If perpetual war existed, how advanced would humanity be?

[Giovenith]

Are you telling me that WWII, although an important and influential event, wasn't as cool or world-molding as NS'ers frequently make it out to be?!

Oh, it is. (Well, maybe not as cool, but I'm about 100 million years old, and I'm no longer quite as excited about bloodletting as I used to be.) But there are lots of people badly confused about technology and where it comes from.

Definitely not as cool as the History channel makes it out to be though.

You know, where it comprises roughly 80.5% of the history of the entire world and everything else was aliens and rednecks with hobbies.

[The Forsworn Knights]

Either cavemen with laser canons, or someone would release hippie gas into the air and It would come out like this.

[USS Monitor]

And has iron for brains.

Pretty much all modern warship designs are influenced by the Monitor, but not many things outside the military are.

That was true up until the end of WW1, when people started to realize how much fun you could have with aircraft carriers. And that's leaving out subs, because they ride even lower in the water than you do.

Aircraft carriers still have design elements borrowed from Monitor. Subs are probably the most different since gun turrets aren't practical to use underwater.

[USS Monitor]

A world of unrelenting war would be a poorer, less advanced one. As Eisenhower said in his Chance for Peace speech:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Are you saying I'm an act of theft?

[Purpelia]

Advancement is not a function of war but a function of need. And the more dire the need the more rapid the advancement. War is simply a situation with a very dire need. But there is a flip side to this. The more dire the need is the less sustainable it becomes. A starving person might become incredibly inventive in figuring out what to eat but it wont be long before he actually finds food or dies of starvation. And the more inventive he gets the more energy is expended making both outcomes more rapid and likely. And equally so the longer a war goes on the more advanced the sides will get and the more rapid the advancement will get until such a point where one side either wins or keels over from exhaustion.

[Philjia]

If the cold war had gone hot, we'd all be dead. So, not very advanced.

[Minivanistan]

If the cold war had gone hot, we'd all be dead. So, not very advanced.

I disagree.
Instead of going hot, the Cold War went cyber.
Very advanced indeed.

[Greed and Death]

But we can make it as close as possible.

Nonsense - we'd have to become more progressive to do so.

We've got the poverty, tyranny, slavery, starvation, apathy of the upper classes, and religious radicalism poking it's nose where it shouldn't be, but at least the world of 40K had all that and gave a shit about space exploration, meanwhile here we are, fucking over NASA at any chance we get.

NASA had a lot more funding during the cold war.

[The Wolven League]

There's been constant warfare for most of, if not all, of human history as far as we know. Tribal societies are notoriously violent.

Tribal societies never have WMDs either.

Vercingetorix used nuclear weaponry o n Caesar's legions. Basic history.

[Northwest Slobovia]

Nonsense - we'd have to become more progressive to do so.

We've got the poverty, tyranny, slavery, starvation, apathy of the upper classes, and religious radicalism poking it's nose where it shouldn't be, but at least the world of 40K had all that and gave a shit about space exploration, meanwhile here we are, fucking over NASA at any chance we get.

NASA had a lot more funding during the cold war.

Well, NASA had plenty of money for putting men on the moon. Their budget started getting cut long before the Soviet Union collapsed.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

In the Grimdarkness of Nationstates, there is only war.

Oh dear. Poor II. Hobbes was right.

You mean Calvin's tiger? (joking)

Anyway, that was just a 40k reference.

[Nazis in Space]

Flight Airspeed Records

July 1910: 106 km/h
1914: 216 km/h

Four-year improvement by 110 km/h

1914: 216 km/h
1918: 262 km/h

Four-year improvement by 46 km/h

1918: 262 km/h
1922: 360 km/h

Four-year improvement of 98 km/h.

I think it's safe to say that the first world war wasn't kind to aircraft development.

Now, obviously, this isn't universal (diesel engines, for instance, improved above the pre- and post-war norm due to Germany's hunger for submarines), but it's safe to say that even in war-critical technologies, war can and historically, does at least occasionally have a significantly detrimental effect on technological development.

And it's likewise worth noting that alleged technological breakthroughs caused by war... well. The German rockets of the 1940s were nice and all, but what were they based on?

The civilian rocket enthusiasts of the 1920s and 1930s, who pushed the boundaries of technology during peacetime. And the Treaty of Versailles, which prohibited Germany the possession of heavy artillery, which led to the Reichswehr investing money in rocketry. Which, yes, means military funding - but military funding specifically because more conventional options weren't available. It were restrictions on the military that led to it, not the military having free reign.

War can occasionally push technology forward. Occasionally. But by and large, war tend to represent a destruction of investment that ultimately, limits funding, limits man- and thus brainpower. The steam engine wasn't produced by a nation embroiled in total war, it was produced by a nation that'd been safe from invasion for a century, and only engaged in low-risk, low-investment expeditions abroad, never sacrificing long-term investment at home in favour of glorious fire and brimstone.

The rest of the continent fell behind when it was embroiled in a quarter-century of endless war, losing millions of lives and seeing its investments go up in flames as Napoleons armies swept the continent.

It caught up when peace largely returned, and war remained limited in scope for the next ninety-nine years.

[Benuty]

Warhammer 40000 is not real life.

Yes it is why else is everything so damn edgy?

[Uxupox]

There's been constant warfare for most of, if not all, of human history as far as we know. Tribal societies are notoriously violent.

Tribal societies never have WMDs either.

We have to go back to tribal societies soon enough a meteor impact is long overdue.

[Zudril]

Warhammer 40000 is not real life.

I am pretty sure 40k is quite adamant about how perpetual war would stagnate humanity.

[The Derpy Democratic Republic Of Herp]

A world of unrelenting war would be a poorer, less advanced one. As Eisenhower said in his Chance for Peace speech:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Are you saying I'm an act of theft?

No your not. Don't be silly.

Or actually, do be silly but in a different way, silly.