I'm not quite sure I was proposing tech as cheaply as Los seems to think,
though it might be that cheap. I suggest that the moral issue of cloning a
brainless body for parts is a different one than growing another being and
"overlaying" his brain with yours. And so is the level of tech required. And
even if it took you a year to rehab (takes you out of a campaign), it might
still be worth doing for career soldiers. Professional army and all that.
Why not use bots or programmed human automata? Well, for grunties like I was
when I was in the reserves... sure. Section attacks they could do. For SF?
Nope. You need (and I'm not just being nice) a high level of motivation and of
creativity and invention. I don't think the creativity, initiative and ability
to adapt are easy to engineer into either human or mechanical automata. In
order to have these, we live with some of the other flaws of the human. For
normal infantry tasks, such Automata might be okay. The problem is, once you
dehumanize your force, you might remove some of the barriers to the enemy
treating them humanely. Today, we don't nuke each others infantry because our
local area commanders don't want to get nuked. If the local fighters were all
some form of mech or bio automata, then who'd care if they got nuked? Suddenly
they become less effective than normal (albeit enhanced) humans because the
thing that keeps them viable in part is mutual restraint as both sides don't
excercise the most lethal systems they have because they don't want it done to
them. So we see such automata might give a short lived advantage, but the
point Los raised about
action-counteraction is visible here.... shortly the gloves would come
off and the automata would die in hordes. Back to the drawing board. Plenty of
reasons to enhance normal humans but not change them so much that they are
unrecognizable.
Note that only fools (sorry, my word for them) want to take man completely out
of the combat decision loop. I think most more sane folk have it in their
heads to take man out of the needlessly risky parts. Decision loops should
still have humans in them, maybe advised by expert systems. And some types of
ops will (if you are the ESU) be cheaper to do with humans or (if you are the
NAC) be delicate enough you can't just use a bot.
What the battlefield in 2185 will be is a place where humans play a more
selective and specialized role. And the average soldier of the day will
probably (for a regular) be stronger, faster, bigger, tougher, etc. than one
of today. Better armed, protected, and less likely to get pointlessly killed
doing something technology could do cheaper. But he'd be there... on the
field....doing his job because it can't quite be done by a computer as well.
That will come one day I imagine, but way past 2185 (I hope).
Though bits of it reeked of cheese, the movie Soldier with Kurt Russell
addressed the idea of building combat biological automata and the effect of
newer generations of the technology.
As I said, I think one can posit a higher level of med-tech which only
impacts campaign wound recovery - the rest (weapon lethality vs soldier
toughness and reflexes) is mapped into the combat system and the recovery roll
system covers the stabilization aspects. I'm not talking about overhauling the
game, since the game is generic enough to already operate on these
assumptions. I'm just talking about campaign detail.
If we came up with an RPG for the GZGverse, then we'd have to look a lot more
closely at what tech in specific was in existence and operation.:)
> At 02:56 AM 12/21/99 -0500, you wrote:
But wait a minute, you (or others in this thread?) are already proposing that
a soldier can be killed, have his brain saved, plopped back into a new body
(or the his brain patterns copied and remaped into a new body) and then off he
goes on his way either in a day or a year. (For the record I do not beleive
that this can be even remotely accomplished by 2180s, beliefs about what
humanity can accomplish when they put their mind to it not withstanding, but
I'm playing along since it is interesting.) In fact you have even suggested
that the memory of the traumatic experience can be wiped from his mind. (And
what about all his squad mates that saw him
die?)
So I'm not making this stuff up just reacting to what I'm reading.
(meaning, you opened this can of worms;-)) In that case If I'm killed,
or before I even go on the operation, you just make a copy of my brain and you
can toss that copy into any host (preferably a clone of me) and instead of one
guy with 20 years of specops experience you have two. More importantly, would
be the ability to take my experience and incorporate it, programmatically,
with others so you can improve on it. In this case there
is no differnce between ability /experience etc of a original copy or
the dupe, unless there are imperfections unnoticed in either the cloning
process or the remapping process, so whether the guy is SF, infantry, or
whatever is immaterial.
BTW this entire idea is so fraught with moral/ethical dillemas that will
arise from what at first glance is a purely medical capability to help wounded
or killed solders, that I could see whole wars being fought just to prevent
this level of capability from ever happening.
> Note that only fools (sorry, my word for them) want to take man
Agreed but if you have teh level of sophistication need to remap a brain from
one person to the other, go in an edit out selected memories or even put one
brain in another, then...boom...you are more or less already there since the
implied sophistication transfers to many other endevours surrounding the whole
process. Sort of like if we can build a space ship that can fly to the moon,
then we can make Tang too.(stupid anaolgy but I used to like Tang!)
> What the battlefield in 2185 will be is a place where humans play a
than
> one of today. Better armed, protected, and less likely to get
I'm sure anyone that cared to postulate about warfare's future in the 1600s
may have had the same conclusion as you but the fact is, that really isn't
so even today except in a very few western countries/societies, who by
the way, when they undertake military action are not fighting for their
survival or even cultural ethical issues but to make various political points.
All the other countries in the world centuries later and with tech advanced
way beyond anyones wildest imagination are still have manpower as their
cheapest commodity and have demonstarted their willingness to throw away
humnas in large quantities. Sure it's a little better, though the nineties has
been a pretty damn ghoulish decade, IMO.
Cheers...
(snip lots)
> IAll the other countries in the world centuries later and with tech
Witness the Iran-Iraq War, where apparently no one ever learned about
WW One.
If you regard your citizens as expendable, you have a lot of options. I
understand Syria is teaching its kids, in school, that being a martyr is a
great thing and walking into an Israeli building or street with a dynamite
vest counts for making you a martyr. Okay,
maybe--maybe!--a lot of the young impressionable kids who hear this
from authority figures on a regular basis still won't go along with it, but
what if one tenth of one percent of one year's worth of schoolchildren believe
and are willing to act on it? Okay, now to be a little more organized, say you
ask for volunteers to be carry a biowar package into Washington, or a suitcase
nuke into Norfolk? Think you might find one? That's all it takes. You don't
need clones when you indoctrinate your citizenry instead.
"Yeah, but that doesn't make spec-op troops"
Los, would you say your unit has ever gone begging to find guys who
wanted to be part of whatever group of high-grade soldiers you belong
to? ("Qualify" is a different story). I know we've got a fair number of SEALs
in my neighborhood, and I know guys who work 6 hours a day for months, in
addition to their regular jobs, training on the hope they'll get a chance to
apply for a SEAL slot.
Now let's take a militant government and send recruiters and Special Forces
troopers and Republican Guards and so forth, visiting every grade in every
school once a month. Instead of football and basketball, promote ROTC as
fervently. Think you'd get enough volunteers?
(Not that the Islamic Federation would do _any_ of this. Really).
> Laserlight wrote:
> "Yeah, but that doesn't make spec-op troops"
I'm not quite sure if I read your question right but no we never go begging to
find guys it's usually the other way around. (Same with most units of our
nature, there's always a long line to try and get in). And yes people put in a
tremendous amount of personal effort to join
SF/SEALs
including putting their personal lives on hold for x amount of years to go
through the porcess. Some get half way through, get hurt and have to start
over etc. Much effort.
> Now let's take a militant government and send recruiters and Special
ABsolutely. Just tell 'em that cjhicks will dig 'em.
My 2 cents on the subject...
A similar kind of medical technology is in David Drake's "Ranks of Bronze".
For those unfamiliar with it, a Roman legion is defeated and sold into
slavery, to aliens who use it to fight low tech wars in space. As long as the
legionnaire doesn't have brain damage or spinal injuries, they can be
rehabilitated after a battle. Missing limbs can be regrown, other injuries
healed quickly. IMO, a much more "realistic" med tech for the next century or
2.
[quoted original message omitted]