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/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/joehonestjoe 2d ago

It's ironic, accuses you of changing the goalposts when you said 'they most watch on the hills' and they then said 'you said there were none' when you said there weren't very many.

Hilarious hypocrisy on their part.

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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...