The world's most depressing computer game.

[az]

From the Makers of Darwinia.

I'll just quote the website:

It's Global Thermonuclear War, and nobody wins.
But maybe - just maybe - you can lose the least.

http://www.everybody-dies.com/

[Dr Mordrid]

Joshua/WOPR: "The only way to win is not to play"

[az]

Yup, that's what I thought of, too. Strange game indeed.

[cjolley]

And not just in the movies.
When my Dad was doing nuclear war simulations and planning programming for SAC he said it became quickly apparent that the first to NOT shoot everything they had "lost".
It didn't matter who shot first.
There is simply no mathematically viable limited nuclear war.

Which makes you wonder what playing involves.
I mean, how simple can a game get?
Shoot everything and pray.
What kind of a game is that?

[KvHagedorn]

Almost seems like someone's trying to teach someone a lesson..

[az]

Play it, the free demo is <50 MB, the graphics are minimalistic but nice, and it's not as boring as you'd think. And if there are still people out there who haven't learned this lesson, I'd be glad if they listened to this game - but if they haven't learnt yet, I don't know why they would.

[rylan]

Crazy Kim in North Korea might end up using this as his nuclear war simulator. Except he won't get it.

[TransformX]

No, he'll use cheats!

[Dr Mordrid]

In the NK nuke thread some were dismissive of their sub-kiloton test, but this may prove a premature judgement.

This weeks Weekly Standard has an article by Michael Goldfarb analyzing the events of the last week in the context of Pakistans program. Here's the pertinent part;

In response to India's renewed testing, Pakistan claimed to have tested five devices in the Chagai District of Baluchistan Province in 1998. The tests were conducted underground and, though estimates vary, the initial blast probably produced a yield of roughly 8 kilotons (though Pakistani sources have claimed it was as powerful as 40 kilotons) and registered at 4.8 on the Richter scale.

But this is where things get interesting. Although the Pakistanis claimed to have detonated five bombs (likely an attempt to demonstrate parity with India), only two detonations were confirmed by seismic activity in the area, and this seismic activity showed the tests were conducted as much as 80 miles away from one another. The second test produced a much smaller blast in the subkiloton range.

According to Pike (John Pike, the founder and director of globalsecurity.org), there is reason to suspect that this second blast, in 1998, might have been carried out by the North Koreans. This speculation is based on the fact that a number of North Koreans were on hand for these tests, and seen leaving the country immediately after. Also the Pakistanis' first blast was captured on video and played for news outlets around the world, while a veil of secrecy surrounded the subsequent, smaller test.

Is it possible that this latest North Korean provocation was neither a failure nor a first test? Pike believes that may be the case. If the test was of a "trigger device" rather than a conventional fission bomb, one would expect a yield of less than 1 kiloton. A trigger device is the primary, fission explosion needed to initiate fusion in a thermonuclear weapon, otherwise known as a hydrogen bomb. The United States staged numerous tests for devices of this type in the 1960s, resulting in similarly small blasts.

If the North Korean nuclear program was geared toward the development of fusion-based thermonuclear weapons rather than fission-based atomic weapons, one might expect the results of early tests to look much different that the first atomic tests by the United States, Russia, or India--all of which had programs that were originally designed to produce fission weapons.

The French Minister of Defense commented yesterday that "if this was a nuclear explosion, it would be a case of a failed explosion." Such statements are fuelling an increasingly dismissive attitude toward the capabilities and risks of a nuclear North Korea. If Pike is right, these assumptions may be wrong and the North Koreans could be on the cusp of producing a weapon with an explosive force that would be measured in megatons rather than kilotons.

The assembly of a fusion bomb isn't that tough once you have that 1 KT primary and the secondary fuel, usually lithium6 deuteride (Teller-Ulam design);



Yes, polystyrene foam is a critical component in an H-bombs firing sequence;

[cjolley]

Well there certainly wouldn't be any mistaking a thermonuclear test when their next test comes

[Dr Mordrid]

Presuming they aren't still playing poker.

Once the primary has been tested they can assemble the rest with little extra testing since the secondary is concentric cylinders whose proportions can be calculated, esp if they used an instrumented dummy casing & secondary in the trigger test.

[Fluff]

And I thought it was Excel

[rylan]

Well if thats the case, it would be orders of magnitude worse having them with H-Bombs instead of A-Bombs. You're talking detonation strength of Megatons instead of Kilotons.

[cjolley]

But Doc, isn't it really a little far fetched that NK would hinge it's future existence on an untested secret H Bomb project?
And if they did test an H Bomb, which I doubt they could obfuscate, I think China's attitude would undergo a remarkable change. And they know it.

It is important in these conjectures to remember Hanlon's Razor
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

[James_D]

Actually, the most depressing game is War On Terror, from Monte Cristo. my gawd I wanted to shoot my computer after 5 min. But I managed to collect myself and uninstall and throw the game in the trash. (anyone wants a 5 min used game?, they can get it with a free sample of Effexor(antidepressent medication), for only the cost of shippment

I was so looking forward for a good evening with a relaxing RTS game.

Argh.


JD