Episode 244: Gaming scenarios

Salty & Spice talk about gaming out scenarios.

Check us out at Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You!

Transcript

spk_0:   0:01
Hello, everybody. Hello,

spk_1:   0:03
everybody. And welcome to the show The Big show. The most critically acclaimed an important podcast. It is recorded in our car and next week, two dates in our truck. We're in the big the big white studio, Remember, We're Ah, it's a Sunday and it's a beautiful day and we're going out doing something outside. What does things that spice? I We come from a background where our friends are gamers of various different descriptions. Um, some of them actually play the role playing game. Some of them are war gamers. Uh, some of them are video gamers, but you know, we're tend to hang out with people who game a lot and one of the things that I've been noticing about my gaming friends. Then, of course, the fact that they really need to not be spending beautiful summer days hunched over a gaming table and should be out tricks get a little exercise. Other than that,

spk_0:   1:10
yeah,

spk_1:   1:12
is that I see the stuff that they talk about it. It's interesting to the very smart people, humorous and then I go into, like, a propping forum or listening to preppers or podcast or stuff like that and I realized how similar a lot of preppers outlooks toward prepping our two gaming scenarios.

spk_0:   1:44
At least the vocal online preppers,

spk_1:   1:47
right? Not obviously

spk_0:   1:49
one population out there.

spk_1:   1:51
People out there who are Oh, hat, no cattle. Prosperous is who I talked about. I I like gaming. I enjoy gaming. In a sense, I'm a war gamer. But prepping isn't a game. You can have fun with it. You can make games out of aspects of it to challenge yourself. But prepping itself is not a game. Yeah, that's what we're going to talk about today

spk_0:   2:25
in games, theories work.

spk_1:   2:28
I'm sorry.

spk_0:   2:29
Theories work in games.

spk_1:   2:31
Right game, Jeff.

spk_0:   2:32
There are predictable rules. The amount of chaos is limited,

spk_1:   2:38
we hope. Playing. Okay, She was playing. We went to a gaming convention yesterday. We got a one a year. Why we spend one day doing in here? I go and meet with my historical, uh, role playing that role playing. We're gaining friends e and Guest Day Morning I fought a Civil War battle reenactment, actual reenactment of an actual Civil War battle that happened in North Missouri. Very historically accurate game. And we basically fought it out onto the tabletop, and it's It's an amusing way to spend the morning. Last night I got into a game that is kind of a home brewed game of chariots and my charioteer alter ego, Saul Tikus. Not his real name, but it's close enough for this. Saul Tikus took out the victory, and that's fine. That's good in the stuff. But the tactics that I used in this game were game tactics. They would not have worked in a riel chariot race. And the problem isn't that you play a game. It's when you're trying to use unrealistic game Tackett tactics as a way to base what you're doing. I mean, yeah, I would never actually do that stuff in real life.

spk_0:   4:23
You can never really have as much faith in your assumptions in real life as you can have in the gaming world, right? Because in world does have rules and Rhea life. While it has rules, we don't know all of them, and some of them can change without much warning,

spk_1:   4:40
right? Well, here's Here's an example. In a game that she was involved in, there were regular troops and there was a commis are, and in truth. She mentioned something that was it was perfectly the safest way. Two of the best way to be safe around the Comets are is to be out in front of that person, doing brave and stupid things in real life the bravest, the stewed, the bravest people doing the stupidest things with the safest problem, the Soviet commissars. Sometimes life does imitate art, and art does actually live in imitate life. So you look at the movie Enemy is gay. It shows a perfect example of this. They're just Soviet troops were forced to attack a strong enemy position in Stalingrad. Some of them didn't even have guns. This is This is true. Sometimes the Soviets did actually send troops into combat without guns saying, Well, they'll be available here shortly.

spk_0:   6:01
Yeah, you just picked one up after somebody else dropped it when you get shot. No problem.

spk_1:   6:06
Yeah. And they actually did set up machine guns behind the troops to encourage people to not turn around and run. I know that's debated, but I have it from a very good source that it's true. So it's kind of hard to explain what I'm trying to. I know what I'm trying to say it's kind of hard to Well, we're gonna get a train.

spk_0:   6:37
So, uh, yeah, we are getting trains is good. So maybe give some examples of the kinds of assumptions you see online preppers making that you don't think would hold up or things that you think are unrealistic. You know, I've got a

spk_1:   6:56
perfect example. We had this game this game was taking place in North. Was there. There was a battle cycle at a seance. Athens. Nathan's where you're from, how you pronounce it. And we know how many people were casualties, raisins. We know exactly how the battle went. We can line up the troops on both sides. We can load up. The Quaker gun actually did use a quick click. Very, very, very, very early skirmish in the civil War, like one of very personal ins. And Quaker Gun is a cannon made out of a tree log bound with a tree log, hollowed out bound with metal straps. And, you know, they generally blow up and kill everybody if you try and use them. So not a good idea. So we know that and we can war game that. But reality was entirely different. Reality was entirely different. The numbers don't show what reality was like. Hastens Waas, a mosquito infested, miserable experience for the people involved. People worrying heavy duty winter type clothing in the summer

spk_0:   8:34
made out of wool.

spk_1:   8:37
Well, some of it waas. This was very early that we're not a whole lot of uniforms. Idea. The union troops from Iowa were wearing cool uniforms, the ones that can ish shot a few shots across. The Haven't claimed they won the battle.

spk_0:   8:53
The Iowa troops didn't actually cross into Missouri to fight. They just stood on their side of the river and

spk_1:   8:58
took some

spk_0:   8:58
potshots at the Confederates they could see.

spk_1:   9:00
And then once the Missourians ran off the the Home Guard, which was the Confederate for us, the Iowa Federal troops came in and we won, in case you're wondering, but, you know, it was a miserable experience. People died and people got blown apart in horrible ways and lives were shattered in the game, you know? Okay, little plastic. I gets knocked over. We don't care about the plastic guys to ICO plastic daughter. We don't care about the grieving plastic wife. We don't care. It's unrealistically.

spk_0:   9:41
We don't

spk_1:   9:42
have a lot

spk_0:   9:42
of guys plastic leg

spk_1:   9:44
off. That's right, Um, in the chariot game, Guy got drug behind the chariot. We were laughing that he died eventually, and then he started having parts of him fall off, which was funny. I know it's a little game in a game. It was hilarious. In reality, it would not have been nearly so funny. Unless there's something really wrong with you

spk_0:   10:10
in a really life situation, I can't think of any actually really, really good outcome when you're forced to fire a weapon at another human being. I mean, even if you your objectives are successfully met, I I understand the military likes to rephrase things in ways like that, and they're doing it in a quite intentional way to depersonalize it and to try and remove the emotions from it. Because the emotions air hard on human beings. People who are not cycle paths have some trouble when they kill other human beings. Heck,

spk_1:   10:47
the military actually has put out some of these games. The Army put out a really good 1st 1st 1st person shooter. Yeah, because you just that's what they do, and I'll use you. I'm not going to sit here and say, Hey, don't play video games or whatever. I don't care. What do I do? Not care. You play whatever you want to play. It doesn't actually physically hurt another person that doesn't want to be hurt. Um, I don't care what you do, but you get in the city's first person shooter games, and you realize that now some of these high end guns that you can, you know, gain access to you get access to, like eurotech optics sensibilities. Other optics, you get access. Those are not product placements. But the products in the shooter do not work like, really, because in the shooter, you know, you hit, your guy explodes, he dies. Whatever. You know, that's fine in a game. But I think far too many people assumed that's what real life would be, just like That's a real problem. You know, I know a lot of people who consider themselves to have a great deal of tactical experience because they played a lot of first person shooters. That ain't it. That ain't it just is not yet

spk_0:   12:29
even the kind of things people do with their range where they like. The three gun competitions are a great way to train some firearms skills, and they look like a lot of fun. To be honest with you, absolutely. But I can't imagine confusing that with being prepared for actual fighting of other human beings because those targets are not shooting back at me. They're not screaming When I hit him. I'm not full of adrenaline. Okay, yeah, I have some adrenaline when I'm blowing up. Lots of innocent little paper targets met high speed because it's fun, but it's nothing like the kind of adrenaline shot I would get if I were in a life threatening experience. I've been in a life threatening experiences, and there's a whole another feel oven reality to it when you get that much adrenaline running around. So it's, I think people's planning doesn't necessarily account for the the realities of the situation. Even a minor gunshot wound if you don't have top notch medical care, is a nasty, ugly, life threatening kind of problem. It's not TV show where you get hit with a round in the shoulder and you're fine. The next week

spk_1:   13:54
we come back to the Civil War, you have to come back to the Civil War and have any of those wounds were not that serious. They weren't even battlefield wounds. You could cut yourself on a on a fence post or, you know, you cut yourself in a hand using while cooking what me? Your supper you have. But because you are tired because you are weakened by other types of diseases, like dysentery and whatever, because you are not your immune system's already horribly challenged. What would normally be in today's world? A minor cut? You know that if it gets infected, you could just drop a little bit of antibiotic on it. You're good. Killed a lot of people. People do not realize that most of the people who died in the Civil War died of disease, and it wasn't even close.

spk_0:   14:55
You hear those one day totals of those terrible battles hundreds of thousands of people dying in two or three days and then you think horrible is that was the number killed in battle was less than half of the number actually killed in war

spk_1:   15:13
staggering. But yet we don't game how many deaths we get in a Civil War hospital. That's not what we broke it off as a prepper. You game. How? Oh, I get these firearms Does. That would give me the best chance to bah blah blah instead of okay. What am I going to do for antibiotics? What am I gonna have on hand for dysentery? Have I got okay? I cut myself really bad. Have I got bleeding control? Not only do I have it, but is it where I can get to it? You know

spk_0:   16:01
what happens with my primary source of water? Filtration fails. Because if you in the games that you know, try and be realistic. Like some of the role playing games where I play you. You Ah, I have to think about providing yourself with food and water along the way. But those means of providing food and water. If you had the foresight to think of him in the first place, they never fail. You don't get mice tearing up your storage and spelling stuff all over the place. You don't have your filter that you got to filter your water, have the filter suddenly pop out on you and whoopsie. Now you've got contaminated water on both sides of the filter What are we gonna do about that?

spk_1:   16:47
It's a good question. If you don't know, you need to find out. It's exactly what I mean. You know, when you game something, even if your gaming it in your own mind, it's not the same. So I guess the takeaway I'm going for here is when you're doing things like gaming, just realize it is what it is. It is not a replacement for careful considered. I thought about the reality of the situation

spk_0:   17:25
and some real life practice. Obviously, none of us are gonna go out and practice some of the things we prepped for because we don't want to live that way, Frankly, but some level of practice in using the things you have bought to be preps will help show you where the failed points are, and they'll show you the kinds of things that can happen. And they give you a sense of reality about it. Uh, yeah. You've got this nifty little tent and you set it up at night and you sleep on it at night, and then you get up to go in the morning. But it, dude, overnight and now you're tense. What So you gonna pack it up carrying heavy and risk it molding? Or are you going to do something else with it? No. A tiny little thing that you would never get from a, uh, video game type scenario or you or even watching Survivor. You may notice they show the horrible what I

spk_1:   18:27
don't That's fine. I'll just chuck it.

spk_0:   18:29
I didn't even see it. A friend of mine was talking about it. My and the friend was outraged because the friend is a camper and she was reporting that she was watching the show and the guy set up his shelter in the pouring rain and he finally got his shelter set up and he did a really good job of it, and he had a really nice shelter, but he had to set it up in the pouring rain. But somehow when he got up in the morning, his clothes were magically completely dry. Whoa, wow! I've been on camping trips, and that's not how it goes when you set your camp up in the rain. You remember everything you own is what period forever feels like forever until that sun comes out or it molds away to non existence,

spk_1:   19:17
you know? And here's another thing you know, people don't don't think about you have super Jimbo cotton clothing. If you have to wear your cotton clothing a lot in the weather, it will rot. It will rot off of you. Um, and you ever see people walking around in these video games or the movies or whatever rotten off clothing will zombies. Yeah, but just some to keep to get keeping right. It's when you're wet and you're out on one of these trips of your wet and you're cold, it's miserable. It's absolutely miserable. But do

spk_0:   20:05
you have materials and the skills to taking your clothing if you start losing weight?

spk_1:   20:14
Yeah, you also do You have redundancy on your key Stop. In a normal scenario, you people. So I've got this in my bug out bag and I got that my bug out bag. Yeah, but what happens if that fails? Well, I've got seven different knives. Yeah. Yeah.

spk_0:   20:37
You see the pictures of what some people are putting in their bug out bags and they've got a whole cutlery department in there and one pair of socks,

spk_1:   20:49
I think, personally the largest, uh, What's the word? I'm looking? Where was the opponent with largest salad? JJ two. Good prepping is testosterone. I think this is a guy that is the biggest challenge to a being. A good prepper is learning out to chill out the testosterone.

spk_0:   21:21
May I add an addendum? It's also a driver for prepping a useful driver

spk_1:   21:28
for prepping. So point,

spk_0:   21:31
Yeah, to a point, because it will. Ah, lot of guys do feel strongly invested and being able to take care of themselves and being able to take care of their family. And I'm 100% behind at that. Absolutely. I also think women should be should feel similarly and many of us do. But I'm all for it. The guys do, and I think it's more common in guys in in in part because, you know, that's how they're wired and it's their hormones that open get wired that way, right, but too much of it. And you get Tau focusing too much on the

spk_1:   22:11
testosterone, the knives, the guns, the combat, you know. Oh, I need to be prepared to do freak out until everybody in sight, because that's how you have to be to survive Uh, no. There've been a lot of this world's old. It's been around for a long time, and throughout the history of sick of civilization, you really had very few situations. Where you have to kill everybody just arrived. Just really is not a common

spk_0:   22:48
most of time. That people have been most successful are those who form a strong community that's mutually interdependent. They support each other and they help each other get through the difficult times. And that is what has worked. Historically,

spk_1:   23:03
it's truth. Eight. Admit it. But it's true. So I knew it. We're not. We've talked about doing a article in podcast on game theory, and this is not that our core pot you

spk_0:   23:20
didn't know.

spk_1:   23:21
So maybe I had a title, this one. The ante games there. Well, I was just struck yesterday. People were talking when we're going through these games, and people were talking about what it was really like versus what the games were like. The game's air clean the games. When somebody gets killed, it's like, Well, good bye, plastic piece. That's just not how it happens.

spk_0:   23:49
The games were set up to be to some extent, fair, Yes, and life is not. I heard the shocked discussed in one person's voice. Somebody was describing a new game system to him. And in many of these games, different kinds of troops are assigned different points. So you can, based on, you know, things that are more effective, cost more points. So both sides can start with an even number of points in an effort to make the game more fair on. This guy was outraged that this game system didn't have anything like that because clearly some forces that somebody could decide to bring wood completely outmatched and overwhelm the forces that the other side decided to bring. And it's like, Oh, yeah, that's just how it is. If you show up with this and I show up with that, you're gonna win and I'm gonna lose, and there's not anything I can do about it. I state fair. I've noticed that

spk_1:   24:54
I actually do a gaming scenario several years, but a little bitty tanks. It's called Micro Armor. I have a scenario that is 1973 Arab Israeli war on the Golan Heights, and I will tell you there was absolutely nothing fair about that fight in the Golan Heights. The technology difference that the Israelis had was astronomical, but the Syrians had a whole lot of tanks. They didn't have our good tanks. They had a whole lot. So, you know, it turns out to be a quality versus quantity thing. And there's really no winner at Loser because, you know, everybody knows the Syrians just don't have what it takes to beat the Israelis in that situation, they just can't do it. So the winning and losing scenarios, okay, how many can you kill before you die? Because, you know, But in my scenario, the Syrians just keep getting endless tanks because they just keep coming and coming and coming out thousands of things. And this really is a very limited number. So and we all know what happened. Anyhoo, that's just an example of Yeah, it wasn't fair. It wasn't a fair fight. It never was a terrifying. There's nothing fair about Pearl Harbor. The Americans had no chance of winning Pro Harbor, given the situation that they had a unnoticed of modified No. So there we are. Anything else to

spk_0:   26:36
add. It's not what you know about that's likely to get you. It's what you don't necessarily know about. So remember that your assumptions are not necessarily the way the world really is, right?

spk_1:   26:51
And put my old spin on what she just said. It's not what you know about that. You think you're gonna kill you. It's what I was gonna get you. It's what you think you know That just doesn't turn out to be true. That will get you those assumptions. You know what they say about assumptions? This is a G rated program, so we can't say it here, but, uh, anyway, I am salty.

spk_0:   27:20
I'm spice

spk_1:   27:21
and I am out.