and the differences are shocking.

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u/gettingthere_pastit 2d ago

Earth's medieval population was an estimated 250 - 500ml. Now close to 8bl so relatively the numbers involved in your favourite battle are worse than the numbers in Ukraine.

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

So we have now 20 times more population, and about 20 times more deaths, and war have not even ended yet.

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u/Gamer-Of-Le-Tabletop 2d ago

Actually I'm pretty sure it's artillery that's one of the worst offenders. At least drones only target "military"assets whereas artillery is a generalized everything other there.

War is unforgiving and brutal. May we avoid meeting our fate to it

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u/Gym_Noob134 2d ago

For now. Automated suicide drone swarms are increasingly becoming a thing.

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u/Gamer-Of-Le-Tabletop 2d ago

They still won't decimate the land, and they likely won't kill every living thing in the area.

But don't get me wrong we're arguing between two near adjacent weapons.

We need to diplomatically approach conflicts because once they're hot everyone loses

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u/Gym_Noob134 2d ago

Ukraine and Russia are starting to manufacture millions of drones. China is hush hush on its drone manufacturing numbers but I believe it’s likely in the tens of millions in their stock pile. They have a navy fleet entirely dedicated to autonomous drones, after all.

Indiscriminate mass drone swarm bombings can exact massive casualties and land destruction. Especially if the explosive potency increases (which is trending upwards), and if the AI’s are designed to target anything biological.

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u/Valeredeterre 2d ago

There is a survivorship bias we saw way more dro e kills than the rest because it's letteraly a camera.

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u/dw82 2d ago

Just extrapolating demographic change could bring the numbers pretty close to one another.

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u/handysmith 2d ago

Would you prefer to be involved in those "old school battles"?

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

Being chased by drone or killed by himars? I would rather have a sword fight and at least have a chance to kill someone.

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u/ZephyrFlashStronk 2d ago

You would rather have a chance to kill someone (then die painfully after you are stabbed in the gut with a shortsword) than die nigh instantly from an explosion that rips you in half?

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

You go to war to kill or to die? If you want death you can always commit suicide.

You would be lucky if rocket hits you and torn to pieces, but quite often you lose a limb or two and adrenaline wont let you die, so you slowly and painfully die in agony. Also quite often used cassete (not sure if this right word, maybe cluster) bombs, where thousands of balls or sharpnel is being fired.

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u/One_Researcher6438 2d ago

Nah I've seen enough of those videos to know that you're lucky if it's instant.

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u/squirreladvised 2d ago

In the battle of Cannae, tens of thousands of Roman legionnaires were encircled and massacred. This massacre-ing took hours to do. You want to do that? You want to spend hours being jostled, screaming, with blood underfoot, being trampled by your allies and with absolute certainty you're going to be die a painful death?

Hey. You do you. I'd rather go quick, but you have fun with your pointy stick mmkay?

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

russians do just like that to Ukrainians right now. Sometimes they shoot but sometimes they do all the possible war crimes. For example, there were evidence found that russians remove teeth from woman and rape them till death. Doesnt sound any different to me from middle ages.

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u/Spookki 2d ago

I'd much rather get shot in the heart and killed by 5.45 than get an unremovable arrow stuck in my chest and die slowly in agony.

War has gotten more humane, thats undeniable. The geneva conventions (when actually followed) do a major amount to help and we have ww2 to thank for those.

The longer conflict takes, and the more expensive equipment needed, the less lives are wasted.

Hopefully one day the rich children leading countries can just send expensive robot armies to fight on their behalf and we get to watch it live on tv like big brother, instead of being in the trenches with them.

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago edited 2d ago

I expected this war to be some kind of robots vs robots, I was really surprised that half of us in our homes have robot vacuum cleaners, yet military doesnt have similar stuff with gun attached and still goes old school fighting until drones appeared.

I also expected more cyber security attacks, similar to what Israel done in Gaza with pagers. Since most stuff is made in China, in case of war against them I wouldnt be surprised to receive forced update on smart things that would overheat and make fire.

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u/VegisamalZero3 2d ago

...and you're forgetting the hundred thousand killed by disease on the way there.

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

Same thing happens now, you may get sick while being in a trench.

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u/ShakeAndBakeThatCake 2d ago

Also rockets. They probably kill more than drones.

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u/Strange-Idea7819 2d ago

Do the math.

The battle lasted two days and estimates of dead are 8-16k.

Now, the Russo-Ukrainian War has been waging for years now. At the rate people died in Grunvald, there would be 4.5 million dead by now.

I prefer drones.

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

Wikipedia says there were up to 80k casualties. In just 2 days.

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u/Strange-Idea7819 2d ago

I went with the low estimates 8k. Add a zero to my number and that is even more staggering.

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u/onFilm 2d ago

You do realize that in the past we proportionally sent more people to war than we ever do today, right? Things always get better over time, proportionally. So no, today's wars have way less casualties than they did back then, proportionally.

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

But wont modern wars affect more population?

What it used to be, lets say you are farmer, your animals are taken for food, and soldiers with all surrounding people march (cooks, medics, barbers, etc) basically moving village. And they march for a long time. Whike you sit in yoir half emptt farm dealing your business.

Modern war: less than 1% population are soldiers, but rockets, drones and artillery reach is huge. One minute you are baking cakes the other you are hit by missiles shrapnel. Or your house got destroyed. So you are not fighting, you are just suffering.

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u/onFilm 2d ago

It's all about being relative. If less population is affected overall by war, that's always a good thing.

Not sure what the whole baking thing is supposed to explain, but yeah, that's how war has been since before we were humans.

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

Well, its the opposite what I wrote. You may not be a soldier, but still can be killed hy artillery or rocket. One rocket may kill hundreds of people. It wasnt like that before.

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u/onFilm 2d ago

Yeah, innocent people have been killed as casualties of war since day one. You'd literally be dragged out of your home, and brutally murdered as your family would watch, one by one, slowly, sometimes quick if you were lucky. And even if a rocket can kill multitudes of people, there are still way less people relatively dying as casualties compared to before. It always improves as time goes on.

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u/Real_Particular6512 2d ago

Well thank god you prefer a certain type of battle to another having never been in either circumstance yourself

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

And neither you, so your comment is useless.

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u/Real_Particular6512 2d ago

I'm not trying to take some weird fucking high ground about what type of war I prefer based on some bullshit reasoning

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u/Ok_Run6706 2d ago

So why are you even here?

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u/Real_Particular6512 2d ago

It's a post about an interesting and novel use of drones...

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u/psychodogcat 2d ago

It's kind of true that eventually, these technologies do end up saving lives more though. As warfare tech gets more dangerous, people are less likely to use it because their enemies also have the same tech. Mutually assured destruction is a hell of a drug.

However, the period immediately after invention is always the worst. See Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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u/Little_Head6683 2d ago

The MAD concept only applies to nuclear warfare. Wars have only become more lethal.

Just look at the devastation to cities in modern conflicts. The utter destruction of civilian areas is a hallmark of modern conflict.

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u/Habanero-Jalapeno 1d ago

Exactly. People are so out of touch here jeez but they must give their 2 cents on everything.

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u/tallsmallboy44 1d ago

Ancient armies literally used to burn entire cities to the ground. What are you talking about?

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u/Little_Head6683 1d ago

Just because it happened doesn't mean it always happened. Or even often. They had to make a deliberate choice to raze a city. Which would be done to send a message, revenge or as part of a genocide. And it would happen AFTER the battle, not because of the battle.

Nowadays the utter ruination of a battlesite is a given.

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u/Traditional-Key4824 2d ago

Don't tell this guy there is this thing that is called arm race.

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u/Grimour 2d ago

LoL. You do realise you are talking about the Russian army here. Those who still use ancient technology, because they are still using cannon fodder tactics. They are racing to their graves, not to advance anything.

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u/Traditional-Key4824 2d ago

While the Russians is certainly undersupplied and using outdated equipments in most fronts, their drone warfare tactics and equipments only stepped up during the war. Are they still behind? Yes. But are they better than the start of the war? In drones, yes, other, maybe.

And it's not only the Russians, every single nations watching the war had begun their drone programs after seeing the effectiveness of them.

I'm not solely referring to the Ukrain-Russo war. And arrogant people like you are the reason the Chinese is catching up.

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u/Grimour 2d ago

Of course that is the way of our kind. I would much rather fly a drone though than run head first into bullets.

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u/Vasyh 2d ago

It's funny how Russia is still advancing with only shovels (if you check what really happens on the ground after 2023).

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u/Little_Head6683 2d ago

Stop believing the false narrative. Stop underestimating your opponent. Russia has been a festering corpse since the fall of the USSR. But they're also in a war economy currently.

They're still a massive threat and responsible for 100.000s of deaths by now. The West is currently studying modern peer-to-peer warfare. Russia is actually fighting it. Ukraine might be better than them at it, but Russia just flattens everything they encounter with the massive shell and drone production they've got now.

The destruction in Ukraine is more concentrated than during the 2nd world war.

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u/Grimour 2d ago

Sure they are fighting it - and losing heavy losses all day, everyday. They aren't even making modern tanks because they are also just fodder. It's one big Russian nesting doll.

Russia is all out of their massive second world war bomb storage. They are bleeding hard now and the only reason that scum shelling tactic was working, was because no one was willing to give Ukraine anything that was able to strike back at easy stand still missile launchers..that was a horrible time to witness them being helplessly torn little by little.

Russia flattens everything it encounters huh? Sure haven't flattened Ukraine.

What a random WW fact, that means nothing when condensed to such a degree.

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u/Poohstrnak 2d ago edited 17h ago

Hey now, they half like 4 almost 5th gen fighters with exposed wood screws, no S ducts, and a radar cross section the size of a whale shark

They have bleeding edge tech!

I wonder if no one knew I was joking. All of the things I listed are profoundly not 5th gen.

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u/xXTurdleXx 2d ago

damn Japan actually somehow rewrote themselves into the victim. those nukes saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives, because the Japanese literally refused to surrender. japan raped and killed more people in a single Chinese city than both bombs combined, yet somehow are victims because they were so insane they would rather suicide their entire country than give an unconditional surrender

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u/WorstPossibleOpinion 2d ago

Japan's surrender had nothing do with the nukes, this is well established historical fact, they were holding out on if they could surrender to the soviets believing they'd get more reasonable terms from them. In fact the emperor and his council didn't pay much attention to the reports of cities being destroyed by the nukes, it was not a concern to them.

The nukes were used against Japan purely because the US had them and not because of any practical purpose.

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u/Little_Head6683 2d ago

They used the bombs to send a message to the world (especially the USSR) as well as to speed up the surrender deals with Japan.

Russia was advancing through Manchuria at breakneck speed. They knew that the USSR wished to annex as much of the territory they 'liberated' as possible. The US wanted them to have as little leverage as possible.

Relations between the West and the USSR were already souring rapidly before the war had even ended.

I'm not excusing it, by the way. The bombs should've never been dropped.

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u/xXTurdleXx 1d ago

yeah and Japan never should have raped and murdered 100x the people in China/Korea either :)

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u/Little_Head6683 1d ago

Yeah. No they shouldnt have done that. Thank you for your insight!

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u/xXTurdleXx 1d ago

well established historical fact

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

yeah sure, there was totally no reason at all

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u/WorstPossibleOpinion 1d ago

Well established true facts are often the cause of debate. Are we to give up vaccines because they are debated by people in bad faith?

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u/Honkerstonkers 2d ago

I actually visited the museum in Hiroshima today. Saw the charred toys and children’s clothes. The pictures of the utter destruction, the horrible burns on people slowly dying.

How many of these children and pensioners were sacking Nanjing?

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u/xXTurdleXx 1d ago

It's crazy that you care more about the thousands of children who died in Hiroshima as unintentional targets, rather than the millions of children killed in China as part of an intentional genocide, simply because Japan cried more about it after the war ended

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u/Honkerstonkers 1d ago

The children of Hiroshima were definitely intentional targets. The Americans knew what they were doing. You make it sound like killing Japanese children is ok because soldiers committed atrocities in China. Killing children is never ok.

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u/Ckarles 2d ago

Yep, they said the same thing about mustard gas.

"Hey, if we can just kill all of these people with some gas, it's gonna end the war quickly, so lives will be saved".

Then a few weeks later, the opponent used the same technique, then people started to die faster, and suffered much more.

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u/Grimour 2d ago

Why was the machine gun effective? Because of armies swarming the front. That is no longer a viable strategy on the battlefield. Things have changed for the better for the average man, who was a war puppet yesterday.

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u/Force-4842 2d ago

Still a war puppet today

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u/igotthisone 2d ago

Sure, but he was yesterday too.

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u/Meta_Zack 1d ago

Yes but it also pushed war from open fields into cities and towns as they can be used for "cover". War will always be shit

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u/Grimour 1d ago

When buildings become modern fortresses then war often moves where you have a greater defensive position and protecting your cities seems logical. In the world wars there were plenty of city battles. When you have nothing left to lose, then making a stand in the cities are only logical, because the aggressors will probably have to destroy a lot of what they hoped to conquer and use.

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u/Automatic-Change7932 2d ago

You mean ww1? Still most casualties stemmed from artillery in both world wars. Now it is drones. In this case drones are even worse. They make the till recently most deadly weapon more deadly and are the most deadly weapon. Now you can kill more people for less money. Brave new world.

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u/BulkyCoat8893 2d ago

The Nobel peace prize exists because Alfred Nobel made explosives safer to store, thinking he was saving lives. But making explosives safer meant everyone could make and carry more into battle.

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u/Fit_Organization7129 2d ago

ww1 but yeah...

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u/Bored_Amalgamation 2d ago

People still have to defend themselves. It's not like no one will die if Ukraine stopped using drones.

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u/bfume 2d ago

Take a look back at every war before WWI. The number of casualties per capita goes down dramatically as wars get more “modern”

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u/Rdtackle82 2d ago

I also have seen that on Reddit, but in this case it's literally resulting in fewer troops used in total and lower casualty numbers. Eventually, the human aspect will be entirely removed.

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u/GH057807 2d ago

"Shit, they got 100 guys shooting like 1000, better send 10,000."

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u/Open_Ad_8200 1d ago

That’s not true at all. It was created because reloading weapons took to long. This was at a time when wars were just people standing in line shooting at each other. The idea was never to use less people

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u/Ambiorix33 2d ago

Except the Russians could end the killing in a day if they just fucked off back to where they came from

This isn't WW1 where a bunch of powers are obligated to keep pushing of be annihilated, Russia could go home tomorrow and the borders reset to pre-2014 and nothing would be lost for Russia, no one would enter Russia.

This is entirely.on them

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u/FlyingOTB 2d ago

I don’t think that was ever the sentiment with machine guns.

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u/Mrqueue 2d ago

It’s an anecdote. The man who invented the automatic gun thought war would be fought by 1 man in a field instead of 100 because at the time they would line up in fields and shoot each other

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u/marsinfurs 2d ago

That’s literally true though

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u/PangolinPretend4819 2d ago

the difference here is that the main user of said drones is a defending nation being attacked by an imperialist aggressor, what are they supposed to do, just go home?

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u/Badloss 2d ago

Nuclear deterrent has successfully prevented all-out total war since it was invented. I genuinely do think Nukes have made the world safer overall

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u/Throwawaywadwadwad 2d ago

im unsure if you're justifying Russians invasion and killing of innocent?

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u/BolunZ6 2d ago

What I meant is improving arm doesn't mean saving more lives. We just change the method of killing each other instead