History when steppe nomads crushed agrarian societies. Once agrarian societies advanced past a point the discipline and technology advantage outcompeted any natural hardiness.

>>64907090
Afghanistan

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>>64907095
That's about right, logistics trumps all.
There's a good writeup you can find by googling "The Fremen Mirage"

>>64907142
>logistics trumps all
Isn't that what Paul brought them ? Organization on a large scale. The only reason they won.

>>64907095
FPBP. Organization really trumps everything. Even in an era of profound technological simplicity (late copper era) the Yamnaya and subsequent related cultures wiped the floor with Eurasian societies and bearly completely replaced all adult males within a few hundred years. This, because they brought with them a society that was actually organized, along patriarchal/warrior lines, versus whatever the fuck the tribes they encountered were doing at the time (a little cannibalism, a little light agriculture, a little starvation).

Montagnards in Vietnam are one example I guess. They had extensive US training though. Some Indian tribes were decent fighters once they got access to firearms, and many Northeastern tribes fucking loved guns during the early colonial period. Germanic tribes during the Roman period were hit or miss--sometimes they performed well, but usually they lost when fighting a fair fight.

>>64907090
reading through romance of the three kingdoms and realizing the best warriors happened to often be from the frontier

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>>64907151
yeah

Good times create weak men

>>64907090
Gurkha

>>64907200
literally only works in alt right memes.

>>64907200
are the good times in the room with us?

>>64907090
Because generaly speaking its true, as long as they aren't to the point of malnutrition
But this only really applies to conscript armies, any decently trained army will beat the confort out of you in basic

>>64907192
now post the outcome

>>64907255
al quaeda destroyed, isis reduced to small cells in sahel, iran's grip on the middle east in shambles, afghanistan in ruins? you died by the millions while americans lost 7k over the course of 20 years. all you did was hiding beneath caves and come out like rats while we mowed you down like weeds.

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>>64907090
>were there really cases in history in which a harsh environment created superior warriors
All the time but superior warriors don't win a war.

>>64907090
>where does this myth of harsh land=hardy people=
Harsher environments tend to have stronger selection pressures. In contrast milder environment allow someone to survive childhood and even procreate that wouldn't have been able to in a harsher environment.
Caveat being that a frail child might turn into a capable craftsman for example, or any other form of profession which might support the troops/allow a society to raise more soldiers.

An argument might be made that a harsh environment leads to people being more used to death and sacrificing people. Similar case that knowing the land might be more relevant to survive and thus a more common skill.
Although those become less relevant in industrial wars due to the scale.

>>64907343
Another caveat is that harsh conditions might very well harm people's development. Take some super amazing warrior who survived terrible conditions in his youth...wouldn't he be an even better warrior had he grown taller with better nutrition? Or learned from more highly skilled teachers?

>>64907255
He did faggot

The combat in Dune is particularly gay, at least in the likes of say 40k melee combat is a heavy metal cover where dudes are swinging chainsaw swords and electric hammers that give blasts like thunder when striking alongside having big guns.

>>64907216
>>64907208
>>64907343
>>64907200
The Good Times = Weak issue was always more an matter of political will on the part of the elite and even then the correlation was spotty. Though the Late Roman aristocratic class were indolent Rome had also been put in the position it was by almost two centuries of constant civil wars. And "good times" really only ever applied to the elites prior to the 20th century, before that the peasantry was living mostly the same lives no matter what the political circumstances were. Obliviously people who live as tribal raiders for generations will individually cultivate, culturally develop, and biologically select for the physical and behavioral traits which facilitate that lifestyle. And remember that those who are selected against don't even necessarily die they could simply leave and thus as far as the gene pool is concerned they are as absent as they would be if they where eaten by a lion.

Selective pressure doesn't go away, merely what is being selected for and the nature of the selection changes. One could argue that right now selective pressure is harsher than ever. According to the GSS which has collected data since 1927 and has used a completely static data collection methodology and definitions since 1972 the current birthrates in the US are as follows: Blacks 1.2, Spics 1.4, Liberal Whites 0.9, Conservative Whites 2.4, Jews 0.8, Asians(unfortunately nebulous term) 1.1. When it comes to selective pressure dying of pneumonia in your crib, being killed in a war at the age of 17, and being childless cat lady at 60 are functionally identical all are just as dead genetically as the other.

If you were trying to breed a warrior people for modern conflict you'd create a society with a massive surplus of population of which only a few bred but those which did underwent selective pressure for the traits which you find desirable. Not a harsh society but a harsh selection process.

>>64907142
>Which are flourish, evergreen despite not,

Lmao this guy probably considers himself a writer

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>>64907373
The writer was a politico nerd and I have criticized how he depicted the combat for decades especially since if he spent five seconds thinking about it he could have made a even more psuedo-medieval mode of warfare which was also cool and more realistic.

Shields and their dynamic with Lasguns and the taboo against nukes which las/shield interactions closely resemble are there to get ride of all paramutations of ranged combat which would slaughter the Fremen. Fine, good start.

There are descriptions of different shield settings which make the shield less permeable or fit closer to the body at the cost of becoming air tight, but none of this comes into play in the books. For loose shields you could shove a micro-uzi through the shield an discharge it into your target and obviously slow moving objects like knives can penetrate the shield. You would think this would encourage spaceage plate armor and wrestling which would make the combat very medieval. Elites can afford the best shields, armor, training and get to LARP as knights. Unfortunately this style of warfare would be a hard counter to that which the Fremen practice so it couldn't be put in the book even if Herbert had conceptualized it.

And lets be clear an army outfitted with bolt action rifles and enough water could mop the floor with both the Fremen and Sardaukar because without shields rifles and mortars would slaughter them like pigs. In the book the Fremen actually use pistols and ranged weapons far more than their counterparts.

TLDR: Herbert was the wrong kind of nerd to make the combat interesting. And art nerd even replicated my thoughts independently.

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>>64907456
It's a blog, he's going to be a pedantic litfag. I also read it a decade ago and wondered if somebody would post it. I think he was belaboring the point a bit and didn't address that fact that life as a steppe nomad wasn't much harsher than that as a sedentary peasant. But the nomad does use weapons more for hunting and endemic tribal conflict, practice matters.

>>64907095
>>64907179
Part of what made the nomads so strong was that they always had a lot of horses and ox to haul their shit around. This let them move their entire tribe in one go and that meant that a nomadic tribe's entire economy would move with the army. As long as there was enough land to graze nomads had a massive logistics advantage.

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>>64907476

>>64907142
Not that I disagree with the general premise, but this guy is well known to be very biased. He picks his examples, lies by omission and makes nonsense arguments that only the historically ignorant would believe. For example, in one of his articles he claims the Spartans were shit, and he does this by lumping in the early first half of Sparta's existence (when they won everything) with their twilight years (where they lost everything) and concluding the Spartans only won half the time, therefore giving them an average record. In another article about the gladius he makes utterly ridiculous claims about gladius and medieval sword lengths, in the face of all available archeological evidence.
Also I do believe that in this article in that image, he takes issue with the "hard times = hard men" phrase, which is about individual prowess and willpower, and pretends to misunderstand it and and turn it into an issue about civilizations. One of his examples is about the latter Roman Empire - you know, that one that relied heavily on foreign mercenaries instead of recruiting from its natives. He ignores that the armies of many societies recruit primarily from the most impoverished strata of society. He ignores that even in societies of warrior castes (e.g. the nobles of medieval Europe) it were the most impoverished members of that caste who primarily did the fighting.
Completely deceitful. The list goes on and on. I have yet to see him do a single "myth-busting correcting the record" which goes against his obvious political inclinations and doesn't involve massive amounts of compulsive lying. He doesn't even pretend to be unbiased, there are many counterfactuals, but he doesn't even acknowledge them, and the obvious many horde nomad ones he just dismisses it with a "horse nomad OP LMAO".

should i remind you that houthis defeated the u.s. navy?

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>>64907492
I haven't read any of his other stuff and I only skimmed his blog years ago, is he a basic bitch liberal anti-racist type?

>>64907151
Judging by the fact that you're posting skibidi redditjaks you probably weren't alive for the beginning of that war, when the coalition basically took over unopposed, but can you explain why the Taliban waited 20 years to take back over, and only did so after the coalition withdrew? Why didn't they just stop them from taking over the country to begin with?

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>>64907492
It should also be pointed out that most warfare is economic rather than ideologic the genteelly impoverished nobility and random fortune seekers who are looking for gold, glory, and girls are there because they had few prospects otherwise.

In the US 90%+ of the SF are hardass rural white guys who are doing it for trills or rather than any sense of civic duty. And as gets pointed out here all the time superior firepower trumps even white SF every time. It doesn't matter how bad ass you are if the enemy is in an elevated position with a crew served weapon and you have a carbine.

>>64907513
Yes. Although I won't say basic, he's openly hardcore leftist on every issue. Some of his articles do seem good, but I can't escape the feeling they're more propaganda, because whenever he does touch on the subjects I do know about, they're either outright wrong, or very deliberately disingenuous.

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>>64907090
It's a romantic view that came from Lawrence of Arabia, which is where the author of Dune got his ideas.

This and drawinian selection, see>>64907343. Animals in difficult environments are usually pretty fit simply because unfit individuals die in infancy. Being a bird for example is very difficult from a technical perspective as they need to be very light, very strong, able to spend lots of energy quickly but also make do with little food. In most bird species most individuals die in infancy because the pressure is too high, and only the fit birds make it to adulthood. Not unlike what you'd see in, say, Sparta where teenage boys went trough military training that killed a significant portion of them.

More developed societies keep the misfits alive, but at the same time puts them to work. The large numbers of workers allows division of labor, high technologies and proper logistics which is what wins wars.

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>>64907516
I really hope we see American forces let of the leash to commit a proper campaign of extermination. I want to see the look on every lefty/brown face when they realize they've been getting off light for almost a century now.

>>64907532
Yeah, everybody knows that "hard times create hard men" is clearly about the men, and not about the ability of their society to win wars, which is about the economy, numbers, leadership etc. But this Bret Devereaux guy somehow manages to escape basic reading comprehension and makes an entire series of articles debunking it.

>>64907255
The outcome doesn't really matter from the perspective of yhe OP, thougheverbeit

>>64907090
There’s plenty of historical examples listed ITT, but it bears pointing out that the Fremen were getting their shit pushed until Paul showed up and herded the cats into a proper army.
A 100 ruthless, fearless warriors will stomp 1000 peasants 9/10 times, but 10 ruthless, fearless disciplined soldiers will stomp 100 warrior 10/10 times.

>>64907717
herbert clearly drew comparisons between the fremen and the sardaukar, and concluded the former are stronger than the latter because they were raised in a shittier place. that's literally nigger logic, they boast about how miserable their childhood was to convey how tough they are. paul didn't drill the fremen into a proper army, but he found the diamond in the rough and by sheer chance he stumbled upon the strongest warriors of the galaxy, and all they needed was a leader.

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>>64907717
The Sardaukar were also chronically underfunded at that particular point.

I'll argue against the "soldiers" characterization though since most soldiers are conscripts who don't want to be there, support troops who don't want to be shot at, or doing the bare minimum. And it turns around again if terrorism is used, a single lone wolf could kill an arbitrary number of soldiers and civilians with EFPs set up along a thoroughfare or nerve agents or whatever the murder flavor of the week is. But at the same time warriors could just loot and rape the entire country until the terrorists activities were inconsequential or soldiers to massacre the entire population making his goals impossible and killing him along with everyone else. I'd say genocide is always the winning doctrine if you have the power and stomach for it.

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>>64907762
Frankly the Harkonnens could have made a better army if they took the top 0.001% of their billions of subjects from the industrial shithole planet they ran, had them fuck bitches for selective breeding, juiced them up on space steroids, outfitted them properly and let them loose. But they were run by a retarded fag who thought he was a genius so not happening.

>>64907178
Not necessarily organization, the Fremen already had a functional, organized society. But his role as religious leader allowed him to bypass all the bullshit inter-tribal politics and unite them into a single army

>>64907090
>where does this myth of harsh land=hardy people=better soldiers come from?

Mostly historical examples of soldiers from hardy regions making better auxiliaries or soldiers
>Romans made widespread use of Gallic auxiliaries and later German foederati and even as imperial bodyguards
>Mamluks and Ghulams drawn from Turkish barbarians
>Greeks employ those barbaric Franks and Normans to put down their rebellious Lombard vassals (they later rebelled) and drive off the Turks (they drove off the Arabs who were fighting the Turks instead)

Dune specifically it should be remembered is closely tied to the middle east as an outline of the core setting and its inspiration, the Saudukar are analogous to the immortals of the late Sassanid Empire, the best trained and equipped soldiers in the Eastern world, well drilled and feared, while the Fremen are analogous to the Bedouin tribes of the Arabian peninsula. In essence once could treat Dune as an analogy for the expansion of Islam. Paul is essentially Muhammad and the Femen his early ghazi supporters who despite being what to casual observers was just some savage desert tribes managed to shatter the two greatest empires of his era (although the expansion of the caliphate was mostly done under Umar and Uthman).

>>64907090
Romanticization. Same thing when people mistake hardwork, sacrifice, etc THEREFORE value, rather than specific work, specific sacrifices, specific production that is valued or leads to valuable things. Go dig a 10 foot hole, its hard work but no one cares, chop your arm off, its an incredibly large and painful sacrifice but now youre crippled and no one cares. Same thing for growing up in the mountains or a desert, makes for a nice story though

>>64907090
Romanticizing the foreign mercenaries you've contracted out to do all your dying for you so your actual productive industrial base is not compromised by the need to turn craftsmen into soldiers.

>>64907090
The Highlanders were superior soldiers who came from a rough hills and had good hunting skills that easily translated into good soldiering skills.
Ditto the sikhs. Also if you're living on the hills it generally means that you're up there because over many generations the people who live on the better ground on the plains displaced you to those hills, but you've been fighting too hard to be completely subsumed or destroyed.

>>64907090
how many times has somebody tried to stop the afghans fucking goats?

>>64907151
you thirdies are literally currently fighting a war on the behalf of a jewish dictator

>>64907255
>Dead civilians don't count because... they just don't, okay?
I bet you say that "all those dead babies" (more every day btw and you won't do shit) are just irrelevant and don't mean anything anyways.

>>64907342
This. The truth is that a handful of good warriors will always lose to 2x+ their number of malnourished manlets. Even at the dawn of civilization, when personal combat ability mattered the most, this is why hunter-gatherers got outcompeted by farmers and herders, despite how much early agriculture and animal husbandry sucked.

>>64907543
>I really hope we see American forces let of the leash to commit a proper campaign of extermination.

Give it 10-20 years. The younger generations (talking people in early 30s and younger) are fuckin' bloodthirsty, and I say that as a member of that cohort. Not sure if it'll be finally giving up on trying to civilize the middle east, or if it'll be against the Mexicans.

>>64907503
>should i remind you of [delusional fanfiction]
You could repeat the lies you tell yourself to cope with reality, yes, but people will just laugh at you.
Man, being a contrarian loser has to be a hard life lmao.

>>64907095
So what about agrarian societies living in harsh conditions?

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>>64907762
Pretty sure the idea is that the Sadaukar have become complacent in their success, not that the Fremen live in a shithole. The Saduakar 'know' they are the best and everyone tells them so, so they look down on their competitors and it leads to them making the wrong choices and preparing insufficiently while the Fremen are the underdogs with everything to prove. At least I'm pretty sure there's a line in the end of the first book implying this. Paul can look at the Saduakar and knows they don't have 'it.'

I also remember there being the implications that Saduakar were in the process of dying from institutional rot and forgetting the 'why' of what they were doing, but I may have inferred that where it wasn't said.

>>64908286
>in the process of dying from institutional rot
This is what ends up happening to every foreign mercenary band as it becomes institutionalized and "civilized" by its host empire btw. The books acknowledge that the same will eventually happen to the Fremen.

>>64907255
>>64907280
the goat fucking will continue. the banning women from reading will continue

>>64907503
when? was it real inside your mind?

>>64907090
Fuck Brian and fuck his work, thank you.

>>64907095
>History when steppe nomads crushed agrarian societies.
You do understand that the Mongols were a freak outlier, right? Most steppe nomads were never more than an occasional raider nuisance to sedentiary civilizations.

>>64908315
Logically it should have happened the moment the Fremen stepped off planet. When suddenly shield fighting goes from a theoretical you've trained for to everyday reality the learning curve is going to be covered in blood. Not to mention that Fremen soldiers are in short supply in comparison to literally everyone else in the setting due to coming from a single planet with a tiny population.

>>64908381
Well there's also India getting conquered by Aryans off the top of my head. The Scythians also gave Greeks a hard time to the point that the Greeks kept ranting about them well after they died out as a civilization.

Didn't read this thread, but if it's about Dune, I didn't finish it because it was boring and dumb crap.

>>64908286
>>64908315
This is why I've always looked down on esprit de corps and abstract ideological or cultural motivations for war, then again my family are entirely Cavaliers and Landsknechts so be aware of my own inherent biological and cultural biases. I can't help but think the strongest people are the ones who need and want nothing, those have zero ideals and just plod along endlessly. Sure you've have to pay them a king's ransom to fight for you and they would never die for your cause but they have no morale to break because they are cruel, hateful, miserable sons of bitches and so long as the gold flows they'll kill for you and focus on killing the enemy first and foremost. You can't become complacent if you have no pride or at least if your pride to begin with or at least no pride tided to social status or being a member of an institution.

In the US right now if you could have a army of a million men all trained to current SF standards in terms of their technical knowledge, all conditioned into amateur athletes, and all eager for murder. You'd have to bribe them with a 200k salary contingent upon them maintain their physique and passing standardized PE and technical tests and spend a fortune on constant training but you could do it. Then again robot grenades are probably a cheaper investment at this point.


>>64908381
The Mongols couldn't even take a single European stone fortification, not one even during the second attempt.

>>64908385
Also you stop being worth 10 men when those conscripts don't care about dying anymore and are willing to swarm you. I assumed they just threatened the Guild and embargoed any noncompliant planets until they gave in.

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>>64908406
>then again my family are entirely Cavaliers and Landsknechts
Shit only americans say

>>64907090
>where does this myth of harsh land=hardy people=better soldiers come from?
Dune is just late-stage Orientalism, which that guy, the author, definitely grew up in. This fake and gay belief that sand land = exotic and wonderful led to his books. Arabs are actually some of the shittiest fighters in history whose sole victories came from zerg rushing unprepared enemies. Once they faced any real opposition though, they got their pussies crushed. So no, deserts do not make better warriors. IQ does.

I would go one further and say part of the reason Arabs are such shitty fighters is both their anti-meritocratic religion and culture and their clannish tribalism. Both of which virtually guarantee anyone with talent is not going to rise to the top, or hold any power. Which is the exact opposite of Dune's themes, in which tribalism and perpetual murder somehow created a race of supermen. What it actually does is create old gray rapist leadership who routinely kill their youth off for dumb reasons.

>>64908406
"Then Paul used his control over spice production to strongarm the Spacing Guild into betraying literally everyone else in the setting while preventing anyone from being able to attack him" goes against Herbert masturbating to the thought that a shitty, deprived life makes you a supersoldier instead of a growth stunted adult with psychological issues.

>>64908385
Dune has a weird sort of cultural setup where the people are extremely complacent, it's why Paul could conquer the known universe and commit the bloodiest genocide in history by a massive margin with a handful of Fremen. The whole point of Leto II's plan was to break that complacency by being so unimaginably tyrannical that someone will kill him and when he dies humanity will scatter forever ending the threat of a single empire rotted to its core leading to the extinction of human civilization.

Atilla was a steppefag
The xiongnu were steppefags
The mongols and their successors were steppefags
The turks started as steppefags
The kipchaks were steppefags
The magyars were steppefags
The bulgars were steppefags
The hepthalites were steppefags
The parthians were steppefags
Timur was a steppefag
There were quite a few

>>64908448
>Then Paul used his control over spice production to strongarm the Spacing Guild into betraying literally everyone else in the setting while preventing anyone from being able to attack him
Maybe I'm missing the sarcasm but that's literally what happens in the book

>>64908454
Yes, I'm saying that Herbert downplays the fact that it's the Spacing Guild is the true source of Paul's power while the Fremen are largely irrelevant and mostly just left to genocide the galaxy to keep them occupied.

>>64908419
>The guy who opines the that the state of the American army doesn't match his cruel mercenary LARP is American. Insightful.
Also I'm serious not a drop of my blood got on the continent after 1680, somebody was probably a blacksmith making horseshoes for Landsknechts as well though rather than actually fighting. The English half were exiled for cattle thievery on behalf of the King, probably because they kept small service fee for every cow they stole from parliamentarians.

I'm also fully aware that the traits which make my people immune to the negative effects of modernity also makes them nigh impossible to politically organize and fundamentally disinterested in creating or running a state.

>>64908419
>t. thirdie

>>64908478
I have Hessian ancestry, my ancestor was one of the guys who got blackout drunk on Christmas and captured by Washington when he crossed the Delaware lmao.

>>64907090
Let's go through the harshest lands.
>Africa
>Middle East
>Eskimoo land
The answer appears to be no.

>>64908488
To be fair the Fremen were gingers who were mudslimes for some reason ather than arabs, and the Sardaukar were blondes. So they might have had triple digit IQs.

>>64907411
What traits does modern society select for? Resistance to endocrine disruption?

>>64908513
Not him but close enough. Resistance to all the pressures that reduce birth rate, be it physiological, cultural, physical, psychological, and chemical. Modern first world humans are undergoing possibly one of the most intense evolutionary pressures right now. There might be no winning.

>>64908513
Society doesn't really select for traits on an evolutionary scale, and evolutionary pressure only cares that you make it long enough to breed. "Survival of the fittest" doesn't mean "survival of the best;" fittest simply means most likely to have offspring.

>>64908513
Impulsivity, aggression, and short term gratification, as well as susceptibility to religious experiences. The people having kids in large numbers are either religious fundies or dumb horny people who don’t think ahead.

>>64908485
What a chad

>>64908485
>>64908546
this was apparently pretty common. a bunch of hessians didn't go back

>>64908513
>society
Same thing as always, obedience

>>64907464
Bruh. You dumb and should stick to babby Heinlein. The point of hand-to-hand combat + shield in Dune is due to the prohibition of open war by the Guild and the Landsraad. All wars became limited to personal duels and vendettas. You can't even send an assassin to a planet without the Guild's permission since you must pay for the transport. The Guild are statists. Their only concern was the supply of Spice must continue to flow. The Landsraad are statists too. None of them want any House or the Emperor to grow too strong. All these factors results in the banning of open war and WMDs. Even artillery fell out of use since it might damage infrastructure too much. Hence why the Atreides were caught off guard by the open war attack on Dune. Paul later took advantage of this too when he blackmailed the Emperor with nukes to destroy the Worms and Spice.

>>64908286
The Sardaukar are basically the VDV, they think they're hot shit but get mulched at the first sign of real resistance.

>>64907090
Harsh conditions within certain limits do produce measurably but not infinitely better soldiers. Afghans were well respected as soldiers on a man-per-man basis for all of history, and the Fremen are just explicitly Afghans.
Unfortunately for later Dune stories, a type of environment producing rugged survivalists doesn't generalize to winning every war, and being accustomed to and adapted for difficult survival scenarios doesn't actually make you better at fist fighting than men produced from fifty generations of good nutrition and physical fitness.

A more reasonable explanation for the Sadukar being mogged would have been that they're hyper optimized for shield combat, and their lifetime of training and honing reflexes and muscle memory for such combat would actually make them very unoptimized for shield-less combat.

>>64907178
He organized them but you cant just talk a galactic economy of scale into existence.

The Fremen make sense if they're a tiny praetorian guard of fanatical loyalists, that are just useful because he can rely on them, not if they're cool ninjas who are each worth ten normal men, even with shields involved and fighting in environments they've never seen. Emphasis needs to be given to the fact that there are what, a few million Fremen and this is a war that would involve trillions of soldiers.

>>64907203
The Brits select for only dozens of the best out of thousands of desperate applicants.

>>64908644
>Afghans were well respected as soldiers on a man-per-man basis for all of history
I guarantee you, if the Afghans had to invade any vaguely normal Western country or even Russia, it wouldn't last a day before they are annihilated.

>>64907090
When I was in Afghanistan we raided a house and there was a severely retarded kid chained to a wall. Presumably because he would have wandered off a cliff. There is no version of events where this is possible in a nomadic mongol horde. There was no time or resources spent on cripples

>>64907137
Terrible soldiers through most of history. Their Iranian/Yuezhi/Saka cousins mogged them repeatedly until the Turks took over the job

>>64908625
two points. You've probably never read Heinlein. The poster is probably sperg raging about space magic and suspension of disbelief.

By all logic here the USS Enterprise could come in and destroy everything, with Picard rubbing is disgusting old balls all over the plot before you can say "Muad'dib".

>>64908644
>Afghans were well respected as soldiers on a man-per-man basis for all of history
They literally weren't. The strong Afghanistan meme didn't even start until the Great Game.

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It's not that soldiers from the harsh environment are objectively better with no conditions attached, it's that they perform better inside their environment, while the troops from outside are going to underperform.

>>64908644
The fremen are a pastiche of arid-weather nomads, specifically inspired by the muslim insurgency the russian empire had to deal with in the caucases. The padisha emperor was directly inspired by the Tsars of the latter 19th century.

>>64907090
It's a romantic view of the hardy hill tribes winning the fight against the soft merchants from the city.

Which happened countless times. Until the merchants got fed up, built an army and removed the hill tribes.
Which also happened countles stimes, but 'City states send Militia and Mercenaries to kill Bandits' just doesn't come across as very romantic.

In the case of Dune, Frank Herbert pretty much took a book describing hill tribes from the caucasus fighting a hopeless, losing war agaisnt the Czar's armies, and changed the setting to a desert planet with hugew sandworms and space drugs.

you guys are midwits, it's not about strength or weakness, it's about fitness and adaptability to the enviroment

The Fremen had the advantage of a constant Spice buzz from birth. How the fuck do you beat a force that is basically semi-prescient? Their gear was made of spice, their food had spice, their water, the very air

>>64908513
Pretty much. The instant that darkies get access to modernity they are effectively sterilized, it doesn't even require full on decadence and affluence. Only cruel heartless rural whites are breeding and have been for 70 years without any decline. Good riddance to the rest I say.

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>>64909101
It's actually more about how 19th century Russian peasant conscripts with inbred nobles for officers performed abysmally against Islamic hill tribes in the Caucasus foothills.

We can draw a bunch of conclusions from this, but the tl;dr version is that if you want to remove something from the premises you have to stop fucking around and remove it.
pic tangentially related

>>64907090
>where does this myth of harsh land=hardy people=better soldiers come from?
Herodotus

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0126:book=9:chapter=122
>>“Seeing that Zeus grants lordship to the Persian people, and to you, Cyrus, among them, let us, after reducing Astyages, depart from the little and rugged land which we possess and occupy one that is better. There are many such lands on our borders, and many further distant. If we take one of these, we will all have more reasons for renown. It is only reasonable that a ruling people should act in this way, for when will we have a better opportunity than now, when we are lords of so many men and of all Asia?” [3] Cyrus heard them, and found nothing to marvel at in their design; “Go ahead and do this,” he said; “but if you do so, be prepared no longer to be rulers but rather subjects. Soft lands breed soft men; wondrous fruits of the earth and valiant warriors grow not from the same soil.” [4] The Persians now realized that Cyrus reasoned better than they, and they departed, choosing rather to be rulers on a barren mountain side than dwelling in tilled valleys to be slaves to others.

>>64909191
the Renaissance in Europe really ended all those nostalgic dreams of the hardy border lords ruling over a fertile valley full of peasants from their hilltop castles.

>>64908625
>Heinlein
Please his political diatribes change based on what broad he was banging. I don't know why you assume I'm a fan of his work.

As for all the shit you spouted, I know its all in the glossary in the back. It doesn't change the fact that the combat system as shown doesn't exploit the dynamics the author sets up because said other was interested in writing a political treatise not a ttrpg with shield fighting, which is what interests nerds like me. And its not as though shoving machine pistol through a shield or wearing plate armor is any dirtier or more destructive that all the tricks shown. My critique as only about the man on man fighting itself not being thoroughly thought through and thus not as cool as it should have been.

As for the politics of WMDs in the setting, at various points shields were used as bait for worms or to make the Sardaukar think twice about using las guns on their choppers. Rogue Houses with "house atomics" for insurance against them being wiped out are mentioned several times so the taboo on nukes appears to be retarded cultural fear of environmental damage as well as a political tool. And in the book it wasn't nukes which were going to be used to wipe out the worms it was the worm excrement space LSD which Paul's mommy had poisoned with bullshit space feminist bio-magic. I don't even like the book itself and think it wasted a setting deserving of a better story yet I still remember more of it after two decades than you do, movie-fag.

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>>64909189
>using Russians a model of the military competency of anybody who isn't russian
Classic blunder! That Japanese created the the Kantai Kessen to replicate their success in the Russo-Japanese war and look how that turned out, since the Americans weren't 100% retarded drunks that got the shit kicked out of them despite executing the replication of first stroke(elimination of the East Pacific Squadron and Pearl Harbor) perfectly.

>>64907095
There was also that time the Afghans defeated the British army, leaving one (1) white male survivor of their entire force. That's probably more of an inspiration for dune.

>>64907142
Bret Devereaux is more right than most, but he isn't right about everything

>>64907343
Also harshness is relative and may be more than physical
E.g. in the modern day, having the ability to withstand the African environment is good if you're a child soldier in Kenya, but worthless for making a living in a major city in a developed nation

>>64907534
>hardcore leftist on every issue
He's not

>>64907090
You guys don't really understand what a "harsh environment" means. It can also mean an artificial setup in a land of plenty, so you have all the resources to maximise development, BUT create artificial scarcity in order to train oneself via self-discipline. And it can be mental and skills-based, not just physical and environmental.
"Train how you fight." Modern military training is harsh, but artificially.
Individual training is harsh. An exercise regimen and a proper diet are both artificial pressures and constraints designed to shape an intended effect.
Exams, drills and exercises are also harsh, mentally as well as physically.
And lastly, morally and socially as well. It's objectively harsher to avoid certain habits like bingeing on drugs, alcohol, junk food, any sin you care to name.

Unless you really think that fat bitch Captain LaQueesha who still had to be pencil-whipped into the army despite lowered standards because of quotas is really a superior soldier to the people who actually do all the work she takes credit for.

>>64908859
For the reasons I alluded to, yes.
Soldiers measurably but not infinitely better at rugged survival is not the deciding factor in a campaign.

>>64908976
All mountainous regions with any white admixture produced above average mercenaries for all of human history.

>>64909595
American sociopolitics really warps the perception of people. It has nothing to do with the harshness of the environment but rather the wealth of a few niche communities. Indeed, so called city slickers live much more dangerous and stressful lives than a farmer nepo baby inheriting half of idaho and tens of millions worth of agricultural machinery will ever know.

it doesn't necessarily translate to better soldiers, but it does translate to a citizenry that is much more inured to suffering which can be useful

>>64907090
War creates superior warriors.. The warring states era produced the Samurai.. Multigenerational warriors that from birth to death were men who drew every breath in their life to advance the understanding, arts and science of war.

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>>64907090
>were there really cases in history in which a harsh environment created superior warriors?
Bruh this happened at least twice

>>64907090
>were there really cases in history in which a harsh environment created superior warriors?
gurkhas

>>64908656
Yeah, were a majority or at least a sizeable minority of them even literate?

>>64909189
>performed abysmally against Islamic hill tribes in the Caucasus foothills.
And then all Circassians just went away on their own to celebrate their stunning victory.

>>64907090
Idealisation of natives during European colonialism.

>>64908656
>Emphasis needs to be given to the fact that there are what, a few million Fremen and this is a war that would involve trillions of soldiers.
Emphasis needs to be given to the fact that there are a few million Fremen holding the spacing guild by their balls, and this is a war that would involve trillions of soldiers facing total embargo on their planets.

>>64907095
tbqh it kind of went back and forth for millennia, it wasn't "pastoralists always win" and then "sedentary states always win", you had times when sedentary states were on top and then other times when pastoralists were on top, depending on climate, political situation, talents of individual leaders, etc. The Manchu pastoralists crushed the sedentary Ming over a century after the sedentary Russians had crushed the pastoralist Tatars. Even some industrial societies benefited greatly from pastoralist elements within them, e.g. the USA was an industrial society but their westward colonial push was being done by their own pastoralist ranchers, which in turn were also a recruiting pool for their military.

Anyways, to answer OP's question, they're mistaken. It's more that harsh environments tend to favour pastoralism more than agriculture, and pastoralism tends to lead to both better nutrition than historical agriculture and a higher ratio of useful soldiers, so indirectly harsh environments do usually lead to societies that can punch above their weight in terms of martial quality, but this isn't because "hurr hard lands make hard men" but rather because pastoralism tends to be the adopted mode in those regions, and historical agriculture kind of sucked as a lifestyle if you weren't in the upper 1%. You could practice pastoralism in nice areas if you really want to and you'd be able to field soldiers who were just as hale as any steppe nomad.

The difference is also more pronounced in asia where most of the famous nomad-sedentary conflicts occurred, because in asia they practiced really unhealthy, miserable rice paddy farming and were societally quite distinct from the pastoralist nomads in the adjacent steppe, whereas in say Europe there was more of a blend of agriculture and transhumant pastoralism within the same cultures.

>>64907090
The explicit testimony of commanders with regard to Berber, Manchurian, and Gorkha troops at various points in time.

>>64909952
>Berber, Manchurian
Not harsh lands.

>>64909968
The Sahara desert, south of the Atlas mountains?
Manchuria has extreme seasonal temperatures and rough terrain, even if the soil is usable.

>>64908462
>the Spacing Guild is the true source of Paul's power
The power comes from his control over spice.
The Spacing Guild are a consequence of that.

>>64909924
>harsh environments tend to favour pastoralism more than agriculture, and pastoralism tends to lead to both better nutrition than historical agriculture and a higher ratio of useful soldiers, so indirectly harsh environments do usually lead to societies that can punch above their weight in terms of martial quality
what's your definition of "pastoralism"?
when you analyse its defining elements, you'll realise that it goes back to
>harsh times do make hard men
>THEN you give them superior tools and they crush everyone

>>64907090
Reminder that the Fremen were being crushed, enslaved, and nearly genocided if not for Paul teaching them to forget some of their savage ways
only then did they become an effective fighting force. until then, they were too busy killing each other, and ignorant of modern combat.

>Projectile launchers, rockets, all the ancient weaponry - that's one thing we'll give the Fremen
>Teach us this weirding way and you have sanctuary with us as long as you wish.
>And he thought about Halleck's reports on Fremen battle tactics. The tactics smacked of Halleck himself, and Idaho, even of Hawat.
>Both fuel and aircraft must be gathered and saved for the day of maximum effort

it is the Atreides who are the real elite warriors, and they came from a similarly-poor background but not dogshit poor like the Fremen; the Atreides were a major Great House and the leader of the Landsraad political opposition, with all the technological and tactical superiority that this affords: the best Mentat and the best Swordmaster in the galaxy, and access to all the best technology even if only in small amounts

the real answer therefore is that you need a relatively-wealthy society AND the artificial "harshness" of training and self-discipline. the poorfag Fremen and the debauched Harkonnen are extremes of either end

>>64909973
Besides the one in sahel they were living the Mediterranean dream life.

>>64908859
>if the Afghans had to invade any vaguely normal Western country or even Russia, it wouldn't last a day before they are annihilated.
This is happening right now but the "normal" country is Pakistan.

>>64909984
There is a desert between these two locations.

>>64907090
>many writers and authors either liked the idea or genuinely believed in it.
Because most writers are academics who have never left an air conditioned classroom. They're weak cowards so they assume everyone else in their society is as well.
Frankly you can train your nerves for combat well enough if you've been in a few school yard fistfights. It's not exactly the same but it gets you over that "oh real shit" moment that causes others to freeze.

>>64909992
Berber is like Germanic or Turkic. A general name for a multitude of people. The one in the desert are Touareg, all the other ones lived on the Mediterranean shores. The Touareg are more of an exception. They don't even look like the other ones.

>>64910003
The Tuareg look like all of their neighbors. They aren't even homogeneous within their own groups.
When I said "Berber", I mainly meant these, the recruitment pool of the early Almoravids.

>>64909998
Herb was a war photographer in the PTO, he probably admired the men he watched go into combat

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>>64907456
>>64907476

Bret Devereaux is an actual historian of ancient and medieval warfare. His stuff on LotR is very good.

>>64907481

I would invite you to read about actual pastoralists. They can be mobile, however they were not hippies, just wandering where they wanted to go. They moved between very specific places at specific times. A clan might have somewhere between 1 to 3 types of animals: sheep, goats, cattle, horses, camels. Each animal had different walking speeds, needed different amounts of rest and water. They often traded with sedentary peoples, so they had to take that into account as well. Have to be in the city at a certain time to be able to sell the wool or the leather. So their economy was very constrained.

The constriction on their economy would have made them better at managing logistics.

>>64908443
Freemen were copied from Caucasian region tribes
https://bookblast.org/blog/the-sabres-of-paradise-the-book-that-inspired-frank-herberts-dune-spotlight/
Don't let sand misguide you

>>64908454
Om the other hand we have crusaders and Conquistadors coming out from comfortable noble's homes

>>64907208
Happened in Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc, and is happening now.

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For me? It's the Aiel.

>>64910286
sure, sure. from which dusty shithole do you come from? oh no wait, you're a zigger thinking living off vodka and krokodil makes you a supersoldier, right? well good for you, just remember to smile at the drone's camera.

>>64907208
>boomer desperate to believe he's not one of the weak men

>>64907208
It works in reference to elites, not the general public. Mostly because elites get their good times by becoming such rapacious parasites that their soldiers are reduced to malnourished and demoralised wretches.

>>64907090
>The Sea Peoples
>The Huns
>Vikings
>Mongolians
>Irish galloglass and Scottish highlanders
>Cossacks
All of these guys were hardened by a lifetime of barely surviving against the land they were born into. Their success as warriors and the scope of their accomplishments can vary between them but I think it would be fair to say that taking from others by force and killing came natural to all of them. Those are good qualities for a warrior.

>>64907090
i guess the Atreides were supposed to be the greeks and the Fremen were supposed to be the Spartans or some shit, or maybe the Sardaukaar were supposed to be the spartans

>>64910379
Guess more

>>64910377
>>Cossacks
>of barely surviving against the land they were born into
Actually southern lands cossacks inhabited were much less harsh than north lands where muscovites hid from nomads. "Harshness" of cossacks lands came from constant threats of nomads raids and enslavement.

>>64907090
> where does this myth of harsh land=hardy people=better soldiers come from?
https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-fremen-mirage/
(author has some obvious liberal sensibilities as you'd expect of an american college professor, but I think he's roughly correct and does a decent job keeping his bias out of the more important parts of his analysis)
tldr goes all the way back to ancient greeks believing in "not becoming too soft or these hard and barbaric persians wreck us"

>>64910388
>where muscovites hid from nomads
Nomads were much closer to where muscovites lived, and were already fairy tale characters in this region by the time cossaks (outlaws and runaway serfs) began hiding from Polish,Turkish, and Russian governments in the no man's land in what is now southern Ukraine.
> "Harshness" of cossacks lands came from constant threats of nomads raids and enslavement.
Cossacks were the ones doing raids and enslavement on sedentary population. They were basically river pirates, who sometimes acted as mercenaries for whatever aforementioned state happened to pay them at that point in time, and then ceased to exist when military development allowed Poland and Russia to more or less control the region and had their identity coopted by Russian state for its frontier armies, which had nothing in common with original cossacks other than name.

>>64908513
>What traits does modern society select for?
Neurotypicality.

The modern society is designed for distracting neurodivergents with fads that make them more likely to isolate and otherwise remove themselves from the gene pool, so that the future generations will have higher percentage of neurotypical servile cattle that have weaker sense of justice and are more likely to just go with the flow.

>>64908462
Paul controls the Fremen, the Fremen control the spice, the spice controls the Spacing Guild, the Spacing Guild controls the galaxy.
They're a causal chain, not independent powers he wields.

>>64910398
>quite clearly a society which does nothing but fight well is not a goo society

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>ywn be bullied by Leto II's state police of space mommies
life is an endless suffering

>>64910424
>Nomads were much closer to where muscovites lived, and were already fairy tale characters in this region
Crimean Khanate existed till 1783.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean%E2%80%93Nogai_slave_raids_in_Eastern_Europe
Caucasian region tribals participated in slavery (local and trafficking to Ottoman Empire) until late 19th century when region was subdued by Russia.

Kudos to >>64909979 for citing actual evidence from the book that's the real smart shit. Also I agree with your general thesis.
>>64909923 And what he said. And that people really forget those two major facts, one not mentioned here but worth reiterating

Paul is prescient. Not as good as Leto II, but with a total ability to dictate the time and place and nature of his choosing for the wars. So he's not going to throw the Fremen into anything without being able to predict what's coming on the macro level. On top of as you said and needs emphasis
>Embargo
On top of how intertrade dependent the planets were. Think about our own globalization situation and how people get caught with their pants down without the necessary infastructure to build up their militaries. Now what if it's your macguffins for Holzman shields or lasguns or any kind of serious munitions? Since to begin with you wouldn't be farting out lots of guns and missiles unless you're an exceptional house.

And we're not considering the fact that there'd be division and loyalists to Paul on the planet, so it's not a unified front - The armchair dunning kruger monday night quarterbacking can cut both ways with interpolating shit that wasn't in the books verbatim but can be reasonably inferred.

>>64909630
I know Vegetius has the same "city slickers with their guccicus loafers and their fancy Allemannii horses" narrative in 4AD, and Israel in the decades leading up to 1948 had the Kibbutzim snubbing their noses against city faggots with their jazz clubs and ice cream bars as not being suitable for fighting. It's a common sentiment. We did see how much "xaxaxa those salo eating sissies can't fight" worked out for a certain nation.

>>64910490
>xaxaxa those salo eating sissies can't fight
That's also a really great example of the shortcomings of seeing 'tougher' selection pressures as having some kind of moral or ideological superiority. We live in developed societies because enough people over enough time decided that actually it kind of sucks to have the vast majority of a society's manpower dedicated to the task of not starving and that they'd rather their lives not be nasty, brutish and short.
Aside from life generally being more stable and secure, the biggest advantage of that is people can be useful in all sorts of ways, and in ways that never would've been reliably selected for before.
It turns out it's actually pretty useful having a whole range of people that've specialised into different tasks and become experts in different fields, tasks and fields that wouldn't have even been conceived of if everyone still had to be doing 'tough stuff' all day every day to survive. Everyone's a tough survivalist who only has time for manly men and tough guy stuff until they want to see a doctor or use a computer.

The exact same applies to selection on smaller scales, such as a military deciding the kind of people it wants and the kind of culture it wants to instill. If your primary selection criteria is looking tough in VDV music videos and putting up with the anal rape, then you're going to be fighting with a force of people mainly good at looking tough in VDV music videos and putting up with anal rape. That's a whole lot of potential cards you haven't even gotten out of the box, let alone left on the table.

>>64907216
No, they are gone

>>64910098
He types like a fag.

>>64910490
>The armchair dunning kruger monday night quarterbacking
Holy shit don't ever type again.

>>64907095
But the most important and famous example of that,the mongol conquests,happened when Mongolia got lots of rain and became less harsh.

>>64911204
this

every civilisation gets its chance to rise up. that was Mongolia's. then they lost the empire and now the place has gone back to an arid shithole. circle of life.

>>64907090
It’s a cope. Same way Japanese talk up their “fighting spirit” before rushing a machine gun nest with a handful of bullets. Less resources will get trumped by more resources.

>>64910551
Something overlooked in these conversations is that the "hard" societies usually have pretty low caps on their sustainable population because harsh climates and terrain make for poor food production. When you actually look into the culture and society of these people you frequently find they're not so much as good at fighting and pillaging as they are having a surplus population that can only support itself by stealing shit from others or fucking off to be mercenaries.

>>64911119
Nah, dumb nerd faggot pulling some "I'm going to complain and poke holes in an authors work I didn't even read but just surfed wiki pages for" are insufferable. You hacks aren't clever or smart, you're just trying to flex about how you'd write something better after smugly identifying pedantic and often inaccurate observations, but God knows you will never actually do anything but backseat bitch and kvetch like a fucking woman. Bunch of fucking bucket of crab cocksuckers is what you all are.

>>64911204
>>64911211
The Mongol Empire a pretty bad example in general. It was a highly developed state entity with a well-established bureaucracy and sophisticated logistical system.

>>64911303
not reading yuor blog bret. get yourself a real job, faggot.

>>64911204
Big request: would you mind looking up every steppe empire, from xiongnu to the last tatars and turks, doing an analysis on their starting/enabling conditions, and posting it as a thread here on /k/?

>>64907373
40gay is the Castro District of tabletop. Fantasy (not AdditionofSpacemarines, actual Warhammer Fantasy) will always be the greatest.
Fucking "scifi" spinoff for band kids who crank it to the Adapted Sisterhood or whatever "Adepta Sororitas" stands for.

>>64911440
40gay is the Niggerflix of tabletop
strictly normie central

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>>64907373
>The combat in Dune is particularly gay, at least in the likes of say 40k combat is manly men doing manly man stuff stong buff men mmmmmm men men men btw I'm not gay because I love manly men doing manly things

>>64907373
>The combat in Dune is particularly gay
Of all boards I would have thought /k/ would dislike dune the most, for this reason
Try to imagine what shieldfighting would look like
It would inevitably be "4 guys tackle 1 guy and 3 pin him down while the 4th slowly pushes a knife through his shield"
But herbert wasn't writing a hard scifi story so everybody has different power levels of magic sword fighting
>bro the sardaukar are the bestest fighters in the galaxy because their planet is so tough
>nah bro the fremen are even betterer because their planet is even tougher
>nah but the woman cult have this magical style called the weirding way which beats both of those
And there is zero reason why the fremen should even use knives, when their planet disincentivises shields - they should be expert marksmen while the offworlders scramble to rediscover marksmanship principles they've neglected for a thousand years of shield use (but that would mean the fremen couldn't jihad the rest of the galaxy where they do use shields, of course)

>>64912470
As has been mentioned the set up should incentivize formation fighting particularly something like a tercio, space-plate armor, and wrestling with big rondel daggers. Which would make it even more medieval. But just like you pointed out that wouldn't service the narrative the author wanted so he either didn't think it through or deliberately ignored the implications of the setting he created.

>>64912847
Dune is space fantasy after all. A real sci-fi would explore the ramnifications of shield-fighting, while in Dune shields are just a contrivance to set up the plot.

>>64909091
FPBP

>>64907090
Nah. Rich countries with surplus food and time that can focus on training and supplying their soldier's with top of the line equipment and weapons will always win.

think knights, training since their were children to fight and wearing the best plate armor vs your average levy.

>>64908950
>defeated the Russians so hard their empire fell apart
>defeated the British so hard their empire fell apart
>defeated the Americans so hard their empire is falling apart
Yeah Afghanistan produces awful troops.

>>64913030
>the American empire is falling apart
the nogunz said for the 40th year in a row

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>>64907090
Herbert was heavily influenced by the medieval Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun's book Muqaddimah. In it Khaldun theorizes about the rise and fall of various empires and kingdoms from warrior tribes to imperial decadence, only to be conquered by new barbarian tribes:

>Ibn Khaldun describes asabiyya as the bond of cohesion among humans in a group-forming community. The bond exists at any level of civilization, from nomadic society to states and empires.[4] Asabiyyah is strongest in the nomadic phase, and decreases as civilization advances.[4] As this declines, another more compelling asabiyyah may take its place; thus, civilizations rise and fall, and history describes these cycles as they play out.[4]

>Ibn Khaldun argued that some dynasty (or civilization) has within itself the seeds of its own downfall. He explains that ruling houses tend to emerge on the peripheries of existing empires and use the much stronger asabiyya present in their areas to their advantage, in order to bring about a change in leadership. This implies that the new rulers are at first considered 'barbarians' in comparison to the previous ones. As they establish themselves at the center of their empire, they become increasingly lax, less coordinated, disciplined and watchful, and more concerned with maintaining their new power and lifestyle. Their asabiyya dissolves into factionalism and individualism, diminishing their capacity as a political unit. Conditions are thus created wherein a new dynasty can emerge at the periphery of their control, grow strong, and effect a change in leadership, continuing the cycle.

>>64907095
Steppe nomads were still giving industrial civilizations a run for their money as late as the 1800s.

>>64909979
>what's your definition of "pastoralism"?
A lifestyle where your sustenance mainly comes from animal herds that you maintain.
>harsh times do make hard men
Except they don't. Rather, environments that aren't good for agriculture usually lead to pastoralism. And pastoralism doesn't even make "hard men", it makes "men who have better nutrition, typically better skills with ranged weapons such as bows or slings, and often skill with & supply of horses."

>>64912470
>Of all boards I would have thought /k/ would dislike dune the most, for this reason
I can accept that most authors aren't going to be super autistic about the combat and military implications of things, especially when that's not really the point. The fremen being big badasses with cool worm knives helped but the only reason paul conquered the galaxy is because he could say "I have the spice, so I'm the emperor now", the rest was all of the religious fervor he had used to lead the fremen up to that point catching up to him and going full jihad whether he wanted it to or not.

But also, just shooting the fuckers and generally taking advantage of the lack of shields and forces used to relying on them is something they did and a big reason they were able to essentially jump the empire in a dark parking lot and steal their wallet and car keys when they weren't expecting it.

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>>64907095
Nomads usually only get the drop on Civilizations when said civilization is either in chaos or experiencing instability. Most of the time settled people routinely btfo barbars, or kept them at bay at least.

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>>64912847
>As has been mentioned the set up should incentivize formation fighting particularly something like a tercio, space-plate armor, and wrestling with big rondel daggers.
Nah.

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>>64910286

>>64907090
>where does this myth of harsh land=hardy people=better soldiers come from?
It's a version of the just world fallacy. People generally want to believe that suffering has a purpose, makes you stronger, more resourceful, more capable. But the truth is that it's the opposite. What doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger, it just wounds you.
The worse your life is, the weaker you are.
Success breeds success, hardship begets hardahip.

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Do the people living in these "harsh lands" actually lead harder day-to-day lives than the sedentary farmers that they raid?

>>64913322
What's stopping literally anyone from just walking around this thing?

And yes, I know there's no argument on the other end. There's nothing stopping people who can apparently fly with no consideration of energy from just avoiding combat forever. Your 50 guys can't actually realistically defeat 10 guys unless they have more mobility than the 10 guys in Dune's rules. But what you're proposing just never works.

>>64913030
>history begins in the 1800s
American, stfu. Afghanistan got raped for 2000 years unbroken beginning with the Achaemenids

>>64913541
This is, of course, true to the extent that hardship that stops short of wounding you does make you stronger, which usually only happens in controlled environments. Like education or training.

>>64913674
nta, but cope thirdie

>>64913030
None of those empires fell apart because of Afghanistan. None.

You're a special kind of stupid. You actually thing that even IF the USSR's downfall and everything that happened to Russia after the fact was directly caused by Afghanistan, you're still wrong. Afghanistan came out worse from that conflict than post-Soviet Russia did.

>>64913695
All hardship leaves wounds, just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're not there.

>>64907216
Kek

>>64913711
No, that isn't true, you just posted a retarded trueism like it means something.

>>64913709
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan did play a major role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, just not a direct one. Also the end of the Soviet invasion was not the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

>>64913755
>The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan did play a major role in the collapse of the Soviet Union
Retard response. The Soviet Union fell for real reasons like their whole economic system being unviable. A failed invasion doesn't kill a country except in security concerns, which was never an actual concern for Cold War USSR.

By the way nobody is fooled by your whataboutism. We still all know that >>64913030 is completely wrong. No ifs, ands, or buts. Afghanistan was FUCKED UP by that war and won't recover for potentially centuries. They aren't hardened troops or some shit, they're just fucked up.

>>64913813
>nation with rapidly failing economic system wracked by shock measures to stave off collapse engages in costly, years-long war that also exacerbates already existing social tensions and opposition to the government while self-inflicting political instability within its struggling sphere of influence
>doesn't play any part in why the SU collapsed
It's like having salmonella, deciding to eat nothing but rotten food, then arguing at the Pearly Gates that doing your grocery shopping at the landfill had zero impact on you shitting yourself to death. It's like having your house collapse and blaming it entirely on your foundation shifting while ignoring the fact you knocked out several load-bearing walls. Do you understand that something can play a major role in an event while not being the inciting cause or 100% responsible or do I need to use less syllables and simpler metaphors?

>>64913911
No it isn't. You are literally arguing that something that had at best .1% of the downfall of the USSR was more than that. We're talking about a country that had real economic problems like brain drain, oil addiction, military waste that far exceeded the cost of Afghanistan, etc. Vs your story that a conflict that killed a couple thousand Soviets per year was even in the actual running. And then the country died for not one military reason but exclusively economic ones.

Idiot.

>>64914012
Less syllables and simpler metaphors it is.
>poor
>trouble paying bills
>buy high price things
>can't pay bills
>evicted
Greentexted for the hard of comprehension.

>>64914052
No. Not an argument. Anyone can do this.

>LE BONEYARD OF EMPIRES
No. It meant nothing. Not one aspect of the USSR's collapse would have changed had they never invaded. Fact.

>>64910286
Egypt never recovered from the collapse of the bronze age
Greece, as in classical Greece, is not the same as Mycenaean Greece, which never recovered from the collapse of the bronze trade and died completely. Taking nearly half a millennium to bounce back and even then it was a small party compared to it's neighbours, only note worthy thanks to it's philosophy and being conquered by Macedon.
Rome never recovered from the collapse of it's empire and became irrelevant afterwards, with the sole exception of the Pope and the Papal States.

>>64910484
>Leto will never turn to you and demand that you fuck his fish speakers because he's feeling like playing with a new variable to his eugenics program.
Why even live, my water is a waste, the desert is too good for me.

>>64907373
i really hate dune shields. i think it's a pretty gay implementation of a 'field that makes modern war impossible but allow for medieval sword combat' where the answer is 'if you shoot a laser at it you turn into a nuke'

like i like the fact that it stops anything kinetic and that herbert recognized that there was a gaping hole in his holtzmann shield because energy weapons aren't necessarily kinetic weapons, but the solution to it is just really fucking gay. like, nothing's stopping them from just building a bullet that is stopped by the shield, slowly pokes through the shield, and shoot napalm through it or something, maybe an explosive even.

fucking hate people who just fellate herbert's work that much, yeah it's good but come on man.

>>64913201
>men who have better nutrition
>better skills with ranged weapons such as bows or slings
>skill with & supply of horses
how?

>>64908381
Parthians went from illiterate nomads to ruling all of Persia. Huns were literally the strongest land power in late antiquity. Turks conquered all of Persia in the medieval era. Mongols created the largest land empire ever witnessed in history. Horse archers were the nukes of pre gunpowder warfare.

>>64909040
Explain why steppe nomads managed to conquer so many agricultural civilizations on their home turf while the only settled societies that managed to conquer the steppe societies were the US and Russia.

>>64914166
>nothing's stopping them from just building a bullet that is stopped by the shield, slowly pokes through the shield, and shoot napalm through it or something, maybe an explosive even.
On small scale, some assasins weapons allowed by rules of Kanly worked like that. It was a projectile moving slow to go through the shield, and when that's done it was shooting a poisoned needle at target. The problem was that it was easy to spot by a target and swat it away while it was pushing through a shield, or that it was innacurate if target was moving. Hence it was mainly used for covert assasinations and not in regular warfare

>>64914311
>>64914319
have you considered the question of selection bias?
i.e. steppeniggers were kept out hundreds of times, until the ones that we know of finally succeeded

for example, the Great Wall of China managed to keep out the Mongols for about a millennium until finally the Mongols broke through; and even then not because of superior tactics, but simply because China rotted from within and some dickhead let them through

>>64907090
For Frank Herbert, the writer of Dune, it was probably more the myth of the frontiersman.
Buffalo Bill slop was the original cape slop of its day.

>>64914303
Meat good. Milk good. Grain bad.

>>64914411
>Meat good. Milk good.
Other civilisations had these too, not just pastoral.
>Grain bad
The Mongols' staple crop was grain.

>>64907090
>harsh land=hardy people=better soldiers come from?
Ireland but in their case it's actually dna

>>64907090
Scotland

Steppe nomads and pastoralists were almost universally taller, stronger and healthier than agrarians. The only difference is they died more often in combat and were vulnerable to raids. The difference between blood, milk and meat and living almost entirely off grains is night and day.

It's not so much that they were strong, it's that agrarians and city dwellers were sickly and weak.

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>>64907492
>he claims the Spartans were shit, and he does this by lumping in the early first half of Sparta's existence (when they won everything) with their twilight years (where they lost everything) and concluding the Spartans only won half the time, therefore giving them an average record

And how is that wrong exactly? And where does he "lie by omission, or make nonsense arguments"? You know he's fluent in ancient Greek and Latin and so uses the actual primary sources for his arguments right?

>In another article about the gladius he makes utterly ridiculous claims about gladius and medieval sword lengths, in the face of all available archeological evidence.

What claims? Why are you being so vague? Are you just seething because he said orange man was bad or something? You can't even articulate how he's supposedly biased.

Bookfag here.
>>64907464
>warfare
Massed warfare with shields doesn't exist in Dune until Paul's jihad, and he can use his monopoly over space travel to get around any problems. I'm pretty sure in messiah he says something about burning non-compliant worlds from orbit, presumably with lasers or stoneburners. The Harkonnens invading arrakis is the only example we get of masses of shielded fighters engaging in combat, and that was a ridiculously expensive operation decades in the making that only occurred after they had been decisively outmanoeuvred politically. My point being that everything was stagnant from warfare largely being ritualized with assassinations and poisonings.
>For loose shields you could shove a micro-uzi through the shield an discharge it into your target
This sounds like gun-kata shit that'll just get you stabbed to death. The atreides soldiers are mentioned as carrying pellet pistols, but those are the slow type that take a bit to "fall" through the shield.
>You would think this would encourage spaceage plate armor and wrestling which would make the combat very medieval
There actually are a few mentions of soldiers wearing metal plates under their robes, weaving extra thick cloth in certain places to catch knives, or wearing some sort of mail/plate, but it doesn't really work. For example, halleck gets attacked by a fremen wearing armor and he just stabs him in the face instead, and Feyd is mentioned as wearing mail against Paul. By and large though the impact of armor is ignored, or assumed to be largely worthless against future tech.
>Elites can afford the best shields, armor, training and get to LARP as knights.
That's pretty much already what happens with the noble fighters that we see in the books. Paul gets the best training and tears his way through the fremen even without future sight. Feyd LARPs as a gladiator and doesn't seem to struggle even when they aren't drugged to a stupor. He would've beaten Paul without the trigger word cheat.

>>64907492
>He ignores that even in societies of warrior castes (e.g. the nobles of medieval Europe) it were the most impoverished members of that caste who primarily did the fighting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_fee

>>64914372
Good answer. That's what Chud Frank would believe.

>>64909979
>Reminder that the Fremen were being crushed, enslaved, and nearly genocided
Maybe according to the Harkonnens but the majority of the fremen were perfectly safe in the southern hemisphere where their deal with the guild and the sandstorms made them undetectable and untouchable. Sure, the north was under threat, but all the harkonnens could do was catch them out in the open or fend off raids, destroying a sietch was off the table until the war ramped up with Paul's leadership. My assumption is they figured the forever war against the Harkonnens would be rendered moot when the terra forming paid off and the planet would be rendered useless to outsiders from all the water.

>>64907411
Dog I'm gonna be real with you, the second we picked up a rock evolutionary pressure went out the fucking window

>>64914984
It took two outsiders, first Kynes, then Paul, to put the Fremen on that path in the first place
(Kynes appears to be something of a John the Baptist figure here)
>the terra forming
was Kynes's idea, which the Fremen initially disbelieved. up until that point they weren't doing shit, just being the Dune equivalent of ornery hillbilly niggers up in them thar hills
Kynes is the one who first began to make use of their "harsh environment" and change it from an instinctive industriousness to a targeted, visionary one
and after that in then took a second Imperial outsider, Paul, to essentially ditch Kynes's idea and go for the jugular instead

note that even Kynes didn't have the balls to blackmail the galaxy with an interplanetary suicide-bomb, it took Paul to think that one up

>>64915030
>It took two outsiders, first Kynes, then Paul, to put the Fremen on that path in the first place
(Kynes appears to be something of a John the Baptist figure here)
Very true. If I remember correctly there were two kynes on arrakis. Sr., who started the terra forming and died before dune, and then his son who took over afterwards and we see in the book. I think the presence of the kynes was able to ease the fremen into the idea of following a single foreign prophet that Paul stepped into with Jessica's help.

>note that even Kynes didn't have the balls to blackmail the galaxy with an interplanetary suicide-bomb, it took Paul to think that one up
I think the kynes were genuinely true believers in the fremen cause, whereas Paul clearly admired them but was far more cynical in using them for his own ends. I imagine kynes sr. as a lawrence of arabia type who went native and had his own scientific dream of being the guy who turned arrakis green, which he then syncretized into the fremen beliefs.

>>64913635
Is that.. fucking.. achilles giving hector the broly asscheeks?

Been 30 years since I read the book but once thing I recall was Paul noticing the Fremen have a lot more tech than they seem (Frictionless walls on the water resevoirs) and then confirming that they have huge populations in the deep desert, so they're mostly LARPing at being primitives

>>64914804
>https://acoup.blog/2024/01/05/collections-the-journey-of-the-roman-gladius-and-other-swords/
>With a typical length of around 75-85cm, they’re only about 10% shorter than a typical medieval arming sword (they tend to be c. 90cm total length).
Medieval arming swords tended to be 100cm total length, you can fact check this by reading Oakeshott or looking online at museums that publish dimensions of their swords e.g. royalarmouries.org. His ranges and sizes for gladii are wrong too, he downplays the variablity in lengths and shifts the averages higher/lower than they should be to support the argument he's making. This too is easily fact-checked, the number of unearthed gladii is very low.

>Sparta
If you're going to pretend not to understand the sheer duplicity in just treating the two distinct periods of Spartan history into one lump just to prove a point I have nothing more to say. An honest historian would had examined why the first half of Spartan history was successful, and why the latter half was not (an interesting subject that could had spawned a whole series of articles were he so inclined, but no doubt would be as equally dishonest were he to do so), but that would had destroyed his argument. Instead he gives no dates and contrives to give the impression that these victories and defeats were consistent and evenly dispersed in time.

For the record, I think the Spartans were shit. Their economic-social organization led to long term decline and their hyper-focus on hoplite combat was both unnecessary and lead to massive easily-exploited blind-spots in both tactical and strategic warfare. However it is undeniable that in warfare, especially ancient warfare, close social bonds and a myth of superiority and unbreakability is a massive advantage, probably one of the most important and overwhelming tactical advantages short of ambushing an unprepared army.

>>64915298
>Medieval arming swords tended to be 100cm total length, you can fact check this by reading Oakeshott or looking online at museums that publish dimensions of their swords

Why should I do your homework? You do it. You're making the claim you do the fact checks.

also,
>the spartans won 50% of the time and lost 50% of the time overall
>pointing this out is duplicitous and deceptive because... uh... it just is okay?!

Right anon.

>>64914961
There was not enough land for everybody. Given the fecundity of medieval people and the unwillingness (and lack of relevant skill) of the fighting class to step down to a lower class, landless "knights" were commonplace and outnumbered those who had a fief. The pure medieval system never really existed, and to have an army composed mostly of actual fee-holders was rare, medieval armies were always heavily supplemented with mercenaries i.e. those who served for pay and not because of feudal obligations. The poorer knights (both including those who held and didn't hold land, take your pick) were both more numerous and had no choice but to serve in order to survive. For the higher class, combat was an occasional social obligation and an honour. For the lesser class, those many poor and virtually invisible "knights" in the historical record, it was a job.

For example, the Cartae Baronum of 1166 established only around 6000 holders of knights fees, and actually deploying them all never happened. In later years (basically most of the middle and late medieval period), the feudal system was basically sidelined and shifted entirely to paying soldiers.

>>64915074
>I think the kynes were genuinely true believers in the fremen cause, whereas Paul clearly admired them but was far more cynical in using them for his own ends. I imagine kynes sr. as a lawrence of arabia type
Nigga, what? Lawrence of Arabia was a British glownigger who organized uprising in a country opposing Britain in the WWI. Much closer to what Paul did than Kynes.

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There are quite a few idiots ITT who don't realize that the failures of modern large armies to "defeat" smaller irregular forces is not a failure of the armies but a failure of national leadership to commit to winning and install an imperial government.

>>64913813
>their whole economic system being unviable.
Yes, it turns out that oil price go down is bad for a country that mainly exists as an exporter of oil.

>>64915328
For someone so belligerent, you sure don't know about the subject. Just read some Oakeshott, will you?
But since you insist, here's a typical sample of explicitly arming swords from an English-language museum:
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/object/object-142
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/object/object-30
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/object/object-108
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/object/object-30
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/object/object-20093
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/object/object-7997
https://royalarmouries.org/collection/object/object-55008

Shorter swords in common use exist of course, e.g. the degen and katzbalger, but these aren't considered as arming swords. 90cm seems to have been very close to would had been considered the edge of acceptability for an arming sword, and is no where near the average.

Anglo-saxon and "Viking" swords were typically 100cm too. I include these for the sake of completion because they fulfilled the same role and use even though the designs were different. Indeed, most designers of reproductions (I use the term very loosely here, there's a lot of garbage out there) of arming swords agree that 100cm is the average, you would be hard-pressed to find online anybody selling an arming sword smaller than around 100cm. The vast majority are 100cm. Smaller reproduction arming swords do exist of course, but are vastly outnumbered by those selling 100cm swords.

>Sparta
Yes, because if all the victories are concentrated in one half of their history, and all the defeats are concentrated in the other half, then there's clearly something going on. Pretending not to notice this (massive huge sudden discrepancy that even the most casual observer of history will notice), with not even a single comment on it, just because it doesn't support his argument is obviously dishonest.

>>64915517
Not to mention that Sparta lived coasting off Leonidas and maybe their archaic period, only to twiddle down into complete irrelevance after the peloponnese war.

>>64907142
It should be noted that this article doesn't even discuss OP's question. All those words might as well be summarized as
>Hard times might make hard men, who knows? I don't care and didn't check. But hard men don't decide wars anyway, and here's a list of big rich civilizations beating up some poor small civlizations.

>>64914694
Steppe nomads didn't leave on harsh land. They lived a life of abundance that farmcels could only dream of.

>>64915569
Labor wise intensity it maybe somewhat true.
But much harder living conditions. They basically live outdoors. Especially men who herd stocks.
Farmcels spend their life within daily walk to home with hearth, bed and hot pot of gruel cooked by wife. Farmcels basically know nothing about outdoor, survival, hiking etc
That was lifestyle advantage of nomads it provided full outdoor survival skills knowledge and training that transfers into every man is a soldier ready for campaign with knowledge and gear.

>>64915569
It's more like the low fertility of the land ironically meant that they kept most of what they produced, while the unfortunates of richer lands had to give up the product of their labor, even to the point of starvation and death.

>>64915663
Steppe nomads had their tents and yurts, or even permanent dwellings. They did move around, but the big movements were seasonal, but then they would just move their yurts with them.

>>64915705
This. well-established nomad cultures were basically snowbirds in their RVs of their era.

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>>64915705
>Steppe nomads had their tents and yurts, or even permanent dwellings.
When herding animals around far pastures men stayed outside access of their tents settlements, staying for day and night with herds living outdoors.
Similar life was for The Caucasian region pluralists that Herbert used as prototype. While they were no Nomads and lived on permanent plot of land their clan owned. But herding stocks was nomadic outdoor activity To not overgraze it means herds need to moved around, and moving them to pastures far away from home, outside comfortable daily march means herders would be living outdoor, sleeping on the ground wrapping themselves in great felt cloaks, that were their rain cloak, bed and a blanket.

>>64907179
>Yamnaya
>Some Indian tribes were decent fighters
JEET DETECTED. What you're posting is illegal in your home country. You need to be honest. Everyone can see your izzat and your filth

>>64914694
More like the weak just died or were killed in childhood by family members as to not consume rare resources.

You know why "still births" were so common back in the day? It's because the midwife or whomever just killed the baby if it came out looking wrong and then told the mother the baby was born dead.

In "civilized" society we had enough of a surplus of resources that you didn't have to kill every runty baby that came out. Besides, in cities, people had other career opportunities besides
>strong warrior
so even the physically weaker individuals could earn a living and support their family.

>>64915517
>here's a typical sample of explicitly arming swords from an English-language museum

I didn't ask for a "sample" you subliterate. I want your source. Cherry picking is not a source.

>all the victories are concentrated in one half of their history, and all the defeats are concentrated in the other half

So... a 50% victory rate overall, like Brett said. Boy he sure looks stupid now. Moron.

>>64915000
As a geologist whose undergraduate work twenty years ago was focused on macro-evolutionary trends(Biomeres) in Late Cambrian Trilobites of the Laurentian Platform I'm goin to be real with you: you don't know shit. The fact the race exists, selective pressure caused human populations to differentiate long after the first monkey bashed another's brains out with a stick.

Evolution is just the accumulation of traits within a population as a result of selective pressure, selective pressure today is functionally harsher than it has ever been. There is a common misconception that the poor and stupid are the only ones breeding when in fact that opposite is true. The poor(mostly shitskins) are effectively sterilized within a single generation of entering a modern industrial society. The socially minded portions of the middle class(libtards) are effectively sterilized. Azns everywhere no longer breed. Mudslimes and spics are below replacement rate in most of their own nations despite living in comparative squalor.

Certainly the cause seems to be hedonism and distraction of all types even abstract intellectual distractions we don't commonly consider hedonism. Remember that in the past most leisure activity was social and thus it would introduce young men and women with one another increasing the rate of contact between compatible mates. Remember than in the past society coerced them into breeding and caring for the offspring. Remember that in the past there was no option to engage in regular sexual activity(not counting sodomy ect) without the possibility of procreation. In the paleoenvironment selective pressure did not strongly apply to hedonism as it did not impinge upon fecundity; not only were ancillary distractions rare and expensive due to the material poverty but what distractions did exist where tied to familiar and community life which to an extent facilitated reproductive activity rather than interfere with it.

>>64916200
You do know that the common speculation for over a century is that Sparta's odd distribution of wealth and land started to disincentivize large families among the actual Spartans resulting in declining numbers of recruits despite the efforts of the rulers. Xenophon, the original spartaboo himself, even mentions the problem with the concentration of wealth in the hands of certain families rather than the Kings or the most martial of the Spartans. This in turn necessitated a more defensive military posture and in general ceded the initiative to the enemy who weren't passive actors either and may have also started to adapt to Sparta's particular military doctrines. It could also be that increase utilization of cavalry even merely as skirmishers began to make the traditional Greek phalanx less effective.

It's like you are comparing a pre-Marian Roman army with a post-Sulla to Caesar Roman army and a Roman Army of 200AD. These are very different bodies of men with different doctrines facing different foes.

>>64916209
you make some good points although I don't agree that
>Mudslimes and spics are below replacement rate in most of their own nations despite living in comparative squalor
they appear to be holding at the regular 2.5 kids quite well

notwithstanding that, I think you have quite a few good points and seem to have done your research so I'd like to know what you think the future holds, thanks in advance

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>>64916417
>they appear to be holding at the regular 2.5 kids quite well
I was speaking of the industrializing ones specifically not all of them as an aggregate. And of course the imported mudslimes and spics are effectively sterilized within a generation of importation to the West. I should have clarified that but I was running out of wordcount.

There is also the issue that with a few exceptions the turide birthrates are declining quickly. There are even some who claim Nigeria's birthrate is significantly lower than they claim because by claiming a larger population than the have the can get more gibs from the UN and NGOs. But I don't necessarily credence that hypotheses I just am willing to entertain it as a possibility.

Firstly be aware I my own biases, I have five kids, am a colonial blood rural white American and generally hate society. That said the only demographic which has been consistently breeding at above replacement rates for the last 70 years despite being subjected to modernity are rural right wing whites in America with a birthrate between 2.3 and 2.7 depending on how "conservative" they are as defined by the GSS. This doesn't include groups like the Amish since they are categorized outside of the liberal-conservative spectrum. I don't know if there are other populations which are similarly resistant to the current conditions because few nations collect as much demographic data as America. But that might just appeal to my own sensibilities.

Overall I'm skeptical about the chances of populations like the Amish or some hypothetical anti-modernist government reversing these trends because a single lapse is all it takes for an enforced social system to collapse. Meanwhile if you just rely on natural behavioral predispositions you only hemorrhage those vulnerable to modernity and therefore select against that trait within a given population. I think selective pressure can't be cheated and unironically billions must die childless.

>>64908656
But they control the spice, so they can cripple everyone else's logistics.

>>64916722

Declining birthrates are a self correcting issue. A stable population will eventually emerge after a transitional period.

>>64915074
>the presence of the kynes was able to ease the fremen into the idea of following a single foreign prophet
Kynes Sr is supposed to be Moses or Elijah, the one who founded the Fremen (Jews) as they are "today" when the story begins
ironically, Kynes Jr starts off being Biblical Paul, first opposing the Atreides, and then being converted himself, his Road To Damascus being the absolutely epic ornithopter flight and dinner party. masterpieces of the storytelling art.
>the kynes were genuinely true believers in the fremen cause
Yes
>whereas Paul clearly admired them but was far more cynical in using them for his own ends
Yes
Herbert makes him a false messiah
(ironically, in Children Of Dune Paul accuses the Fremen of idolising him against his will, but at that point the story is off the rails anyway so I don't give a damn much)
>which he then syncretized into the fremen beliefs
the Missionaria Protectiva did that

this is one interpretation, that Herbert is analogising the Fremen as Jews

alternatively, consider that Herbert was pretty knowledgeable about Islam, and the Fremen are obviously strongly Islamic (Al-Lat = Allah, amongst many other Arabic loanwords, including Jihad)
that would make false Paul another Prophet entirely

>>64916809
Well yeah that's what I said with fewer words. There would be various surviving populations. You could have isolated populations who are not significantly exposed to the selective pressure, though I'd say that they would be vulnerable to similar pressures in the future. There might be "libtard" populaitons who survive due to whatever specific form of social signally they are particularly addicted to empathizing fecundity. Maybe like those "family friendly" evangelical types who are behaviorally and genetically just libtards who socially signal in church like it was still 1850 instead of in some faggy commie bookstore or on twitter. And then you have the large undifferentiated mass of "I don't give a fuck" hicks who just do as they please no matter what. Since they are the largest contingent of people with triple digit IQs I suspect they will dominate. The result is likely the death of both popular and high culture, to be replaced with highly fractious "folk" cultures. Also politics as it has existed for most of human history might change since status signaling would take a backseat to open or covert murder among elites.

But yeah in absence of other strong selective pressures what is currently being selected for is either hostility or indifference towards modernity and pleasure seeking. Inherently stoic, hateful, miserable hicks will inherit the earth and genocide anybody they want for the pebbles under their feet. Maybe, hopefully, perhaps.

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>>64907179
>Even in an era of profound technological simplicity (late copper era) the Yamnaya and subsequent related cultures wiped the floor with Eurasian societies and bearly completely replaced all adult males within a few hundred years.
I understand that the herders simply had achieved herd immunity to some animal diseases while the farmers had not. They likely also brought the first wave of the plague into Europe along with those.

>>64916877
>disease which only effects the males of the farmers
I mean its possible but the halpgroup studies indicate it was good ole'fashioned conquest and rape.

>>64916855
It's deeply hilarious to me that we're apparently on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, but we still both agree that billions must die lol.

> in absence of other strong selective pressures what is currently being selected for is either hostility or indifference towards modernity and pleasure seeking. Inherently stoic, hateful, miserable hicks will inherit the earth and genocide anybody they want for the pebbles under their feet. Maybe, hopefully, perhaps.

Tho social fads are not features that get selected for by evolution. The biological traits for conforming to societal pressures are what are getting selected for.

Also, hostility towards group concensus never gets selected for unless there is a disaster that wipes out the entire population except an isolated population that happened to be elsewhere when the disaster struck. So barring a natural disaster like some turbo-COVID with 99% lethality that wipes out population centers, or an actual honest to god apocalyptic war that targets population centers, the isolated hicks will never achieve majority status. Even in the case of population collapse due to declined birthrates the correction will come before the population is totally wiped out.

>>64916937
I think I might not be defining my terms well enough or I'm not articulating everything properly, that happens you have try to cram description of a general model you've developed over decades into a few posts. I'll discard the terms libtard and hick since they aren't as descriptive as should be.

Among whites there are two general behavioral phenotypes the pro-social and the anti-social which I'll roughly define.

The pro-social have tended to be the middle class throughout history because through most of history even mild affluence was very closely tided to the ability to engage in politics and network, not that it isn't today but there are other avenues open. The evangelicals who bitch about morals, the fags who bitch about racism on twitter, the various hardline protestant sects who bitched about witches(ie we suspect you are a murderer or social problem but can't prove it), abolitionists of Victorian England, ect were all part of this general social phenotype. They define themselves by social status and signaling that status. The managerial class of today.

The anti-social tended to be the lower class in the past but sometimes became upper class off and on. These were your mercenaries, your borderers like the Scotts/Irish or ironically aren't actually Scottish or Irish for the most part, criminals who skipped down, woodsman Europe or fur traders in America, and today technical experts of all types. These people define themselves by their ability to "get shit done" or more accurately to actualize. These are mechanics, small industrialists, highly skill laborers, craftsmen, scientists more and more today, engineers, ect. Occasionally like during wars or America right now these people are more affluent in terms of disposable income than their pro-social counterparts. They do have communal life but it is a very taciturn and closed system. They are "hicks" not because they live out of town but because they don't focus on socialization.

to be contined

>>64917047
In the current environment we've established that hedonism is the primary trait being selected against and since there was little to no selection against that trait at least among the general population in the paleoenvironment it is actually pretty common though slightly less so among the anti-social. Sure some of them are drunks but they often have it under control. While the pro-social population not only is more hedonistic the current political forces encourage maladaptive behavior in general and as socially conscious organisms they tend to conform to social orthodoxy even if that orthodoxy simultaneously claims they are rebelling against another no longer existent social orthodoxy. I also include all "conservative" members of the political class in the "pro-social" category since they by necessity are people who to some extent thrive on socialization even if politically they appeal to the "anti-social" members of a population to garner their support. They in fact fight as vehemently against "far right" political forces as any communist, because they have just as much to lose.

So you have two general populations who essentially no longer interbreed with each other and haven't for over 50 years. Which is due to a combination of politicization of society, and a level of freedom of movement and association unprecedented in history which allows those who do mate to be highly selective.

As you pointed out that issue is will the "pro-social" population be able to pull out of the death spiral when their population sufficiently declines. I don't know if they will since their share of the white population has dropped from a 50/50 split among the boomer generation down to a 30/70 split among young whites today. They could just quietly die off or perhaps the current maladaptive social regime will collapse and remove at least the social pressure which reduces their fecundity. Then again China and the USSR couldn't reverse their trends so who knows.

>>64917047
>The anti-social tended to be the lower class in the past but sometimes became upper class off and on. These were your mercenaries, your borderers like the Scotts/Irish or ironically aren't actually Scottish or Irish for the most part, criminals who skipped down, woodsman Europe or fur traders in America, and today technical experts of all types.
A fundamental mistake you make is assuming that the antisocials have higher IQ on average. They do not.

True psychopathy and sociopathy, which are the main drivers of antisocial behaviour, and that are not indicative of one's IQ, are not prevalent enough in human population to form any sort of majority unless an unnatural selection pressure (even more unnatural than the big two I mentioned in an earlier post) appears.

Low IQ on the other hand manifests as antisocial behaviour, mimicking psychopathy, as low IQ people are too fucking dumb to emulate "theory of mind" when it comes to other people.

Anyway the point I was trying to make was that rural antisocial people might very well get selected for in case of a global disaster, but it won't be because they have higher than average IQ.

>>64908488
>Africa
Produced the fastest race of people on the planet
>Eskimoo
Physically built like refrigerators, developed specialized metabolism for eating raw meat all day
Doesn't necessarily create great soldiers but environmental pressures do select for special traits over time. If a culture had a "kid fight club to the death" concept eventually only the best combatants would exist

>>64917236
>A fundamental mistake you make is assuming that the antisocials have higher IQ on average
I'm not actually making that assumption. The spread that last time I looked at the data for America the mean IQ was 100 for white women, 108 for white men, 106 for white liberal men, 108 for white conservative men, 101 for liberal white women, and 99 for conservative white women.. There is the complication here that all women are more "pro-social" than all but the faggiest of men so those who respond less to social signaling may just be slightly dense. And a few IQ points means little, you need a discrepancy of 5 or so before the societal effects become obvious. It's less a matter of intellect and more one of behavioral predispositions, though visual vs verbal IQ might factor in as well.

> antisocial behavior
I was deliberately using the terms "pro-social" and "anti-social" with the "-" to disassociate them form "antisocial" as a pathology. The "anti-social" populations often display strong social connections communities and especially extended families but they aren't focused on socially signaling to those people and don't engage in social signaling to general society or care what society in general wants of them. There is an implicit assumption of conditional loyalty among a closed community or clan like structure. Conversely despite being "pro-social" populations defined as such have less strong family ties but are very active both in social signaling to strangers or state authorities and very conscious of perceived cultural consensus.

>>64917320
And you'd probably see the best results by having a highly fecund culture with abundant resources but a high washout rate. That way you aren't selecting for say tolerance of famines or resistance to parasites but just fighting.

>>64907090
I mean it is true that ability to handle physical adversity--hunger, bad weather, wounds etc--while fighting a war is an important quality for soldiers and armies that are good at it have an advantage against armies that aren't. If you hand someone a spear or a gun and a heavy backpack and tell them to slog for 20 miles a day in shitty weather conditions with inadequate food, someone from a harsh land will usually do better than someone from a city or cushy temperate farm climate.

Applying that to a modern context is kind of retarded though, we have basically solved this with modern training programs and technology. War isn't mostly just marching in bad weather with bad food and heavy gear like it used to be, and you can put a bunch of pampered dipshits through modern basic training and they will usually do okay in battle.

I think the further back in history you go, the more true this was. Read some of what the Romans wrote about their barbarian enemies, usually the further north the German barbarians came down from, the tougher they were described as being individually, though Roman logistics usually still won out at the end of the day.

>>64916898
>>64916877
>>64907179
isn't there some period in time where like only 1 in 20 men reproduced and a ton of y type DNA died off? I'm pretty sure there is a "city" for lack of a better term from that time period where there's a mass grave with evidence that the inhabitance were eating other humans and tossing their bones, minus whatever parts they were using to make cups and decorations and shit, into a mass grave.
Also the mass grave had old women, kids and men in it but lacked the bones of any woman or girl who would have been in or around peak fertility ages

>>64917363
>I'm not actually making that assumption. The spread that last time I looked at the data for America the mean IQ was 100 for white women, 108 for white men, 106 for white liberal men, 108 for white conservative men, 101 for liberal white women, and 99 for conservative white women..
You are making the assumption that
>conservative=rural+antisocial
It might be that conservatives are more likely to be rural, but it doesn't follow that rural people are more likely to have higher average IQ.

>The "anti-social" populations often display strong social connections communities and especially extended families but they aren't focused on socially signaling to those people and don't engage in social signaling to general society or care what society in general wants of them.
>There is an implicit assumption of conditional loyalty among a closed community or clan like structure.
Then it is doomed to remain a clan/tribe level thing. You can't form a majority class on a nation state level if you as an individual only care about what your direct family thinks of you.

>>64917431
>someone from a city
Ridiculous meme.
You never met a construction worker?
Maybe a brickies' labourer?

>>64916937
>It's deeply hilarious to me that we're apparently on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, but we still both agree that billions must die lol.
The Culture War is used to distract and divide the opposition faction in a Class War.

>>64907090
It's a thematic romantization of the opposite of most people's lives.

>>64916825
>one interpretation, that Herbert is analogising the Fremen as Jews
The Freman are also a mixed population of several exile cultures who had been chased out of several planets before finding a desert world nobody wanted, using it as a place to hide from generational enemies until they were forgotten about.

>>64908266
Agrarianism is inherently comfy and soft compared to nomadism
You sleep in the same place every day, you work in the same place every day, you eat in the same place every day, it's just natural to end up making it so these 3 things are as short a distance from each other as possible. Before you know it you barely move in a typical day.

>>64917637
What complete fool would think life before power tools was any less harsh than nomadic hunter gatherers.
Your brain has been filled with shite.
Go dig a hundred holes, plant 4 acre of crops, and then fell two trees with nothing but a shovel and axe. Then you can come back and tell me if they were soft 2000 years ago.

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>>64907090
>Go to war against barbarians
>Lose
>"Errmmm uhh we were uhh fighting against uhh BLOODTHIRSTY SAVAGES and uhh ummm they were all DEATH OBSESSED WARRIORS... mmkay?"
Cope is the oldest weapon of war.

>>64917577
the usurers and speculators are the ones letting the invaders in, retardo

>>64917518
>It might be that conservatives are more likely to be rural, but it doesn't follow that rural people are more likely to have higher average IQ.
Yeah but I have to work with what data I can get, I already pointed out that the politicos among self-indentified conservatives aren't anti-social by the definition I'm working with. Also there is a further complication that the lowest of the low class in rural areas actually tend to be anti-racist, irreligious, ect despite not really fitting into either categorization of anti-social or pro-social I'm using. I'm trying to be make a broadly predictive model, I've just accepted that the methodology is never going to be rigorous as I'd like. And as I said 1-2 IQ points for white men of either proclivity doesn't really matter. Behaviors are dictated by more than just IQ though it is the largest single factor. For example the IQ of spics is 86 while that of blacks is 85 yet there is a much wider discrepancy between the two populations when it comes to say the rate at which they commit violent crime. And I've also seen no difference between the IQs of urban and rural non-whites, which is why I attribute the difference to which populations of whites self-selected for urban or rural lifestyles as they arrived.

>Then it is doomed to remain a clan/tribe level thing. You can't form a majority class on a nation state level if you as an individual only care about what your direct family thinks of you.
That's always been limitation, despite probably constituting a majority of the American(only whites can be American) population prior to the 1870s these people outright refuse to politically organize. They'll covertly murder people to ensure the safety of their own county but they'd rather be tortured with a car battery than engage in politics. Individually they are on average the cruelest, most technically capable, strongest organisms. Which is why I brought it up in this tread, "best" is relative to the criteria being applied.

>>64917577
1/2 of the tope 1% that you always complain about are distinct ethnic group which maintain an insular culture equally distinct from that society in general while behaving as taste-makers for polite society always seemly for their own benefit.

And as has been pointed out culture like nearly all things is dictated by biology. There is no solidarity between say blacks and whites because they have nothing in common and essentially common interests.

>>64917709
>yet there is a much wider discrepancy between the two populations when it comes to say the rate at which they commit violent crime.
we don't actually know if this is true.
a. hispanics are often entered as white into crime stats, see the texas's most wanted meme
b. hispanics basically only ever do intraracial crimes where as blacks do a bunch of interracial crimes. if you beat, rape and/or rob an illegal, the illegal isn't going to report it for fear of being deported. asians, especially the ones who live in ethnic enclaves like chinatown were famous for only ever targeting other asians when they did crime, outside of lowlevel shit like pickpocketing or doing other scams like restaurant prices that people don't really consider crimes in the same way people think muggings are crimes

>>64917757
Fair points but isn't the discrepancy between the crime commission rate of blacks and spics greater than the crimes committed by whites(even spics who are claimed as white) in total? Thurteen du fiddy and all that.

As for the illegals, quite possible.

>>64917320
yeah but we are talking about best soldiers, not 100 m sprinters or raw seal eating champs

>>64907090
This is a very old idea, royal Mongols used to send their kids to live off rodents on the steppe after conquering China, because they feared the Chinese civilization will make them weak sissies [spoiler]it did anyway [/spoiler]

man Frank's obsession with limiting guns in his universe was always funny to me
>abduct and brainwash couple of children from some shithole where old age starts at 20
>train them
>order them to shoot laser rifles at rival house officials during ceremonies or other meetings while shouting some fremen slogans
>shield and rifles both detonate in nuclear explosion, taking everyone
>good luck sifting through nuclear ash to figure out the culprit

>>64918019
He actually went so far as to make the the magnitude of the shield/lasgun detonation random so that it wasn't always a nuke and therefore not a reliable WMD. But then every time it is shown its like a nuke going off. He could have just not had lasguns(which behave more like charged particle accelerators) but whatever.

>>64918019
>>good luck sifting through nuclear ash to figure out the culprit

They would approach lasgun WMDS the way we approach dirty bombs. Bene gesserit would be brought in and they would be able to find out the truth of the matter, and whoever thought they were a clever
>teehee who can say whose nuke this was?
gets hit by the house atomics.

>>64917650
>What complete fool would think life before power tools was any less harsh than nomadic hunter gatherers.
There's still plenty of hard work on a building site.
Though I grant you that the trend is to decrease over time as cost:productivity crosses thresholds where it becomes worth giving Juan NoHablo-NoDoco a nailgun, a forklift, a lifting exoskeleton, a Spanish-speaking construction robot that he directs to use it's integrated tools.

>>64917673
>the usurers and speculators are the ones letting the invaders in, retardo
Yeees, let the hate flow through you.
Turn on that poor, they're not even middle class like you and they're much less intelligent.

>>64918342
invaders are not human and they are in league with the ursurers and speculators

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>>64917985
>royal Mongols used to send their kids to live off rodents on the steppe
Don't knock boodog!

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>>64918348
>invaders are not human and they are in league with the ursurers and speculators
I'm ready.

>>64907532
>being this wrong about fucking everything
Wew lad.

>>64918342
>poor
Look at this fucking retard who thinks (((class))) is a thing.

>>64907464
>>64907476
>>64907486
>>64907490
>>64907501
>>64907513
>>64907532
>>64907543
>>64908286
I get it was the 1960s and this was sort of par for the course of sci-fi back then but these illustrations are goofy as fuck. Reminds me of the guy in that rubber suit in the OG Star Trek or that tin robot from lost in space. It’s like come on man, how are we supposed to take this shit seriously.

>dunc shields
>heh they make you invincible
>reality
>turn one on
>instantly blind, deaf, and suffocating/dying from heatstroke
I have a suspicion that the "lasguns" aren't lasers at all, but Holtzmann field projectors.
>also
>take a hit from a .50bmg
>shield belt starts glowing white hot and cooking into your flesh
My way of dealing with sheild users is a Aeon Flux style micro grenades that seek out shields and make it their objective to blow them the fuck up while rolling under the speed they activate. Dune is overrated trash.

>>64907216
the good times were in the 60s up until the very early 2000s. Now we're in the early satges of the bad times.

>>64917600
Funny you all mention Jews, especially when and where the show up in the later books

>>64918766
this guy pays for a 4chan pass

>>64918792
Herbert wrote Dune+Messiah as one complete whole with many distinctly identifiable analogies to the Middle East situation. Some of what he predicted actually came true (spice/petroleum interdiction).

However the later books are clearly a continuation of his own universe rather than an extrapolation of events turned into analogy. So it really doesn't matter where he put the Jews in the Dune universe afterward.

>>64918790
Yeah you're right. We are led by people born in the 60s and 70s who achieved adulthood in the 90s and enjoyed the peace dividend and prosperity of the 90s onward.

>>64918855
>thinks gen x rules
Nah, this is ALL boomer fuckery. Gen X is however, responsible for all the slop in entertainment.

>>64918855
And yet, after some 25k years, little changed with them.

>>64918855
>he thinks the GWOT was about oil
No it was about Jews, and their paranoia regarding pan-arbaism.

>>64918883
>doesn't know facts; spergs
most politicians today are in their 60s or younger, and they are just the tip of the iceberg; their subordinates, advisors, and analysts (who recommend much of what they later present to us) will be even younger.
>Vance, 41; Rubio, 54; Besset, 63; Hegseth, 45; Bondi, 60; Rollins, 53; Lutnick, 64; Turner, 54; Duffy, 54; Wright, 61; Collins, 59; Noem, 54; Gabbard, 44
>Harris, 61; Blinken, 63; Haaland, 65; Cardona, 50; Buttigieg, 44; Todman, 55; Su, 57; Walsh, 58; Raimondo, 54
up norf,
>Carney, 60; Trudeau, 54
across the pond,
>Starmer, 63; Macron, 48
I won't dig into their Cabinets here but the same holds true; most are born >1960

>>64918915
>he thinks Frank Herbert wrote Dune about the GWOT

>>64907513
He has been called out for midwit takes a few times over the years. Its more when he tries to talk about shit "out of his expertise" like modern warfare and genetics (in terms of neolithic and bronze age population changes)

>>64918951
>only focused on middle management
Oooooof

>>64919194
>Cabinet Secretaries
>middle management
Oooooof

>>64907464
>>64907476
>>64907486
>>64907490
Huh, didn't expect to see this guys art posted here. Not that Im complaining.

>>64919214
>believes that anyone under 70 is actually in control of anything
This is how we know to disregard everything you say.