Almost there. And it looks like the UNA is going for broke.
It’s difficult to convey the mixed feelings this page gives me. Though I write a military comic, I’m very committed to nonviolence and peace – it’s an odd and at times awkward contradiction. But I am going somewhere with all of this, and this was how the chapter was supposed to end. In fact, way back in Chapter 1, Jim Francis, artist and writer of the online GN Outsider, quipped that he wasn’t sure where I could go once I’d already dropped the proverbial Big One at the end of Chapter 1. Well, global atomic war seems rather a step up, I guess.
It’s important to note that this is, in fact, an atomic war, not a thermonuclear one. The distinction may seem minor when you’re talking about weapons that destroy entire cities, but hydrogen weapons are an entire order of magnitude more powerful than atomic weapons. Hermann Kahn likened them to barely-controlled forces of nature. An atomic war may be survivable in ways that a thermonuclear one would not, simply because the total atomic mass expended would not be as great. On the other hand, the aftermath is likely to be much more devastating, as the byproducts of fission weapons are considerably more toxic. But I digress.
In researching this comic I have been watching a lot of documentaries and videos from the Cold War on the subject of nuclear weapons. YouTube is a particularly open source for this stuff. What shocks me, though, is the extent to which people give free rein to very strong feelings of disgust and resentment about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Bikini Atoll, Castle Bravo, and all the other devastations caused by atomic weapons, yet seem perfectly willing to advocate their use against the US as revenge for, well, basically everything and anything. Being an American seems itself to be a source of popular scorn these days: “Death to the USA!” is a common sight all over the internet. It’s odd to be a citizen of the last nation on earth people feel it’s okay to openly hate. But, well, I suppose the debate just rages on, so to speak.
I’m certainly not so naive as to believe that we can simply “un-invent” nuclear weapons now, nor am I willing to second-guess the way the United States went about ending the Second World War. Someone once asked me if I, as a crypto-pacifist, was outraged by the atomic bombings of Japan, and whether I thought it was immoral or unjustified. My response was this: the entire war was immoral from start to finish, and the atomic bombs were simply the final stage in an escalation that had been underway for close to a decade when we used them. The alternatives, which were either to blockade Japan and starve them to death over some matter of months or years, or killing the same number of people, or more, with guns, knives and bayonets in an invasion of Japan would have been just as immoral, inhuman and insupportable, and so we got the killing done all at once, with a weapon that ended up becoming an albatross to the entire civilized world right up to the present day.
So, enough railing about my thoughts and feelings on nuclear war. I’ll simply sum up by saying that if anyone wants to know what I really think about nuclear war and its dangers, they should watch the BBC documentary The War Game. It may be alarmist, to some extent, but you’d better have a strong constitution either way. And in the end, as Curtis LeMay said, “All war is immoral, and if you let that bother you you’re not a good soldier.”
Anyhow, this page is the second half of another spread, but it’s not as cut-up as the last one – it’s just a continuity. But if you’d like to see the whole thing, you can just pop on over to TopWebComics.com, vote for 6-Commando, and there it’ll be, in living color!
Thanks to everyone for all the comments last week – the discussion was very lively and I appreciate it enormously. And next week will be the last page of the chapter. So until then, be well, and may a Rumbler not run over your car!
Two Addenda:
First, the guest work on reMIND is still going strong: this week is the work of Aviv Itzcovitz. I recommend you check out both reMIND and Aviv’s own work, Stupid Snake – both are well worth the time, and both artists have been a great support to me as I’ve developed 6-Commando.
And second, on a related but unpleasant note, I am informed that the same, Jason Brubaker, has suffered the loss of his grandmother over the weekend. He has my deepest sympathies which I’m sure all of you share.
You know… I have a funny feeling. 🙂
You mentioned living in a last nation on earth people feel it’s okay to openly hate… and I might say you’re wrong.
Unfortunately you’re wron not in the part of hating USA … but in the part of “lask on earth”. 🙁
For instance Russia is hated by most of scandnavian nations. Some (Fineland) hate us because of “Finnish war” that happened not long before WWII. Some hate us because after “liberating” them from facist occupation Soviet Union refused to grant them independance and forced them to be part of the Union (suppressing a couple of uprinigs by froce in process) and they had to stive for almost 50 years to get their freedom from evryone.
Now Georgians dislike us because we took the side of their opponents in their internal conflicts (Osetia and Abkhazia recently separated from Georgia).
Ukranians dislike us because once Sovie Union was disbanded they were left without free resourses and had to buy them from us.
But all these are not a real hatred… If you wish to see real hatred look at mid-east conflicts around Palestina (not sure if this is the right name of this regon in English…)
Plus (on the upside for you) it is really not like evryone hate USA. There are a lot of small nations that do not give a crap for USA. They have more pressing matters than hating anyone. That is for one.
There there are Ukrain and Georgia that are currently flapping tail toward USA. That is mostly because they want to get your help to get back what tey lost with disbanding of SU, and once they realise they are not getting a lot for free the sympathy may reverse, but for now they like you.
You make a good point. Perhaps the real problem is that so many people feel willing to allow their grievances such freedom that it turns into a desire for violence. But as I said above, I have the luxury of not having had my home burned or my city bombed, and so I don’t know what it is to really want to hate someone. I have lived in a country for the better part of my life where we have been the beneficiaries of peace and domestic cooperation, and so I suppose that makes it hard for me to really understand, first-hand, what it is like to be in a really aggrieved, victimized position. I’m sure it seems like I’m talking down even as I write this. But at the same time, I grew up under the threat of nuclear annihilation, and we were really afraid of the Soviet Union and felt that Russia was our great enemy, but now I feel no ill will for the years of conflict and paranoia and panic, nor do I feel any disdain for or bear any grudge against Russia or Russians. Maybe if those missiles had started to fly for real, I’d feel differently.
On the other hand, what I meant was that it is seen as justifiable to hate and ridicule the US and American culture and society even among people who otherwise consider themselves enlightened and progressive, and to take attitudes towards Americans and perpetuate stereotypes about them that would be totally unacceptable to do in reference to other countries. I dunno, I’m biased towards the US/Canadian way of doing things. I don’t think my country is so bad. And just as American attitudes can be destructive, I see the anti-Americanism that’s prevalent in the world (and has been for some time) causing the same backlash everyone warns us about, here in the states. Nativism and isolationism are at an all time high, and suspicion and resentment of foreigners is on the rise, mainly du, I think, to a perception that the rest of the world hates us and therefore doesn’t deserve our friendliness in return. I’m sure it’s the case in Russia as well, and can probably be found in Britain, France and so on, as well. It’s all just such a destructive cycle on all levels – truly one of the great insoluble problems of the human condition.
–M
You know how the saying goes: “With great power comes great responsibility.” So being the most powerful nation on the planet, and also an ‘enlightened democracy’, USA is being held to a very high standard. China may literally get away with murder, because no one really expects any better from a totalitarian regime, and they’re making all our cheap stuff. But the citizens of USA are responsible for picking their own government, and sending their troops to other countries. And it doesn’t look so good when a country like Iraq is invaded on very dubious grounds, and oil is on the line. It kind of looks like a school bully shaking down someone for their lunch money.
I guess that sometimes it might be better to intervene than to let people fight it out amongst themselves, but every time USA uses its great power there will be people who disagree. And regardless of all the good things that come from USA, those people will keep carrying their grudges. And you know how in most struggles it’s popular to root for the underdog? Well, USA is never the underdog, is it?
So there you have it. My guesses for why some people feel that it’s all right to violently hate USA. But USA is a big boy, the top dog, and should be able to handle it. Just think of all the other people who love USA. There are lots of those around too, most likely a lot more than the haters.
If I may quote Fallout:
War… War Never changes…
I’ve got my salamander jerky and my Bozaar ready for action. How ’bout you?
–M
Not exactly looking forwards to sharing the train-ride to work with gouls and I think the Super Mutants would cause some personal space issues of their own, but I figure I’d look awesome in that T-45A Powered Armour and that Gecko steak sounds kinda tasty
Mmm… Gecko steak. Just don’t eat the Brahmin Fries.
–M
40K hits it even better:
War is eternal. Only mankind is finite.
Actually, the really famous 40K quote is:
“There is only war”
I love how the page is breathtakingly beautiful…and the end of the world as we know it at the same time.
The nuclear holocaust is one of the worst things that could happen to humanity and yet…everything about a nuclear war is pretty: The missiles rising, the warheads coming down again like shooting stars… Even a nuclear explosion is beautiful – if viewed from a distance.
I have the same feelings about it. It may not be the “end of the world” per se, but it’s surely the start of a very terrible amount of destruction, and the moment before is that kind of last possible moment, just before the inevitable.
–M
And now we see the consequence of there never having been an atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (since there was no WWII, if I recall the author’s comments correctly). Since those bombings and the awful aftermath was never seen in the 6-Commando world, this world regards nuking as an acceptable option, which means a nuclear exchange was inevitable.
Oh well, the upside of that is the war which triggered it will now be forced to end. Kind of hard to continue a war when the source of supplies needed for that war have been blasted back to the Stone Age…
Indeed so – I’m glad you get the point so well! This world only developed atomic weapons in the late 1970’s, and so never had to come face to face with their civilization’s own mortality in the way that the bombing of Japan and the subsequent Cold War forced us to do. That and the much wider proliferation of weapons (it’s hard to see, but the ICBMs are launching from the United States, the stealth bombers are Australian and the submarines are Mexican) really did make the danger of an accidental war of this kind much more real. But on the other hand we’ve had several near-misses ourselves over the years, so imagine how much worse it is for them!
–M
Actually, when you look at the raw data, then you can see that this “awful aftermath” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has partly been overly hyped and also, in some (sadly many) cases, been completely distorted (often on purpose.) Pages like Wiki claim some 100k deaths due to radiation, which is utter nonsense. The vast majority of deaths was caused by heat and the blastwave, like in pretty much any explosion. The actual number of radiation cause deaths since Hiroshima is below 1,000. There have been numerous studies about it, and they all come to this conclusion.
That said, nuclear bombs have been hyped, mainly because of misinformation, but also because the mushroom cloud makes a pretty iconic image.
Let’s compare. How many people have been killed in nuclear blasts in WW2 and how many have died due to a very simple, cheaply produced, poison gas?
The American nuclear program was awfully expensive and there was no guarantee it would even work. The Americans killed more civilians with conventional bombing. The Japanese killed more civilians with machine gun and bayonet in Nanking. The Germans killed more civilians with gas. Cyclon B was cheap and easy to produce. The nuclear bombs were expensive and a pain to build and there was only initial material for three of them.
The risk of a nuclear war was always pretty low. The moment the Soviets had the bomb both sides quickly realized that neither side could win and full scale war with the bomb. There were, however, plans to use small tactical nukes on battlefields (as Soviet plans published after the fall of the SU showed, pretty sure the Americans had similar.)
Chemical weapons are a far bigger threat. They are easy to produce and cheap. In 1995 Tokyo saw how dangerous those can be. The Aum sect had produced sarin gas and used it on the subway of Tokyo. Luckily their delivery system was a mess, and thus “only” 13 people died. If the delivery would have worked as planned, there could have been thousands of deaths.
The horror of nuclear weapons is wrapped up in them being so physically small but so enormously powerful. I don’t subscribe to the theory that a nuclear war would be an orgiastic spasm of global destruction, nor that it would instantaneously end civilization, or that society would collapse all at once. That is science fiction. Probably some less stable countries would succumb, and life would be tremendously hard in others, but I see no reason why we should descend into barbarism. And yes, a lot of the threat of nuclear war is based on late Cold War hysteria. But the fact is, whatever the size of the exchange, a nuclear bomb or two could kill and injure a lot of people and inflict a lot of suffering with relatively little effort to launch it, since it’s already there.
On the other hand, we have a lot of nasty ways of killing each other, like gas, as you say, and napalm or phosphorus bombs, like we used on Tokyo/Sumida and Dresden; fuel-air explosives, too, are fairly horrible. But nuclear arms are so much a part of the western collective consciousness that it’s hard to ignore.
–M
Well we could`ve seen this coming… if they have something as dangerous as Mike, then nukes are just a commonplace for them.
whoever survives this nuclear onslaught… well grats to them…
no actually i feel sorry for them, because their lifes after that are going to be a living hell…
I’m reminded of a cartoon I once saw, with two soldiers in radiation suits standing in the middle of a bombed-out wilderness, and one looks at the other and says “Well, great, how are we going to explain THIS to Jesus?”
–M
heh… Remins me of “Gone with the blastwave” comic… Pity it got discontinued and deleted…
For a really tragic look at the aftermath of a neuclear war, check out “When the Wind Blows” for a very British take on surviving an atomic exchange and how utterly deluded people can really be, even in the face of it
Actually, I think youtube comments bring out the worst in people, and America is the one country everybody forms an opinion about.
http://pewglobal.org/2010/06/17/obama-more-popular-abroad-than-at-home/#overview
Actually, what I find most surprising is how evenhanded people are. I mean, for goodness sake, even Russians are split on whether they like NATO or not!
True, I guess I shouldn’t be shocked. But, well… I mean, for all my Frenchness and so forth I am still an American.
It reminds me of an old Star Trek episode, oddly enough, where the Federation and the Klingons are prevented from having a war by a race of super-powerful energy beings, and they are so committed to it that they end up arguing with them, demanding that they be allowed to have a war. The futility of such insane, knee-jerk, retaliatory kinds of hatred is just so sad and pathetic to me. But on the other hand, I’ve never had my home mowed over or my city bombed by people from another country, so maybe I’m the one who just doesn’t “get it.”
–M
Awesome page! That last tilted panel is just breathtaking.
I have a feeling we are going to see a lot more spreads in chapter three. : D
We are indeed! It has proven an extremely effective way for me to lay out pages, and I plan to begin doing it pretty much everywhere it’s appropriate. And I’m glad the last panel worked out – it’s mostly pure color, with few lines, and I wasn’t sure the style would blend right, but it did.
–M
Hey, how many lovers can claim they actually did turn the world upside-down and inside-out to save the one they love? Mike just did. 😀
😀
Mike has his own priorities, doesn’t he? It remains to be seen what comes of them, though.
–M
Not sure that I like the sonic boom effects you have. I always thought of them as opaque disks rather than crescents. I don’t know, they just don’t seem to click.
To tell you the truth I’m not sure I like them either, but they were not intended to be sonic shockwaves, but just a light effect indicating speed and direction. Like so many other things they serve the purpose, but maybe I’ll end up thinking of something better in the end.
–M
Is there anyone other than me that thinks thats an awful lot of missiles.
Actually, a full exchange would probably involve several hundred missiles going each way, each with multiple warheads. So you’re only seeing part of it.
–M
First off, Mr. Average, excellent webcomic. Just discovered it and avidly read all the archive. It’s really good. I like how neither side is depicted as evil boogeymen (especially how this was averted regarding the Federation).
Regarding atomic weapons, you and AK are right. The USAF could have razed Hiroshima, Nagasaki and all other Japanese cities through conventional bombing, as demonstrated on Germany (especially the firebombing of Dresde). Especially given the dismal state of the Japanese air force in 1945 : no more fuel, no more resources with which to build planes, lack of trained pilots… Little Boy and Fat Man were more remarkable for the “ace in the hole” surprise effect they had, than for their military significance. At that point, atomic weapons still had to be carried by conventional bombers, so the USA couldn’t have used these bombs as they did without the near total air superiority they already enjoyed – a sure sign that Japan was in effect already defeated.
In a way, I suppose the militaries of 6-Commando are a bit like the US military of the 50s-60s, when atomic weapons were all the rage and were envisioned to even have close tactical uses, like in the Davy Crockett nuclear recoilless gun (how anyone can have enough balls to use that kind of weapon, I don’t know…).
Anyway, great work. And since you’re a fan of Dr. Strangelove (also one of my very favorites), I’m eager to see how this nuclear war will unfold.
PS : what are your other favorite war movies ?
I recall a prevailing theory in my history classes, that the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, not so much to take Japan out of the war, so much as to show off to the Soviets. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just convinient test targets that would give spectacular and horrifying testement to the power of America’s new super weapon and discourage the Soviet Union from launching their own assaults across an already battered and exhausted Europe with their own vast conventional forces.
I remember the Davy Crockett and other simirlarly bat-sh*t crazy weapons from the time, like the Atomic Annie neuclear artillery system. As I recall the Davy Crokett had an effective range that was well short of the its blast radius, so the troops firing it would be huddled in a trench, some how praying this would save them. These sorts of weapons were kind of a desperate attempt by the army to justify its very existance at a time when many military pundits and planners were of the impression that atomic weapons rendered the army and navy totally obselete, when the airforce could vaporise entire armies with a single bomb.
and as for Dr.Strangelove… “You can’t fight in here, this is the war room!”
That came out of the Cold War, particularly the 1970’s, when it became fashionable to view the Second World War in terms of being a sideshow in the Marxist-Capitalist ideological struggle. The fact of the matter is that the bombs were used because the U.S. needed to terminate the war with Japan quickly – in essence, as I understand it, the fact of there being an atomic bomb made its use necessary, in a sense, because there would have been no way to justify an invasion if atomic weapons were available. That is, it would have been a political disaster if an invasion had gone forward, with all its concomitant destruction and death, and it later came out that there was a superbomb which could potentially have averted the entire situation, which the US had decided not to use. I do think that the issue with the Soviets was that the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo was vastly destabilizing to the remnants of the Japanese military, and the fear was that if Japan fragmented completely, the Japanese military would become a series of warlord-states which would refuse to surrender, and the occupation of former Japanese territories would devolve into an enormous series of brushfire wars being fought pretty much to the death on all fronts, with the Soviet Union being an unpredictable element in the whole equation. The British and the Americans were also terrified of having invade Japan physically, because the casualty projections were enormous.
Also, the Davy Crockett did work, and was considered an available and practical form of tactical weapon in the 1950’s and 60’s. I believe its yield was about a dozen or so fissile tons, making its kill zone well smaller than its range. I don’t know that any atomic weapon was ever tested where its range was smaller than its kill zone – that’s an urban legend.
–M
I’m really glad you’re liking the story so far! Since there’s no magic, vampires, zombies, or disaffected college students, 6-Commando is pretty isolated in the world of webcomics, and so it’s always a thrill to know that someone is enjoying it… and getting the point so clearly, as well!
In the world of 6-Commando, atomic weapons research wasn’t conducted in earnest until the late 1960’s. The focus, up to that time, was on more and more sophisticated forms of conventional warfare, primarily because there was no Second World War and thus the ideas about war-fighting were shaped by such concepts maneuver conflict and national military integrity. In essence, there had never been a serious need for war-winning weapons since the wars of their 20th century were smaller and more numerous, part of the unspoken balance of power which caused the two main super-states to, in Orwellian terms, avoid any strategic maneuver which involved a serious risk of defeat.
Thus, they have advanced technology and poor understanding of its effect on war-fighting. They are kind of going through the motions of a second World War I, where strategy and tactics have failed to keep pace with the technology being used to implement them. They do understand that an atomic war could be very devastating and the atomic nations, especially in the West, are paranoid about it, but at the same time they don’t have any real sense of what would be involved in fighting such a war, or in avoiding it. It’s something that they fear almost reflexively and irrationally, but this has caused them to recoil from the prospect of taking any serious steps to prevent it.
I am a serious Dr. Strangelove fan, as you note. My other favorite war movies (or movies with war as a backdrop) include 2010: The Year We Make Contact (I have always loved the idea of a war startong on Earth while the people in space are still out there), La Grande Illusion, WarGames, Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca, Star Wars, Star Trek VI, and Thirteen Days.
–M
Only one percent of the fissile material used in the Hiroshima bomb actually fissured into a reaction. That bomb would be a dud by todays standards, but it worked (barely taken into consideration). I believe Rasputitsa means the USAAF. Our Air Force –independent– didn’t exist until 1947. After the seperation the Army was prohibited from flying fixed wing aircraft by Congress. The Army only flys helicopters. Their are planes with Army wording on it but typically flown by air force personel. Just like how their are no Marine medics. I also like how neither side is depicted as the antagonist. Still how do I know who to route for. Can’t build a fan base without a hero. My favorite war movie was Grave of the Fireflies and Schindlers List. Because it’s not a war movie, it’s anti-war movies.
On the note of the last nation everyone hates – I do have to say, if your getting that from YOUR polls, well your obviously reading it wrong. After all, everyone knows that USA is the only vote that counts. Everyone else can go dig themselves graves if they hate the USA and are foolish enough to attack. I’ll gladly give them a push in.
– Slim
“A strange game. The only way to win is not to play.”
Even if there hadn’t been a WWII, wouldn’t someone have sat down with a calculator and notebook and worked out the logical consiquences – and then made a book or a film about it?
“Probably some less stable countries would succumb, and life would be tremendously hard in others, but I see no reason why we should descend into barbarism.”
I believe you overlooked the EMP effects of a nuclear detonation.
Today’s technology is vulnerable to EMP effects and the primary targets of a bombing,would be technological/industrial centers.
I doubt if the civilization we know would survive a full scale atomic war-we are too much depended on digital technology.
The irony is that less civilized countries who still depend on analogue/mechanical devices,would retain a higher standard of civilization,compared to the digital technology oriented countries.
Interesting comic!
You can shield EMP waves with a simple farraday cage or thicker wire insulation. Modern telecom systems use fiber optics not metal wires which have a higher tendency to short out.
But most modern non-military electronics are not so well shielded. The electronics of the world’s militaries might survive, but surviving civilians would find themselves without power, with no TV, Internet, radio, cell phones or anything like that. It’d be straight back to the 19th century for most survivors-in the areas where the nukes went off at least.
On the EMP discussion, I think that the electromagnetic effects of an atomic war would get lumped into the rest of the damage it caused. But I don’t think they’d be in any way insurmountable. The knowledge needed to produce new electronics wouldn’t go away, and there would surely be places where the effects could be repaired faster than others, just as would be the case with the initial explosions.
Again, I don’t want to downplay the devastation that would be caused by an atomic or thermonuclear war. But I take the Khanian approach, that the fact that it would be horrible and difficult should not cause people to recoil so completely from thinking about it that they fail to consider the situation rationally and take sensible steps to prevent it. The prevailing science fiction depiction of nuclear war is that within a day or two humanity reverts to barbarism, and people sit down in the ashes and wait for death, hopelessly. A much more likely scenario would be that depicted by Shirow Masamune in Ghost in the Shell: post-war, an effort to clean up and rebuild is undertaken, and though the world is politically and culturally changed, life goes on.
This might seem to contrast my earlier in re: The War Game, but I take that as being a more potent depiction of the horrifying experience of the conflict itself. But I think it’s far too simplistic to think of the entire structure of government and civilization being swept away by something like that, no matter how horrible. Even the Black Death didn’t cause Europe to descend into barbarism: on the contrary, the Renaissance and New World explorations coincided with the event. And they had far less ability to cope with their crisis than we do with the aftermath of an atomic war. So I mean, who knows?
–M
Well im going to make it quick.
M*A*D
There goes the world.
I told this comic is abbout shit going down xD And it first needs to go up ;D
So there a stealth bombers, does the F117 Nighthawk exist in your world?