Sci-fi Weapons, Vehicles and Equipment

The MCU Avengers (or heroes related to the Avengers) whose stories derive in part or full from their military or paramilitary service are Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, James Rhodes, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, and arguably Carol Danvers. Of those, only three are enhanced from human normal.

Chronic Hero Syndrome aside, none of them are so grotesquely enhanced that they literally cannot pass for normal, so the main challenges facing them in the attempt to return to civilian life would be the psychological traumas and hangups that they incurred over the course of their careers. There's nothing physically* stopping them from having regular lives.

* Rhodes is paralyzed thanks to Civil War, but there are tons of disabled vets out there. Danvers is "glowy" and would probably have trouble fitting in as a normal due to incidental photon blasts and stuff, but she's not disfigured or visibly enhanced otherwise.

The only Avenger who is literally not human enough to pass for normal is Banner in Professor Hulk form, and he's found his own solution by Endgame.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 30th 2019 at 4:40:17 AM

Lots of service members go into law enforcement. Captain America-style super soldiers would probably be in high demand with police departments.

Just use the Mass Effect method. Literally, even the greenest bottom of the barrel blue falcon Alliance Marine, fresh out of infantry training, would absolutely murder stomp Delta Force, SAS, ST 6, etc, even without their fantastical Eezo technology. Every one of them is a super soldier by any reasonable standard.

It's just doesn't come across that way since Shepard and co are are better than...well everyone, by orders of magnitude.

We as a species have fought a war that had bouts of fighting for 300 years over a fucking bucket.

It doesn't have to be rare, people will go to war over the stupidest reasons.... another one is fucking pastries, it just has to be something that pisses some one else off.

Edited by Imca on Jul 30th 2019 at 5:59:40 AM

I don't think you all truly understand just how pointless it'd be to go to war over an asteroid. One of the things Sci-Fi always gets wrong with Galaxy spanding empires is the entire concept of "Resource shortage" or anything remotely similar is laughable. In just asteroids alone, there are more resources in our solar system than we could ever even hope to mine...in the Orion Arm? lol, we're talking millions upon millions of years of stuff, and that's if we were trying to guzzle it all up. For all intents and purposes, once asteroid mining becomes a thing in reality, we basically have unlimited resources, barring fuel just to get the stuff there and back to wherever.

Fighting over a single asteroid is literally like two neighbors fighting over a blade of grass in a shared yard.

No we understand, we just want to tell these kinds of things and ponder reasons why because it's fun.

Imca: I have no idea what war you are referring to.

Draedi: There are materials that are fairly rare out there. Fissiles, for example. The only significant source I know of is the Earth itself.

Why do people always think that resource shortages are the only reasons to go to war?

No, it's about the rights to said resources and future planing. You want to seize as much as you can as early as possible so you can develop it later. Even if you don't live to see it you want to ensure that your grandkids will have that wealth available to them.

And it's never just going to be just one asteroid. It's going to be a MASSIVE SWATH of asteroids. Destroy your rival's mobile forces and ALL their undeveloped holdings are ripe for the taking. You could score control of entire moons or dwarf planets if you're lucky.

You also have trading rights, access to ports, tariff rates, and exchange rates. Seizing access to a critical trading post can get you access to top of the line weapons or information. Hell, if you manage to force a local monopoly on trade you basically have a license to print money. Possibly literally as you could issue your own currency and force others to use it.

That's more justification than literally several recorded wars in history.

An asteroid might be a Silly Reason for War, but it'll happen if history is any guide.

Edited by MajorTom on Jul 30th 2019 at 8:09:32 AM

I am also confused by the bucket war reference. Was it a nice bucket?

^ If lmca is referring to the raid in Bologna, it was a wooden bucket.

OK, cool, I'm just gonna go google "Bologna Bucket" and hope for the best.

OK, I'm assuming we're all talking about the War of the Bucket, a war that took place in 1325, part of a period of conflict that lasted from the 12th century through the 16th century. As far as the brief Wikipedia article suggests, it didn't really start anything so much as continued it.

Reminds me of the Pig War, a conflict in 1859 between the US and the British Empire, where the only casualty was a British pig (U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!)

Edited by AFP on Jul 31st 2019 at 7:19:32 AM

What about the Emu war?

I like how in the Wikipedia article about it, it said one of the casualties was "Dignity." XD

Yea, the war of the bucket.

But my point is basicly, it doesn't mater how stupid it would be to fight over an asteroid...... some one is eventualy going to do it.

Humans can, and have faught over the stupidest shit imaginable, things that if you heard them in a story you would find it unrealistic.

I could imagine a situation where conflicts over Asteroid mining is less because anyone is at serious risk of running out of resources, and more because bad actors are trying to monopolize the extraction market in order to gain political power over the population centers that benefit from asteroid mining.

That means the conflict isn't really about resources at all, but what those resources can do for someone who has them, and is able to deny anyone else access to them.

Edited by Falrinn on Jul 31st 2019 at 7:53:11 AM

All organized warfare, by definition, is over things that people are willing to die for. This nearly always boils down to the balance of power between two rival communities. People may use superficial excuses to justify killing someone, but scratch the surface and you'll find one one of the parties is trying to keep the other one down. This means that no one is very likely to fight over any number of asteroids—unless this allows one faction to suppress another one. It isnt hard to spin scenarios where this might happen, but its a little more complicated than "lol, humans are stupid."

Edited by DeMarquis on Jul 31st 2019 at 8:39:26 AM

^^ That'd be the thing about asteroid mining and war. It's easier to fight over and seize existent operations than it is to find a suitable (unclaimed) one and start from scratch.

That and controlling existent operations can hamper, impede or otherwise form a monopoly against the opposing faction.

History has quite a few battles and wars fought along these means. Easier to fight over existent gold or oil fields than to explore and build your own for example.

It would also explain using troops for capturing facilities rather than destroying them, opening up personal combat to the setting.

With "Frivolous Wars" (wars fought over something trivial like a bucket), typically the war has much deeper causes. If all it takes is a stolen bucket to start a war between two countries, those two countries have a lot of bad blood between each other over things that aren't trivial.

See also: The Football War, which was not in fact fought over the outcome of a football game.

True, but it also means that an asteroid starting a war isn't un-beleivable, its not "Lol humans are dumb" its "People will fight over just about any thign as long as they dont like eachother"

Edited by Imca on Aug 1st 2019 at 7:31:03 AM

As long as fighting holds out the promise that one side can gain some sort of advantage over the other. Which might not necessarily be the asteroid itself. People do not always fight over the territory they are fighting on.

A fair number of major battles have been less about objectives on a map and more about drawing the enemy force out into the open where they can be engaged and destroyed. Typically only advisable if you have the tactical advantage to overwhelm the enemy or strategic depth to tank the losses your own forces will suffer via attrition.

For example, the Big Week raids, in terms of pure numbers, should look like a German victory, but because the Allies could afford to lose hundreds of planes and the Germans couldn't, it was considered a decisive victory for the USAAF and RAF, paving the way for Operation Overlord.