Warfare in the Avatar-verse.

I was thinking, for anyone here who is an expert in military tactics, strategy, and logistics, how would bending be incorporated into a modern-type (or at least, World War 2, military?).

Do you mean Avatar The Last Airbender or James Cameron's Avatar?

Bending implies the former.

I think the impact of benders in a modern...ish war would depend greatly on the existence of firearms in the Avatar-verse. Did someone finally get creative enough and invented guns?

For reference, by the time of Avatar Korra, the world already has access to warships, airships, submarines, air-planes, torpedoes, aerial bombs, naval mines, tanks and mecha tanks, and several short-range weapons (electrified gloves, electrified kali sticks, etc.).

It would be required training for all enlisted personnel, but would have absolutely no bearing whatsoever in any modern battle between two armies, as the range at which wars are fought has increased to intercontinental.

The key word there being 'modern'. An occupation force will find 'bending' useful (the higher-ups and politicians back home will enjoy fighting a war that doesn't necessitate short- to medium-range bullets or explosives), and the resistance to that force will find it useful as well. The occasional severely warped soldiers who come home to a disconcertingly quiet land will also find it useful, to lash out or sell their skills to some similar program.

In short, bending would become the equivalent of law enforcement-grade pepper spray in the face of college students, an inexpensive and ideally non-lethal means of controlling the unskilled masses. It will be in the hands of white power militias, terrorists, mobs, the Girl Scouts, criminals, drug dealers - and there will be no peace or justice for non-bending civilians except at the point of a high-powered firearm.

How many catastrophes would be perpetrated in the Avatar-verse, for every crazed white mass-murderer incident in the real one?

I don't really see a difference between the modern Avatar-verse and Metal Gear Solid, to tell the truth. Or Votoms. (...wow I'm dark tonight. Geez. Someone mind doing a lighter take on this?)

( Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight. Guns are terrible melee-range weapons. A bender could adequately counter them with an element-relevant smokescreen of sorts, then disarm once they've closed the distance.)

edited 13th Oct '14 8:52:20 PM by DeusDenuo

I think that, for whatever reason, the creators of At LA and Lo K are going NOT to allow firearms, because of the heavy emphasis on martial arts in the series.

I think that a big problem is the question of how widespread bending is. Is bending a recessive genetic trait? Is it a talent like any other? How long does it take to become proficient enough to use in combat? From what we've seen in the series, the majority of people are not benders and cannot become benders. If so, then modern militaries aren't going to see widespread use for it. Modern militaries operate a lot like bureaucracies, in that most jobs are designed so that, ideally, anyone could learn to do them. Guns are useful because virtually any average citizen could use them. Bending, on the other hand, is something that only the really talented have any hope of using.

Plus, there's the old saying, "God created man, but Samuel Colt made them equal". Guns are a hell of an equalizer. Even Bruce Lee himself admitted that the whole martial arts wuxia idea only worked in pre-firearm societies, because in modern-day times, a guy with a gun is, baring luck or stupidity, going to win.

edited 13th Oct '14 8:35:18 PM by Coinage

Whoops. Somehow I missed the mention of bending in the last bit.

There HAS to be some sort of Geneva Convention equivalent for all the Fridge Horror inherent in all four styles of bending. Like, is instant-suffocation okay in REALLY DIRE circumstances, like if a firebender's about to instant-cremate you without provocation? Or would both of you be posthumously charged for war-crimes against each other?

And for "sucking the water out of plants," would intentional use of that on crops be a reversed form of scorched-earth tactics?

Hell, would the discovery of Not-Energybending to get rid of a bender's powers spark a Geneva Convention equivalent in itself? I mean, Amon used that shit on presumably civilian benders, and nearly all of them had NOTHING TO DO with the Equalizer movement. That's not okay on so many levels.

This just raises so many questions.

edited 13th Oct '14 9:24:37 PM by Sharysa

I thought this was going to be about the James Cameron-verse

Still the bender verse, is cool too.

On the matter Fantasy Gun Control, while having fire arms being developed as they did in the real world would make a lot of the non bending martial arts obsolete. Maybe instead of fire arms being refined some sort of 'bending weapons' could take their place?

Guns wouldn't be the death knell of benders, but definitely steal their thunder as the principle means of warfare. The gun is simply too easy to use and too deadly to ignore. That being said, benders would be useful in World war one and two style warfare as specialists.

Fire benders are walking flamethrowers without all the limitations of flamethrowers (i.e. limited ammo, bulky, prone to detonation, etc.). Earth benders would be essential battlefield engineers, capable of demolishing earthened structures, form fortified positions, or dig sizable tunnels with a literal wave of the hand. Air benders would make excellent scouts, being fast, air mobile, and able to operate anywhere people can breath (except, maybe, underwater). And water benders? The ability to reliably tread life threatening wounds would be a boon to any army that has them.

In all honesty, I think metal benders would be the most terrifying to face. Especially if you're in a tank. Surrounded by metal.

Note that it is possible in the Korra era to produce metal armor that's immune to metalbending. More relevant in this situation would be an earthbender's ability to simply drop the tank into a hole, or jam its treads with rock spikes...a mobility kill still counts as a win, and as an added bonus you might even get to capture the tank intact. Modern tanks in the Avatarverse would have to be constructed very differently from the ones we know to avoid becoming easy prey to earthbenders. In fact, this is one of the few situations in which walking tanks (like the various mecha from the Korra series) actually make a bit of sense.

Benders wouldn't really work as the bulk of a modern army, but in specialist roles they'd act as serious force multipliers. Combat engineers and medics have already been mentioned, and both would have a dramatic impact.

Oh, and consider the scouting potential of a bender with Jinora's astral projection trick. Or just the effect bending would have on asymmetric warfare.

I figure benders would have a similar role in the military as mages do in Shadowrun: Specialists, attached one or two per platoon to regular units or at the squad level to special forces.

I'm not sure they would be confined to be specialists.

Remember, the advent of industrial warfare also brings about the advent of standardized, scientifically informed training. Bending techniques would be scientifically scrutizined, and ways to produce more powerful benders would quickly be seized upon by the various nations.

For instance, we know that lava-bending is an extraordinarily powerful form of earthbending. Ghazan was able to wipe out an entire city by generating a volcano. In essence, Ghazan was a person of mass destruction. Nations with earthbenders would intensely study lavabending and lavabenders so that they could find ways of training more lavabenders.

In addition, we know that spirituality is a key component in determining the frequency of benders. The entire Air Nation was composed of benders because of their focus on spirituality. Therefore, I suspect that militaries, as well as state education systems, would seek to maximize their students/recruits exposure to, and successful negotiation with, spirits.

Plus, guns are a single-use tool: they kill people, that's it. Bending affords far greater tactical, strategic, and logistical flexibility.

I should note that technically, firebenders as living flamethrowers ARE limited. Firebenders still need food, rest, are at least semi-limited to 1) emotional state, and 2) however far they can shoot fireballs or flame-whips. Fire needs propulsion to work at range, and an exhausted firebender would have considerably less range than a bender at full strength.

Plus, damaging a firebender's morale is even worse than damaging another bender's morale because their metaphorical "fire" (drive/motivation/goals) is the source of their literal fire. Notice how Zuko, the Crown Prince and an extremely powerful bender, completely lost his mojo after he joined the Gaang and lost his primary motivation for firebending (capturing the Avatar to regain his honor).

You break a firebender's morale, you've pretty much won the fight unless they can get their drive back in the minutes/hours/weeks it takes to get it back. Psychological warfare would be a key aspect in winning against the Fire Nation.

edited 14th Oct '14 11:48:27 AM by Sharysa

We also cannot forget energybending. After all, we all see how Korra was able to use energy-bending to become a giant kaiju. I imagine that the various nations will be funding all sorts of researching into weaponising energybending and forming their own giant kaiju.

In adddition, we know that spirits can be influenced by highly spiritual people. We see this in Book 2: Spirits, when Unalaq successfully turned spirits dark and directed them at his own command. With the spirit portals opened, and spirits all over the world.

Therefore, I suspect that the various nations would have their own kaiju. Similar to how in Naruto, different nations have control over different kaiju. These would probably be considered weapons of mass destruction, and they would probably work to deter mass scale wars much as how nuclear weapons have deterred mass scale wars today.

Please note that bending has more severe range restrictions than bows. It's very rare for bending distance to exceed more than, say 50 meters or so. This is well within the range of arrows much less guns.

So far, only the Avatar and the Lion-Turtles have been capable of performing Energybending. Likewise, only Korra and Unalaq have become "kaijus" and both were possessed by two very powerful spirits, Raava and Vaatu, respectively.

As for Spirits, given the fact that they're sentient, I would consider them wild cards in any major conflict in the Avatar-verse. They've been hostile to humans who harmed the environment before (Hei Bai) and those who try to "use" them for warfare (Wan Shi Tong), so I think it's far more likely for the spirits to oppose humanity in a World War.

Edited: I forgot Aang also turned into a Kaiju during the Siege of the North but, as with Korra, he was the Avatar AND he merged with another powerful spirit (La, the Ocean).

edited 14th Oct '14 3:26:10 PM by Lorsty

Technically, Korra was not fused with Raava during her kaiju faze. Unalaq had ripped Raava out of her right before.

Touché, my good sir.

Either way, while I think your point of using (abusing) benders as Person of Mass Destruction is "viable", I believe they could prove to be unreliable because of the human factor. I should note that, despite being rather optimistic with the things I write, I do take a rather cynic stance with the Super-Soldier and similar (even if only in spirit) tropes.

Now, even if the Kaijus and special bending techniques were allowed (if lavabending then bloodbending), I think it's safe to assume that the militaries/nations of the world would create a counter-measure either by using other benders or using non-bender technology to remove the human factor and thus, in a way, create a better version of what they're trying to counter in the first place.

edited 15th Oct '14 6:42:25 PM by Lorsty

Interesting idea, however one must remember that the most advanced computer in existence (at this moment at least) would be the human brain. There will always be a human element, if for no other reason than that humans are (at least for now) superior to adapting to unforeseen circumstances. That being said, you would be right in saying that the militaries would be looking for ways to minimize the risk to humans.

One really Magitech example would be a device that could infect and controls spirits with dark energy. Unalaq was able to infect and control spirits. Imagine if the effect could be amplified over a long distance? Then spirits would be the equivalent of modern-day predator drones.

It sounds like you're talking about a Lensman Arms Race. That would probably be the case. Nations would allocate bigger and bigger budgets to R&D, until one of the nations would undergo economic collapse, similar to what happened in the Cold War.

I think eventually the case would get so big that serious attempts at Arms Reduction would be put in place. Especially since the WMD's would be people and not mindless rockets or machines.

edited 16th Oct '14 1:32:50 PM by Coinage

Also, on the issue of ranged warfare, benders can very easily cloak themselves or restrict visibility to zero. Earth benders and sand benders can create powerful dust storms. Wind-benders would probably generate tornadoes or such things. I suspect this would mean greater emphasis would be given on heavy ordnance. After all, how do you defeat a well-placed, well-camouflaged sniper? Carpet-bomb the area.

Still, that would not eliminate any sort of long-range weaponry. After all, the benders power would be limited by line of sight as well. Snipers would therefore be a big deal.

One major issue working against benders is that it's very hard to do proper bending from cover. You need to perform some moderately acrobatic moves depending on your form (even the most basic "let's throw some fireballs" attack requires you to throw punches), which means you'll stand out and attract a lot of bullets.

this cuts both ways. One of the advantages benders had in TLA was that they could attack at range.

That being said, creating a smokescreen on demand would be tactically useful

Legend of Korra addresses this in part. Modernized bending uses quick and simplified moves so a bender only sticks his head out for a brief moment to launch an attack before ducking back down. Granted, I don't think this would work in the prone position so it's a good thing benders can often create their own cover.

Uhmm, I have a question regarding Dark Spirits. Was Unalaq the one behind the spirits turning Dark or was it just the presence/influence of Vaatu?

It's implied that it was Unalaq who was using his powerful ability to connect with spirits to taint them with his dark energies, much like how he's able to apply light or dark energies to his water-bending.

The show demonstrates that Vaatu cannot infect others whenever he's in someway contained or restricted. When Raava had Vaatu in her grasp, Vaatu was unable to "darken" other spirits. I suspect the same logic applies when Vaatu was imprisoned in the Tree of Time.

edited 16th Oct '14 11:36:38 PM by Coinage

Thinking about it, I sincerely doubt that guns would be developed, for a number of reasons.

1) Earthbending. Earthbending provides a cheaper alternative to firearms. A sufficiently trained earthbender would be able to fire off a pebble at extreme speeds, enough to cause as much damage as a bullet, with the added advantage that unlike bullets, the ammunition could be reused. Earthbending would probably evolve to incorporate aspects of modern-day firearms.

HOWEVER, I acknowledge that this reason would only work if bending was widespread. I believe that this assumption is accurate because of the advent of the industrial revolution and scientific revolution in the Avatarverse. As scientists apply the scientific method to bending and spirits, I believe that they will eventually discover a way to make bending available to everyone. Universal bending is not unprecedented: the Air Nomads were entirely composed of benders. Bending will then become part of mandatory education to all citizens, much as reading and writing are mandatory in almost all mandatory education.

The Air nomads had such a high ratio of benders because they structured their entire society around spirituality. However, this left them woefully under equipped to deal with an industrial power such as the Fire Nation who had tanks. A society that dedicates it's entire population to prayer and meditation is ill suited to industrialization as they don't have the manpower available for factories.

Thus, it's simply not worth the effort to make every member of a society benders. Industrial nations will simply outstrip them in both warfare and wealth.