The Star Trek version was to have citizens of both sides executed to match simulated casualty numbers... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
Two parties agrees to wage a war in virtual worlds to decide if virtual hells should be allowed or banned. Unsurprisingly, the losing party tries to move the war in the real world to reverse the losing trend.
I don't think we'll ever see a civilized form of war where no real harm is done, because abiding by the rules of such a war is not a game-theoretic equilibrium. If a party builds a real army in addition to the simulated army and uses it, it will win the war.
Just like nuclear powers sometimes wage limited conventional wars, it's possible to imagine a set of international laws and norms where disputes would be resolved by virtual conflicts without escalation to armed force.
Advances in robotic war machines could make them so fearsome they deterred real-world armed conflict in favor of virtual conflict. (Of course, that's what they said about the machine gun before WW1)
Power for heating, cooling and hospitals. Transit systems for food distribution. Computers for synchronising all of the above.
How many casualties do you think would result from shutting down infrastructure in NYC in mid winter?
Even evacuation causes casualties. I was reading an assessment of the Fukushima evacuation that suggested fewer casualties would have resulted from just staying there.
I suspect the random variation between the two would account for far more difference than the casualties directly attributable to method of destruction, though.
Unless you mean destroying the transformers with blockbuster-size HE, or dirty nuclear devices?
I guess my point is that the number of people who would die from sustained, widespread infrastructure disruption would be huge, and not greatly changed by casualties around the blast site if you decided to blow stuff up literally instead of just metaphorically.
Heck it might even prevent war if the simulation says that both sides will suffer too high casualties to make it worth it.
At best, a very accurate simulation could tell you "in the case of war, here is the expected distribution of outcomes, here are the probabilities of various levels of "winning", here are the estimated levels of civilian casualties.
And quite a few political leaders in such situations have or would have chosen to take e.g. a 5% chance of victory instead of surrender, or simply as a deterring tactic - yes, we know that we will surely lose, but in the process you'll lose many men as well, so we'll bet that the result is not that important to you and you won't pay this price.
If Herodotus is to believed, a Persian siege against Babylon was met with the Babylonians strangling all the women except for a few to make bread as to stretch fighting resources as long as possible.
During the Sono-Soviet border conflict of the late 1960s, Mao threatened to overwhelm the Russian border with millions of Chinese as a part of his "man over weapons" strategy. Even with nuclear weapons, the Soviets were terrified of the sheer number of people that China could throw at them.
How do you predict that? How do you put a number to it?
War is always political.
I was meaning more that a conventional war is more violence then politics. There are various aspects to war, each type has its own balance of these aspects. I just feel that in a guerilla war the politics has as much a part as violence.
Now, Germany was obviously occupied on multiple fronts.
While I can't contest that if a nation of 330 million were to devote its full human and industrial capacity for the purpose of destroying all resistance in a nation of 33 million, it would succeed...
I wouldn't call the richest country in the world failing to convert to a war economy to overcome an enemy ten times smaller then they are to be 'lack of will to win.'
The richest nation in the world should not have to convert to a war economy to defeat an enemy ten times smaller. If it could not; then it didn't want to be there in the first place, it didn't want to do what was necessary to win, or their internal politics is screwed up. Possibly more than one of those.
It was clear then too, but it obvious now that the proto-ISIS "freedom fighter" narrative was completely divorced from reality.
For this to work, every aspect of the simulation would
have to match up with real world circumstances.
...which would mean no secrets.
...or weapons that, when used, obviate many degrees of
secrecy, like nuclear weapons.war is a dirty business, but business it is, and what a juicy one. simpler people hate banks/bankers, yet I haven't heard about any protesters occupying Lockheed, BAE or similar folks and wishing them jail. last thing these powerful corporations want is to change the game that works so well for them now.
war is a seed planted for long term future. look at middle east - I guarantee you 100 years from now on, this will still be a bad place to be. who will profit from it? all that arm all sides.
when last few US wars were declared, for whatever funky official reasons, do you really believe that only US president and very few true and just in government were involved in deciding if, when, how, what tech will be used etc? in this I trust Russia much more - epicenter of power is pretty clear there.
I don't believe in some Illuminati governing everything, nor do I believe that people with real power are not corrupted to their rotten core, owning favors left and right, their missteps are overlooked and their places +-secured etc. you don't get too high in politics (or army for that matter which becomes politics from certain level) as independent and just. just my gut feeling and common sense. but boy would i be glad to be wrong!
In this same way you can figure out that conspiracies about free energy and coal/gas industry suppression of alternative energies is bullshit. Almost everyone else in the world would love to have cheaper energy so they would not allow the oil or gas companies to suppress alternative energy.
Well that's my logic anyways.
In practice, the losing party as often as not will try to inflict as much damage on the victor as they can, and more often than not what starts as a battle ends up being a long term occupation and that's when all simulations seem to break down.
Battles are 'easy', long term planning is not.
In this episode, the crew of the USS Enterprise visits a planet whose people fight a computer-simulated war against a neighboring planet. Although the war is fought via computer simulation, the citizens of each planet have to submit to real executions inside "disintegration booths" to meet the casualty counts of the simulated attacks. The crew of the Enterprise is caught in the middle and are told to submit themselves voluntarily for execution after being "killed" in an "enemy attack".
"Well, they're not taking [whatever the goal was] without a real fight!"
It will then be AI/humans vs AI/humans cause one side will have to bear (real) heavy losses...
Of course, it does not always work.