War is Bad. However, war is also interesting. Since I was warned that posting/talking about my SPARC essays might be a bad idea, this is my replacement blog post.

I tried to avoid news about Ukraine at first. On the first day of the conflict (2/24), it was because I had an SRP Lab Report to finish and that was far more important. Once I started actually following the war, my productivity cratered for a day because I was unable to think about anything else. After that, I stopped thinking about it, annoyed RK by making my discord status “ignore the war”, and settled back into my life. Now that everyone else has also gone back to not thinking about it, just to be quirky and not like the other boys, I’ve begun following it again!

I’m quite surprised by the extent to which people have moved on. It’s a testament to our short attention spans, but to be fair it’s also a far-off war that none of us can really do that much about. Eventually, everyone, either consciously or unconsciously, makes the calculation I made and stops caring. Also, conflicts with just as much bloodshed happen all of the time in non-Western countries.

I woke up this morning and there was a land war in Europe.

Someone in my physics class

The emphasis on land war in Europe, kinda makes me think of oh so it matters because they’re white. However, I’ll give it a pass this time because, unlike the other conflicts, this is a nuclear power (Russia) invading Ukraine which has gotten support from many nuclear powers. (Huh, I never ended up posting my theory about nuclear weapons and the Fermi paradox :P)

American Intel

I’m pleasantly surprised by how the government’s responded. There’s some unfortunate deja vu to the fall of Afghanistan, but the decision to release the intel about Russia planning to invade was brilliant. People kept saying that the US was inventing war fears for political gain, and I thought as much, but the intel ended up being proven right. It’s always nice when people doubt someone and they end up being proven right.

Anyways, my little thesis is that the situation in Ukraine should still be followed because Kyiv will probably fall soon. Of course, the New York Times has been continuously using their all-caps headlines to talk about Ukraine, but newspapers will always do this. I thought it’d be interesting to compare two German invasions in WW2 to the current invasion. I can’t be bothered to do actual research, so I’ll end with some numbers that are based on current borders and thus wildly inaccurate.

German Invasion of Poland

Sep 1, 1939 – Oct 6, 1939. 36 days. ~500km distance from Berlin to Warsaw. Size of Poland: 120,726 mi²

German Invasion of France

May 10, 1940 – June 14, 1940. There were 35 days between Germany leaving Germany and entering Paris. This was very quick compared to the long slog of WW1. In this invasion, the Germans traveled around 400-450km, and the size of France is 210,016 mi².

Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Feb 24, 2022 – Current. ~150km from the Belarusian border to Ukraine. Size of Ukraine: 233,031 mi²