A Disturbing Idea

[kato13]

Webstral 07-12-2008, 02:52 PM I was thinking about the use of dogs in Twilight: 2000, and a really awful thought occurred to me. Dogs, with their exceptional senses, would be of enormous benefit to defenders. Explosives-sniffing dogs also would have their uses in minefields. I could easily see cantonments seeking out dog breeders and incorporating dogs into their defensive schemes. However, dogs are carnivores. I know they can eat some vegetable matter, but they require some meat in their diets, don’t they? Meat is scarce by 2000. Well, except for one source that even hungry people might refuse. And there are lots of people dying all the time in Twilight: 2000. Yes, I am a damaged person. But if I can think of it, people in the Twilight: 2000 world are going to think of it.


Webstral

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Raellus 07-12-2008, 03:01 PM I've read of many, many instances of folks in war zones witnessing stray dogs and cats munching on human corpses. It's not too much of a stretch to image some psycho deliberately feeding human flesh to animals.


Soilent Green brand puppy chow!


As for other uses of dogs in warfare, back in the early days of the "Great Patriotic War" (WWII) the Soviets trained canines, using basic Pavlovian conditioning techniques, to run beneath moving tanks. Strapped to the back of each dog was a satchel charge with a trigger mechanism sticking up between the dog's shoulders. When the dog went beneath the tank, BOOM!


Trouble was, the first troops of dog suicide "sappers" were trained on Russian tanks. Whoops! After correcting this mistake, the dogs had some success. Germans were quite fearful of these weapons and made it policy to shoot all dogs on sight.

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weswood 07-12-2008, 07:24 PM I've always had the impression of starving people eating dogs. I don't think most people would eat thier own pets, but feral strays would be fair game.


When I was first introduced to role playing, it was Dungeons and Dragons. My first character was a not particularly strong warrior, so on the advice of the rest of the party, the character aquired a "war dog". The dog probably accounted for 1/3 of the charcter's kills, and was quiet useful cleaning up the battlefields. When the charcter would go up a level, the DM let me add the rolled hit points to the dog's total also, and the dog only had one less hit point that the character.

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newyorkronin 07-12-2008, 08:41 PM Dogs can also be used for tracking, search and rescue, hunting and locating hidden suspects in buildings. And even in "civilized" settings, there's nothing like a growling dog inside a locked car or warehouse to deter thieves.


I read somewhere that if the handler of a military working dog is incapacitated, the dog will not accept commands from anyone in the unit, who end up having to shoot the poor pooch.


Speaking of using animals to attack, in ye olde 2nd Edition DnD days, a player in my group once theorized about unleashing wave after wave of cats at the enemy. We figured that with a properly crafted spell, at least two dozen of them can charge in formation and simultaneously leap at different trajectories to shower the entire surface area of whichever side of the target was facing the "Kitty Claymore."


With three attacks per round (2 claws and a bite) times 24 "shots" this means 72 attacks in which a natural 20 is bound to be rolled at least three times, statistically. Unless using an area-effect weapon or spell, the target can only target two or three of them per round.


I imagine the target rolling around on the ground cussing up a storm, a jumble of fur and plate mail. All it takes is one claw to bypass the the helmet/chest plate gap, go through one of the links in the chain mail, pierce the cloth undergarment and get to the jugular! The path to 2nd level Cat!

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Targan 07-13-2008, 12:00 AM If I was hungry enough I'd dog. Meat is meat.


I recently read a good book about US Green Berets unit ODA 391 fighting in Iraq (sorry, can't remember the title) and I recall there was a mention in there of during the night, half way through the battle the book was mainly about, wild dogs turning up and chowing down on Iraqi corpses.


As I've mentioned before, in my current T2K campaign there is a long standing NPC who is a USAF dog handler and she has repeatedly been denied permission by Major Po to select and train a working dog. Major Po can be a bit of a fun-stealer joy-thief.


Waaay back in high school (more than half my life ago now) the player of Major Po was playing in an AD&D campaign I was running and his character was a druid whose name has been forgotten. But the druid had a war dog named Lionel and when the druid died his player asked if he could just play Lionel rather than roll a new character. As it turned out, Lionel was a much more effective character than the druid.

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Nowhere Man 1966 07-13-2008, 02:00 PM I know with cats, it's even worse, if they do not have a certain protein found in meat, Taurine I think, or some other source of it, cats will go blind without it. I don't know if their sight will return if taurine is reintroduced though.

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TiggerCCW UK 07-13-2008, 04:39 PM Isn't Taurine one of the ingredients in Red Bull? If we could work out how to feed Newyorkroinin's attack cats Red Bull they'd be second level in no time!!

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Targan 07-13-2008, 11:58 PM I'm thoroughly addicted to Red Bull and taurine is indeed the red in Red Bull.

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GOF 07-14-2008, 02:40 AM I'm thoroughly addicted to Red Bull and taurine is indeed the red in Red Bull.


Hmm, I don't suppose you'll be put off by this then...

Taurine; noun - A colourless crystalline substance obtained from the bile of mammals

Bet the Chinese would love it

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Targan 07-14-2008, 03:23 AM Taurine; noun - A colourless crystalline substance obtained from the bile of mammalsMmm, bring on the mammal bile, love it.

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Tsepesh 07-15-2008, 09:01 AM I think one of the set backs to using dogs extensively in T2000 is the likelihood of feral packs. I was a city kid myself, but I use to spend most of my summer vacation on a farm. Most of the farmers and I assume most farmers had dogs and for the most part where well trained, loyal, and indispensable to there owners. There was one guy though a mile down from us that had three horridly mistreated dogs that where often starved and even shot with salt pellets. Eventually the three went feral and often lurked around the property of this burned out house between us and this guy.


After a couple weeks and a few close calls by farmers in the fields you had what could only be called raids of farms throughout the county. In many cases farmers where coming home from the bar late at night and finding all there chickens, gini hens, geese, ducks and even sometimes calves were dead. In one case, a elderly woman was stuck in her house one evening while she watched 50-60 dogs ravage the farm while her husband was visiting a neighbor. Basically what happened was that at the end of the day the three feral dogs would essentially round up all the other dogs in the area and go on a rampage.


The point is that because of this (which I've seen happen elsewhere since then), I think dogs would not be relied to heavily on in T2K that readily. Just because it only takes one or two going feral to create a serious problem. The only plus side is that if you take out the leaders, things usually go back to normal.

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Tsepesh 07-16-2008, 02:43 AM As a side note, a feral dog pack could be an interesting scenario. Resolving the problem would likely require some investigation since unlike normal wild dogs, these feral dogs tend to be pretty hard to track down. They don't fear people (if anything quite the opposite) and they can recognize a firearm and general know to stay out of the path of fire in the most simplest terms. Basically being raised by humans gives these feral packs an uncanny level of cunning do to there familiarity of human life and could be an interesting challenge.

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kato13 07-20-2008, 10:56 PM The photoshoped pic in this story made it worth posting. It is even on topic for this thread.


They're Britain's dogs of war

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...cle1447714.ece

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TiggerCCW UK 07-21-2008, 02:45 AM The photoshoped pic in this story made it worth posting. It is even on topic for this thread.


They're Britain's dogs of war

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...cle1447714.ece


In a similar vein, did anyone see the news story at the weekend about the German private pilot who had to leave the controls of his aircraft to cut free a british army paratrooper? Apparently he somehow caught a para in his under carriage during the drop. He had to leave the controls of his plane to cut the para free, and he then completed the drop safely using his reserve chute.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7515262.stm

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weswood 07-21-2008, 05:15 AM I've never heard of dogs parachuting. That's wild. I wonder if they like it? Next we'll have K-9 Sport jumping clubs springing up across the world. It could even be an Olympic sport!


And that picture of the British SAS...They don't have faces!!!!

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TiggerCCW UK 07-21-2008, 08:25 AM And that picture of the British SAS...They don't have faces!!!!


Its a regimental requirement to avoid being idntified :biggrin:

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Twilight2000V3 07-21-2008, 09:40 AM FYI - dogs can only work for a certain ammount of time (on the average no more than say 20 minutes). wether its tracking, bomb or dope sniffing.

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Targan 07-21-2008, 11:48 PM Its a regimental requirement to avoid being idntified :biggrin:Same in Australia and New Zealand. You never see the faces of serving SAS members in the media, with the exception of the highest ranking officers. That has now been extended to the Commandoes too since they and the SAS were moved into their own Special Forces branch.

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pmulcahy 07-22-2008, 10:31 AM I've never heard of dogs parachuting. That's wild. I wonder if they like it?


The 82nd tried jumping with dogs in the late 80s and early 90s. The dogs didn't mind the jump -- but there were a lot of casualties among the dogs, ranging from broken legs and collapsed rib cages to death. AFAIK, the 82nd hasn't tried jumping dogs since.

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weswood 07-22-2008, 03:09 PM The 82nd tried jumping with dogs in the late 80s and early 90s. The dogs didn't mind the jump -- but there were a lot of casualties among the dogs, ranging from broken legs and collapsed rib cages to death. AFAIK, the 82nd hasn't tried jumping dogs since.


I guess it's hard to teach a dog a proper PLF....

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