D&D and the rising pandemic

[BookTenTiger]

So, find us a time in history in which there wasn't disease, famine, and war in the world.

I think if you go back about 4 billion years before the advent of life on Earth, things were pretty peaceful?

As soon as matter started self replicating, the end has been right around the corner.

 

[BookTenTiger]

I thought this was the best place to say this, had to get it off my chest, so I'll say it. I don't consider myself part of any religion, but since I grew up in a predominate catholic family my brain defers to the Bible. Doesn't it seem like the S++T is going to hit the fan sooner than later?

Pestilence - COVID
Famine - Supply Chain Upsets
War - South and North Korea as of yesterday, (this is the start of WW3 IMO)
Death always gets his Man

I saw this on the local news and at the end they aired a 2-y/o kid with cancer story. I cried

I dont have much faith in humanity these days. but I hope I'm wrong.

Whenever I feel too down about humanity and the future, I think about how, at a very recent time in US history, lynchings were common and unpunished. That has (mostly) changed. But during that time, it must have looked absolutely bleak. It must have been hard to imagine a future in which this wasn't a frequent possibility.

During the Black Death, during the genocide of the Native Americans, during the Cold War, it must have seemed like the end of the world was just around the corner. Somehow we keep on going. Some things get better, others don't. But when I keep in mind that my country used to have a system of legalized slavery, and now it doesn't, that gives me at least a glimmer of hope for the future.

 

[Baron Opal II]

I thought this was the best place to say this, had to get it off my chest, so I'll say it. I don't consider myself part of any religion, but since I grew up in a predominate catholic family my brain defers to the Bible. Doesn't it seem like the S++T is going to hit the fan sooner than later?

Let me tell you, 2020-21 was really rough for me.

Spring: Terrible ice storm where my family and I were homeless for two weeks.
Summer: Horrific forest fires where I saw a red moon and the very next day the sky was coal black at noon, for another week or two.
Fall: Covid comes in earnest.
Winter: Supply chain issues greatly impact my hospital.
Spring: The insurrection.

As a lifelong practicing Catholic, I have to look at one key passage about Christian end-time prophecy, namely “you will not know the day or hour.”

And I was telling myself this throughout the year. Should it come, it won't be this obvious, and there will be at least one meteor / asteroid issue as well.

But, it has been very trying couple of years...

 

[Zardnaar]

We had it comparatively good for a few decades post war until the 80's and it's been slowly going downhill since then. A crisis or three shows the problems with the system.

Our grandparents and great grand parents had to deal with same things but life was bit harder back then so I guess they were better adapted to dealing with it.


Read enough history books the cycle continues.

 

[GreyLord]

Some thoughts on the recent unexpected turn of the thread...

On the Biblical note, many have looked for a second coming/end of the world for centuries, but in truth, the end of the world came sooner than they all expected...individually.

The end of the world is not necessarily some great big event, but each of us dies eventually, and for each of us, that is the end.

Whether it is to the quiet annihilation of nothingness in an endless sleep of a decaying body or in ashes, or to some judgement to decide whether we were good or bad or how we will be reincarnated or any sort of many other things that we have belief in, the end that we are looking for may be no further away then the end of our lives.

In that light, live the best life we can, be the best we can to others, and try to make the world better by our actions.

We saw in the pandemic so far those who only think of themselves, those who don't care to make the world better, and those who disregard anything that can help others.

But we can't let that take our hope for the future of humanity away. Despair is a very real thing, but if we despair and give up that only makes the world a darker place. I avoided Covid-19 for a while, but eventually the way I acted and how others acted around me finally got me infected. It would have been very easy to blame those around me, to get so down on myself that I lost hope, or to be bitter about it, but in the end I got very lucky/blessed/aided by modern science (even if I was stupid and didn't get the booster when I could in hopes of getting a better one in the future, I still was vaccinated. With how bad I got hit, I think it could have been much worse if I had not been vaccinated previously. That vaccination may have saved my life, I am glad for modern science and technology).

The only thing we have is today, and that applies to me as well. I am looking forward to playing D&D with my friends, living my life, and trying to make the world a better place by being conscientious of my own actions and how it affects others and the future of the world to the best of my ability. I can't change big things by myself, but I can join the collective efforts of others to try to preserve our world and make it better.

If it ends tomorrow, well, at least I know I did my best to make it better even if others destroyed it...or...I just have it end because I die. If nothing else, at least I can know I tried.

 

[Umbran]

A crisis or three shows the problems with the system.

Systems generally don't deal with crisis well. Systems are static. Crises are dynamic.

Our grandparents and great grand parents had to deal with same things but life was bit harder back then so I guess they were better adapted to dealing with it.

I don't know that my grandparents fleeing the Soviets had it worse than, say, Syrian refugees, or folks recently fleeing the Ukraine.

What our grandparents had was a world of simpler technology, that didn't call for nearly as much global interconnectedness. Distant problems could remain more distant.

That and, well, atomic weapons. My grandparents didn't have to deal with the possibility of global nuclear war.

 

[Zardnaar]

Systems generally don't deal with crisis well. Systems are static. Crises are dynamic.



I don't know that my grandparents fleeing the Soviets had it worse than, say, Syrian refugees, or folks recently fleeing the Ukraine.

What our grandparents had was a world of simpler technology, that didn't call for nearly as much global interconnectedness. Distant problems could remain more distant.

That and, well, atomic weapons. My grandparents didn't have to deal with the possibility of global nuclear war.

Fundamentals of the US economy were different back then. Modern USA could not redo WW2 for example they can't produce the steel or aluminum anymore.

Similar thing here we couldn't do what our grandparents did. Local manufacturing is gone, and the government can't actually use the same measures they did back then. They made things like that illegal in 1990/93.

Everything has less room for crisis management. Look at shocks to gas or oil back then the biggest oil producers were Venezuela and USA middle eastern oil.

With double the population we couldn't mobilize half the men these days for war or anything else.

Pretty much rest of OECD is in the same boat. Look what happens if a single ship blocks the Suez and proportionally the Spanish flu was way worse than Covid.

Governments can't really enforce their will like they could back then. That's assuming the government has a plan and us vaguely competent that's rare these days.

 

[Hussar]

That’s not true @Zardnaar.

We absolutely could mobilize to WWII levels. But it would require the same as it did back then - strict rationing and massive restrictions to personal freedoms.

Think about it this way. The US just fought two of its longest armed conflicts ever, simultaneously. Without so much as a blip of raising taxes or a hint of a draft.

It’s pretty unprecedented in history that a single nation has become that relatively powerful compared to other nations without massively colonizing and taking the resources of other nations.

But if the US wanted to be the next great empire? The only thing stopping that is the Americans themselves.

 

[Umbran]

But if the US wanted to be the next great empire? The only thing stopping that is the Americans themselves.

And nuclear weapons.

 

[Zardnaar]

That’s not true @Zardnaar.

We absolutely could mobilize to WWII levels. But it would require the same as it did back then - strict rationing and massive restrictions to personal freedoms.

Think about it this way. The US just fought two of its longest armed conflicts ever, simultaneously. Without so much as a blip of raising taxes or a hint of a draft.

It’s pretty unprecedented in history that a single nation has become that relatively powerful compared to other nations without massively colonizing and taking the resources of other nations.

But if the US wanted to be the next great empire? The only thing stopping that is the Americans themselves.

Blew out the national debt though fueling inflation.

You got rid of the draft after Vietnam similar reasons we did.

US couldn't deal with Covid how you gonna draft millions. Even if you did the USA can't manufacture the resources they could 70 years ago.

Look at vaccines a few decades ago vs polio and smallpox.

Kinda moot point US doesn't need large amounts of manpower to win a war. They do to win the peace though but what's a couple of trillion wasted dollars here and there huh?

NZ had the thought censorship in the allies in WW2 that's gone the government doesn't gave those powers anymore and society won't accept it.