RogueIce wrote:
You know, I could see young Shepnukistani men (and women, depending on how integrated his armed forces are) joining the military and volunteering for the East Neverhood occupation forces, just for the chance to try and desert to cross MESS lines.
You don't need to look any further than all the USSR escape attempts for inspiraton. Of course, East Neverhoodian units will probably be sanitized with secret police to prevent just such an occurence, but the short distances here provide another convenient escape point.
Airplanes
I mean, air force pilots are a strange bunch in that you can't have barely literate peasants operating such complicated machinery ; They've got to be smart and resourceful.
And get this: In the USSR, an air force pilots enjoyed pretty decent living. A car, an apartment, a summer dacha - you could easily have it all.
But still, there was a guy who hijacked a Mig-29 and crash-landed it in Japan because he wanted to get out of there so much he risked crashing it into the ocean along the way.
God knows how many of these guys actually thought about such an attempt, but never undertook it because of the great distances involved. But if you're flying a CAP above Shepnukistan or Saddamistan, if you slam the afterburner, you can be over a free country within minutes. Even if UAR air defence units have oders to immediately shoot down any airplane diverting even slightly from the flight plan, it's entire possible to eject over Shepnukistan and splash down in, say, Canissian territorial waters.
Then there's boats, and ballons, and undeground tunnels, and cut-down convertibles and...
Hey, we should have an international incident over a defector