jrs100000

No, the first course of action would be to stop the fire.

Link just doesnt realize he is the girlfriend now.

Well it looks like one of the SU-57s is already down, so the odds are looking better for Cessna!

No even a former colleague, Sisko was the guy he used to bully in school.

Plenty of people with moderate views are passionate about politics and love to talk about it. Its just that they talk about boring stuff like policy positions and numbers.

Should have let that one live.

Well Bones didn’t appear in the pilot or first episode of TOS, so I dont think well get more than a cameo if he shows up at all.

It was vaguely implied several times throughout the series that the ships computer, or at least the holodecks, were more alive than anyone knew/acknowledged. Lots of strange stuff happened in there. I always assumed it had something to do with the modifications made by the Binars.

Well she was obviously making an excuse to be there and everyone in the room knew it. Id guess the security clearance was something like manually verifying his identity and registering him with the computer as part of the command staff. This would normally be the sort of boring paperwork the computer or a lower level security person does off screen, but she wanted an excuse to be there and the clearance was technically something she was responsible for.

It sounds like the issue was that the two primary female characters in TNG were the doctor and the counselor. Whenever the two of them talked professionally it was probably going to be about a patient, and there was a good chance the patient would be male. For VOY, when the captain and chief engineer communicate professionally it would usually be about a piece of machinery, which would of course not be male.

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North Korea is quite poor. They ave a GDP per capita of around 1700 USD, and that has likely been shrinking steadily year over year since the Soviet Union collapsed. They have an extremely militarized economy, devoting perhapse 1/5 to 1/4 of their entire GDP to the military (for reference, the US is at about 3% and Russia is at about 5% right now in the middle of a punishing war). To come up with hard currency for their missile and nuclear programs they have focused on illicit programs including counterfeiting, drug production and trafficking their own population.

Their military is also massive for their population, with roughly 1 million active duty troops and perhaps 3 million more in reserve. This military has two primary missions: to keep the current leader in power and to reunify the Korean peninsula under north Korean rule by force. To accomplish this they maintain a strategic stockpile of supplies sufficient to support their active duty military for at least six months of high intensity combat. These supplies are kept in an extensive network of tunnels and bunkers that have been constructed throughout the country. North Korean doctrine imagines an extremely high intensity conflict that is likely more intense than anything we have seen Russia perform in Ukraine, outside of perhaps a Wagner suicide charge. The amount of food, weapons, supplies, fuel and munitions required to support a force this large for six months in an intensive offensive is enormous. When you consider the poor state of their economy and the poverty that most north Koreans live in its absolutely staggering.

Now during the 90s north Korea suffered from two catastrophic disasters. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union, cutting off most of the foreign aid that had propped up their economy and supplied their military. This led to a collapse of their industrial base and starting the trend of year over year GDP decline that continues to this day. The second disaster was the North Korean Famine. This famine lasted throughout the mid and late 90s and resulted in the deaths of a significant percentage of their population. Exactly how bad things were is a closely held state secret. We know that people were trying to eat grass and tree bark. There were rumors that people were digging up freshly buried corpses and children and old people were going missing, but I couldnt say if that was common or even if it was true at all. The famine was finally ended with a steady supply of international food aid. This solution was a thin cover for the fact that their agricultural capacity has still not recovered to this day.

North Korea does manufacture arms and munitions for export. However, the quantity these weapons are available in would be on a scale suitable to arm your standard warlord on a tight budget, but not nearly enough to backstop a full scale mechanized conflict. If they are supplying at a significant level it means they are taking weapons and munitions from front line units (which they would never do), or they are dipping into their reserves. Now, north Korea does genuinely support Russia and it is very much in their interest that Russia not collapse again. However, considering the extreme hardships they have endured without touching those strategic reserves, I find it implausible that they are doing so now. I believe that this is actually an equipment swap, where they dig out crates of old supplies from their bunkers and swap them out with brand new supplies from China. I dont have any evidence to back that part up, its just a hunch.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

I would need to see sources for that. As far as I am aware the Roman legions primarily manufactured their own weapons and numerous weapons making factory sites have been unearthed in Italy. And the M17 is made by Sig Sauer, Inc, a US spin off company headquartered New Hampshire and manufacturing in the US

In past civilization collapses, it hasn’t been the death toll that’s done it; it’s been a breakdown of security that causes trade to collapse. For example, people didn’t forget how to make Roman concrete when the Western Roman Empire collapsed. It just became impossible to get the necessary ingredients from scattered locations all over the former empire, so people gave up the technology. Likewise, people aren’t going to forget how to make modern firearms after an apocalypse, but without access to industrial chemicals, they’ll soon be reduced to black powder, and after modern metal alloys rust away, they may decide that swords and spears are safer and more practical.

If security and infrastructure stay intact, we’ll probably bounce back from just about any level of population loss, just like Europe did after the various plagues. If security and infrastructure fail, the society crumbles, like the South American Empires did after the arrival of the Spanish.

North Korea has been painstakingly hoarding military supplies for generations. While their people starve and freeze they stuff tunnels and caves full of food and clothing. While their industry crumbles they pry up train tracks to melt down into artillery shells. They have their own soldiers train in cheap tennis shoes so boots can be saved for war. What would make them dip into these precious stockpiles that are so important to their security that everything else can be sacrificed to preserve them? My guess is its pretty simple. Russia sends oil to China, China sends new munitions and uniforms to NK, NK sends old stockpiles to Russia. Russia gets their supplies and China keeps their hands clean.

Take a look at the copyright date on the comic. This was right at the time when tape recording, not just playback, devices were becoming common.

NK doesnt have a significant textile industry. They get their uniforms from China, like everyone else.

Yes. In the 80s.

Tape recorders were common in studios and high end home audio systems by the 70s. They were not common in the average household until the 80s. In particular, equipment that could both record and play back audio tape was expensive and uncommon in a home setting until the mid 80s.