The Old Hack

In an ideal world they would have. And it was certainly what many or even most of the people in the Resistance tried for. But even good men can wear down and when you live under constant threat of capture, torture and death, and you see that happen to your closest friends and family members, and you can not ever be certain that someone you trust won't sell you out... strange things happen to the human mind after a while. And some people are just broken to begin with. That doesn't help, either. In school I was taught a sanitised version that closely resembled the ideal it is so tempting to believe in or hope for. You have to dig to find the atrocities. But if you do, they are there.

That reminds me of once back in the 90s when the central network of the place I was then working at got empowered by a lightning bolt striking right next to the building and sending a 50.000 volt surge through the network. Happily, our cheap 10-dollar net cards protected themselves by sending the surge on to our 1000-dollar CPUs. The net cards all worked fine afterwards. The CPUs in the servers, not so much.

Ah, shadows of the early days of tabletop roleplaying games. Where you grabbed all the valuables no matter how lawful good you were, because 1 GP = 1 XP.

I am going to answer this as honestly as I can: I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me. Not that any war is ever pretty, but this one was really hideously ugly. Of course we had resistance fighters who tried to minimise civilian casualties. But we also had the type who said, "If they are near Nazi property, they probably had it coming anyway." The Resistance had to deal with informers and deserters and doing so in an environment where getting caught by the Gestapo could readily mean a fate that would be if not worse than death then at least incredibly painful for a while, and then death. And where getting caught could mean that they got the names of your friends out of you. People got murdered just under suspicion of being informers. Gestapo officers got liquidated and countered with more atrocities. My own uncle was a teenager who did stuff like running errands, sugaring gas tanks and spreading illegal papers. He eventually got picked up by the Gestapo and spent the rest of the war in a jail that I somehow don't think appeared in the Michelin guide. During the first part of the war, the Resistance was small and unorganised as well as poorly equipped. It did not accomplish much. More, at the time the government collaborated with the Nazis and so they did not do much in the way of atrocities. In fact, because Danes were so close to what the Nazis fondly imagined to be racial perfection and because Denmark had been one of the nations that had been least harsh with territorial demands after WW1, Denmark was treated more like an ally than a conquered nation. Without support from the population in general and with the police at least nominally assisting the Nazis, the Resistance could and did not accomplish much. But as time wore on, it became harder and harder for the Nazis to ignore the Resistance. They started to do atrocities to suppress it and frighten the population into subservience. As usual, it worked with some but made others more motivated to fight back. And of course atrocities begot more atrocities. The government became less cooperative. The Danish Police was rounded up in 1943, imprisoned in camps and replaced with SS and local collaborators known as Hipo, or the HilfPolizei. As you can imagine, the latter were far more interested in beating people up, having a good time and filling their own pockets than in keeping any sort of order. At that point the Resistance really started to get momentum. I am not an apologist for atrocities but I am honestly not certain if I would have had the moral strength to keep from doing them myself if I had lived at the time. I am sorry.

To be fair, if a bunch of cops formed up in a line between me and my monitor whenever I turned it on, I'd get rid of the damn thing in a freaking hurry, too.

On the countering side, puncturing a pulmonary artery is not likely to fill the lungs with whipped cream.

I was about to comment on forecast services omitting essential information, but thinking more closely about it, I am compelled to agree. (This reminds me of a horrible forecast I once saw in a Danish tech magazine. It featured a bugged forecast page which had placed a nonexistent extra day between Sunday and Monday. According to the forecast, this hypothetical day featured weather such as a constant temperature of 99 degrees Celsius throughout the day (210 degrees Fahrenheit) and an average windspeed of 999 meters/second (1092 yards/second). Near as I could figure out, if that day had actually happened, there would be nothing manmade left standing atop Danish soil afterwards. Possibly buried nuclear bunkers might survive it -- I don't know if we have any of these.)

We had quite a few of those in Denmark three quarters of a century ago. Only we called them 'resistance fighters.' I blame Orwell.

Does the forecast mention the likelihood of Elder Gods appearing to devour the countryside?

Personally, she reminds me equally of the Furies. Spill family blood, pay a terrible price...

Absolutely. If Dan said he didn't do it, of course he didn't do it.

The Moderator: I would like to remind the people posting here that we have at least one Muslim poster here and we may have lurkers of that faith, too. This sort of reductionism is insulting to them. There are many Muslims in the world who live in countries friendly to the United States (millions of them in the US alone, for example) and to make the claim that all their clerics 'feed them anti-US propaganda' is a staggering oversimplification about as reasonable as saying that all Christians are homophobic, anti-science and against LGBT rights. Once again, please do not descend to this particular kind of argument. Faiths are not monolith blocs led by the Borg Queen. And for that matter, terrorism is not limited to the Muslim faith. I am watching this thread closely and I truly do not wish to lock it -- but if I judge it necessary, I will. ~tOH.

Nonsense. They are just really, really thirsty after all that getting knocked about.

This happened to my friend Elizabeth's cat Haile Selassie, so named for being an Abyssinian and fondly nicknamed His Imperial Majesty. He developed diabetes but it was caught in time and eventually he went into remission and didn't need insulin anymore. Here is a picture of Haile in action, in a manner of speaking:

This day... WE EAT!

I thought bastardy was marked with a bar sinister? *scratches head*

I disagree. What makes for a hero isn't success or failure but the act of entering danger in order to protect others, if need be at the price of one's own life. A fireman who is killed the first time he enters action is still a hero. I fully agree with the tragic part, mind you. *sigh*

Ah yes. Cats. This is something I've seen so many cats do. My own cats when they were young did just that. They'd gallop frantically around for a while, then get into a massive kitfight with each other, and two minutes later they would be fast asleep on top of one another. Later, they got more calm and staid, especially the male. My wife used to say of him then that he had two speeds, Stop and Neutral.

Even today it is no sure bet. My best friend just died of cancer. He was fifty-one.

No, but the older child got into a serious streetbrawl with a unicorn and eventually they got drummed out of town.

Actually, some supposedly 'non-lethal' games can be surprisingly brutal. I remember playing Thief once, in which the entire idea was that you would never get spotted and manage to steal things without ever having to hurt anyone. The catch was -- this only applied to you and not the NPCs. Those buggers had no compunction whatsoever about using lethal force if they caught you. Best example: I'd managed to raise the alarm and was in trouble. Guards were walking around with increased alert level, poking into every nook and cranny looking for me and calling out stuff like, "He has to be here!" or "Come out and surrender!" I was desperately trying to escape when a guard walked out right in front of me, yelled "THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!" and killed me. I suppose he was right. It was my last warning ever.

I do not intend to discuss it in public.

I have Copenhagen Syndrome with respect to the Danish Parliament. It manifests itself in an urge to purchase a gasoline-powered chainsaw and charge inside while Parliament is in session, and not stop while anything in there is still moving. So far, I have been able to keep this urge in check. Barely.

The Moderator: Please don't revive old threads that have been inactive for around two weeks or more. If you wish to debate a thought related to a matter here, start a new thread in the General forum, or possibly add a comment in the 'Noticed upon Reread' thread. Thank you. ~tOH.

Ever since the old forums, the one 'Delete' option has been to message the moderator (me) and ask the lazy sod to do it. Which you should all feel free to, I really don't mind.