Worldbuilding Realism Consultation Thread Mk. 4

[Prosorusiya]

In an emergency situation, my Militsyia would likely be the first to respond, coordinating more conventional emergency efforts involving police cars, fire truck, ambulances, and the like. If things were really serious, someone would probably call up the Interior Minister, who would coordinate forces and command the situation. For wounded who might need Medevac, the Transport Minister would be called upon to order out the Mi-2 and Mi-8 helicopters of my national airline. If civil unrest started to take place, the Interior Ministry can also deploy troops to control the situtation. I'd be hesitant to use my Army and Air Force in such situations unless absolutely necessary.

~~~

How economically lucrative is flying a route into Kabul, Afghanistan? I'm already flying out to Jeddah and Moscow, and I am wondering if it makes sense to fly to Afghanistan as it is (or was once upon a time) a nexus of trade between Europe and China, and I was pondering whether or not this would be a good destination to serve especially given the Soviet history with Afghanistan.

[Crookfur]

Hmm. As somewhat related sperg:

Is using an Mi-26 or potentially even a larger helicopter (obviously an NS one as Mi-26 is the largest helicopter even in production IIRC) for any of the following purposes useful/viable?

• Multiple Casualty Unit
• Mobile Hospital
• Mobile Command Post
• Mobile Communications Relay

/other duties where it operates similar to how a large specialized trailer or RV would, basically landing in an area for personnel to operate in and around it (e.g. have a mobile hospital inside to treat relatively major wounds, and set up awnings/tents from/around it where triage and minor injuries are handled, etc.)

Also would it be practical to have several of these fly out to some remote location (allegedly with sufficient resources or awaiting resource shipments) and essentially land and set up an ad-hoc base (assuming they had a reason) ?

What I basically want to know is essentially, are these helicopters prohibitively expensive to use in such fashion (and numbers) and would using them like this not offer much benefits where it would just be better to drop off whatever they have to drop off and then simply go be useful somewhere else?

The mi-26 in its medevac/ air ambulance role can be configured as an airborne hispital/surgical unit but I suspect that's closer to the chinooks that pull medical response duties in that any work is carried out as they rush the patients to where they really need to be.

There was a proposed airborne command unit version but the key word is airborne as it would be flying around to perform it's role, kind of like the eh-60 but for a larger formation.

[The Soodean Imperium]

Huh, looks like I'll be going with the square holes after all.

The Chinese coins used to have round holes in them, until this was changed to a square one c. the 3rd C. B.C.E. In either event, it was designed to allow coins to be strung together, and Chinese people had a unit called a "string" which consisted of 1,000 coins. When paper currency developed in the 10th C., denominations as representative money evolving out of IOU were noted in "strings". While the "one string" bill legally had the purchasing power of 1,000 coins, the actual conversion rate would fluctuate between 1,000 and 800. So while you can pay one string with a "one string" note, if you instead chose to convert the note into coins, you'll end up short, but somehow merchants still recognized the valuation of the note, even though it couldn't actually be converted at its face value.

Before coinage became common, China used these:

(Image)

Spades. They were initially actually usable spades, but eventually they became miniature spades and were flattened into this:

(Image)

I'm aware of the history of Chinese coinage - including the Yuan Dynasty's disastrous experiment with paper money, and the Qing Dynasty's decision to monetize silver which resulted in massive silver arbitrage internationally. I was just wondering if it would raise any modern problems, and apparently the answer is no.

The string function is a nice feature, though I doubt it would be used much today, when paper money is available for larger denominations. Though if vending machines etc. are designed to account for it, it might serve as an additional means of sorting, handling, and checking for counterfeit pieces.

AT least there isn't three different systems, like for China. That's got the Postal, Wade-Giles, and Pinyin. The latter is used in modern contexts and works fine, but for Historians like me things get mighty damn confusing quite quickly.

Not to mention really weird old systems like Gwoyeu Romatzyh, which is still used in spelling the first half of Shaanxi - because Pinyin (without tones) cannot distinguish between 陕西 and 山西.

Or the way North Korea uses McCune-Reischauer, South Korea uses RR, and Korean names are romanized any number of other ways - 이 as I, Yi, Yee, Lee, Ri, Rhee, Ree, Rey...

This reminds me of an incident last semester where I went to use my schools vending machine, and it would not work. I turned out that, in my late night confusion, I had accidentally been using yen instead of US currency!

This also happened to a friend of mine once with Korean Won coins. What's more, it happened while we were desperately trying to scrounge together enough spare change to get instant noodles from a campus vending machine, because we were both forever_alone for Thanksgiving and had nowhere else to eat.

Good times. good times.

[Hyggemata]

Personally I prefer Wade-Giles; it's phonetic values correspond with the letters in the English language.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

Hmm. As somewhat related sperg:

Is using an Mi-26 or potentially even a larger helicopter (obviously an NS one as Mi-26 is the largest helicopter even in production IIRC) for any of the following purposes useful/viable?

• Multiple Casualty Unit
• Mobile Hospital
• Mobile Command Post
• Mobile Communications Relay

/other duties where it operates similar to how a large specialized trailer or RV would, basically landing in an area for personnel to operate in and around it (e.g. have a mobile hospital inside to treat relatively major wounds, and set up awnings/tents from/around it where triage and minor injuries are handled, etc.)

Also would it be practical to have several of these fly out to some remote location (allegedly with sufficient resources or awaiting resource shipments) and essentially land and set up an ad-hoc base (assuming they had a reason) ?

What I basically want to know is essentially, are these helicopters prohibitively expensive to use in such fashion (and numbers) and would using them like this not offer much benefits where it would just be better to drop off whatever they have to drop off and then simply go be useful somewhere else?

The latter.

These sorts of helicopters are very expensive to purchase and operate and there is little sense in designing them to be single-role vehicles where they will rarely be trotted out for their specific purpose, flown once to the target area, then left for several days with the pilots twiddling their thumbs until they fly back to base.

It would be much more efficient to just develop containerized communications platforms, command centers, or mobile hospitals and transport them via helicopter, then unload them at the destination, freeing up the helicopter to go do other things. Especially because some of these uses (command center, communication platform) do not need something as huge as an Mi-26 while a hospital would be better off being even larger. Building a larger field hospital would either require multiple helicopters converted to hospital use (at great expense) or you could just have a single helicopter airlift the hospital in modular pieces to the crisis zone and have it assembled on site, then re-task that helicopter to ferrying stable casualties to other medical centers and return with fresh supplies to keep the field hospital stocked.

Well on another side there exist situations where my proposed solution would be called for i.e. if you're operating in a very high risk environment and you don't know if or when the enemy is coming (this obvs. applies more to a military context ; maybe in a civilian context you could have something like idk a volcanic eruption, rioting mob, or undead charge coming, or some other thing whose way you better get out of) and you have to pack shit quick and go ASAP when they come.

Although in all honesty a container-carrying skycrane would still work in this situation. Depending on whether the container is rigidly attached to the skycrane or if it's flexibly slung underneath, evac may happen quicker or faster (the latter would probably be somewhat slower as you would first have to take off, positing the skycrane right over the container, and attach it by slings). Depending on how much height there is between the landing gear and the bottom of the helicopter's hull, to keep a container rigidly attached to a helicopter you might end up with something outrageous looking like the original spec Mil Mi-10



or, if you're going with a smaller, Tarhe/Skycrane-type helicopter that has a fuselage with a cargo cut-out



you could, i think, have the helicopter rest on top of the container assuming the landing gear doesn't reach the ground, assuming the container can support its weight (i suppose it could).

[Padnak]

Every nation should seize the opportunity to use the Mi-10 whenever it presents itself

[Gallia-]

Tarhe is better.

It's not an abortion.

[Padnak]

Tarhe is better.

It's not an abortion.

How can you argue that the Tarhe is less of a meat hook abortion than the Mi-10

[Gallia-]

It doesn't look inbred and is properly proportioned.

[Korva]

Mi-10 just looks happy to be included.

[Padnak]

Its the Jeb Bush of helicopters

[Gallia-]

J.E.B. is more like a UH-1.

Or maybe that's Herb.

Or BILL BILL BILL [Nye] the Cruise Missile Guy.

Or The Notorious M.I.T.T.

They all look like "presidents" tbh. Just like UH-1 looks like "helicopter".

[The Soodean Imperium]

Is the problem with Mi-10 related to performance? Or just aesthetics?

If it's the latter I'll probably base a cargo helicopter off of it. Tarhe looks super derpy when it doesn't have a container attached.

[Gallia-]

And Mi-10 doesn't? v:

[Korva]

pls no bully Mi-10

[Gallia-]

inferior technic he deserve cri

[The Soodean Imperium]

And Mi-10 doesn't? v:

Empty Mi-10 looks like a skinny Mi-6 with rlly long legs

Empty Tarhe looks like a CH-53 that's had its rib cage torn out

[Padnak]

And Mi-10 doesn't? v:

Empty Mi-10 looks like a skinny Mi-6 with rlly long legs

Empty Tarhe looks like a CH-53 that's had its rib cage torn out

The Mi-10 has a nice curve to its hips while the CH-53 looks like it just got out of an internment camp

[Gallia-]

Empty Tarhe looks like a CH-53 that's had its rib cage torn out

Are you saying helicopter guro isn't cute?

[The Soodean Imperium]

Empty Mi-10 looks like a skinny Mi-6 with rlly long legs

Empty Tarhe looks like a CH-53 that's had its rib cage torn out

The Mi-10 has a nice curve to its hips while the CH-53 looks like it just got out of an internment camp

More like it went on a weird diet where it has an emaciated body but Jabba the Hutt's face.

It's like a stick figure with a rotor on the back.

[Gallia-]

It's an anime character irl.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

i vote for the tarhe

i watched a fanboi documentary today that said the tarhe had the best safety record of all u.s. (armed forces or just army? already forgot) helicopters in its service timeframe

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

tarhe 4 lyf

[Prosorusiya]

Are there any Mi-10s still flying? They'd be good for dispersing aircraft in the event of war...

[Padnak]

So I've been playing allot of farcry 4 lately...

Baring some kind of international intervention, would it actually be possible to run a state as Kyrat is run in the game? It doesn't seem like there is any sort of actual government in place in the game; instead Pegan Min (The despotic king of the country) seems to simply collect profits from the various illegal (drug trade) and semi legal business (mining, selling artifacts etc) and keep himself in power by means of a few cronies and a lose 'army' of locals with a small core of more highly skilled mercenaries. Kyrat seems to be divided into several administrative regions run by Pegan's governors who seem to execute absolute rule over their regions.

In many ways it seems similar to the ill fated Congo Free State owned King Leopold II of Belgium

Would it actually be possible to run a state financed primarily with the sale of illegal drugs, specially in the manor in which Kyrat is run?

(I know I know video games are a bad thing to base things on but I'm kinda curious)