Timeline for Need help to solve the problem with the number of armed forces
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 10 at 21:19 | comment | added | bytepusher | 10% of the population. Not 1%. I get it, you're one of those people that just won't back down and concede anything, so you'll keep picking. I'll leave you to it. | |
| Oct 7 at 23:40 | comment | added | Questor | @bytepusher another thing to remember is that the US had also magically doubled its available workforce during WWII. Which is not something that modern economies are capable of. (As women are already out in the workforce, and there isn't another section of the popuatloin that could be put behind the wheel). | |
| Oct 7 at 23:04 | comment | added | bytepusher | @Questor so say I concede your point, fine: I have read books, and I disagree, but it doesn't matter. My original point is perfectly valid: They had way more than 1% of the population under arms. Have you seriously not read books about elementary maths? Or maybe strawmen arguments? | |
| Oct 7 at 16:47 | comment | added | Questor | Have you seriously not read history books about WWII? It wasn't as bad in the US as in Germany, England, France, China, Russia, or Japan. But it wasn't a rose garden. | |
| Oct 7 at 16:43 | comment | added | Questor | @bytepusher My grandfather who was a child during that time could not leave a crumb on his plate, because wasting food was a bad thing. His favorite treat was lard + sugar on a slice of bread... Food was rationed. Gas was rationed, electricity was rationed. Women stopped wearing stockings during this time period because there wasn't any material to make stockings with. | |
| Oct 6 at 21:40 | comment | added | AlexP | @bytepusher: From 1941 to 1945 no automobiles for private use were produced. Not fewer than before 1941, but zero. As the famous Soviet motivational poster says, it was everything for the front, everything for victory. | |
| Oct 6 at 21:11 | comment | added | bytepusher | big caveat on the answer: "in peacetime". Near the end of WW2, the US had about 12 million in the military, out of ca 140 million population. There's no indication to me that their economy was struggling with this, they were in fact exporting a lot of war materiell to their allies. As such, I think this answer is at least incomplete: It ignores a wide range of scenarios between the suggested 1% and the "extreme" scenario shown here - btw, I'm pretty sure the US could have expanded the military further. | |
| Oct 5 at 7:51 | comment | added | user111403 | @Questor not necessarily. Any major military already has a structure like this. You have a few more layers in the chain of command, but this is literally what the chain of command is there for. The big question is communications. Unless communications are nearly instant, many times faster than light, your Quadrant Generals, probably even Regional Generals are effectively independent and your "empire" is a very loose confederation. | |
| Oct 5 at 5:51 | comment | added | SRM | @Questor … or bureaucrat’s happy dream! | |
| Oct 4 at 22:54 | comment | added | Questor | @AlexP you would have to have Quadrant Generals coordinating Regional Generals Coordinating Stellar Generals.... It will be a terrible bueocratic nightmare. | |
| Oct 4 at 22:00 | comment | added | AlexP | @Крэйден: The 1% to 1.5% of the population is only achievable by such a militaristic power, such as the USA in the modern world. A normal country has maybe 0.2% of its population in the armed forces. Another thing to consider is that the large the empire is the smaller is the border compared to the territory. Who are they fighting against? How could a general even coordinate hundreds of millions of soldiers in a war theater? | |
| Oct 4 at 21:41 | comment | added | Крэйден | There is one nuance - we are talking about an empire that glorifies military affairs, that is proud of it. War from the point of view of the ruling elite is a blessing - it gives orders to the armed complex, pushes science to develop. As for military actions, the war of varying intensity has been going on for the last 500 years. The empire has many ambitions and plans and many planets and systems to conquer. | |
| Oct 4 at 21:17 | history | answered | AlexP | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
