where does this myth of harsh land=hardy people=better soldiers come from? evidently many writers and authors either liked the idea or genuinely believed in it. which at this point begs the question: were there really cases in history in which a harsh environment created superior warriors?
History when steppe nomads crushed agrarian societies. Once agrarian societies advanced past a point the discipline and technology advantage outcompeted any natural hardiness.
>>64907090Afghanistan
>>64907095That's about right, logistics trumps all.There's a good writeup you can find by googling "The Fremen Mirage"
>>64907142>logistics trumps allIsn't that what Paul brought them ? Organization on a large scale. The only reason they won.
>>64907095FPBP. 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.
>>64907090reading through romance of the three kingdoms and realizing the best warriors happened to often be from the frontier
>>64907151yeah
Good times create weak men
>>64907090Gurkha
>>64907200literally only works in alt right memes.
>>64907200are the good times in the room with us?
>>64907090Because generaly speaking its true, as long as they aren't to the point of malnutritionBut this only really applies to conscript armies, any decently trained army will beat the confort out of you in basic
>>64907192now post the outcome
>>64907255al 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.
>>64907090>were there really cases in history in which a harsh environment created superior warriorsAll 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.
>>64907343Another 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?
>>64907255He 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>>64907200The 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
>>64907373The 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.
>>64907456It'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>>64907179Part 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.
>>64907476
>>64907142Not 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?
>>64907492I 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?
>>64907151Judging 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?
>>64907492It 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.
>>64907513Yes. 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.
>>64907090It'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.
>>64907516I 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.
>>64907532Yeah, 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.
>>64907255The outcome doesn't really matter from the perspective of yhe OP, thougheverbeit
>>64907090There’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.
>>64907717herbert 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.
>>64907717The 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.
>>64907762Frankly 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.
>>64907178Not 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).
>>64907090Romanticization. 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
>>64907090Romanticizing 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.
>>64907090The 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.
>>64907090how many times has somebody tried to stop the afghans fucking goats?
>>64907151you 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.
>>64907342This. 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.
>>64907095So what about agrarian societies living in harsh conditions?
>>64907762Pretty 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 rotThis 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>>64907280the goat fucking will continue. the banning women from reading will continue
>>64907503when? was it real inside your mind?
>>64907090Fuck 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.
>>64908315Logically 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.
>>64908381Well 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>>64908315This 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. >>64908381The Mongols couldn't even take a single European stone fortification, not one even during the second attempt. >>64908385Also 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.
>>64908406>then again my family are entirely Cavaliers and LandsknechtsShit 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.
>>64908385Dune 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 steppefagThe xiongnu were steppefagsThe mongols and their successors were steppefagsThe turks started as steppefagsThe kipchaks were steppefagsThe magyars were steppefagsThe bulgars were steppefagsThe hepthalites were steppefagsThe parthians were steppefagsTimur was a steppefagThere 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 himMaybe I'm missing the sarcasm but that's literally what happens in the book
>>64908454Yes, 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
>>64908478I 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.
>>64907090Let's go through the harshest lands.>Africa>Middle East>Eskimoo landThe answer appears to be no.
>>64908488To 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.
>>64907411What traits does modern society select for? Resistance to endocrine disruption?
>>64908513Not 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.
>>64908513Society 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.
>>64908513Impulsivity, 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.
>>64908485What a chad
>>64908485>>64908546this was apparently pretty common. a bunch of hessians didn't go back
>>64908513>societySame thing as always, obedience
>>64907464Bruh. 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.
>>64908286The Sardaukar are basically the VDV, they think they're hot shit but get mulched at the first sign of real resistance.
>>64907090Harsh 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.
>>64907178He 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.
>>64907203The 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 historyI 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.
>>64907090When 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
>>64907137Terrible soldiers through most of history. Their Iranian/Yuezhi/Saka cousins mogged them repeatedly until the Turks took over the job
>>64908625two 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 historyThey literally weren't. The strong Afghanistan meme didn't even start until the Great Game.
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.
>>64908644The 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.
>>64907090It'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
>>64908513Pretty 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.
>>64909101It'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?Herodotushttp://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.
>>64909191the 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>HeinleinPlease 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.
>>64909189>using Russians a model of the military competency of anybody who isn't russianClassic 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.
>>64907095There 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.
>>64907142Bret Devereaux is more right than most, but he isn't right about everything>>64907343Also harshness is relative and may be more than physicalE.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 issueHe's not>>64907090You 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.
>>64908859For the reasons I alluded to, yes.Soldiers measurably but not infinitely better at rugged survival is not the deciding factor in a campaign.>>64908976All mountainous regions with any white admixture produced above average mercenaries for all of human history.
>>64907090Look at the liberal city "men"vsRural men.One of them thinks they are becoming a women and wants to be seen as such.
>>64909595American 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
>>64907090War 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.
>>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
>>64908656Yeah, 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.
>>64907090Idealisation 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.
>>64907095tbqh 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.
>>64907090The explicit testimony of commanders with regard to Berber, Manchurian, and Gorkha troops at various points in time.
>>64909952>Berber, ManchurianNot harsh lands.
>>64909968The 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 powerThe 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 qualitywhat'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>>64907090Reminder that the Fremen were being crushed, enslaved, and nearly genocided if not for Paul teaching them to forget some of their savage waysonly 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 effortit 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 amountsthe 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
>>64909973Besides 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.
>>64909984There 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.
>>64909992Berber 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.
>>64910003The 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.
>>64909998Herb was a war photographer in the PTO, he probably admired the men he watched go into combat
>>64907456>>64907476Bret Devereaux is an actual historian of ancient and medieval warfare. His stuff on LotR is very good. >>64907481I 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.
>>64908443Freemen 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
>>64908454Om the other hand we have crusaders and Conquistadors coming out from comfortable noble's homes
