/k/ - Weapons

Someone on /pol/ mention this a while back. Is it any good?

>>331384

Find a english copy of "Der Wehrwolf" by Hermann Löns.

Its about farmers during the Thirty Years War who build their own Fort to defend themselves against marauding Soldiers.

The Thirty Years War was kinda the Apocalypse for the Holy Roman Empire and the end of Medieval Europe.

There are a bunch of books in this series.

They're all pulp novels, but I have a soft spot for barbaric Conan-like works.

>>331384

Starship Troopers should be mandatory reading in all public schools, at grades 6, 9, and 12, imo. With book reports due every time.

It's such a fucking goldmine of wisdom.

>“There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.”

>“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms”

>“Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.”

>“Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?–TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out.

Poor arithmetic, but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature–a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price.”

>“Any group is weaker than a man alone unless they are perfectly trained to work together.”

>“To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.”

>“Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination– devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues – which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.”

>“Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not - and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind.”

>“Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part…and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”

>“When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.”

>“Cast me into a dungeon;, burn me at the state, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives – but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.”

>“A boy who gets a C- in 'Appreciation of Television' can't be all bad.”

>“I told you that 'juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue—indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a 'juvenile delinquent.' But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents—people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail.”

The book was goddamn magnificent. The movie, not so much. I wish the plans to make an accurate movie adaptation had gone through.

>>331554

>those quotes

mfw

I read this book not too long ago, a good read. You can thank this book for cheeki breeki and ARTYOOM!!

>>331679

that that was a very good book

also, you faggots need to read Dune

What do you guys think of Matt Brackens books? I know I read the first one, not sure about the others.

>>331413

It was the first heinlein I read and the ending especially has always stuck with me.

>>331424

I really disliked that book, except as a manual for how to kill off the future of your town.

>>331434

I thought it was okay back in the day, but haven't read it in forever. Depends on how cheap you can get a copy.

>>331735

>>331680

I always love recommending Dune. The first books is very good even if you don't like Sci-Fi, but even then if you didn't like it that much it ends on such a way where you don't have to worry about the sequels since it's pretty self contained where it leaves off, but there are sequels (as long as you stay to those written by the ORIGINAL author) if you can dig it.

Also last time we had a thread like this a few anons recommended this, does anyone know if its any good? I was thinking about picking it up for my birthday so I atleast have something to do that day.

>>331680

>>331770

Dune is god-tier but you gotta avoid the movies and miniseries and every book written by Herbert's son. Actually, even Herbert's own books go off the rails a bit starting with God-Emperor.

The first Dune, though, is a masterpiece.

>"You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind."

>Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

>"Shield your son too much […] and he'll not grow strong enough to fulfill any destiny."

>“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.”

>“When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movements become headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget the precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late.”

>Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn…

>“It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”

>“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”

>“The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" – which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.”

>“What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises—no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting.”

>“The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind.”

>“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles. – Muad'Dib”

>“A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.”

>“And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning 'That path leads ever down into stagnation.”

The original Dune is a meditation on self-awareness and discipline, with the story and setting serving as a vantage on various characters for the purpose of comparing and contrasting the relative values of these concepts. The benefits of understanding that humans are animals, and precisely what sort of animal humans actually are, and how you can use that information to better yourself.

Which is why no movie or TV adaptation does it justice. They never include all of the thoughts and monologues that are critical to the book's message and theme. One of the TV miniseries opens with Paul doing a literal song and dance. Directors, actors, artistic types like these, they don't understand what someone like Paul or Leto would be like. Someone who's fully self-controlled, who's not prone to flights of fancy or singing or joking, is completely alien to the kind of person who makes TV and movies in this day. To these people, the magic of Dune is just another science fiction setting to play around in. The philosophy, the psychology, the sociology, the ecological concerns, etc, fly right over their heads.

>>331832

>more entertaining than Meditations

u fuckn w0t m80?

>“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

>“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”

>“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”

>“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

>“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”

>“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart.”

>“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.”

>“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

>“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

>“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”

>“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

>“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

>“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”

>“Here is a rule to remember in future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: not "This is misfortune," but "To bear this worthily is good fortune.”

If SST should be taught 3 times before graduation, Meditations should be taught every year from 1st grade through graduation.

With Epictetus and Seneca sprinkled in liberally.

>It has nothing to do with fascism or nationalism in the book, that was just a setting which put pressure on the protagonist.

I would disagree. I think in Heinlein's view such a State was the inevitable outcome of Stoic virtue. When your primary focus in life is mastering yourself, striving to be the best possible version of yourself, and serving and teaching others, the Whole is naturally elevated above the Individual. It's not the traditional Nationalism/Fascism we know, in which the State is merely the top peg on the social hierarchy and the people are naturally submissive beneath, but rather the people, through their own urge to better themselves and their communities, lifting up their communities for the sake of building their own character and exercising their own virtue. It's self-serving in a unique way, rather than serving the State.

The problem, imo, is how you'd find enough good, virtuous people to administrate so many offices. How do you find so many teachers, trainers, military officers, politicians, etc, with this sense of duty and self-discipline and wisdom for teaching others? Perhaps, as we've said, you start by teaching these topics in school.

>>331843

The first is about character examination.

>"What do you despise?"

Someone who despises weakness has a preoccupation with strength.

Someone who despises other races would be, predictably, a racist.

Someone that hates injustice likely has a strong preference for order and fairness.

Someone that hates rules likely has a strong preference for personal autonomy and perhaps anarchy.

The idea is that by examining what things a person rages against the most, you can understand a great deal about that person.

>"The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind."

This one is about tolerance and patience and perhaps planning. The willow is a fragile tree. It bends and sways. You may recall a variety of sayings along the lines of "the stick that bends does not break", or "it's better to bend than to break". Rigidity, or an uncompromising attitude, can result in outright failure if you can't stand up to outside pressures.

The willow tree bends in the wind so that it does not break. It lives its life, growing slowly, bending with the wind. Then it has offspring. The more offspring it has, the better they can all collectively resist the wind. Until eventually you have a willow grove that's completely shielded from the wind.

This has a variety of interpretations. Personally, it could refer to a person putting up with hardship until their work becomes fruitful enough to elevate them out of it. Like trudging through school and college, even though it may suck, until you get that degree and get a decent job. Or putting up with a bad job long enough to get a promotion or a transfer or to find a new, better job. Or living in a run-down apartment until you save up enough money to get a better one.

But if you generalize, this could also be about a group of people. A movement of people that don't cause a stir, who quietly confer amongst themselves, sharing their ideas and working together and slowly attracting more and more like minded people, until they have a movement on their hands.

Overall, the idea is not to be a rigid, aggressive prick who starts shit. Be flexible, accept what life sends your way, and focus on growth and well being, until the outside concerns that once threatened you become negligible. Pick your battles wisely. Avoid challenges that unnecessarily push you to the breaking point when you can instead choose steady progress and achieve the same goals through patience, rather than conflict.

>>331843

>"A killer with the manners of a rabbit - this is the most dangerous kind.”

You're mostly right on this one. If you want to kill anything, it's best not to let that intent be known. The hunter hides in the tree stand. The assassin blends in with the crowd. Shows of force, or posturing, or chest-thumping, are all behaviors intended to prevent violence by warning others that you're not to be messed with. But if you truly intend to do violence, to kill something, you do not want to give warnings. You want to be as invisible as possible. You want to be quiet, kind, and unassuming. The best hunter blends into the forest. The best assassin blends into the crowd.

When you act tough and ready to kill, people expect it of you. People are more wary around you. They act nervous. This is good if you don't actually want violence, but to deter it. But if you intend to kill someone, you want them to trust you. You want them relaxed, at-ease, and unconcerned with your presence, if not completely unaware of it.

Who puts you on your guard the most? The thug with neck tattoos you run into in the middle of the night, or the man in a button-down shirt and slacks with well-groomed hair, holding pamphlets about Christ's Love or a copy of the Book of Mormon at your door? The thug would have a hard time closing in on you without you preparing to fight him. The preacher could stab you with a knife hidden under his pamphlets before you even realized he meant you harm.

So, if you intend to kill something, you want to look as innocent as possible. This helps with the execution as well as the escape. In the above scenario, the thug with the tattoos is automatically a suspect, while the preacher is likely overlooked.

Even in a fight, the seemingly hapless looking fighter is taken less seriously. It lowers their opponents' guards. In the UFC recently Holly Holm held back in all of her big fights leading up to Ronda Rousey. She deliberately took her time and fought sloppy to lower Rousey's expectations of her, and to not give Rousey any good video material to train off of in the weeks leading up to their fight. Then, when she got into the ring for the championship fight, she stopped holding back and took the Bantamweight title in dramatic fashion. Going into that fight Holm was an extreme underdog. Based on her previous performances, nobody thought she would stand a chance. Then she thrashed Rousey. That was in November. In her most recent fight with Miesha Tate, she had no element of surprise, and Tate choked her out twice.

Monster Hunter-series.

Not exactly god-tier but more of a fastfood-tier. Feels little like Jack Reacher meets Blade.

Gunporn meets different mythological creatures and monsters. Firearms vs ghouls, proper killzones vs Master Vampires. What's there not to love?

>>331735

Everything you said is completely wrong.

>Be a good Goy

I'm glad you said that. Heinlein's veteran suffrage would completely remove jews from power.

>Violence has settled more issues in human history than any other factor is a blatant lie

>If the greatest use of Violence is just a facet of Politics, Violence cannot claim to be the biggest factor in settling issues

War is not a subset of politics. War and politics are both subsets of violence.

>by using War/Violence, you become a subject to Politics

Politics is violence. Government is force. That is the entire point of the book.

“To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives—such as mine to make your lives miserable once a day. Force if you will!—the franchise is force, naked and raw, the Power of the Rods and the Ax. Whether it is exerted by ten men or by ten billion, political authority is force."

Starship Troopers.

>"War is just Politics with different tools"

The reverse is also true. Politics is just war by other means.

>Just look at the Middle East or Vietnam

>greatest Violence

Wrong again. Not "greatest" violence. Those wars had the least violence. America stopped fighting total wars and started the faggy public relations campaign of "winning hearts and minds". Americans stopped nuking their enemies and started apologizing for hurting their feelings. From total war to appeasing muslim savages. Patton is rolling in his grave.

“In Japan, we dropped 502,000 tons and we won the war. In Vietnam we dropped 6,162,000 tons of bombs and we lost the war. The difference was that McNamara chose the targets in Vietnam and I chose the targets in Japan.”

Curtis LeMay.

I have yet to start reading that .pdf of Starship Troopers I downloaded over a year ago

>From sci-fi to historical or even real life memoirs.

Other than The Art of War, I really have nothing to offer insight on that has a version that is in English. Unfortunately I had a shortened version because "lol who wants to hear about swords, we took it out". Shit is short and sweet but really after reading like ten pages you already get the point of the book and you aren't going to learn much more from it, still worth buying it for like two Euros.

And on Latvian books, Dvēseļu Putenis (translated: Storm of souls) is a neat one, shame there is no translated version of the book/books. I had read a shortened version because holy fuck are the battles incredibly boring and it used to be in multiple books to make it worse. It is based on stories of soldiers that fought during WW1 and in the Communist takeover of Russia all combined into a single story consisting of multiple characters. Very pro-separatist and first takes place on the side of Latvians resisting foreign aggression, then as soldiers under the wing of Russia, then on the side of the Commies and then afterwards on the side of separatists fighting against absolutely every side of the conflict, ends with desertation.

Another one would be Zīmogs Sarkanā Vaskā (translated: Stamp in red wax), which is about the Crusades that went into the Baltic and sought to convert the region to Christianity by force. This too is dramatised historical account and it too is very pro-separatist. Far less about warfare itself but it does slightly go into the politics of it.

If you have a person or program that can translate all of it for you then you might like them.

>>>331832

http://www.amazon.com/Warwolf-Peasant-Chronicle-Thirty-Years/dp/1594160260/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458005615&sr=1-1&keywords=Robert+Kvinnesland

The only English version of the book I could find. There weren't even any PDFs.

Also related, its about a town in West Virgina circa 1632 that is sent to into Thuringia. Its honestly a very good scifi book and /k/ book.

>>331417

Monster Hunter is a fucking great series. I agree with this anon.

>>332141

Nevermind, I just read the characters list and the main heroes are all 'union workers' (communists). The only halfway sensible character is compared to Jim Crow for thinking that non-future people shouldn't be allowed to vote in their government and they shouldn't be freely offering their technology. Fuck this dumb shit, I like alternate history 'modern notions in the past' style fiction but not when it's this fucking dumb.

>>331397

>Metro 2033 is shit.

>Is shit

>Shit

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>333476

>The message is unimportant, you have to look at the effect when it is applied. The Society in Startship Troopers is a Society of Zombies and Sheeple.

You're a retard. The message is the entire point. And the civilians of SST are sheep, just like most people in real life. The entire point of the fucking book was that with the proper guidance, through service to the species, you could learn to NOT be a zombie.

>You say education, but you actually think and want indoctrination. Duty and Virtue are empty words filled with a myriad of meanings.

No. See the post on Stoicism that followed. No education is forced. You can choose to opt out of every lesson concerning duty and virtue. They even make it easy. They WANT the people who don't care to wash out. They only want the people who give a shit to stick through the program to the end.

Plus, you're making the mistake of projecting current society upon an unrelated society. That makes no sense.

>A Sentiment proven false by Nature. Most animals don't really work for their food,

Ok, now you're just fucking trolling. The Antelope runs every day to avoid being lunch. The Lion runs every day to try to catch lunch. Even the Sloth climbs, slowly, to get to its lunch. There is no such thing as a free lunch because IT WOULD VIOLATE THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS. You cannot exist without exerting energy.

>People who say this usually have one thing in common: They don't want to share their resources with their follow men, without any sort of payment, be it money or servitude.

THE WHOLE POINT OF THE BOOK WAS THAT YOU MUST SERVE THE GREATER GOOD IF YOU WANT AGENCY. Holy fuck, if you're not trolling you are some sub-70 IQ retard.

>The most primitive form of Human Society is the Tribe and Tribes have formed States and Armies since the Stone Age.

War predates HUMANITY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

Non-human animals engage in systematic violence upon one another for various purposes, including long-term strategic goals like territory acquisition, resource control, mate control, etc.

Joining the "Heinlein is best Heinlein" bandwagon.

>>331417

>Monster Hunter

Very fun.

>>331770

>Also last time we had a thread like this a few anons recommended this, does anyone know if its any good?

NIGGA YES THIS BOOK IS THE TITS.

Granted, you'll probably like it better if you have some connection to the American West. But it's a lot of fun, dank /k/ memes from 1978, mayhem of various sorts, amusing writing

>"i thought i was wrong once, but i found out later i was mistaken"

, sex scenes that introduced a 12-year-old future Strelok to a whole new world…yeah, it's a damn fine book.

I'm sort of waiting for the Weird Right to discover Ed Abbey en masse one of these days. The Sierra Club and their ilk have kind of adopted him because he liked mountains and conservation, but he also liked guns, disliked immigrants, thought feminism was a crock of shit, partied like Hunter S. Thompson, and generally lived the life.

Also, pic related is damn good. Post-apocalyptic fiction in which the apocalypse is the Norman Conquest, written in a kind of ginned-up Middle English with bits and pieces of Norse myth. It's not for everyone, but some of you /k/unts would dig it, I bet.

>our fathers was freer than us our fathers fathers stalcced the wilde fenns now the fenns is bean tamed efry thing gets smaller. for efry cilde born there is sum new law a man sceolde be free and alone on his land the world sceolde not cum in until he ascs it. freodom sceolde there be in angland again lic there was in the eald daegs in the first daegs of the anglisc

>>334309

The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey, just like it says when you click on it.

>mfw I don't know what this wizardry is either but I recognized the illustration

>>332152

West Virginians formed unions because coal companies literally kidnapped and murdered people.

West Virginians fought an unknown civil war against the government because union workers got into a war with mine operators and the national guard was called in

Unions back then have no relation to the parasites of today

>>333844

>Greater good

I want the tau to leave