Hacker News Reader

What about waiting for something drastically bad to happen? That'll wake people up, won't it? I think the issue here is that the US populace on average is much too complacent. People don't "care", they don't see how it affects them, etc.

View on HN

There's a great podcast called Hardcore History[2] which has some significance here. There's a podcast titled something similar to "Justifiable Insanity" that talks about the end of WW2. People got into the mental trap of "Well, if we do something particularly heinous, they'll HAVE to surrender!". This lead to things like firestorms of Dresden and Hamburg, which had immense (esp. for the time period) death tolls.[0][1] So, be careful with the tactic of "Well, if something REALLY bad happens.."

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War... [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War... [2]: http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive

Reply on news.ycombinator.com