Infantry Discussion Thread part 11: Gallas Razor edition.

[Manokan Republic]

My point is in regard to fully automatic fire, that semiautomatic fire is better than fully automatic fire, and specifically in infantry combat (as in, not in the anti-aircraft role). There are problems shooting too slowly, and problems shooting too quickly. You need a good balance, with aimed fire, that is semiautomatic aimed fire, usually being better than fully automatic fire. Even fully automatic fire is best relegated to short bursts, which is typically less accurate than semiautomatic fire. Fully Automatic fire is unrealistic due to the low accuracy, both due to the higher recoil and decreased time to aim, with it being impossible to aim a gun accurately 10 different times a second, or as fast as a gun can shoot. There's a limit to most people's aiming ability in a given time frame. You might be able to hit the target after 1000 rounds, but given that infantry simply don't carry that much ammunition it wouldn't be worth the trade off in weight, or time to fire that many rounds.

Putting more ammunition downrange in a shorter amount of time means you are able to hit the target quicker. One well trained man with a rifle trying to hit targets are 500 meters is going to do worse at quickly and efficiently hitting the enemy than one well trained man with a machine gun. Squads and fireteams nowadays are constructed around the automatic riflemen; he suppresses the enemy and kills as many as is possible while the rest of the soldiers close with and kill the enemy. This has been this way since WWI. If you're worried about not carrying enough ammunition, carry more ammunition. If the automatic rifleman can't carry any more ammunition, that's what ammo bearers are for. Soldiers are not going to be stopping to carefully pick off enemies in the middle of a firefight.

The number one killer in an infantry fight is actually grenades, typically fired from something like the 40mm grenade launcher, or the rifle grenade in WWII. For instance in WWII, shell fragments resulted in 50% of the deaths, rifle fire 25%, grenades 12%, and machine gun fire 8%. Fully automatic fire is useful in close quarters or for suppression, but isn't really a big killer by itself. It's designed to pin the enemy down so you can get close and use accurate fire or grenades to take the enemy out. This roughly carries over today in the form of 40mm grenades, or artillery, mortar and airstrikes being called in after infantry pin the enemy down. It's designed for suppression, not really to kill.

In fact, evaluation in the marines has shown that more accurate fire is typically more effective at suppression than constant fully automatic fire, with many of them switching to replacing most of the M249 machine guns with the M27 IAR. While I have a tendency to prefer the marine solution, aimed accurate fire is typically as good at suppression as lots and lots of bullets. An example would be how a single sniper can pin down an entire platoon and halt their advance, not needing anywhere near as many bullets as a machine gun to do so. A suppression is more psychological than physical, idealistically just enough bullets will be used to scare the enemy, rather than consuming more than you need, requiring a bigger gun and more ammunition.

Firing bullets faster means less time to aim and more recoil, which reduces your chance to hit with each round fired. Not every round fired is equal, with rounds fired super quickly in the heat of the moment less likely to hit than an aimed shot. With more time to aim you are more likely to hit, and with less time to aim you re less likely to hit. There are diminishing turns both ways, with taking a minute to aim not providing much more accuracy than 10 seconds, and with taking too long being a problem given the fast-paced nature of modern combat. Essentially you want to aim, but aim quickly. Rapid semiautomatic fire is typically the goal, faster than a bolt action, but still much slower than fully automatic fire.

Furthermore, killing the enemy is not always the goal, but survival. A suicide bomber can kill 50 men in one guy, but he kills himself as well. The purpose is more of a mater of survival, the ability to maneuver in to location quickly, or poke your head out from behind cover, take a few shots, and then duck back in to cover.

No, the goal is pretty generally to kill the enemy. If survival was the primary goal you wouldn't be in combat.

Fully automatic fire is better in close quarters combat, as I've said before, as when you're closer to the target misses are less of a problem. Missing by 1 degree at 600 yards can mean being off by several feet, while it's only a few inches in close quarters. I've never said that accuracy is the only factor, or that speed is the only factor, I've said that balance is an important issue. I can go back and quote my exact words if you want.

You can say it as many times as you want, that doesn't make it true. It's true you are less accurate when fully automatic. Putting more rounds downrange still increases your likelihood of getting a hit. That's why the Germans went so ham in developing the MG34 and 42. The M1 Garand wasn't the future.

America won? The primary killer in all wars is explosives, with grenades killing more than machine guns for example. Due to a 300-400 yard range rifle grenade the Americans could take out the heavy machine guns of the time at a pretty good distance where they were safe (since it was hard to hit people out to those ranges), and thus defeat the poorly maneuverable teams by maneuvering their men in to position and raining grenades on them, taking out multiple enemies at once, and not even needing to aim well. The machine guns were used for suppression purposes so soldiers didn't get killed while maneuvering in to a good flanking position, but the Americans were able to use the BAR to do it, more of a marksmen weapon, than a true machine gun. There's also the fact that stealth and smoke can conceal your movements, and that suppressive fire is only useful when you don't have cover or concealment. Many battles are resolved in ambushes, where soldiers have plenty of time to aim and shoot and simply take the enemy out before they have a chance to defend themselves. Again, it's a misconception that a high rate of fire is a good thing, or else why has modern Germany abandoned it in favor of a lower rate of fire machine gun, why was the MG34 with a lower rate of fire generally considered better, why do few militaries try to get high rates of fire from their machine guns? I'd argue one of the reason they lost was due to the enormous rate of fire of the weapon. If you shoot someone 5 times, or 15 times, they're just as dead and incapacitated. Considering that it made it harder to hit the enemy due to the higher recoil, required more ammunition in short bursts, and the fact most bullets are centered in a small area, the chance of hitting lots of targets with a machine gun is rather low, and consumes way more ammunition.

High rates of fire overheat the weapon faster, while consuming more ammunition in order to hit the target. The modern military does mainly use it's rifles in semiautomatic fire, with it being the standard doctrine they teach their troops, to very rarely use fully automatic fire.

[Gallia-]

The number one killer in an infantry fight is actually grenades, typically fired from something like the 40mm grenade launcher, or the rifle grenade in WWII.

I don't...

For instance in WWII, shell fragments resulted in 50% of the deaths, rifle fire 25%, grenades 12%, and machine gun fire 8%.

...believe you.

The primary killer in all wars is explosives,

No, it isn't.

The primary killer is probably exsanguination.

Again, it's a misconception that a high rate of fire is a good thing, or else why has modern Germany abandoned it in favor of a lower rate of fire machine gun,

TIL MG4 is a belt-fed M1 Garand.

Rapid, semi-automatic fire!

[Manokan Republic]

Due to the relatively recent return of industry to my nation, they have developed a weapon that functions on the idea of rapidly changing calibres. The reason for this is, due to being based in a bombed out Houston there's a fair amount of ammo AROUND, just of widely varying calibres, as a result, Galima commissioned the most skilled gunsmiths in their sphere of influence to produce a weapon capable of holding at least 20 rounds of ammunition, and able to be switched between: 5.56x45, 7.62x39, and 7.62x35. it does not and is not capable of doing so under fire, but it is a simple enough system to be done by soldiers when not under fire and in the field

the big problem here is i don't know if that's entirely feasible with a magazine fed weapon and since you guys probably would know, i figured i'd ask. the barrel is relatively easy to switch out as far as weapon parts go, but would it require entirely new magazine well and feeding system? and is that feasible to be done in the field?

You would need to swap out the lower receivers, yes, or the mag wells for it to be possible, unless you designed a new bullet designed to mimic the characteristics of each cartridge and be loaded from the same magazines, and use the same cases. The G36 for example can have the magwell removed and, if you have it designed in such a way to where the barrel can be removed when the weapon is taken apart (but it's attached to the piston), than it's plausible to do so rather easily. One such alternative is with a weapon like the Tavor, designed from the ground up to have the barrel quickly removed (in about 20 minutes) and the caliber replaced, or the steyr aug which has a quick detachable barrel, removed in a matter of seconds, like a machine gun (although this tends to decrease accuracy unless precision built).

My recommendation personally is for all the rounds to use the same case; basically for you to invent a new bullet that uses the same exact brass casing, but with a different bullet in each one. So, for instance the .300 black-out and 5.56mm can be swapped just by changing the barrel (although a .300 black-out is a tad weaker than a 7.62mm x 39mm) in the Tavor, where as swapping to a 9mm requires a ton of other parts, such as the magwell and bolt and so on. Rather than use the 5.56mm and 7.62mm x39mm, you use the .300 black-out and 5.56mm, or 7.62mm x 39mm and a 5.56mm loaded in a 7.62mm x 39mm case. You could essentially invent a 5.56mm x 39mm round, although the really high velocities would likely require that you use a heavier bullet for decent ballistics sake. As long as you have the same case and a different barrel, you can swap any round you want, provided it has the ability to handle the power and pressure of the new round. Realistically you'd want to swap the recoil spring out too, but this is cheap and fast to do and can be done in seconds in virtually any rifle when you take it apart to clean it.

Because it's easier to go smaller than go bigger, and the 7.62mm x 39mm is a little more powerful than the 5.56mm, if you went this route my recommendation would be to "invent" a new 7.62mm x 39mm chambered in 5.56mm, or a 5.56mm x 39mm round. A 2,200 joule 5.56mm, using a 7.62mm case and gunpowder, firing a 5 gram cartridge would produce 940 m/s from a 20 inch barrel or, more or less roughly the same as the standard 5.56mm. Traveling too quickly wears barrels out faster and causes the round the destabilize, reducing it's range. Using a 4.1 gram bullet you'd generate 1,035 m/s, which would also be above Mach 3 at sea level (1020 m/s), which would further destabilize the round as passing through the sound barrier tends to cause some disruption to the bullet and thus causes accuracy and stabilization problems. If you really want to swap the 7.62mm x 39mm and 5.56mm specifically, than yeah you'd need to have a gun designed like the Tavor to be able to do that, which actually isn't that hard but takes a brand new type of gun design to do, as an Ak-47 or AR-15 has an integrated, instead of removable mag well. So basically a G36 or Tavor-like weapon.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Again, it's a misconception that a high rate of fire is a good thing, or else why has modern Germany abandoned it in favor of a lower rate of fire machine gun,

Germany, like much of the rest of Europe was also heavily invested in the wheeled death truck airmech meme at the time they adopted the MG4. Governments being retarded is not evidence in favour of your thesis.

[Gallia-]

MG4 is just SAW done right.

Automatics only need a rate of fire of anywhere between 500-700 RPM cyclic as optimal.

[Manokan Republic]

The number one killer in an infantry fight is actually grenades, typically fired from something like the 40mm grenade launcher, or the rifle grenade in WWII.

I don't...

For instance in WWII, shell fragments resulted in 50% of the deaths, rifle fire 25%, grenades 12%, and machine gun fire 8%.

...believe you.

The primary killer in all wars is explosives,

No, it isn't.

The primary killer is probably exsanguination.

Now we're just splitting hairs. Blood loss and organ failure are caused by explosives and bullets.

Again, it's a misconception that a high rate of fire is a good thing, or else why has modern Germany abandoned it in favor of a lower rate of fire machine gun,

TIL MG4 is a belt-fed M1 Garand.

Rapid, semi-automatic fire!

Yeah, if you fired at full auto non-stop you'd run out of ammunition in a few minutes. It's short bursts and aimed fire mostly. I've also never said that the M1 garand is the best gun ever, just that the concept of controlled rapid fire, that is aimed fire, typically semiautomatic fire or burst fire, is better than fully automatic mag dumps, and that most military's train their infantry to do so, including the U.S. Army and the Marines. The purpose of LMG's also isn't to kill everybody, it's to suppress the enemy and to let riflemen and grenadiers pick the enemy off, on top of things like say, air strikes and mortars and whatnot.

[Manokan Republic]

Sorry, I assumed you knew anything at all about what you were talking about. Dutch IQ tests from people born prior to and during the Hunger Winter showed no noticeable drop in IQ, but rather the same then-current trend of increasing IQ. That trend ended about 15 years ago or something. IQ has been on the drop in the Western world since the late '90s or early '00s. People like to look at the Hunger Winter because it's one of those classic studies: there's lot of data about it (the Dutch government was, more or less, completely intact), the information was available for decades (they weren't behind the Iron Curtain, unlike Sevastopol and Leningrad), and it's been referenced before by a lot of other people.

There is one psychological health finding that malnutrition leads to in adult life: schizophrenia. That's about it. Physically, there's a strange correlation between infant malnutrition and obesity later in adult life.

This indicates that, although I'm somewhat skeptical, the DPRK's IQ is probably OK in the end. All they need is a warm bed, some food, a reasonable education, and several years of positive outcomes before it can express itself fully. Then they'll be basically South Korea 2.0. I'm skeptical because while their ability to match patterns is OK, i.e. Raven-type IQ tests, they would probably be unable to function normally/typically for other reasons not necessarily related to mental retardation. Such as schizophrenia. For that to be tested you'd also need to administer a large battery of IQ tests to the North Korean population. And schizophrenia is heritable. And a lot of Chinese rice farmers have it, probably.

None of the sources you quoted back this up, and one of them actually refutes you. To say that malnutrition does not cause a drop in I.Q., when all studies have proven otherwise, is ludicrous, and using one supposed outliers, which only lasts for less than a year, is an even more ludicrous argument to make. It takes many years of malnutrition, not just a few months to cause the drop in I.Q. Being malnourished for a day, or a week, or a year won't be the same as many years. Malnutrition is not the same in all cases; saying malnutrition can't cause it, because it doesn't always, is just plain stupid. The drop was very minor, which is to be expected from a minor famine. Also the Dutch had a lot of fish during this time, high in protein and Vitamin B12, which prevents most of the problems with malnutrition in the first place.

We're talking about a very short time in a specific place of the world, with a specific kind of famine, that didn't effect the entire nation, and that's impact was measured on recruits decades later, many born after the famine. It doesn't refute that malnutrition does and can cause drops in I.Q. even if it doesn't in all circumstances.

[Gallia-]

I linked one study. It is a meta-study that shows a consistent correlation between schizophrenia and prenatal malnutrition. Continue being wrong.

[Manokan Republic]

I linked one study. It is a meta-study that shows a consistent correlation between schizophrenia and prenatal malnutrition. Continue being wrong.

I'm talking about how it doesn't disprove malnutrition causes a drop in I.Q. The fact there wasn't much of a drop in this situation doesn't mean malnutrition can't cause it. This is one famine, for under a year, not all or even the majority of cases.

[Gallia-]

I linked one study. It is a meta-study that shows a consistent correlation between schizophrenia and prenatal malnutrition. Continue being wrong.

I'm talking about how it doesn't disprove malnutrition causes a drop in I.Q.

It suggests strongly that it doesn't. Considering we know so little about what actually affects IQ, making blanket statements like "malnutrition 'drops' your IQ" is foolish. Unless you're willing to pony up actual data or something and ideally a basic theory of intelligence that explains why malnutrition "drops" IQ. Basically, as far as we know, IQ isn't affected by malnutrition. What is affected appears to be incidence of certain mental disorders/diseases like schizophrenia though. Prenatal malnutrition and famine measurably increases incidence of schizophrenia, but I guess hundreds of people tested against baseline who showed no measurable reduction in IQ were all just the highest functioning groups of people of those populations, chosen at random? Please.

[Old Varegia]

"Military analyst" is like "sex expert".

What is that supposed to mean?

It's similar to if the Greater German Reich still existed today and had genocided all the Jews within itself and Reichskommissarist Ost.

The comment I made was in response to you only giving me a link to an article about their nuclear tests to prove the US lost the war.

This is called "moving the goal posts". The goals the UNC gave itself were not achieved. Ergo, it lost the war. The goal of the war was to reunite Korea and prevent another invasion of the ROK from occurring in the future. Failed utterly. War lost. The traumatic shock of Korea is also why the USA lost the Vietnam War, more than anything, 20 years later.

"Hurr durr they did good so they decided to do an additional thing and then they didn't do the additional thing, guess they lost the whole war"

No. It was the UN. Why you keep tacking on "S" instead of "N" makes me think you don't know the difference between "States" and "Nations". I can't really help you there since we are on a site called "NationStates".

I'm talking about the US because the second largest contributor (apart from South Korea, which got its ass whooped in the beginning stages of the war) was the UK, and the US brought 23 times more troops into the conflict. It was primarily America versus China. Everyone else's contributions don't mean much in the face of the two giants.

The ROKA/ROKAF would be at the Yalu River in like a month probably. Or less. Depends on how many fleeing refugees they have to machine gun their way through when the DMZ falls over. Meanwhile the Americans would show up just in time to cross the t's and dot the i's on the annexation treaty, notarize it, and smile for the camera to pretend like they did anything in the actual war.

Yes, that's how much the stupid Americans have been able to support them with funding, equipment, training, etc.

Why does it matter? They routed multiple United Nations field armies in the field with nothing more than the finest technology of 1918.

>finest technology of 1918
>primarily uses a weapon developed in 1943

And anyway, the Chinese have more tech than the U.S. It just took them 50 years to catch up.

... What? Sorry, what? Taking 50 years to catch up is not having more tech, especially in the past, and we happen to be talking about the past.

But of course, the US is a stagnant empire with no economic growth and little in the way of innovation these days, while the PRC is the land of opportunity and entrepreneurship that the USA thinks it is.

The US economy is still growing, dude. I don't know how you can also ignore how most of the modern era's innovations came from either the US or the other "average IQ" nations. Meanwhile, China provides cheap labor and products. That's the biggest thing they have going for them. Might as well jump on the Indian "SUPERPOWER BY 2020" boat if you think that makes a country a land of opportunity and entrepreneurship.

As long as you're an entrepreneur for the party, friend. There could be worse things, though, like being in a post-industrial dead nation that rivals Russia or Brazil for wealth disparity and poverty. Which is where the USA is headed.

Ah yes, the all-encompassing, ultra-corrupt Party, which runs practically every facet of society and is so paranoid about being overthrown that they don't even allow proper coordination between their military branches for fear of a coup. Yeah, I'm sure living in a free country with one of the highest standards of living in the world is worse than being a subject of Big Brother.

I've literally been telling you they did this exact thing 1951-1953.

Really? I didn't know the US populace thought Harry Truman was a god and regularly committed suicide after a military failure.

"An infant would always be fed". Not only culturally biased, but vaguely racist in the implication that anyone who doesn't feed an infant (rather than, say, a pig or something valuable) is somehow inferior or untermensch.

No, an infant is not always fed. More often in history, infants are fed to other things, rather than the other way around. They are useless mouths to feed in a famine. You kill them and eat them, or you just let them starve, because you're too busy starving yourself. And valuable animals like pigs and oxen are more important to keep alive. You can always have another baby, you can't get another pig or another ox when it was your husband's dowry, or it cost you two years wages, or something.

We're talking about a winter. One season of a low level of food in a certain area that's not at all closed off, meaning people can leave if they choose to. Regardless, no, it's not fucking racist. Does being black make you eat babies? No. We choose what we do.

Anyway, even regardless of any of that, the ones that would've survived would've been fed. Since this was not a very long period of time, the children would most certainly be able to recover and everything would be fine. A lack of an IQ drop shouldn't be surprising in that case.

*No one.

Oh my god, have you ever studied the Korean War?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President ... _MacArthur
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-his ... s-in-korea
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ ... 180960622/
https://www.airspacemag.com/military-av ... 180955324/

What argument? What the fuck are you talking about? Do you even read words? Holy fuck. I'm literally telling you historical facts. This is like as controversial as "My pillow is stuffed in Pakistan" or "Fords are made in China". There's nothing to defend here, except your preposterous non-sequiturs I guess? There's nothing wrong with using nukes on a highly dense target that cannot move out of the way, either. America is just too morally weak I guess?

It's not like the Russians would have invaded Germany or anything over a bunch of dead Chinese in Korea. OTOH the USA at the time was almost entirely deluded that it wasn't actually witnessing a proxy war, but the start of the 3rd World War itself. Maybe MacArthur and Truman were thinking of saving the nukes for when the Russians rolled over into Berlin and flattening Joe's dacha?

You couldn't come up with any solution to winning in North Korea short of using nukes. That was the point. Anyway, America being morally weak for not nuking people? You seem to have your definition of morals backwards. A person with strong morals seeks to do the "good" thing as much as possible, and the "good" thing might not always be the necessary thing. America choosing not to wipe out tons of cities full of innocent people (China was the main target of the proposed plan). It would've caused a lot of fucking problems if the US decided to go and nuke a bunch of places in China. I can't say for certain if it would lead directly to a world war, but it's really a scenario one would want to avoid.

Have you ever given one?

IQ tests aren't "one thing". There are lots of them. Some of them require knowing a lot of information, like the American College Test, or the Scholastic Aptitude Test prior to 1994, if you're from a coastal city, or Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery prior to 1976. These require knowing the amount of information you would acquire in a typical scholastic career, because this is a proximate measure of your intellect. You've already controlled for amount of time in school, for the most part, so the only substantial difference is ability and willingness to absorb information. It's not really surprising that MENSA accepts some of these tests, provided they're old enough (sadly, a lot of these, like the ASVAB and SAT, are no longer IQ tests; the Triple 9 Society still considers ACT to be an IQ test though) scores.

Of course, there are other IQ tests, which test things like your knowledge of words, your ability to count, store, and recall numbers/information, and your ability to mentally rotate objects. The most comprehensive and probably best are the Weschler scales (WISC [Children's]/WAIS [Adult's] Series I/II/III/IV/V), but I am severely biased in that regard, and people like MENSA and Triple 9 also accept Law School Admission Test scores and a few other things.

Then there are pure pattern recognition tests, which are really the most beautiful ones because they are not biased at all in your ability to encode and retrieve verbal information, so they work fine for people with autism as well as typical people, since people with autism really cannot encode verbal language like typicals do. They work better/are better measured by things like Raven's Progressive Matrices (RPM) and other Raven-type visual IQ tests, because these mesh well with how they view the world.

Anyway the reason you test information you already know is because g is comprised of two things: crystallized and fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence begins its decline after about age 20, and never recovers, while crystallized intelligence is what you know and generally grows, but increasingly stagnant, as time goes on. Put simply, fluid intelligence is what you're capable of learning at that time, and crystallized intelligence is what you already know at that time. If you can control the time, you can setup a baseline comparison by which you can compare someone's knowledge or their ability to recognize patterns, or both. This baseline is called a "norm" and a test which uses a baseline is called a "norm-referenced test".

It's the basis of all standardized testing. It works well enough to sort people into various labeled crab buckets, the problem is that people ignore the crab buckets and just assume because it looks like a crab and walks like a crab, it must be the same crab as all the other crabs. The other problem is that people don't know what a norm-referenced test is, or they don't like the idea of people being superior or inferior to other people (maybe they're afraid for their own egos?), so they dissolve norms and replaced them with asinine things like NCLB.

FWIW, the Dutch and Norwegian armies use Raven-type IQ tests. Very forward thinking, IMO. Those are culture blind.

Have I ever given one? As in providing a test to someone? That's not even a relevant question. You've demonstrated that you do not, or at least did not, know what an IQ test entails. SATs and ACTs are not IQ tests. The only thing they test is if you're a decent student. If you put forth a decent amount of effort throughout your schooling, you will do well on those tests. The only reason I didn't do amazingly well is because of the math stuff (I actually had enough math credits to be able to not take a math class, and I chose to not take one because I hated math, and I still hate math now). The ASVAB is an aptitude test, not a measure of your intellect. Your job doesn't directly reflect your intelligence. I haven't encountered the other ones, but judging by your descriptions, they're all the same for my purposes.

It's good because it works, actually. Find a better method that works without the maths, or cannot be described by maths, and you'd have a point. You won't find one.

You're attributing this "working" to the wrong things. As I said, most of the examples you gave me do not qualify as actual IQ tests.

There literally isn't.

Already addressed this.

This is literally what life is.

That's what being introduced to life is. Once you get beyond that point, there is a lot more to it.

Sorry, I assumed you knew anything at all about what you were talking about. Dutch IQ tests from people born prior to and during the Hunger Winter showed no noticeable drop in IQ, but rather the same then-current trend of increasing IQ. That trend ended about 15 years ago or something. IQ has been on the drop in the Western world since the late '90s or early '00s. People like to look at the Hunger Winter because it's one of those classic studies: there's lot of data about it (the Dutch government was, more or less, completely intact), the information was available for decades (they weren't behind the Iron Curtain, unlike Sevastopol and Leningrad), and it's been referenced before by a lot of other people.

There is one psychological health finding that malnutrition leads to in adult life: schizophrenia. That's about it. Physically, there's a strange correlation between infant malnutrition and obesity later in adult life.

This indicates that, although I'm somewhat skeptical, the DPRK's IQ is probably OK in the end. All they need is a warm bed, some food, a reasonable education, and several years of positive outcomes before it can express itself fully. Then they'll be basically South Korea 2.0. I'm skeptical because while their ability to match patterns is OK, i.e. Raven-type IQ tests, they would probably be unable to function normally/typically for other reasons not necessarily related to mental retardation. Such as schizophrenia. For that to be tested you'd also need to administer a large battery of IQ tests to the North Korean population. And schizophrenia is heritable. And a lot of Chinese rice farmers have it, probably.

I've addressed this as well.

[Manokan Republic]

I'm talking about how it doesn't disprove malnutrition causes a drop in I.Q.

It suggests strongly that it doesn't. Considering we know so little about what actually affects IQ, making blanket statements like "malnutrition 'drops' your IQ" is foolish. Unless you're willing to pony up actual data or something and ideally a basic theory of intelligence that explains why malnutrition "drops" IQ...

I've already done it multiple times. You just ignore everything I post, hell almost everything in your own sources. I'll post it again.

Malnutrition in children between 3-11 has major impacts on I.Q. and health as an adult [1][2][3][4], effecting children the most, especially during important developmental periods, such as the first and second years of life. Observations have shown that the relative risk of having an IQ less than or equal to 89 in severe, moderate and mild malnutrition was 3.5, 2.7 and 1.4 times for boys and in girls it was 2.4, 1.7 and 1.4 times respectively. Mean full scale, verbal and performance IQ as well as the scores for various subtests decreased with the severity of malnutrition. [5] I.Q. points can drop as much as 15 points due to severe malnutrition for individuals within this age range [6], and malnutrition while the mother is pregnant with the child is often even worse. Furthermore, physiological effects on the brain due to malnutrition, such as lacking sufficient Vitamin B12, Iron, Zinc and protein can all have an impact on the brain, and can be scientifically proven to happen. Common sense says that the only way your brain works is if you eat the right foods with the right vitamins and minerals, and if you don't get it in your diet, you won't get it at all. Most people don't inject vitamins straight in to their vein and all of the calories and nutrients they get, comes from food.

Vitamin B12 deficiency by itself is also a big problem, especially in developed countries and by itself can cause brain damage. Vitamin B12 is rare from plant sources, so vegetarians are more likely to suffer from vitamin B12 deficiency. Infants are at a higher risk of vitamin B12 deficiency if they were born to vegetarian mothers. The elderly who have diets with limited meat or animal products are vulnerable populations as well. Vitamin B12 deficiency may occur in between 40% to 80% of the vegetarian population who are not also consuming a vitamin B12 supplement. In Hong Kong and India, vitamin B12 deficiency has been found in roughly 80% of the vegan population as well. Even among developed countries, I.Q. points were approximately 3.7 point higher in those who's mothers took large amounts of vitamin B12 during pregnancy. [2] Bare in mind, that's just one type of vitamin and only during neo-natal periods. Iodine by itself also showed an I.Q. drop of approximately 13 points in studies. [3]


The sample sizes of the studies presented are largely over 1,000 people each, done over many years, and from many different individuals. There's also a scientific understanding of how the brain works, and how it needs certain vitamins and minerals to operate, as well as protein and fats. Omega-3 Fatty acid, Vitamin B12, Zinc, Iron and Iodine are among the most important for brain function but other issues matter as well. Even calories alone can impact brain function, as the brain takes up 15-25% of the calories of the human body, but only 2-3% of the body's mass. Not all famines and malnutrition is the same, with mild and severe malnutrition having radically different impacts, as well as the length of time and what the individual is malnourished from. But in general, yes, malnourishment lowers I.Q. and brain function in general.

[Manokan Republic]

Anyways, to shift to another topic, how do any of you guys feel about adding a marksmen to your infantry squad? Or scout sniper units to platoons? What is your overall strategy and viewpoint?

Adding a marksmen in my case was handing out a rifle with a slightly better optic and barrel.

Scout Snipers are unnecessary at the platoon, or even the company, level outside of specialized units. At that level if you want snipers it should probably be just giving the best shooters in the platoon/company some form of sniper rifle and optic. I don't do that in my units.

The U.S. Army doesn't train to fire burst. For that matter, I don't think the Marines do, either.

So far in training the only time we have been told to use the burst function is when they wanted us to use the blank ammo up faster. Maybe in IOC they play with burst. On the other hand they really push the M249, even though that has been replaced at the fireteam with the M27, something more than a few of our infantry instructors have been disappointed by. On the gripping hand they are talking about issuing everyone an M27.

From everything I've gathered, this is and was the Marine's and Army's basic infantry doctrine forever, basically to use semiautomatic fire over fully automatic or burst fire in most circumstances, except with the machine guns which are used in short bursts due to lacking a semiautomatic firing function. But it's designed to replicate fast semiautomatic fire, essentially. As well lighter rifles, with higher accuracy, such as the M27 IAR, are already trending to replace the heavier machine guns, so my point is that accurate fire is typically as good at suppression as fully automatic fire, in some ways better. Good to hear from someone within training about it.

Also snipers are a hit or miss thing, with mortars also replicating the effect of them somewhat.

[Sevvania]

I think half of the conflict that's spanned the last few pages may stem from two different definitions of fully-automatic fire: one believing it entails "firing non-stop for an extended period of time" and the other interpreting it as "anything but manual/semi-auto". Which is how I would define it, but *shrugs*

[Gallia-]

Malnutrition in children between 3-11

...Is not what I was talking about.

I linked a study about prenatal health and famine because it talks about the Hunger Winter, which lasted something like 8 months in 1944-45. You're the only person bringing up early childhood malnutrition. Were I talking about childhood malnutrition I would have suggested skepticism, as I actually did, at the supposition that the DPRK's sustained famine did not really have any lasting effect on the knowledge producing ability of its population. Schizophrenics aren't exactly well known for being productive citizens (they are often net tax consumers), and prenatal famine has a higher incidence schizophrenia than non-famine births, but it's pretty clear that prenatal malnutrition doesn't affect IQ directly, since the Great Leap Forward lasted for several years as well and produced little drop in measurable IQ. So did Hunger Winter.

Good non-sequitur.

If only we were talking about neonatal instead of prenatal famine, but those aren't the same thing.

[2]

Much better. This is actually somewhat relevant since they're both prenatal. Unfortunately, they used WISC III alone, which isn't too great.

Using one IQ test opens it up to questions about whether or not the test itself was a confounding variable (this is especially true in people with autism, for example), which is why you tend to administer batteries of multiple tests and aggregate the scores of them. Which is what the better looking studies your meta-analysis cites, like Qian et. al. (2005), seem to have done. Unfortunately, Qian, et. al. (2005) isn't prenatal malnutrition, either, so it's not very relevant to Hunger Winter.

Bonilla, et. al. (2012)'s primary problem has been identified though: They're published in PLoS One. Oh no, open journals! No wonder they couldn't afford to administer a proper battery of tests.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

I think half of the conflict that's spanned the last few pages may stem from two different definitions of fully-automatic fire: one believing it entails "firing non-stop for an extended period of time" and the other interpreting it as "anything but manual/semi-auto". Which is how I would define it, but *shrugs*

One is actually "return fire at near cyclic until the enemy slackens his fire due to being confronted with superior shock action, then burst fire and manoeuvre until you are on top of the enemy and can grenade/shoot/bayonet him."

[Gallia-]

One is "Vietnam". The other is "sit in your FOB and wait for them to go away" I guess? America was closer to winning in Vietnam than it was in Afghanistan or Iraq, though. At least the entire goal of "destroy the North" was evident during the whole war, if not capitalized on, so "all" it would have taken was to completely shift American war goals from "sit in Da Nang" to "burn down Hanoi and salt the Earth with tank divisions".

e: OTOH the Vietnamese are the strongest race in the world so I doubt puny Americans would be able to win even with marching fire and triangle handguards. OTOOH sitting in your FOB and hoping the people who hate your guts start to like you is even worse than transplanting villages of communist sympathizers into your firebases. The USA at least had the benefit of being able to study communist counter-insurgency campaigns, like those waged by Saddam Hussein, Joe Stalin, and Hafez al-Assad, who were actually good at busting insurgencies, on what to do in Afghanistan/Iraq. No excuse for it to continue what are essentially Nazi policies.

Hyper modern counter-insurgency fights like Chechnya, Basra (1991), and Hama were a lot more successful than France/Ostfront/Indochina/Malaya/Vietnam/Afghanistan/Iraq debacles tbh. But American counter-insurgency tradition so heavily rooted in Nazi historiography I'm not sure the U.S. Army ever be able to escape the Well of Hitlerism it lives in. Ditto the rest of NATO and Friends who were also aping the Nazis' Ostfront counter-partisan campaign, right down to the whole "surrendering and going home" part.

Although for USA, it would be wanting to examine how Stalin subjugated the Baltic peoples and Ukrainians, since these are most similar to what it was trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thankfully, there's oodles of literature on this. Unfortunately, the U.S. Army Brain is apparently illiterate.

e2: But really the point is that full automatic is a lot better than mechanically limited burst fire. Burst might be good if you have soldiers whose reaction times or neural signals travel so slowly that they cannot realize they're shooting until they've emptied half the magazine, but most people have brains with adequate room for such things, although its debatable whether the U.S. military in Vietnam had much room in its brain given such dazzlingly farsighted initiatives as McNamara's 100,000.

[Fordorsia]

Who cares about any of this

[Gallia-]

No one.

[Fordorsia]

Clearly

[Allanea]

> Malaya
> Debacle

[Gallia-]

> Malaya
> Debacle

Vietnam was a French victory, too. The Malaya strategy as applied to Northern Ireland: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... Europe.svg

[Manokan Republic]

Malnutrition in children between 3-11

...Is not what I was talking about.

I linked a study about prenatal health and famine because it talks about the Hunger Winter, which lasted something like 8 months in 1944-45. You're the only person bringing up early childhood malnutrition. Were I talking about childhood malnutrition I would have suggested skepticism, as I actually did, at the supposition that the DPRK's sustained famine did not really have any lasting effect on the knowledge producing ability of its population. Schizophrenics aren't exactly well known for being productive citizens (they are often net tax consumers), and prenatal famine has a higher incidence schizophrenia than non-famine births, but it's pretty clear that prenatal malnutrition doesn't affect IQ directly, since the Great Leap Forward lasted for several years as well and produced little drop in measurable IQ. So did Hunger Winter.

Good non-sequitur.

If only we were talking about neonatal instead of prenatal famine, but those aren't the same thing.

[2]

Much better. This is actually somewhat relevant since they're both prenatal. Unfortunately, they used WISC III alone, which isn't too great.

Using one IQ test opens it up to questions about whether or not the test itself was a confounding variable (this is especially true in people with autism, for example), which is why you tend to administer batteries of multiple tests and aggregate the scores of them. Which is what the better looking studies your meta-analysis cites, like Qian et. al. (2005), seem to have done. Unfortunately, Qian, et. al. (2005) isn't prenatal malnutrition, either, so it's not very relevant to Hunger Winter.

Bonilla, et. al. (2012)'s primary problem has been identified though: They're published in PLoS One. Oh no, open journals! No wonder they couldn't afford to administer a proper battery of tests.

This is what you said "IQ isn't affected by malnutrition.

What it is affected by is not actually well known. It's not affected by childhood nutrition, stunted growth, or poor education. "- My sources have directly refuted this. Constantly changing your argument is not exactly helping you, as it just makes you look ridiculous. IQ is effected by education, nutrition, and stunted growth as I've demonstrated. You're just off your gourd and keep changing the goalposts and making strawmans hoping I won't notice. But all I have to do is go back and quote literally exactly what you said. So yes, you did say that, and that's what I'm refuting. Furthermore one famine isn't indicative of all famines or forms of malnutrition. Again, the specific types of things you are going without is more important than just a "famine" in general. As well pregnant woman and children typically are given more food during famines, as resources are rationed, meaning famines, especially short one's, don't always result in malnutrition of children or pregnant woman. A famine does not mean all members of the population are automatically malnourished, etheir. In fact with sufficient food reserves, often times famines can be ignored entirely.


Now you say this "You're the only person bringing up early childhood malnutrition." I'm not at all, and this is exactly your problem. I'm beginning to think that even you don't know what you're arguing.

[Gallia-]

At least I know the difference between shell splinter and explosions.

[Laywenrania]

High rates of fire overheat the weapon faster, while consuming more ammunition in order to hit the target. The modern military does mainly use it's rifles in semiautomatic fire, with it being the standard doctrine they teach their troops, to very rarely use fully automatic fire.

German military was/is teached to primarily use full auto in short bursts (2-3 round bursts).
Full auto doesn't mean "pull the trigger and be happy that your mag is emtpy", although that seems to be a constant stigma attributed to full auto by USA because of muh vietnam ammo wastage? /sarcasm

Volume of fire > precision.