Nuclear Tomorrow

Work-work mode is fully on. You know, having part time job takes more of my time than the regular one I had before. It's crazy, but I get into doing all those "extra" things now, I had no time before, and it takes a looot of my time.

Anyway, today something that "touches" upon topic that fair number of games touched upon in the past. It is a touchy subject! Either from RTS perspective of World War 3, or the Post-Nuclear "rebuild of civilization" or RPG perspective of living after the war.."war that never changes"...

This is one of those classic for me "be there" moments.. so sit down, take your Rad-X and take a deep breaths.

It's early afternoon, maybe evening. It's still bright outside, little windy, but other than that the weather is fine. You're sitting in front of PC or with your tablet, iPhone, book - whatever you do to relax after long day.

Whatever you're doing, you're not looking at the window or even in direction of window. That's what saves your sight. There is a momentary flash outside. It bright up room you're in to uncomfortable levels. As if an eye-doctor just took his little flash-light and run it in front of your eyes. It's similar. But stronger and painful. You weren't looking outside, you didn't knew that the flash was, or what it meant.
You're barely done registering and classifying that event in your mind, as the noise, loud as all hell almost bursts your ears. It's a sound like you never heard before. Everything vibrates with the noise, your windows crack and burst. Something taken straight out of a horror movie, like a roar of a great dragon is coming. Anything relying on electricity shuts down, split of a second later.
You're not even in the state of shock yet. You just don't know what's going on. And then roaring wind, like an old, rusty train running on the rattle-railways.. too fast and too loud. By now you turn your eyes towards closest window and you see the hurricane-like wind rush though the street. Taking everything with it. Cars, trees, people. The vibration stars shacking everything. Walls crack and you expect any moment to be crushed by ceiling over you. Blast wave throw you to the ground and you feel great heat coming from outside, as if you sat in front of a giant camp fire. But it's not wood gathered earlier that burn outside, it's the world itself. And the flame steals all the oxygen. You take a breath, but all you feel is hot non-air getting inside. You're getting dizzy. It's funny. Why? You don't know, but it's funny.

The whole experience lasts few short seconds. Barely enough to realize that somewhere out there, a giant mushroom cloud grows in the distance, turning the life you had into a distant dream, never to be dreamed again.

You come back to your senses few moments later. You feel every fibre of your being hurting. Eyes, ears, fingers, mouth, tongue, lungs, stomach. Skin.
As you lie on the floor of your apartment, among furniture and broken glass you get the idea what just happened. But you don't want to believe that. It's almost beyond the realm of possibility. You sit up. You're more-less fine. Some cuts and bruises, but nothing that would inhibit your movement. your skin is slightly red-ish though. Something isn't right though. It's the silence. Complete silence. You don't hear anything. Not just outside. You don't hear your own breath or cough. There's just very distant high-pitched ringing. You feel dizzy and stumble as you stand up.

It's still bright outside. But there's something dark in that lightness. Something unnatural, an aura of menace that glows hungrily. Your first thought after the initial state of shock is for your close ones. Your family, friends, co-workers. You were alone in your house before.
You don't know what happened of them...
Hot air is filled with dust that slowly settles down on everything you see outside. Cars, flipped few times and mangled beyond recognition piled-up against large building that's still standing. Street lights were broken like matches. Bent and twisted they lie on the street too, among rubble of every possible origin.
You don't see anyone else. You don't hear anyone either.
Oh.. wait, you couldn't hear them, even if they were right behind you. People, finding other people. Your neighbours? You decide to leave the house you're in first. Cracked walls drip with dust and crumbs, suggesting that your house isn't really stable.
What do you take with you? Mobile? Coat? Keys? What else? Flash-light? Good enough for now. You leave, knowing that any moment the house may fall on your head.

You're outside, on the street you once knew, now transformed into a scene from worst nightmares. Now, up close, you see twisted bodies inside crashed cars. You see people thrown against walls, alongside debriefs carried by the blast. What do you do? Where do you go?

Closest police station, fire-station, hospital. You see other survivors in your area. Some of them wounded, with skin either red - like yours, or burned. All covered in dust that descends from the sky. Some call to each other, some call to you maybe? But you can't hear them. You just stumble down the street you use to knew. Idea of taking coat feels funny now. It's so warm outside, just like in the middle of the summer.
For the first time you look around at something further than ruins.
Even the sky is shattered. Clouds above you are shattered, broken and twisted. And there, over down-town a giant cloud majestically ascends into nothingness of the sky. You can see smoke rising from different parts of the city. Fires. Whole city is a burning wreak. Mangled buildings stand up among pillars of darkness rising even higher.

It's a guess, educated one thou, that the place you're looking at, is filled with dying people. Dying right now. Burned alive. Blinded and deaf. With street asphalt turn semi-liquid, nobody can run away. With air sucked out by the flame, there is suffocation and death waiting for those who somehow survived the explosion.
They will all die. Everyone. How many of the people you knew might be dying now? How many people you loved? Those who died instantly were the lucky ones. Those living long enough to realize they're dying however...

Our generation, spared the horrors of war, protected by political correctness and gentile minds - how can we comprehend and react to the death of so many, so fast, so pointlessly.
With our brutality meter set so low, how can we react?
What is the most horrifying, brutal and bloodiest memory you ever had? You might have seen someone who's dead, or dying. Someone who got shot, run over, hit by something. Someone that just lost a limb or head. Someone cut in half, someone burning alive. Imagine all of those things. At once, magnified by how far your eye can see.

It's cliche example, but in the "old times" public executions, even public tortures were something for common folk to watch. And they would! They would come with children to see flaying of another human being. In the old days people would themselves, stone their peers to death. They do that to this day in some parts of the world.
But we don't see that. We live in the world of gentle mindset born in the age of enlightenment, brought up in the age of steam and cultivated in the age of radio and TV. We're not use to seeing dead children lying in the dark alleys. And you know what? Dead children weren't so uncommon in the old days. Mortality rate was high; there were no contraceptions, no USG and no gynaecologists. Dead children. Infants. On the streets. Of Paris, London, Berlin.
We're living in the world so sterile and safe that we can't even understand mindsets of people living two centuries ago. And for them our world would feel strange too.

How far however we really are from our ancestors? With laptops and internet, with medicine for every illness and culture of plenty.. with all of that gone in a blink of an explosion. How would we reacted?
We would grew savage. We would kill for food.
Yes, you would be able to kill someone to take away the food he found. You would murder.
Kill.

You don't believe me? Then I dare to say you were never starving. And I don't mean those force-of-will attempts to get your weight down before summer. I mean starving - there is no food. Nothing. For days.
Forget about yourself, maybe you're so closed in modern mindset that you would starve to death before killing another.

But how about your children?
Your children starving to death. With their small bones easier to see though their skin with each passing day.
With life slowly bleeding out of them.
And you meet someone. Someone who you can kill. Someone who has food, but won't share it with you. Not a bit.
You have to kill him to get it.
Him or your child.
It's that simple.

Because world, despite our high-horse morality is that simple. We all compete for a limited amount of supplies. With hunger so strong you can't think of anything else, the primal instincts would take over. If not, you'd simply die. And those who shed the illusion of high morals would prevail.

We, as a race, moved very little in terms of our humanity from the earlier animals on the evolution tree.
Our civilization exists for what? 10.000 years? That'e extreme, but lets go with that. 10.000 years during which people chose to live in settled societies. Humans as a species is around for 200.000 years.
We abolished slavery between 250 and 150 years ago. We gave voting rights to woman depending on country between 120 or 40 years ago (France '44, Italy '45, Switzerland, '71)
War crime and laws of war were established first in Hague 115 years ago.

Are we that far from killing each other for food?
Would our modern mindset could carry such a burden?
Sure. There are people killing people today. In every city you have people that killed other people. Some (hopefully most) are in jail. But they murdered someone for something.
You could too if you were pushed far enough.

Remember, it's not the first death that weights on you the most - it's the one against most innocent of your victims.

War, Games and History.

I don't really play many RTS games, not counting Total War series. First RTS I did played was Dune 2. Then Warcraft 2 and C&C series. Warzone 2100. Later Earth 2140-2150.

I normally play RTS games in the way modern west Europe would. I try to keep my soldiers safe whenever it's possible. That's why I suck at multiplayer where units are a resource to be earned and spent.

I have problem about thinking in those categories. Call me crazy - I do what I can to save "lives" of my guys.

I'm more like Wellington than Napoleon in that manner.

Build up defences, let enemy crash against your walls, pile up units, attack only when almost sure of victory.

I feel most comfortable in defence.

This is so different from my attitude in games like FPS - where I am the first to charge (and die). I am aggressive, pushing and rarely stop for anything. In Borderlands for example I always played Brick, rush in, beat-em-up and move on.

I don't like playing a sniper, I don't like wasting million bullets while shooting from afar. I want to smash and kill and have fun with it.

RTS? I will hold the line till the cows come home and then little longer, just to be safe.

Why?

In my mind when I throw myself on a grenade (which I might have thrown myself), I just waste my own life.

While leading troops in RTS game, I get stupid and try to save their lives. You know, it's sound fine - not throwing needlessly lives away, right? For me it's not a matter of tactic, but saving lives of troops under your command. Yes, the stupid box of pixels and numbers I can produce at mass.

This mindset switch is something silly - but profound in my playstyle.

Think about going to war. Think about being on a battlefield.

Day starts and before it ends you have a fair chance of being dead. And if you wont, there's a far chance you'll kill someone. Or at least see someone die in a horrible way. Horrible.Way.

And you can die in horrible way too.

Read war memoirs from WW1. From any war actually where writer was in the front line.

Our white-gloved culture don't prepare us to see this sort of violence. Few centuries ago public executions for example were means of people getting use to death, sometimes in horrible ways.

We're shielded from human gore.

And it's not like what you see playing videogames. Games only interact with your eyes and ears. Wet sounds and red pixels. It's entertainment for us. Just like public executions were for our medieval ancestors.

So, you're standing on a battlefield. Any period will do, lets say.. 18th-19th century - civilized times in warfare. You're serving in line infantry. One of many in your unit you stand under watchful eye of your superior. The drums play, the standards wave. You see horse messengers rushing back and forward behind your positions. And there, on the other side, you see army of men, just like you. They stand there. You can almost hear their drums or trumpets. Battle starts with some skirmish, maybe some cavalry fight on the wings. You hear artillery maybe some firearms. And then, an order.

Like a wave going from battalion to battalion. Forward.

And you go. And it is on. It's a matter of time before you can see where and why are you moving. There are men on the other side that will try to shoot you. Same way you'll try to shoot them.

Maybe it's all a little unreal still. But you know you can die soon. In 10 minutes. 5. 3. Order to stop.

To fire. To reload.

Maybe you're lucky and you caught enemy still moving. But that won't take long. After first few shots, smoke covers your whole front view - unless wind is too strong. You don't see much ahead of you. And then you hear roar from ahead. Maybe line of white flashes in front. And moments later bullets fly around you. You can hear them. Maybe one of them missed your ear by few inches.

Lets say it did.

But guy next to you wasn't as lucky. His face is now a bloody mess. He falls on the ground next to you. His blood, maybe parts of brain spray around. He yells or cries out. And it is a cry like you never heard before. Cry of someone dying. Right here. Right now. Next to you.

What do you do? You reload. You try not to look at the bleeding corpse that lies next to you.

Oh.. no, he's not dead. you can see his arms moving, hands pressed against bullet-pierced face. He knows it's the end for him. But the primal instincts kick in.. he doesn't want to die. His body refuses to acknowledge death. He coughs and yells and cries out for mother, father, god, his wife, his children. And you know, in five seconds you might be lying next to him. Doing what he's doing. You hate him. He is you, from the future.

He is you from twenty inches to the right.  

 

Your hands may shake at this point. But you reloaded your gun. You rise it and shoot into the smoke ahead. And people on the other side scream and die.

And then you. And them and you again. And the smoke gets into your eyes. You wouldn't see much anyway, by now smoke covers you completely.

Your brain refuses to accept the things you can see.. and do see.

People around you, dead or dying. Or standing and shooting just like you.

You're trained to focus on shooting. And you think that perhaps you just shot the very man that had a bullet with your name on it already aimed at your chest.

Death can happen in any second. Bullet is just one way of dying. How about cannonball? You wouldn't even see the metal ball coming. It might go as fast as 150-250 meters per second. To give you an idea - cannonball hits the front of the modern car.. and it makes its way to the other side without a hiccup. You have one hole in front one in the trunk.

Now imagine, that's not a car that just stood in the way of cannonball. It's you. And there's a chance you won't even register the fact your body is being torn in half. This can happen at any moment to you. Or anyone else around you.

Another way to die is being stabbed. Bayonet charge was popular up to WW1.

It doesn't take long, you know? By the time you reload your rifle enemy might has the end of his in your belly.

So, as you expect death in any moment, from any direction, you try to mute the sound of people dying and bullets flying. You want to focus on the voice of the drum, or whistle, or trumpet.. or voice of the NCO that lead your unit. You want to know if retreat order was given. If you can turn away and flee.

That's what you really want to do now. Turn around and just leave this horrible, blood-soaked field.

What if the person that suppose to transmit order of retreat was killed. And you're standing there shooting like an idiot, blind to the fact your position is about to get overrun. Or you've been flanked by cavalry.

Lets say your side won the battle thou, and you survived. You're alive. Without any major wounds.

This is not the end. This is just one battle. Another one might be a week from now. Or two. Or tomorrow.

Would you liked to think that the person that sends you each time on the battlefield thinks of you as a resource to be spent?

If have trouble separating myself from those experiences when I play videogames. I'm too involved. Too absorbed. 

Today conflict between Russia and Ukraine is heating up to new levels. In few weeks time people like me might be on the streets of Ukrainian cities, going though the same motions I described. Heck, if things will really get screwed it might be me. I don't really believe this as a possible option, don't get me wrong. But first time in my life such a possibility exists outside of pure sci-fi.

Fuck.. I'd use all the cheat codes to get out of that.

God mode please!