rvd1981

@ dsayers: I thought the bulk of the argument here revolved around 'violence is bad'. If that's the case who are you to look down your nose at me? You take money to do violence to people. The only real difference is the name is who signs the check. And if you're not a PMC I apologize for any offence I might have caused you. If you are...you know what they say about glass houses and stones, right? So...okay...let me be clear: there really isn't a 'market' around where I live. Due to the obscenely high tax rate (seriously, a full third of my pretty meager paycheck is taken away by taxes) nobody has any money. Hell, they even take taxes out of my drill pay...which means I'm partly either paying myself or showing up for free for a third of the time. Any decent paying employer has fled the area ages ago leaving basically minimum wage fast food jobs, off the books work or getting a job with the government if you're not on unemployment. I am lucky enough to have a full time job along with my Army stuff along with what little cash I get every month from my books. I work 12-14 hour days five to six days a week and I can't even afford the gas to out of state let alone start over in a new city. So pardon me for trying to you know...live because the tax farmers in my particular geographical area have raised the fences and cranked up the voltage before I could make a run for it. Ideals are great but don't mean much if you've got an empty stomach. Since I can see that everybody here seems more interested in condemning me as an evil murderer than actually listening to anything I have to say I don't really see much point in trying to discuss this much further.

But...it's okay to murder people if somebody earned the money to pay you? Are you one hundred percent certain that whoever pays you are all saints? I mean if they've never ever done anything wrong ever then hey great. And I certainly hope you're not a PMC trying to lecture anyone on morality. If you think the military is bad those guys are even worse. If I did some of the things that some of those guys get away with while on deployment I'd have a long stay in Fort Leavenworth Federal Gravel Factory ahead of me.I can see that this isn't really going anywhere since anything I say is 'propaganda' and you're probably not going to listen to a word of my arguments because Army Bad and anybody associated with it is a horrible person. But let's have one more go at this, shall we?Peace is great. Nobody wants peace more than the people getting shot at on both sides. I don't know how often I have to repeat this until you'll actually listen to a word I'm saying but here goes one more time: I don't want to hurt anybody.Here's what I mean by 'I live in the real world'. There are these things that exist (as ideas and lines on a piece of paper) called countries. And these countries have things called governments. These governments are generally not at all good things because they mainly exist to steal money from people and do other bad things to people. They're powerful and don't seem to be going away any time soon. Hell, the government where I live has pretty much done away with just about anything resembling a private sector. There are really no jobs that pay close to anything you can live on that aren't government related in some way. So hey guess what? Rather than go on public assistance I chose to reenlist in the Army even though I know the government is generally pretty evil as a whole. Maybe some of the people involved are alright as individuals but you get the group of them together and...just ew. Pretty friggin' evil.Would it be more honorable to just go and try and sign up for welfare? Probably but oh guess what! I fall into that magic doughnut hole where I don't really make enough to live on but too much to qualify for aid. So I chose to work for a little bit of extra money to help me exist even if I don't agree at all with the system as a whole.It's kinda like say if you're in a concentration camp you don't have to like the camp or the guards but eating the food is alright because if you don't you'll starve to death. And every day you watch the Allied planes go overhead and listen to the guards whispering and you know that some day sooner or later you'll be free to help your fellow inmates rebuild. The point I'm trying to make is that there's people in the military who, believe it or not, are actually on our side. When you point at them and yell "Baby killer!" or "Murderer!" all you do is stir up all manner of defensiveness and drive them away. I know people who have pulled the trigger and they suffer for it every day. My grandfather fought in Europe during World War 2 and he still suffers from nightmares some seventy years later. A friend of mine suffers from PTSD due to a deployment to Afghanistan. They already feel guilt over what they've done so I guess all I really ask is think a little bit before you start throwing around loaded words like that. Try to understand what you're saying has on the people who hear it. Believe it or not I really do to the core of my being believe in liberty and freedom for everybody. I'm not a killbot. I'm not a fascist. I will defend anybody's right to do what they please as long as everyone's over the age of eighteen and nobody's getting hurt who doesn't want to be (hey there are some strange people out there that like getting hurt but whatever. None of my business). You all seem to disagree with me and hey you know what? That's great. I think it's fantastic. This right here is exactly the sort of thing that I'd be willing to fight for if necessary. If I received orders to do something I know to be wrong I would not comply. I have a legal and moral duty not to. Of course I think a friend of mine said it best: "If you disobey an illegal order you'll be punished but you'll be right."

So with these two pieces of information you gave me I can only assume you think there's a need for military action against an actual threat, i.e. there's a need for harming innocents against a threat. I'm at a loss now. How would harming innocents, which by definition aren't part of the threat, stop said threat exactly? I think I speak for everyone here when I say none of us think there's ever a need for "military intervention" (which is just a fancy schmancy wording for "attack" anyway). So...the use of force is never justified? So if say you were a Catholic living in France in the 40's you'd be totally cool with the Nazis invading? You wouldn't lift a finger to stop them even if though everybody pretty much knew what they were doing to the Jews? After all, the Fascists aren't a threat to you. Okay. Good to know. If there's ever trouble like that again you go on and twittle your thumbs and hope for the best. I got this, buddy.Also it's 'propaganda' that I have first hand information about the atrocities committed by the Taliban? These guys are pretty freakin' far from the noble freedom fighters resisting American imperialism some people seem to think they are. I find it really hard to empathize with people who come in to a village, round up the children and hang them because their relatives didn't want to go fight with the Taliban or strap on a suicide vest. I find it very hard to empathize with someone who thinks it's a good idea to set off a car bomb outside a school and blow up a bunch of little kids. If I end up getting deployed to Afghanistan I personally empathize a lot more with the civilians who'd really rather just go about their lives without having to put up with that. If I saw a guy setting up an IED in a marketplace would I use force to stop him? Yes. Why? He's going to kill a lot of people. The same as if I were stateside and saw some lunatic running around a shopping mall with a gun or an ax or whatever. Also how am I not being critical of myself? Did I or did I not say in my first post "I am at best a necessary evil'? Believe me nobody'd be happier than me if everybody all decided at once we were all going to be cool and do everything voluntarily and everybody was going to put their guns down tomorrow. However I live in the real world. It's not going to happen any time soon and I guess I'm just really trying to do my little bit to control the damage until the state finally collapses then we can all jump up and go "Hey! Over here! Let's try this instead of all that nasty tangled mess that caused all the problems in the first place!"Or well would it be more morally acceptable if my pay stub said "XYZ Dispute Resolution Organization" on it rather than "Department of the Army"? I mean...at the end of the day I'd be doing about the same thing: showing up with a gun on behalf of some guy who pays me to use force against some other guy I likely don't even know. What's the difference there? I mean my boss has guys with guns in both situations. If a guy from the DRO knocks on your door and you know he has guys with guns who will as a last resort say kick in your front door, jam a rifle barrel in your neck and force you out of the house (or whatever the contract says it doesn't have to be rent or whatever) can you honestly tell me that you would not feel the least bit intimidated or coerced in any way?

And I could find pictures of what the Taliban and Al-CIAda gets up to. Let's not pretend the US military is the only bad actor here, alright? So it's probably best that neither one of us go there. Harming innocents is wrong no matter who does it. And hey, guess what...this might come as a shock to you but I actually marched against the Iraq War. If the US government had attacked Syria I wouldn't have went. Why? Neither Iraq or Syria are threats to the US so we have no business intervening militarily.

Hi folks. I'll get right to it. I've been listening to Stefan's podcasts and watching his videos for a little while now and I agree with him on a lot of things. However there's one big thing that I can't quite help but object to. He keeps insisting that soldiers are all murderers. Now, to be up front, I've served eight years in the US Army (divided between active duty and Reserves) so I probably bring a little different perspective to the whole thing than Stef does. I've always thought of myself as a necessary evil at best and at worst a janitor. I don't make the messes (at least directly. I realize that my taxes go to a government that...is morally questionable on a good day) but I get called in to clean them up. And for the record I've never eaten a baby or anything like Stef implies that all military types do because we're all evil sociopaths. I don't want to hurt anybody however I'm not so idealistic as to fool myself into thinking that it's all fluffy bunnies and happy puppies out there. There's bad people out there (granted the vast majority of them are created and funded by some government or another) and I'd like to think that I'm doing my little bit to keep them the heck away from the people I care about.And as far as the whole 'Military people aren't big on negotiation' and the like that Stef's also repeated a few times...it's like this. I've found that treating people like human beings (in the Army or out) gets you *much* farther than just shouting at them. I always use 'please' and 'thank you' even when I'm talking to a subordinate. Heck, the vast majority of bad bosses I've had have actually been in the civilian world. Anyways, I welcome your thoughts on this O my fellow Message Board Posting People.

I should mention that today is the last day of the offer thing that Amazon will let me run. You can get my first book, Outbreak: Boston, either by searching for it on Amazon or following the link in my signature. Enjoy and all I ask if you have a free moment then take a minute and write a review on the book's Amazon page.

For those of you interested I'm running a promotion from 21 to 25 January. You can get my first book, Outbreak: Boston for free in the Amazon Kindle store. Enjoy and if you like it please either write a review on the book's page or at least tell a friend about it.

Hello, everybody. I'm an author and I've published a couple of eBooks available for the Amazon Kindle and I thought I'd see what you all you fine people here thought of them if you were so inclined to check them out. The link below will take you to my Amazon Author's Page where you can find all my stuff in one handy place.http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Van-Dusen/e/B00A3BP6EQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1390070562&sr=8-1My books follow a group of military reservists, National Guardsmen and civilians dealing with a zombie apocalypse. The closest way I can describe the basic plot is sort of either the movie Battle: Los Angeles or Black Hawk Down meets The Walking Dead. The main character tends to use Universally Preferable Behavior and negotiation wherever possible (I mean you can't really negotiate with zombies because...ya know...zombies). For instance in the first book she ends up leading a patrol out to forage for supplies and they come across a gun store. There's a man inside with a gun and a stand off ensues. A few of the people in her patrol are hot to just shoot the guy and steal his guns but she basically tries to convince the man to trade instead as they had just come from raiding an abandoned drugstore. Even though the other soldiers are basically shouting at her to let them go in and the man inside the store actually fires a couple warning shots at her they end up leaving empty handed because the man obviously wasn't terribly interested in doing business.Anyways, hope you all enjoy my stuff. They let me run free promotions every once in awhile or if you're an Amazon Prime member you can borrow them from the lending library thing. Thanks and once again enjoy!

Basically in my books so far there's these rumors and odd stories kicking around the news about this new strain of Meningitis or something making the rounds. The story follows this Air Force Reservist who just returned from a deployment to Iraq. She's as she puts it 'trying to act like a normal person' when she gets a call from her chain of command to get to get to the airfield right away. The first book mainly deals with her first trying to contain this virus then just trying to get these people she kinda takes responsibility for out of the city of Boston alive. The second one is...mainly the characters that survived the first book catching their breath and hiding out with the Air Force Reservist's family.The third one (that I'm currently working on now) is where I was planning on having society kind of starting to rebuild itself somewhat. I was hoping to find some suggestions as to work a more stateless society eventually winning out over an increasingly heavy handed stateist model into the story hopefully without bludgeoning the reader between the eyes with how much better I'd think it would be...you know...too much...

Yes, I understand what you're trying to do, Wesley. I put up the post at like 2:30 in the morning and made a slight error in what I was trying to say so thanks for the correction. I have a pretty good handle on the concepts but I'm always up for learning more because learning is freakin' awesome so thanks for the link. My characters have run into some pretty blatant violations of Universality already (even before the outbreak as two of them are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts). They've generally tried to do the right things however they've basically been put in a situation where there really aren't any good options only less bad I guess you could say.And as far as the spot where I'm stuck right now: there's really two ways I could go with it. Either the characters rally their fellow...residents? Prisoners?...against the FEMA guys and throw them out of the camp. Or my characters just basically go 'Nuts to this! I'm out! I know we've got food, shelter and medical care but screw this! I'm done!' I'm not quite sure where I'd like to go with it.

Hello all! How goes it? Anyways I'll cut right to it. I'm writing a series of books set in the beginning stages of a zombie apocalypse and I was thinking of trying to work some more of my political ideas into the story (volunteerism, universally acceptable behavior, etc) though I wasn't quite sure how to go about it. I mean I'd like to try to go about it with a little bit of subtlety unlike say...every zombie movie that George Romero did after the original Night of the Living Dead (he practically beats you over the head with whatever clever bit of social commentary he's trying to make). For the record the part where I'm stuck right now has my characters (US Air Force and Marine Corps reservists, National Guardsmen and a couple civilians) living at a fortified airport that has been turned into a 'Refugee Resettlement Center' by some FEMA bureaucrats and private military contractors. The PMCs are...not exactly the nicest guys on the planet and the bureaucrats are generally somewhat less than competent (for instance the chief FEMA guys confiscated all the weapons from the people living at the airport when they got there and so on).So...I'm open to suggestions here. Thanks for any advice!