Where would the world be without the USA?

[bertsmobile1]

Australia does have some dangerous creatures,but then so does the more dangerous New York city! Personally,I'd feel safer with the snakes of Oz.

Well the black fellas have been living here for 100,000 years with no hospitals, no ambulances & no vaccines and they seemed to manage the snakes .
Got a nice big carpet python living in the ceiling.
Only problem is I can not get her down to the basement where more mice are

 

[Scrubcadet10]

Well the black fellas have been living here for 100,000 years with no hospitals, no ambulances & no vaccines and they seemed to manage the snakes .
Got a nice big carpet python living in the ceiling.
Only problem is I can not get her down to the basement where more mice are

shivered down my spine.......

 

[Scrubcadet10]

I really don't why (especially in California) they're not managing wild land better, they've rarely used controlled burns to burn off accumulated debris from the forest floors, and people building homes right against a large slope that's covered with brush isn't very smart either. i think if people took time and kept shrubs and wild plants cut back and away from there property, by the looks of those extravagant homes they could pay a crew to clear a 30 foot wide fire lane around the property/home, fires would definitely be less destructive i think.. those steep slopes make it hard to fight fires as they add more the updraft and air movement and that increases speed. so it's a whole quarry of issues combining into one to make the fires much more agressive. of course it's easy for me to say as i'm not in their shoes.
here in east texas in 2011 we had a horrible drought that lasted from Autumn of 2010 and late summer 2012.. had bad fires around the area in 2011... people got off their butts and started cleaning up their property, neighbors helped neighbors who didn't have tractors to clear out old limbs, and ground clutter... fires still burned close by, by at a much less intensity and could be managed with a garden water hose if it got too close because of hardly any fuel on the forest floor around homes. only our tall east Texas pines with low limbs burnt up...

 

[bertsmobile1]

Every type of forest requires a different type of management, which it looks like after the fires last season some in government are finally coming to grips with.
The black fellas knew this a least 80,000 years ago.
A house in a pine forest needs close to 50' of clear space or a water curtain because pine burns very fast & furious.
Down here it is all hardwoods and they are different again
Lots of photos of burned out cars sitting in clear streets with what looks like a puddle of water underneath.
It is not water it is the aluminium that used to be the engine.
So the engine needed to be above 800 deg C for quite a while to boil off the water & melt the alloy.
There is a good reason why we originally built houses with either a single sloped roof, single hip roof or strait pyramid roof.
But those with some money or weak minds see the houses you are talking about with complex fire trap roofs and think it is a sign of their advanced sofisitication to plonk one in a forest because it looks good .
And again while I do feel for those who get burned out a lot of it is self inflicted
The radient heat coming off a black butt forest fire can soften steel beams on bridges to the point of collapse from better than 100 ' way where as a pine fire will cause all of the paint to blister & burn and perhaps a bit of warping but the bridge will remain structurally intact.
It can boil your blood to the point it can no longer carry any oxygen from 100' away.
People have watched way too many Bruce Willis disaster movies and unfortunately it distorts their grasp on reality .
I have seen a 10,000 gallon concrete water tank boiling to the point we could no longer pump the water out of it

 

[Scrubcadet10]

I have seen a 10,000 gallon concrete water tank boiling to the point we could no longer pump the water out of it

Dang.... that's hot...

 

[bertsmobile1]

First time I had been to a fire front and first time I ran away from one.

People have little idea about heat and in particular the heat that comes off a fire front
Back in my teens we were changing from BTU to KW as the measurement of heat.
The fire department used to set up a 16' long booth at shows with a 3 meter board full of 1000W ( 1 kW) heater elements at the far end.
You know the ones that are wound around a cone shaped mount .
They would turn on 1 every meter and get people to walk as close as they could to it.
Amazing that even at 1 Kw/ meter few could actually walk all the way to the back.
Then they turned on 50 in one meter to make 1/2 Mw / meter and no one could get closer that 3 meters from it .
Once they had all 3 of the 1/2 Mw panels turned on people started to step back from the front .
Then they turned a full 100 on in the center meter panel to make it 1 Mw and people would pass out.
Finally and for only a few seconds they turned on all 3 panels at 1 Mw each , painted car wheels burst into flame, unpainted fence posts started to char & burn.
During this time they would play a standard 1/2" garden hose at the heater wall but the water boiled off way before it could get that far.
This was to convince people that once the fire was at your back fence it was time to water the roof and hide in your house because playing water onto the fire was not going to do anything.
When it was over they then played some footage of recient fires and gave commentry on the fire fronts some of which were in the gigga watt/ meter range.
And of course they reminded the people that the display was a short 3 meter fire front not a 20 mile fire front that the fire fighters have to deal with.
No one asked why they could not put out bushfires with hoses after that.

 

[ccheatha]

I can see where you are coming from and to an extent there is some truth in it.
A massive market to be exploited that has a single currency & language is a marketing dream.
So that allows products that have a marketing potential to be brought to the market quickly.
However the original infferance, that without the USA these things would not have happened is still there .
And that is the point I would argue against as it is fundamentially racist .
No peoples on the planet are any smarter ( although I often believe Australians are the stupidist ) than any other .
Then there is the question of what is "better"
The indiginous peoples had lived here for what is now thought to be longer than 100,000 years
During that time no river had become so posionious that it is toxic to the touch let alone drinking it .
No plant , animal , nor instinct had gone extinct,
The people suffered almost no life shortening diseases and lived to an average age of 70 ( contested by some ) with the oldest remains being dated at over 90 at the time of death.
They had everything they needed for living according to their culture worked for less than 3 hours a day on average and managed to avoid massive wars apart from a couple of warrior tribes from Tasmania & the Cape . Children were all looked after as were the elderly there was no poverty & no homeless , even the dissabled & mentally ill were looked after.
I have almost no factual knowledge of American natives but from the little I have heard, their life style was not much different

Our children could very well be the last humans to walk the planet , if the worst case the scientists have been talking about comes to pass .
And it looks very well like they could be correct as storms have been getting more violent & destructive each year, droughts are far more intense and floods substantially more severe.
Your Hurricanes are becoming more intense as are our cyclones .
Then there are the problems like Covid-19 that come ultimately from over population and because of crowded living style spread like wild fire and on the subject of wildfires, yours this year look to being eclipsing last years which were the worst on record.

So if better is having your kids kill themselves because some one did not like their face book post fast enough, or having your daughter lured to her death by a sexual pervert on a dating app, then perhaps we are in fact better .
If better is working 10 hours a day to make sure the roof over your head is secure and you won't end up living in the gutter when you get old then yes we are better.
DEcades ago when I had a marital crisis I had to revaluate my life and part of this was to look at everything and ask "will this improve my life " and 90% of the time the answer is no
Thus there is not a 72" oled TV sitting on the wall over the top of the 2000W 30 speaker home theatre, no 700 litre French door fridge with ice cub dispenser in the door gracing the kitchen etc etc etc

I think we all understand that the original question implied an answer as well. It's been interesting to see the responses, but the bottom line is this: the USA did not just materialize out of thin air. We're the good old melting pot, right? The good, the bad and all the in between is a make-up of places from all over this world. So why would the absence of the USA make that much of a difference in this world today, really? Maybe there's something to the central location of so many different cultures blending together to create the "good old American ingenuity", but don't you think that type of ingenuity would have occurred despite the location? Surely this country has had a major impact on the world, but if the country didn't exist, would its people (maybe residing elsewhere) have not been in a position to contribute and make the world what it is today?

 

[arbee]

Total rubbish
All of the USA's military actions were either to protect the source of the raw materials it needs ( oil for example ) or because of the fear that the megga wealthy might have their "rights" to profit vastly from the under paid labour of others be challenged , thus the massive amount of money that went into anti communism / socialism properganda and wars .
The only case where one could say "freedom" was preserved by US actions is Korea and even then some would consider that Korea happened because of fear that US investments in rebuilding Japan would be under threat from the Chinese communist who were being supported by the Russian communist in repayment for the massive support with both men & materials the Russians got from the Chinese during WWII ( bet you were unaware of that )
I might note that despite the white governments best attempts to wipe them out, the Indigenous peoples of Australia have had freedom for over 80,000 years.
The communist people in Vietnam have quite a lot of freedom almost on par with most Western countries, the only read difference being that the Party Officials are profiting from the economy rather than the elite class ( Rockerfellas / Fords etc ) in Western economies .
Eventually totalitarian government will fail, look at what is happening in Brazil & Burma right now.
However what keeps totalitarian governments in power is support from external sources with a vested interest in benefiting from the regeime
The Talibahn are largely using Chinese weapons because China realized that they could become an ally of Afghanistan , thus not need to spend a fortune on border protection.
They can then access the vast amounts or rare earth resources to feed their manufacturing industry that is undermining the viability of manufacturing in the USA ( & the rest of the west ) plus allow the Afgans to ramp up opium production which will also find it's way into Western economies doing massive economic & social damage .
For China a win win win situation. The real loosers are Afgahn women but then again remember the West used to burn witches 150 year ago, women could not vote 75 years ago , most religions banned women from being church leaders and some still do so "freedom" is a some what relative concept .
The USA was in Afghanistan for the same reasons , to contain China by surrounding it with Western style democratic governments and of course to access the same rare earth minerals.
Russia was there for the same reason , border protection & minerals & the UK before them again for the minerals .

Since you're not here for me to cave in your face, I'll have to limit my aggression to a simple double f#ck yourself.

 

[Hammermechanicman]

Empires have risen and fallen for thousands of years. The US is just a blip on the world's timeline and every country has its history. Some good and some bad. When folks go country bashing they might want to check out the glass house thing.

 

[StarTech]

Since you're not here for me to cave in your face, I'll have to limit my aggression to a simple double f#ck yourself.

Sound like my brother which I could just used the 12 ga with T shot on instead hitting him with a straw broom but afterwards I thought he just not worth going to prison over. Besides I didnt want to clean up the mess. I just moved far away and have not even spoken to him in the last 8 yrs.

Empires have risen and fallen for thousands of years. The US is just a blip on the world's timeline and every country has its history. Some good and some bad. When folks go country bashing they might want to check out the glass house thing.

Finally someone is using their head. There is always someone wanting to take over when in fighting starts.

But we have enough problems with just trying to survive the Covid outbreaks. I understand people wants their freedom back but we must be willing to work at stopping this dang virus even if it means inconveniences. We are going to heck in a hand basket if we don't buckle down and do what is necessary to stop it. Just wishing it away isn't working.

Every day here when I try getting parts they are harder and harder to get. If I hadn't built up an inventory before this happened I would be out of business by now. I can probably survive this year but the next isn't looking likely if things continue to get worst.