A scary thing about Traviss.....

[Coiler]

I was remembering the "One Million Dollars" scene from Austin Powers and drew parallels between it and the three million clones fiasco.

Then the scary part hit me: That Dr. Evil actually behaved better than Traviss did after realizing the poor reaction to an absurdly low number brought about by a horrific misunderstanding of scale.

Let's compare them:

Dr. Evil claims an implausibly low number. When his error is explained to him by someone who knows his business, he recants and revises the number upwards by several orders of magnitude.

Traviss claims an implausibly low number. When her error is explained to her by someone who knows his business, she refuses to recant and sticks to the number, making absurd justifications that only make things worse.

Kind of scary that a parody of a deranged megalomanic villain who shows no qualms about murdering his henchmen has behaved better than Traviss, huh?

[Darth Fanboy]

Except that Dr. Evil stood to make 99.99 Billion dollars more with his claim, while Traviss stands to lose her percieved credibility (which she doesn't even really have to begin with except for Mando Fanwhores and fucktards like Dark Moose).

[Havok]

Dr. Evil also went back to the 60's and demanded 100billion dollars there as well, where he was promptly laughed at by Tim Robbins.

[Sidewinder]

Dr. Evil also went back to the 60's and demanded 100billion dollars there as well, where he was promptly laughed at by Tim Robbins.

I guess the problem was one of sci-fi's evolution. An army with three million men might seem impressive during the 50s or early 60s, but now that CNN and its like have shown us what it takes to have a REAL army able to perform multiple missions across ONE planet, we know better. Traviss was probably writing with the POV of someone from the pre-Vietnam era.

[Sriad]

Dr. Evil also went back to the 60's and demanded 100billion dollars there as well, where he was promptly laughed at by Tim Robbins.

...and got them to agree to it, don't forget.

[Jim Raynor]

Dr. Evil also went back to the 60's and demanded 100billion dollars there as well, where he was promptly laughed at by Tim Robbins.

I guess the problem was one of sci-fi's evolution. An army with three million men might seem impressive during the 50s or early 60s, but now that CNN and its like have shown us what it takes to have a REAL army able to perform multiple missions across ONE planet, we know better. Traviss was probably writing with the POV of someone from the pre-Vietnam era.

Traviss's bullshit isn't even justified by Vietnam. What were the casualties there, tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands to millions of Vietnamese? All that in one limited war fought in one small, third-world country.

Going back just a couple decades before that to WW2, individual nations were deploying armies greater than Traviss's "Grand" Army of the Republic.

The most insulting and retarded part of all this is that Traviss was a defense correspondent who prided herself on knowing her shit about the military. And in 2005-2006, while she was writing most of her "3 million" justifications based on bullshit special forces wank, thousands of American soldiers had already died without securing Iraq because they just didn't have the numbers.

Traviss's military writing isn't the POV of Vietnam. It's pure 1990s "push button," "shock and awe" fantasy wank.

[QuentinGeorge]

I'm pretty sure even in World War I the Germans and Russians both fielded over 10 million soldiers.

Ah yes, here we go. Germans had 11 million, Russians 12 million.

Now wonder why a galaxy where a single planet has over a thousand times earth's population can only field an army one quarter of the size of WWI Russia, which at the time was a poor country.

Australia, a country of 6 million, was able to field 400,000 troops....

Let's go further. In the Napoleonic Wars, the French Empire fielded 1.2 million soldiers, the Austrians a similar number and the British Empire has 700,000 men under arms.

And that was 300 years ago!

[Darth Raptor]

But the GAR is made up of Mandos!! Just one clone trooper is worth about eleventy octillion normal dudes!!

[TC Pilot]

And that was 300 years ago!

Try again.

[NecronLord]

I guess the problem was one of sci-fi's evolution. An army with three million men might seem impressive during the 50s or early 60s,

Not really. Good writers comprehend scale, bad writers do not. Try the Lensman series by E.E.Smith Ph.D, one of the various influences on Star Wars. It has millions, billions even, of Jedi Knight analogues. Millions, billions, even of warships assembled for single battles. Entire planets being destroyed or even shot through hyperspace as projectiles. Written mostly in the 50s.

[Swindle1984]

Russia fielded 1,500,000 men in the Winter War of 1939.

In World War I, the following troops were fielded:

Russia: 12,000,000
United Kingdom: 6,200,000
United States: 4,355,000
Italy: 5,615,000
France: 8,410,000
India: 1,440,437

Those are just the nations who fielded an excess of one million troops. In total, the Allies had 42,243,214 troops. I couldn't find numbers for the central powers.

Allied casualties:

Military dead: 5,525,000
Military wounded: 12,831,500
Military missing: 4,121,000

Central casualties:

Military dead: 4,386,000
Military wounded: 8,388,000
Military missing: 3,629,000

That's a single conflict on a single planet that took place mostly in Europe, with a little spill-over into Asia and Africa.

In WWII, which was a lot more global than WWI, the US fielded over 11 million troops.

Allied casualties:

Military dead:
Over 14,000,000
Civilian dead:
Over 36,000,000
Total dead:
Over 50,000,000

Axis casualties:

Military dead:
Over 8,000,000
Civilian dead:
Over 4,000,000
Total dead
Over 12,000,000

In the Vietnam war, we had 2.3 million troops fielded.That was a conflict between two nations on one planet. Our current military has over 766,000 troops.

So, yeah, an army of only three million soldiers taking place in an entire galaxy that is larger than our own, with millions of inhabited worlds that have populations several orders of magnitude greater than ours, is perfectly reasonable. Uh-huh.

[Darth Hoth]

An army of 2.3 million fielded in Viet Nam? Would that not rather be the total number of draftees that passed through the conflict? I never studied that war in all that much detail, but as I remember it, peak American strength at any one time was slightly in excess of half a million, in 1968 when the Tet Offensive was launched. After that, the scaling-down began.

[Teleros]

Try the Lensman series by E.E.Smith Ph.D, one of the various influences on Star Wars. It has millions, billions even, of Jedi Knight analogues. Millions, billions, even of warships assembled for single battles. Entire planets being destroyed or even shot through hyperspace as projectiles.

I'm in the middle of going through the books like Connor's been doing for 40k (well, when I'm not doing Uni-related stuff... or on WoW ), and some of the numbers are downright huge. Pity Doc Smith isn't around to do books for the EU, because it'd be a laugh to see him and Traviss writing for the same universe.

[thejester]

An army of 2.3 million fielded in Viet Nam? Would that not rather be the total number of draftees that passed through the conflict? I never studied that war in all that much detail, but as I remember it, peak American strength at any one time was slightly in excess of half a million, in 1968 when the Tet Offensive was launched. After that, the scaling-down began.

Presumably he means over a ~10 year period. Most only served one year in country so in any one year hundreds of thousands of new troops arrived in theatre.

[Swindle1984]

An army of 2.3 million fielded in Viet Nam? Would that not rather be the total number of draftees that passed through the conflict? I never studied that war in all that much detail, but as I remember it, peak American strength at any one time was slightly in excess of half a million, in 1968 when the Tet Offensive was launched. After that, the scaling-down began.

Presumably he means over a ~10 year period. Most only served one year in country so in any one year hundreds of thousands of new troops arrived in theatre.

Correct. Total, not at any given time.

[Ohma]

Not really. Good writers comprehend scale, bad writers do not. Try the Lensman series by E.E.Smith Ph.D, one of the various influences on Star Wars. It has millions, billions even, of Jedi Knight analogues. Millions, billions, even of warships assembled for single battles. Entire planets being destroyed or even shot through hyperspace as projectiles. Written mostly in the 50s.

Thirties and forties actually, Galactic Patrol was started in 1937. (technically earlier since Triplanetary is from 1934, but since it was re-written later to fit into Lensman continuity I didn't count it)

[Maxentius]

Even ancient sources piss all over her numbers. The Roman Republic suffered casualties amounting to one-sixth the total strength of the Grand Army of the Republic during the Second Punic War. For the record, I tallied that from memory, as I don't have my hardcopy sources at the moment. It's probably a little liberal.

[Darth Wong]

Traviss' mistake is not due to era: it is due to laziness and pride. She just didn't bother reasoning it out very well, and her stubborn pride kept her from conceding error when she was called on it. You could call up a general from Napoleon's time, ask him how many soldiers he would need to fight wars over a thousand worlds like Earth, and he would promptly generate a gigantic number.

[Ender]

Surlethe make the rater accurate point - you need to scale everything in SW up by a factor of 2 billion from how you would do things on earth.

[Maxentius]

Her obvious obsession with the term "journo" is a little disturbing, frankly. I'm not sure if it's even stubborn pride; her excessive citing of her "military journalist" 'credentials' and the way she throws around rather vapid lingo makes me think she actually believes that she's correct.

[NecronLord]

I'm in the middle of going through the books like Connor's been doing for 40k (well, when I'm not doing Uni-related stuff... or on WoW ), and some of the numbers are downright huge. Pity Doc Smith isn't around to do books for the EU, because it'd be a laugh to see him and Traviss writing for the same universe.

Heh. I think she'd actually try to kill him. Rip his trachea out.

Thirties and forties actually, Galactic Patrol was started in 1937. (technically earlier since Triplanetary is from 1934, but since it was re-written later to fit into Lensman continuity I didn't count it)

Well... Thirties and fifties; in that First Lensman, Gray Lensman and Children of the Lens were both 50s, and the rest were published in the thirties and late 40s (he was busy with the war in the first part of the 40s, AFAIK).

Her obvious obsession with the term "journo" is a little disturbing, frankly. I'm not sure if it's even stubborn pride; her excessive citing of her "military journalist" 'credentials' and the way she throws around rather vapid lingo makes me think she actually believes that she's correct.

Here's the thing I don't get. Surely being a good 'journo' at best means you have no skill in generating numbers for such occasions. You should seek to accurately convey information provided to you by a more qualified authority. So in fact, it has no relevance to her blustering in this regard about her 'expert knowledge' because her 'expert knowledge' consists almost entirely of framing information for public consumption.

It's not like she's a former logistics officer or something relevant.

[Maxentius]

It's not like she's a former logistics officer or something relevant.

Apparently, she thinks she is. Wasn't there that one character, a glorified accountant, that's apparently qualified to debunk battledroid production levels with off-the-cuff analysis? I doubt my accountant could break down the scale of M4 carbines produced in the United States by materials involved and volume, to use a somewhat similar analogy.

[TC Pilot]

Even ancient sources piss all over her numbers. The Roman Republic suffered casualties amounting to one-sixth the total strength of the Grand Army of the Republic during the Second Punic War. For the record, I tallied that from memory, as I don't have my hardcopy sources at the moment. It's probably a little liberal.

Probably, as battle casualties often varied wildly from contemporary source to source. Numbers weren't as important as impressing scale on the reader was, though major battles throughout Antiquity boasted numbers and casualties reaching the tens of thousands easily.

Just to give some context, the Roman Empire boasted a standing army of approximately 500,000 soldiers, divided between regular legionaries and auxilaries during the Principate.

[Master of Ossus]

It's not like she's a former logistics officer or something relevant.

Apparently, she thinks she is. Wasn't there that one character, a glorified accountant, that's apparently qualified to debunk battledroid production levels with off-the-cuff analysis? I doubt my accountant could break down the scale of M4 carbines produced in the United States by materials involved and volume, to use a somewhat similar analogy.

Sad thing about that was that she didn't even bother to finish her calculations! Had she gone even that far, she should have been able to quickly determine that the figure generated was easily within SW industrial capabilities. She just ASSUMED that the figure would support her claims, as if none of her critics had fully evaluated the figures they were claiming, and then presented her (incomplete) calculations as if they constituted a devastating rebuttal of their arguments.

[Maxentius]

Probably, as battle casualties often varied wildly from contemporary source to source. Numbers weren't as important as impressing scale on the reader was, though major battles throughout Antiquity boasted numbers and casualties reaching the tens of thousands easily.

Just to give some context, the Roman Empire boasted a standing army of approximately 500,000 soldiers, divided between regular legionaries and auxilaries during the Principate.

Lake Trasimene, Trebia, and Cannae alone amount to something close to 100,000 casualties, possibly 150,000 as an upper limit. Roman losses at Geronium, while actual numbers elude me at the moment, were incredibly heavy, from an army composed of four legions. The Battle of the Silarus saw the destruction of almost the entire army commanded by M. Centenius Penula. Later in the year, another army under the command of Gn. Fulvius, though probably somewhat smaller (but still in the realm of 20,000 men, IIRC) was likewise destroyed at Herdonia. Second Herdonia, two years later, was pretty much a repeat of the first battle.

While 500,000 Roman casualties over the course of a war which lasted seventeen years may be something of a stretch, they were certainly grievous, easily exceeding 200,000. And this is from a state that composed nothing more than most of Italy, Sicily, and Corsica and Sardinia.