“One of the first things you learn in the Army,” wrote Stephen Ambrose after 9/11, is “don’t bunch up,” as dense groups make “tempting targets.” The once-feared Russian army is still learning this lesson.
There are multiple reports of a New Year celebration that occurred in a building of a school in the occupied Makiivka, where a large number of mobilised were located. HIMARS strike.
Russian sources are telling about hundreds of victims.https://t.co/hRG2H2FFX0 pic.twitter.com/cBTz5qWwMU
— Dmitri (@wartranslated) January 1, 2023
“After strikes [by Ukraine] on large ammunition and fuel depots, the depots
were being dispersed in order to avoid a large loss of materiel in the event of strikes,” thus reducing losses, wrote one Russian. Yet the army failed to disperse personnel, and a New Years Day strike by Ukrainian HIMARS missiles on a single building killed hundreds of soldiers. Apparently, the Russian army had not only brought those soldiers to the building, it also stored ammunition there, making the destruction that much worse.
“Despite several months of war, some conclusions are not drawn, hence
the losses that could have been avoided, which, when taking elementary precautions related to the dispersal and shelter of personnel, could not have happened,” continues the Russian source. “Incompetence and inability to accept the war experience continues to be a serious problem.”
As I argued at the beginning of the Ukraine war, one of the reasons why the Soviet Union and other authoritarian governments want to force people to live in high densities is that it easier for the governments to control such people and to punish them if they resist that control. This fact is demonstrated every day that the Russians send missiles to attack Ukraine civilian areas.
Someone responded to this argument by saying that a nuclear weapon can kill millions of people even if they are living at low densities. But that’s an absurd viewpoint. Nuclear bombs haven’t been used in war since 1945, yet conventional weapons have been used to attack dense urban areas in some war or another almost every year since then.
“Don’t bunch up” applies to more than just wars. Hurricanes, wildfires, pandemics, and earthquakes will all do far more damage to areas where people are bunched up than where they are living and working at low densities.
All of these arguments are dismissed by a YouTube video criticizing my views. The video focuses on housing affordability and ignores the fact that strict regulation of rural lands, not single-family zoning, is what makes housing unaffordable. The simple truth is that most people don’t want to live in density and we have plenty of land for people to affordably live at low densities if only rural land-use regulations are relaxed. There is no good reason why governments should inflict dense housing that people don’t want to live in on low-density neighborhoods whose residents don’t want such density, and plenty of reasons not to.
Don’t bunch up …
Aviation Week (sorry — can’t link) recently reported that Ukraine forces had attacked a Russian airbase at Engels damaging/destroying two Tupolev bombers. This being the age of Google I found images of the airbase on Google Maps.
https://bit.ly/3Z9uXEE
Unlike the airports and airbases we are used to, this base appeared to be just runways, taxiways and parking — no hangars, maintenance, barracks, Dairy Queen or bowling alleys. I’m told that this is common for Soviet airbases. I don’t know if it is for security or cost purposes but in this case it limited damage.
” … strict regulation of rural lands, not single-family zoning, is what makes housing unaffordable.”
I’m living in a single-family home (and surrounded by plenty more) built on a former farm — bean-corn rotation. The land was sold, by the farm family, to a developer because it was worth more as subdivided home sites than as farmland.
The only constant is change.
Density does not require apartments…. if you wanted to you can bomb….a suburban neighborhood just as easily.
The wild fires of Colirado where whole neighborhoods were obliterated by just a few burning trees…. Japan in World War II. US Air Forces turned whole cities to ashes cuz the buildings were all wood.
An single spread incendiary bomb can anwhole neighborhood to kindling in minutes.
I’m skeptical that the Soviets used density for control or anything like that. Now having the state own the housing and dispense it, that’s where the power and control lay.
I suspect the density was an outcome of that system where the state and the soviets ( aka collectives ) didn’t own all the housing but built it. There may have been better + more efficient ways to build, but the buercracy just cared about cranking out units + doing it one way.
Same sort of result, you’re crowed and have no privacy from your neighbors. Everyone is in your business. The only quasi safe place to speak was the kitchen.
I travelled half way across Siberia to the 3rd largest city, Novosibirsk. Blew me away to be driving out of town and you’d go past clusters of 8-12 story high rises then, bam, they stop. Farm fields and forests. No trailing off from 12 stories to maybe something half of then then maybe some townhomes and SFHs. A cluster of half dozen 12 story high rises then, bam, woods and fields.
The other thing is that despite all the high rises, the space often feels not well uses. Seemed pretty normal to have gaps between developments. A lot of green space around buildings that couldn’t really be used for anything. Odd set up.
This is Siberia. The train ride was like taking a train from Boston to San Diego. Only it didn’t get you across the continent, only half way across Siberia. IIRC Siberia has a population density of 1 or 2 people / sq mi. They have plenty of space.
Details of the strike and what was going on is still not completely clear. Quoting someone who claims to know all the details is not a good idea. You will get burned by doing so.
I get it, you’re taking a swipe at urban planners, but this post is really going to age like milk in the coming months.
“This fact is demonstrated every day that the Russians send missiles to attack Ukraine civilian areas.”
I had thought that the Antiplanner would be better than this. Russia has, finally, began doing to Ukraine what the US and NATO do on Day 1: Bomb energy, communication, and transportation infrastructure. Russia isn’t sending cruise missiles in to rearrange someone’s living room. They’re destroying power plants, substations, rolling stock, etc. The exact same things that the US and NATO did in Iraq, Kosovo, and Lybia. War is bad, big surprise knew?
Perhaps the Western leaders should have listened to their own analysts, who have been warning them for years, that said that the actions of Western goernments would eventually lead to war. Bill Burns himself warned in 2008 that NATO expansion was guaranteeing a future war in Ukraine.
The media in Ukraine is tightly controlled by the state. (Same in Russia, so be extremely skeptical of anything you see or hear.) Many details only become known via the various Telegram channels. The media will report on Russia “Bombing an indoor ice rink”, but omit the fact that it was the rail yard full of weapons and munitions next to the ice rink that was almost certainly the actual target. The ice rink was collateral damage from exploding Ukrainian weapons. Ukrainian S-300s crashing into civilian areas are routinely reported as being Russian missiles.
The only details you can usually trust are those that both Western and Russian media confirm, even that can be missing context and important details. The Western mainstream narrative is largely fake, but even in the real world of what’s going on many details still remain speculative or unknown. It will likely be many years until details become concrete.
“All of these arguments are dismissed by a YouTube video criticizing my views.”
I would like to hear a rebuttal to that YouTube video, as I can see full well that it’s misrepresenting what you argue.