What Would A New American Civil War Look Like?

Writing this just the day before the 2016 US election I find myself wondering, along with many others, exactly what the result will be tomorrow?

I mean more than just Clinton vs Trump.

I mean how severe a blow has this election cycle dealt with the overall health of the political system? Can American democracy survive this?

While this forecast may be hopelessly out of date just 24 hours from now, lets assume that Clinton wins, narrowly. This is what the polls currently show. The Five Thirty Eight election forecast has Trump's odds hovering around 30% - certainly too close for comfort for the Democrats. He may yet win, but lets assume he doesn't.

I make this assumption because the implications are much more daunting.

Just Googling it, you find that many people over time have predicted a coming collapse of the United States. This could be in the form of some kind of revolution or an outright civil war. The odds of this happening surely remain low, but no longer seems quite so unthinkable. In just the last few years, we've seen the collapse of numerous regimes. The Arab Spring, which saw the toppling of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and (possibly) Syria, for starters, Ukraine as well. Then let us not forget the sudden (and completely unexpected) collapse of the Soviet bloc circa 1989. That the same thing could happen in a western country is far from unthinkable.

Of course, the options are not simply 'business as usual' or 'civil war 2.0'. Likely, it will be something in-between. There are many past examples of civil disorder we could cite, both within and outside the US. You can go to Wikipedia to find the former. In the last year alone, they list eight major incidents involving violent riots or protests.

Lately, these have usually followed controversial police shootings. The Baltimore riots last year for instance lasted several weeks and saw more than a hundred police injured and nearly 500 arrests. Two and a half thousand national guardsmen were even called in to quell the violence. It is not uncommon for hundreds of people to be arrested or injured in these cases, though fatalities are comparatively rare in the modern era.

A History of Civil Disorder in the US

To look at more major incidents we have to go back a bit further. Take the Rodney King riots in 1992. The city of Los Angeles was in chaos for a full week. Some 55 people were killed, more than 2,000 injured and 11,000 arrested. It took the national guard and several army divisions to restore order. Some 13,500 troops were deployed in all. While still a tiny fraction of the whole United States armed forces - which number 1.3 million full time and 800,000 reserve personnel, it is still one of the greatest examples of civil disorder in the United States since the Civil War.

Probably the greatest example in the 20th century however, would be the 'King Assassination Riots' in April-May 1968 (also known as Holy Week). In raw figures the results were similar to the Rodney King Riots - at least 43 people died, 2,500 were injured and some 15,000 arrested. Rather than being restricted to one city, African-Americans rioted in more than one hundred . Tens of thousands of troops were deployed to major cities like Washington D.C. and Chicago.

These were in fact just the culmination of numerous black riots in the '60s, including ones in New York (1964), Los Angeles (1965), Cleveland (1966), New Jersey (1967) and Detroit (1967), which sometimes resulted in dozens of deaths. We can look back on this era as more than just a few isolated riots - this was a sustained period of heightened racial tensions in the US. It is perhaps the best model we have for what might happen next - though if anything, with the races reversed.

There are other examples we could look at. 1919 was the year of the 'red summer' when racial tensions and communist agitators (following the recent Bolshevik revolution in Russia) killed as many as several hundred people. In 1913 the state of Colorado experienced a major uprising - the 'Colorado Coalfield War' where conflict between striking miners and local authorities resulted in hundreds of casualties.

Pretty much all these examples have a singular 'trigger event'. With the 1992 riots, it was the acquittal of four police officers of excessive force over the beating and arrest of Rodney King. In 1968 it was the dramatic assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Colorado exploded with a murder - after finding the body of a strikebreaker, the Colorado National Guard attacked and burned a strikers' tent community to the ground, sparking further violence.

So the question then is - will the 2016 election result be a similar trigger? And what could be the scale of the violence?

The Case For Revolution

If recent polling is to be believed, 1 in 4 Americans would support their state declaring independence from the union. This figure is over 30% in some regions, and apparently over 50% among certain groups in the Republican party (such as 'Tea Party' members).

Even after the 2012 elections, online petitions to whitehouse.gov emerged in all 50 states calling for secession from the United States. Nearly a million people signed, including 125,000 from Texas alone. So far, this is just a tiny fraction out of 300 million Americans, but the numbers are growing, and could be much higher than anyone realizes. Certainly very few politicians, even Republicans, would support such a movement, but as Donald Trump's 2016 candidacy shows, who cares what the elites want?

Other polls show that, while most Americans may not be rushing to declare their independence, the vast majority have little faith in the federal government. The latest polling shows that just 18% approve of the performance of congress and only 19% 'trust the government' - a near record low.

The major fault lines in the nation are fairly obvious. Trump voters are whiter, male, more rural and more religious. To say 'poorer' is not strictly accurate, as historically wealthier voters tend to go Republican anyway, but his most die-hard supporters are often working-class whites. Democratic voters are more likely to be women, urban dwellers, black or Hispanic.

A problem, potentially huge, is that while the pro-Trump groups may collectively be limited in number (assuming Clinton wins) they are individually much 'stronger' than the average person in America. I mean this in quite a raw physical sense, relevant to the question of civil disobedience and even civil war.

Donald Trump is up among ten points with men - who are much more likely to make useful soldiers in any conflict. This is also true of more rural voters, who are much more likely to be 'survivalist' types, members of their local militia, or otherwise already self-sustaining and ready to go. According to recent polls, more than half of Republicans households own a gun, something true of only 20% of Democratic households.

This disparity has only grown over time. Indeed, nearly 11 million guns were manufactured in 2013, three times the figure from a decade earlier. I don't know what worse omen there is then the fact that in the most heavily armed country in the world gun sales are still going through the roof.

Truly, there seems to be little denying the fact that, if all of America's conservatives lined up on one side of a battlefield, and all of its liberals (hipster-typed included) on the other, the liberals would be quickly curb stomped.

This perhaps reveals a fundamental flaw with a democratic system. Despite its benevolent reputation, democracy only works because the losers in any given vote acknowledge, on some level, that there is no point disputing the result by force because they would likely lose anyway. If you're outnumbered at the polls, you'd be outnumbered or any subsequent battlefield.

But if one particularly side is fewer in numbers but still greater in strength this presents a dilemma. Lets face it, the only thing protecting the 'United States of Canada' from 'Jesusland' at the moment is a few million soldiers and police. Their loyalty would be the key question in any scenario where America descends into real internal conflict.

The other major factor here, and a necessary precursor to a mass uprising among angry whites, is the changing demographics of the nation and what this means for their future. Black and especially Hispanic populations are growing more rapidly than whites. Further throw in recent plans by the Democrats to let in hundreds of thousands more refugees from places like Syria and you can understand the electoral time-bomb the Republicans are facing. We see a similar backlash with the recent rise of the nationalist right in Europe. Most of these new immigrants will, inevitably, end up voting for the left. Where else will they be getting their welfare checks?

You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it.

Mitt Romney had it right back in 2012 when he pointed out how 47% of Americans now pay no federal income tax. When half the country is forcefully funding the other half, with the latter growing in number every year, how is this situation sustainable? When the welfare dependent 'takers' simply outnumber the tax-paying 'makers' how can a democracy survive long-term? Throw in the deep social divisions in America, over race, religion, abortion, gay rights and a dozen other issues, and what do you have?

My point is this - one half of America is very angry and heavily armed - and about to lose what might have been their last 'winnable' election to an opposition they deem exploitative and intolerable.

How is civil disorder not going to occur here?

Outbreak of Rioting

The worst-case scenario, then, is this.

Once a Trump loss appears inevitable, protests start across the nation. These are particularly common in heavily working-class white areas with high unemployment, such as in states like Michigan and Ohio. In cities with both large white and black populations, ethnic tensions explode. The worst examples include Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore and a number of southern cities. Numerous riots break out with black and white gangs fighting running battles in the streets. In many cases, local police are unable to handle the violence. In dozens of cities, the national guard is called in. 

So far, we essentially have Holy Week in reverse. Rather than blacks rioting at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. we have whites rioting at the election loss of Donald Trump. The simplest (and most likely) end to this story is that the riots are quelled. A small number of people (maybe a few dozen) are dead, with hundreds or even thousands more injured or arrested. Politicians (including new President-elect Clinton) make sympathetic speeches and vow to heal a divided America. Within a few years we all forget the whole thing.

But what if that isn't the end?

How a Civil War Might Result

Amidst the brewing protests, Donald Trump refuses to concede the election, repeating his claims that the process is 'rigged' and urging Americans to 'rise up against this utterly corrupt system'.

As the national guard is called in, problems immediately arise. With well over 50% of armed forces members having voted for Trump, many guardsmen do not answer the call to mobilize. Some have even joined the protesters, or remained at home to defend their neighborhoods amid the violence. Several states decline to call on the federal government for help at all.

By mid-November, the first serious calls for independence have emerged. In Jackson, Mississippi, more than ten thousand mostly white protesters surround and occupy the state capitol building, demanding the state declare independence. Most of the legislature flees, but several local politicians join with the protesters.

The Mississippi national guard - 12,000 strong, is mobilized, but less than half respond to the call. Those that do assemble soon surround the state capitol. Conflicting orders arrive from the state governor and Washington, with the result they refuse to move in to clear the protesters.

Still in office, President Obama orders the immediate nationalization of the guard, but this is refused by the local troops as well as most of their commanders, with state governor Phil Bryant also objecting. Most of the local guardsmen then defect to the protesters, swelling their ranks as they fortify the center of Jackson. Thousands begin fleeing the city - particularly local blacks, fearful of the riots and whether the city might become a real battleground.

Regular army units are called in, and by the final week of November more than 30,000 Federal troops and officials from a number of agencies have surrounded the city, with the protesters and defecting guardsmen also growing in number as the stand becomes a magnet for nationalists and patriots nationwide. Still hoping to a peaceful end to the crisis, President Obama begins negotiations with the protesters.

The standoff drags on for several weeks. Meanwhile the situation escalates across the rest of the nation. In many areas riots are put down, but for every city that is pacified another defies the federal government. Across the twenty-seven pro-Trump states (sixteen of which have governors which previously endorsed Trump) calls for independence grow as federal authority quickly erodes. By the end of November more than a dozen cities (though no full states) have joined Jackson in declaring at least local independence.

Seeking a definitive end to the standoff, on December 2nd President Obama finally orders the federal troops to retake Jackson and restore order. Driving Humvees and carrying automatic weapons, thousands of federal troops begin advancing into Jackson from multiple directions. Resistance is surprisingly fierce, as thousands of heavily armed protesters remain, many having arrived from out-of-state. Images are broadcast around the world of federal troops firing into crowds and blasting aside barricades. Within two days the death toll is at over a hundred and little progress has been made. Local commanders call for the deployment of tanks, artillery and even aircraft to quell the uprising quickly. For the time being, the attack is called off.

However, outraged at this violence, public opinion (already shaky) turns decisively against the federal government and what many begin calling its 'Tiananmen-style' crackdown on dissent. In Republican-dominated states legislatures come together to seriously consider voting for independence, as occurred 150 years earlier. By mid-December the impossible has become a reality as multiple states, including Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, vote for independence. Several north-western states - Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, follow suit. In Alaska, a vote of the state legislature also sees the same result. In Louisiana, Democratic governor John Bel Edwards resigns after his veto of secession is overruled by a two-thirds majority, courtesy of several defecting democrats.

With eleven states having officially 'declared independence' in two weeks, the true scale of the crisis is realized. The government in Washington re-affirms the 'indissoluble' nature of the union and calls all votes for succession 'illegal and void under the constitution'. President Obama, with President-elect Clinton by his side, issues an executive order on December 16th for the armed forces to restore order. Fighting resumes in Jackson and several other cities. Within a week fighting is occurring in the heart of the city. Some six hundred 'rebels' and two hundred federal soldiers are dead, with thousands more injured.

This 'Fallujah in Mississippi' sparks further outrage, with Utah, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Kansas, Nebraska, North Carolina, North and South Dakota and Oklahoma further declaring independence, bringing the total number of states to 22 and splitting the United States in two. They consist almost solely of states with Republican Governors and legislatures and a pro-Trump vote, with a few exceptions. Altogether, they have a population of 116 million people - 36% of the US population, as well as four of its five largest military bases.

Along the borders of the seceding states, riots quickly escalate into military skirmishes between various groups, many of them former army troops or national guardsmen, suddenly declaring themselves pro or anti-secession. Hundreds of thousands of people begin fleeing their homes, with blacks and Hispanics leaving the seceding states while some whites begin moving there, fearful of retaliatory black rioters or fresh federal government crackdowns.

Amidst the brewing crisis, with stock markets tumbling, foreign governments expressing their shock and the loyalty of much of the armed forces in doubt, President Obama invites Donald Trump to Washington in an attempt to end the crisis. The invitation is accepted, however the next day (December 22nd) while heading to the airport to fly from New York to Washington, an assassin (soon identified as a black lives matter protester) spots and shoots Donald Trump, who later dies in hospital.

Suddenly without any figurehead, and more distrustful of the 'Washington establishment' then ever, representatives of the defecting states begin gathering in Houston, Texas (the largest city in the seceding states). On December 25th (Christmas day) representatives decide to form a new confederacy, with Houston as the interim capital and Trump's former running mate - Indiana Governor Mike Pence, as leader.

With both sides refusing to yield, the stage is set for civil war.

Could the Nazis truly have successfully invaded the Soviet Union?

As a big WW2-buff, I'm personally fascinated by this topic. When planning the invasion of Russia the Germans assumed a quick victory like over France, Poland or Greece. This plan was ruined just before Moscow around November-December 1941. Some say this was inevitable in the first place. Others say that the Germans came very close and that with a few better tactical decisions (like heading more directly for Moscow) and better planning (better Winter clothing - not to mention the Reich wasn't fully mobilized for war until early 1943 after Stalingrad) this could have succeeded. I strongly favor the latter view, as the Russians really were losing hopelessly before the winter paralyzed the Germans. After this point the war largely turned into a war of attrition. Again, some say this made the German's defeat inevitable, but this is also a questionable assumption. The Soviet Union's population in 1941 was just under 200 million, and this was with newly seized territories in the Baltic states, Finland, Poland and Romania. Before these, it was about 170 million. Germany was 80 million after seizing Austria, so the manpower ratio is about 2-2.5 to 1 depending on the figures used. Now things get complicated. Romania, Hungary and Finland were Germany's main allies on the Eastern front, and add about 30 million people between them. Italy also sent an army that eventually numbered about a quarter of a million. Italy's total population was an impressive 45 million, but only a fraction of their army was deployed on the Eastern front. If we accept a civilian/soldier ratio of about 10:1, we could add around 3 million to our population estimate.

Spain's fascist regime also sent a volunteer division in which about 30,000 served. Hundreds of thousands of other volunteers/conscripts from across Europe also joined the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS to fight communism (for instance, about 50,000 from Holland, 20,000 from France, etc - a higher number than many care to admit). Bulgaria was also part of the Axis (with 7 million people) though it didn't sent troops to Russia.
The largest remaining group was the Russians themselves. It was estimated that around a million Russian defectors joined the Axis to fight Stalin's regime. Using the same 10:1 ratio, we'll add 10 million to the Axis population estimate and detract that from the Soviet figure (we'll use the higher one and say 200 million). Adding all this together, we get around 80+30+3+2+10 = 125 million Soviet Union = 200-10 = 190 million We end up with a ratio of about 3:2, hardly an insurmountable figure. The Axis figure could have been even higher if the Italians, Bulgarians or Spanish had contributed more. In fact, they would have slightly outnumbered the Soviets (42+7+25 = 74 + 125 = 199)

There are a number of other variables to alter this 3:2 figure. Significant Soviet forces remained in Siberia throughout the war, despite the deployment of a number of divisions west, to deter any Japanese aggression in the far east. Even larger German forces remained in France, Norway and elsewhere, and were gradually built up as the threat from the western Allies increased. Further questions need to be asked about the quality of the fighting forces. The German Allies (except perhaps the Finns) were no doubt inferior in quality to the Wehrmacht itself, but this was also usually true of the Red Army. Overall, the average Axis soldier was still likely of superior quality (in training, weapons, morale, etc) to the average Soviet.

The big question then is - what was the casualty ratio of the fighting armies as the war dragged on? The first six months of Barbarossa was a complete bloodbath for the Russians. Killed, missing, wounded and captured appears to have been upwards of five million. The Germans suffered 800,000 casualties. Even this doesn't tell the whole story, as only a quarter of the German casualties were killed, missing or captured - or about 200,000, while the same figure for the Russians was about 4 million. So that's a 20:1 ratio of soldiers effectively out of action, or at least 6:1 if we include wounded (presumably the real figure is somewhere in-between, we don't know exactly how many wounded soldiers returned to duty).

In short, the Germans went through the Russians like a hot knife through butter. If anything like this ratio had kept up for the entire war, the Soviets would have run out of men well before the Axis did, no problem. As the fighting dragged on however, the ratio gradually declined. Case Blue (the offensive towards Stalingrad in 1942) saw a ratio of just 2:1. Kursk in 1943 was actually higher, around 4:1, and Bagration in 1944 about 2:1. Even in 1945, when greatly outnumbered, the Germans generally inflicted higher casualties than they received. This also illustrates the vital importance of Stalingrad.

I found the Kursk figures surprising, as by 1943 the number of fighting troops was about 4 million to 7 million in favor of the Soviets, yet at a 4:1 casualty ratio, the Germans might yet have won. Stalingrad was perhaps different due to much of the fighting occurring in Winter, when we know the German's performance suffered considerably, and the fact that many Axis troops were encircled and then captured, which was still a rare phenomenon until the closing stages of the war. This shows that the significance of Stalingrad as the turning point of WW2 has hardly been exaggerated.
The key factors were the severity of Russia's terrain and climate, bitter tactical lessons learned by the Russians (don't get surrounded so easily), improved equipment (including lend-lease), better leadership and so on. These combined to slowly bring down the casualty ratio. Of course, the final factor I haven't mentioned was that before long Germany was fighting a war on two and then three fronts. If say a third of German strength was tied up in Italy and France by 1944, then we need to take 20-30 million off their population figure. This analysis just asks 'could the Germans have beaten the Russians' without taking into account the western allies yet. If Hitler hadn't declared war on the USA in December 1941, he might have been able to win a war of attrition anyway after Stalingrad. The British alone probably couldn't have won in North Africa or Italy, let alone invaded France.

The key fact is that, given a war of attrition and absent the western Allies, the Axis had to inflict a casualty ratio of at least 2:1 on the Soviets to keep winning the war. Once you take the western Allies into account, this number creeps up to about 3:1. After 1941, the Germans rarely were able to achieve this figure and thus lost the war.

The Definitive World War Two Movie Marathon

Since this idea has been nagging at me for ages, I knew I had to make a post about it eventually, so here goes:

1. Battle of Britain (June - September 1940)

Our story starts in the summer of 1940. In less than a year, Nazi Germany has conquered a dozen countries and now controls most of Europe. With the fall of France, Britain and its Commonwealth stands alone against Nazi tyranny. In a desperate battle, the Royal Air Force is able to fight the numerically superior German Luftwaffe to a stalemate in the skies over southern England.

2. Das Boot (October - December 1941)

A year later the war is still raging and a long drawn-out struggle for control of the Atlantic Ocean is taking shape. We follow the exploits of a German U-boat crew as they attempt to sink ships headed for Britain while avoiding the considerable might of the Allied surface navies.

3. Pearl Harbor (December 1941 - April 1942)

At the end of 1941 the Empire of Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, drawing America into World War Two and making the war a truly global conflict. Five months later, the Americans respond with the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

4. Enemy at the Gates (September 1942 - February 1943)



Russia - 1942. The German armies have penetrated deep into the Soviet Union. In the city of Stalingrad, the defenders slowly wear down the attackers in brutal urban combat. We follow the exploits of the famous sniper Vasily Zaytzev as he fights amid the ruins.

5. The Thin Red Line (December 1942 - February 1943)

Meanwhile, on Guadacanal, the Allies begin their counterattack against the Japanese, slowly pushing them back across the South Pacific.

6. The Great Escape (1943-44)

In the heart of occupied Europe we witness daily life as a prisoner of war. Considering it their duty to disrupt the German's war efforts by any means necessary, a group of allied prisoners plot an audacious escape attempt.

7. Cross of Iron (1943)

Returning to Russia, we see the German armies in full retreat in the aftermath of Stalingrad, as the tide of the war has well and truly changed.

8. Schindler’s List (1942 - 1945)

Back in German-occupied Europe, we see the holocaust in full swing as wealthy industrialist Oskar Schindler attempts to save all those he can from the horrors of the concentration camps.

9. The Longest Day (June 1944)



June 1944 - D-day, the Normandy invasion. The first of some three million allied troops swarm ashore transported by an armada of some seven thousand ships and over ten thousand planes. The western allies finally regain a foothold on the continent, and begin their drive inland towards Germany and the liberation of Europe.

10. Valkyrie (April 1943 - July 1944)

Having witnessed the turning tide of the war, a group of German officers finally unleash their plot against Hitler, hoping to save Germany from complete destruction.

11. A Bridge Too Far (September 1944)



Despite their recent successes, the Allies overreach when they launch the ambitious Operation Market Garden. An attempt by airborne troops to seize bridges over the Rhine River fails, ensuring the end of the war will be postponed to 1945.

12. Patton (February 1943 - 1945)

Initially jumping back a year, we follow the military career of General George S. Patton from his entry into the war in North Africa through to Sicily, France, the Battle of the Bulge and the final push into Germany.

13. Letters from Iwo Jima (February 1945)

Back in the Pacific, the Allies are finally closing in on Japan, but much brutal fighting remains. Told from the Japanese perspective, we witness the conquest of the tiny yet vital island of Iwo Jima.

14. Downfall (April - May 1945)



Berlin - April 1945. As the Red Army fights its way into the German capital, Hitler finally concedes that the war is lost and chooses to commit suicide rather than be captured.

15. Empire of the Sun (1941 - September 1945)

After years of incarceration by the Japanese, a young British boy witnesses the end of the war, including the distant detonation of the atomic bomb over Nagasaki.



So there you go - ta-da!

I'm sure everyone will have a few quibbles with this list. I wanted it to be as close to chronological order as possible, so I agonized over the inclusion of a movie like Patton since it takes place over more than two years. It starts in North Africa and so would follow on perfectly from the battles of Stalingrad and Guadalcanal, but then continues past D-Day and Market Garden up to the closing stages of the war. In the end, I decided it was such a good movie I had to slip it in after A Bridge Too Far. The movie is in two parts, so if you really like, you could just watch Part One before the Longest Day and Part Two after A Bridge Too Far to keep things more in order.

For some events we have several movies to choose from. You could obviously use Saving Private Ryan instead of The Longest Day, however I prefer the latter as it follows all aspects of the battle rather than merely showing the Omaha Beach assault and then following a single squad. It was also a tough choice between Pearl Harbor or Tora Tora Tora. The former certainly runs too long and has the soppy love triangle, but in the end the battle scenes look so epic I can't help but forgive Michael Bay's other flaws as a director. The same could be said of choosing Enemy at the Gates over 1993's Stalingrad, so again, substitute as you will.

Of course, many important aspects of the war are passed over. I really wish Midway (1976) had been a better film for instance, rather than being a B-grade production that borrows footage from sources like Battle of Britain, as it depicts an absolutely pivotal battle. Because of this, we don't witness the destruction of the bulk of the Japanese carrier fleet and simply jump straight to Guadalcanal instead.

The North African campaign probably deserved a film of its own. The most famous ones mostly appear to be black and white ones made back in the 1950's like The Desert Fox (1951) and The Desert Rats (1953) and I couldn't find a decent modern example (I wanted to stick with more modern films, call me a hopeless millennial, but few films made before the 1970's have ever really grabbed my attention). However, we do get a few North African scenes in both Patton and Valkyrie. The Eastern front, given its size, could also have had several more films devoted to it, but here it is the focus of at least three (including Downfall) whilst I recall the Red Army is also seen briefly at the end of Schindler's List.

Downfall I will confidently label one of the greatest war movies ever made, and Bruno Ganz's Hitler has to be the best since...well, the original. It could easily have been the finale, but the fact remains the Japanese held out for longer. I thought it wise to include Empire of the Sun, even if it is not the most well known film here, because it not only shows some of the Chinese theater (which was the second largest in casualties after the Eastern Front) but ends with the main character seeing the distant explosion of Fat Man over Nagasaki in September 1945. I can think of no better ending note.

Certainly dozens of other films could be included here, not to mention other productions. The ten part miniseries Band of Brothers does a superb job of covering the 1944-45 campaign in western Europe. The Pacific later did the same for the Pacific War. I also came across a German miniseries - Generation War that does much the same for the Eastern front, a welcome find.

The list I've given here however, should cover most major aspects of the war including all the major theaters, the war at sea, the war in the air as well as the holocaust. At one film a day, you could complete this in about a fortnight. Though I haven't checked all of them, you can probably find most of these movies here - http://123movies.to/ or on similar video streaming sites.

So get cracking comrades. Good luck, and may we beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Why The Jedi Are Hilariously Underpowered

Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking - yet another random internet rant about some aspect of Star Wars that doesn't make sense.

And you're correct. So shut up and sit down.

My complaint today doesn't actually revolve around a scientific inaccuracy in Star Wars. There's plenty of them to pick from. No, today's qualm is more of a political one. Put simply - why on Earth does anybody really care about the Jedi?

I mean - what's the point?

Through seven movies now, only occasionally have we ever seen the Jedi do anything remotely powerful enough to make an entire galaxy of beings quake in fear. I mean, that is meant to be the point isn't it? The Jedi are keepers of the peace. They're the galactic police force. If one planet goes to war with another planet. the apparent policy is that Coruscant just dispatches a couple of Jedi to 'settle the conflict'.

Yet why does anyone actually fear the Jedi? What powers do they possess that means they can 'settle' anything? The basic ones should be pretty obvious - telekinesis, enhanced speed and reflexes, as well as 'mind tricks' that you can use to control people's actions. Oh, and laser swords - really cool laser swords.

Other abilities include some degree of precognition, the ability to partly come back from the dead as a 'force ghost' and being able to shoot lightning from your fingers (or 'lightning hands') for some dark side users.

That's a pretty wide array of cool stuff. So what's my point?

Well of the above abilities, I would have to say mind tricks and precognition are by far the most useful. The ability to control other people's actions would made them unique spies, saboteurs, interrogators and advisers. The CIA would hire them in a heartbeat.

As for the military however...what exactly is the appeal?

At no point do we see the Jedi using telekinesis on a scale I'd say would be significant on even a 20th century battlefield. A while ago xkcd tried to estimate how much 'force power' Yoda could generate by examining the scene where he lifts Luke's X-Wing out of the swamp. He estimated that since the X-Wing might have weighed about five tonnes (comparing it to an F22) and given the speed at which it moved upwards, Yoda might have generated about 20 kilowatts of energy - or about 25 horsepower.

http://what-if.xkcd.com/3/

Admittedly, the prequel trilogy contains some examples that appear to be much larger. Near the climax of Attack of the Clones we see Yoda hold up a pillar toppled by Count Dooku so that it doesn't crush Obi-Wan and Anakin. 

I''d estimate the length of the pillar to be about eight meters. That makes it maybe 1.5 meters in diameter. It appears to be made of metal, and we don't know if its hollow or not, but lets assume it isn't. The density of steel is about eight times that of water. 

We end up with an estimate of 8X0.75X0.75XpiX8 = about 113 tonnes.

This is an impressive amount. An M1A1 Abrams weighs about 60 tonnes for instance, so supposedly Yoda could flip them over or perhaps crush them if he concentrated.

Even here however, at what seem to be the very limits of the Jedi's power (Yoda is meant to be one of the most powerful) they hardly seem able to compete with modern weapons. Then again, I'm reminded of the climax of X-Men First Class where Magneto stops the barrage fired by the naval vessels off shore.

The total mass of all those shells and missiles is probably less than one hundred tonnes, implying Yoda could perform a similar feat. So on 20th century Earth Jedi might still be dangerous, but you'd still probably need an army of them to pose a real threat to the world.

In a galaxy far, far away however, filled with thousands of worlds and millions of spaceships, how exactly are the Jedi so scary? On the list of dangerous weapons, surely they should be somewhere behind atomic bombs, relativistic projectiles, giant space lasers and antimatter munitions?

If the Jedi were to make any sense. They would have to be vastly more powerful. They should be able to make entire planets quake at fear with their mere presence. Oddly enough, their powers are sometimes much greater in the Star Wars expanded universe. Take this clip of Yoda from the 2003 Clone Wars cartoon for instance.

Now this is more like it. Here you see thousands of droid soldiers crumpling before a Jedi's power. With abilities as depicted here, its easy to imagine a powerful Jedi leveling much of Manhattan in an afternoon, Godzilla-style. Already you may be starting to wonder - what is the point of those fancy laser swords if they are this strong with the force?

This is still not quite what I'm talking about however. The Galaxy is a big, big place, consisting of many thousands of populated worlds. Although we may never get exact numbers, there are probably more planets than Jedi - i,e, a ratio of one Jedi per planet or less. You have to think of a single Jedi being able to intimidate a whole planet, to be able to threaten its populace with swift destruction if they get too uppity - and these are planets with technology that is generally centuries ahead of our own.

No - Jedi should be on a whole other level to what we've seen depicted in the Star Wars films. They should be godlike. They should be on a similar level to beings like Superman, Goku or Dr. Manhattan. They should be able to demolish entire cities with just a thought. They should be able to snap battleships - even space-bound ones, in two like matchsticks. Their wrath should be comparable to a force of nature, easily mistakable for an earthquake or a hurricane. #ChuckNorrisFacts should pretty much apply to them. At their full power they should be capable of killing millions, of rendering entire worlds uninhabitable, if not dismantling them entirely.

They should not be these moody guys in robes who fuck around with laser swords.

Honestly - not only would this make more sense, I think Star Wars would have been a lot cooler because of it. Perhaps Luke Skywalker should have been like Elsa from Frozen - growing up barely in control of his powers, afraid at any moment he would kill someone, before Obi-Wan comes along and shows him how to control them. The X-Men movies also deal very well with the real-world implications of people having superpowers, including isolation, discrimination, fear and arrogance. 

Since it originally started off as a fairly low-budget, niche sci-fi flick, I suppose we can forgive Star Wars these flaws, but damn, the Jedi could have been so much cooler.

Reviewing the Idiran-Culture War

A major event in Iain M. Bank's seminal 'Culture' series of novels is the 'Idiran-Culture War'. Only the novel 'Consider Phlebas' is set during it, and even then the war mostly serves as background. Thereafter it is relegated to a historical event (as the books can be separated by centuries) but is repeatedly mentioned in a way reminiscent of the World Wars today.

The Culture series is relatively hard science fiction, though many of the technologies it involves would be considered extremely advanced by our standards. Faster-than-light travel also exists as well, but despite this, the series portrays the details of both domestic and interstellar politics with great skill.

The war unfolds (obvious spoilers) in a manner similar to our own WW2-era Pacific War, with the Idirans in the role of the Japanese and the Culture as the Allies (particularly the Americans).

The Idirans are described as the peak of biological evolution, having emerged as the 'top monster on a planet full of monsters'. They are also biologically immortal (i.e. they don't age) and for reasons along these lines they have a serious case of what you could metaphorically describe as 'white man's burden'. They believe themselves superior to all other races and that they have a divine destiny (there are religious undertones here as well) to spread out across the universe and rule the 'lesser' races.

There have been various fan-art depictions of the Idirans given their physical description in the books. This is probably my favourite -

^ The Master Race - as imagined by Iain M. Banks

The Culture meanwhile, could be described as the ultimate hedonists. They are an advanced society all-but free from violence, disease, poverty, money, religion and all other forms of civil ailment. This has been achieved largely by the 'post-scarcity' nature of their economy. They're so advanced in fact, that they no longer even live on planets, considering them useful only as 'nature preserves'. Instead they live on massive spaceships or artificial habitats (think Dyson Spheres and ringworlds).

Here then, we see the comparison between the utterly racist, expansionist, fundamentalist Idirans and the supremely carefree, happy-go-lucky Culture. This is reminiscent of (though greatly exaggerated) the Japanese Empire and the western democracies in WW2.

As for the course of the war, in its initial stages the Idirans conquer a vast number of worlds, while the Culture retreats into the depths of interstellar space and begins ramping up its war production (as they had previously been a peaceful society with no dedicated warships).

The war lasts decades, before the Culture begins launching strikes deep into Idiran territory. Eventually another advanced race who are major supporters of the Idirans - the Homomda, withdraw from the conflict, at which point the Idiran's fate is sealed. In the closing stages of the war they resort to increasingly desperate tactics to change its outcome (including blowing up a bunch of stars) before, after a total of forty-eight years of war, their homeworld is reached by the Culture and their empire dismantled.

Any history students should see the parallels here to the Pacific War. Imperial Japan emerged out of the chaos of the archipelago's medieval period, when it was divided up into many different feuding states. After being isolated so many hundreds of years, Matthew Perry's visit to the islands in 1854 forced Japan to end its isolation and begin modernizing. This led it on a campaign of conquest in East Asia that mirrored those being carried out by European states from halfway across the globe.

In the opening months of the war - essentially from Pearl Harbour to Midway - the Japanese conquered large parts of the Pacific and East Asia, running rampant everywhere from India to Hawaii. After that their expansion came to a halt while the Allies counterattacked. In a series of bloody campaigns from Guadacanal to the Philippines the Allies gradually gained the upper hand. Eventually, closing in on the Japanese home islands, they resorted to the atomic bomb to force Japan into submission.

More than this however, we can see than Iain M. Banks did not choose this comparison randomly.

The Pacific War was, more than most combat theaters, an amphibious war. Army troops were useful only for garrisoning islands. The decisive battles were all fought at sea.

The islands of the Pacific, then, can be compared to individuals star systems and planets on the galactic scale. Assuming that planets are still your targets in any interstellar war (far from a certainty) the key battles will surely be fought far from a planet's surface. Battles in deep space between warships - likely run by autonomous AIs and built in vast numbers, will decide the fate of worlds.

Planetary battles would be somewhat like the marines storming ashore on Guadalcanal or Iwo Jima. Rarely was a naval assault actually repulsed in WW2. Once the enemy's fleet is parked off-shore (or in this case in-orbit) your fate is basically sealed. Without quick reinforcement, it is only a matter of time, and lives.

Bombardment from above - either from planes and Battleships in WW2 or orbiting cruisers in space, would be used to soften up the defenders. Assuming you needed to actually capture the world (and not just destroy it outright - which may be deemed prudent depending on the circumstances) the next step would be to send in the starship troopers.

Just as the Japanese built complex systems of trenches, caves and bunkers from which to defend their positions, a defender on a planetary surface could bury deep into its crust to avoid the preliminary bombardment. Most of the Allied bombardments proved useless against the well-entranced Japanese, requiring weeks-long campaigns of brutal ground fighting to root them out. Even then, in many cases, small groups of Japanese held out even after an island was 'secured', often for years.

Again, on a planet, even advanced weapons such as nukes and lasers will have difficulty attacking positions buried many kilometers into the Earth. The deepest mine on Earth currently is the Tautona gold mine in South Africa, at 3.9 kilometers deep. With great need and more advanced technologies however, its not hard to see us exceeding this depth by quite an amount. The Earth's crust averages 30-40 kilometers thick beneath the continents, though this increases to close to a hundred in some places (particularly under large mountain ranges like the Andes and Himalayas).

The infamous fanaticism of the Japanese could also be paralleled by soldiers far from human. These could be either advanced machines or creatures that have been genetically modified in some way. In all seriousness, think of Terminators or even Transformers - and self-replicating ones at that. Imagine such a machine burying into the Earth, perhaps via  existing mineshafts or underground tunnels, and slowly making copies of itself deep underground. Then one day, perhaps years later, a whole army of them bursts forth from the ground, set on re-conquering the surface once more.

In this way, a defending force could wage a guerrilla war against the surface occupiers of a world almost indefinitely. Assuming they had a manufacturing capacity of some kind (and there are plenty of metals and lots of geothermal energy to facilitate this in the depths of the Earth) they could retreat and regroup there before launching regular attacks on the surface. Presumably the purpose of this is not so much to liberate the world as to make things uncomfortable for the occupiers, perhaps compelling them to abandon the planet someday.

As far as I'm aware, such a scenario has not really been depicted in science fiction before. Many of the separate elements are there - we've seen terminators and Red Dawn-style guerrilla warfare and underground cave systems, but I don't think anyone has yet married these different elements fully. This is a shame, as such a strategy actually seems to make sense, and may very well happen one day.

In fact, since no one else seems to have thought of this, I'm going to coin a new term here - 'Lithospheric Guerrilla Warfare'.

The 'lithosphere' of a planet is its solid outer surface. This includes not only the crust but the viscous uppermost part of the mantle. I find it difficult to imagine than any creatures or machines could actually operate in the mantle itself, the laws of material science don't appear to allow it, but anywhere in the crust could be fair game, and eventually become a battlefield. The term 'terranaut', which somebody else has already coined (I recall hearing it in the movie 'The Core' - otherwise a thoroughly awful film by the way...), could very well be used here.

Just as wars have previously been fought on land, at sea, in the air (over the last century or so) and theoretically could occur in space, countries may one day be compelled to create a 'Terranaut Corps' as well. Already we have precedents like the WW1-era Battle of Messines. British miners spent months tunneling under the German lines before detonating 19 enormous piles of explosive - almost 500 tons in total, beneath them in preparation for an attack. Ten thousand German soldiers were killed in moments, still the deadliest non-nuclear explosion of all time. The blast was loud enough to be heard in London and Dublin, hundreds of kilometers away.

Early Lithospheric Warfare (film - Beneath Hill 60)

While science fiction talks often of 'holding the high ground' in a battle - i.e. space, controlling the low ground could be just as essential. Imagine doing what the British did in 1917 - but with nukes. Consider digging a tunnel, perhaps one tens or even hundreds of kilometers long (projects like the Channel Tunnel prove this is possible) to sites beneath major cities, or other targets. Imagine how much damage a large nuke could do if buried a few hundred meters below London or Tokyo.

Of course, I'm talking about all this in a theotetical, currently-relegated-to-science-fiction sense. I'm not saying we should be worried about Al Qaeda tunneling from Afghanistan to New York and setting off a bomb, but I don't see any fundamental reason why an attacking (or even more-so a defending) army might not do this in the far-future. Wait until the enemy's forces have landed, then set off a bomb right beneath their camp. By doing this repeatedly, a resisting force could make a world untenable for an occupying force to live in.

I wonder if the Idirans thought of this,

Why Human Beings Will Never Colonize Other Planets

If you're someone who is remotely interested in space, you won't have failed to notice the headlines that pop up every few months about scientist’s latest discovery of a 'potentially habitable planet' – ‘Hey look, we found a planet only twice as large as the Earth, possibly orbiting in the habitable zone of its star, that's only 400 light years away!’

Now yes, I'm not saying we should ignore the latest Kepler discoveries. Nobody has ever done this before, and the spotting of more than 2,000 exoplanets since 1988 is indeed a scientific milestone. Personally, I remain a huge fan of SETI.

But as someone who (secretly) hopes to earn my stripes as a hard science-fiction author someday, I can't help but remain a bit skeptical. Will these far-flung worlds ever really affect the destiny of the human race?

Might it not be the case that, in however many centuries it takes us to reach them, we come up with much better alternatives when it comes to finding a place to live? Might these worlds become obsolete long before anyone has a chance to do their Neil Armstrong impression?

Let’s step back for a moment.

Say all of 21st century humanity, as we know it, was just a tribe from the Stone Age living in a cave somewhere. It’s a cave, but it’s a nice cave, nestled in a hillside, over a river, surrounded by fertile soil. Not a bad place to live.

Now imagine one of the young hunters goes off exploring, and returns a few days later with exciting news.

‘Hey guys! You'll never believe what I found! There's another cave we could live in! I mean...its kinda small, its filled with poisonous moss, oh and its in the middle of the desert...two hundred miles away, but still!’

And indeed, maybe some members of the tribe eventually do make the arduous journey and attempt to live there. Maybe they even find it tolerable, and this sets a precedent, with other bands setting off to colonize caves of their own.

In this manner, Stone Age humans might have crossed entire continents, seeking out more and more caves in which to live. In time, Civilization might have arisen from these underground refuges. Underground wars would have been fought. Cave-based empires would rise and fall. Shakespeare might have written Hamlet under the stalactites.

Indeed, if you had gone back and asked whatever budding science fiction writers may have existed in 10,000BC, this is how they might have pictured the future - a world in which humanity spreads across the Earth, inhabiting every single cave? Whoa!

There's a little flaw in this story though, an unexpected factor that makes this just an alternate history. While humans have sometimes lived in caves, civilization as we know it did not ultimately center on their existence. At some point, someone invented an alternative form of habitation, one that proved superior to caves in most respects.

We call them houses.

The Rise of the Cosmic House

In case it’s not clear what I'm on about, the caves in this analogy are the planets themselves. As for the houses - that's a little harder to describe. So what is the interstellar equivalent of a house?

While the cave analogy is mine, I can't claim credit for this entire idea. We have already seen it in works from authors like Iain M. Banks and Stephen Baxter.

In Banks's 'Culture' universe, most citizens of the advanced, star-spanning Culture live on enormous, galaxy-crossing spaceships or giant, artificial habitats. Planets are considered little more than nature preserves, inhabited by primitive races yet to develop spaceflight.

I also recall a Stephen Baxter story where a character becomes the first man to land on an asteroid. At first, he's little known, with most of the glory going to the first man on Mars. In time however, the Martian cities decline, the planet is largely abandoned, and the bulk of humanity ends up living in space. The protagonist does to the Martian Neil Armstrong what Christopher Columbus did to Leif Erikson.

In the end, it is those who leave a lasting legacy that achieve true glory. Space is where our future lies, not planet-bound like our ape ancestors.

Many studies have been conducted in to what future space habitats may look like. The jumbled mess that is the International Space Station will be looked back upon as the first roughly hewn raft our ancestors assembled on a beach somewhere.

Names like Bernal Sphere, Stanford Torus and O'Neill Cylinder have been floating around for a while now. These consist of different versions of what is essentially the same thing - a rotating space habitat.

The basic idea is that space habitats need to rotate in order to produce centrifugal force, thereby imitating the gravity of a body like Earth. These generally take the forms of cylinders, wheels or spheres. A cylinder a thousand meters across, for instance, would need to rotate about once a minute to approximate 1G.

There's no reason to believe such habitats could not be built in the near future. I'll stress again - this is science, not science fiction.

A very early example would be ‘Space Station One’ - the rotating wheel we see early in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The building of much larger habitats is certainly possible. ‘Rama’ from Rendezvous with Rama (also by Arthur C. Clarke) is a larger example, being a rotating cylinder some fifty kilometers long and twenty wide. 

I can even imagine looking up at the night sky in a hundred years or so and seeing hundreds of cylinders, spheres and wheels the size of cities orbiting the Earth. Probably the best description of this we've seen so far would be Alastair Reynold's 'Glitter Band' of ten thousand space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone in his Revelation Space novels.

Some authors have presented us with even larger structures, such as the Halo Ringworlds (about 10,000km across), Iain M. Banks' Culture Orbitals (3 million km across) and Larry Niven's titular Ringworld (300 million km across!)

Of course, the ultimate extension of this principle is a ‘Dyson Sphere’ - a swarm (NOT a solid shell) of enormous solar power collectors partially or entirely surrounding a central star. Such a structure, if placed around our own sun, could collect nearly a million, billion times as much energy as current global electricity consumption.

So one has to ask - amidst all this, what place is there for planets?

Planets vs. Space Habitats: A Losing Battle

When it comes to qualify of life, planets just can't compete.

For starters, planets are horrendously inefficient users of space. The whole point of a sphere is to minimize the surface area of an object after all, making planets literally the worst possible option.

The Earth weighs nearly six trillion, trillion kilograms, but has a surface area of barely 500 million square kilometers. If you disassembled the Earth and used its material to manufacture rotating space habitats, even if the thickness of their shells averaged say, a kilometer (and it could be a lot less) you would increase the available surface area over two thousand-fold.

Not only would you have more space (who needs a mantle or a core after all?) but your new environment would be infinitely more malleable than your old one.

For starters, your new home's gravity can be turned up or down like the volume control on a stereo. Just spin the habitat a little faster and it goes up. Do the opposite and eventually you'll be back in free fall.

This is one of the biggest issues people tend to have with planets. Mars, while many argue it is ripe for terraforming, has the downside of possessing only 38% as much surface gravity as Earth. For us Earthling this adjustment isn't so bad (it could even be viewed as a positive) but for our descendants who may grow up there, returning to the mother planet could be a big issue. Only advanced medical technology (perhaps a pill that can regrow your atrophied bones) might surmount this obstacle.

Even then, a humanity that spreads across the cosmos will surely splinter into innumerable factions. A big divide between them may be gravity. Is a full Earth gravity really ideal? Or would it be better to just live in microgravity? Is there some ideal figure somewhere in between?

Many problems with transportation here on Earth relate to either gravity or air friction, both of which are really quite punishing down here. On Titan for instance, with gravity a sixth of Earth's but a denser atmosphere, people could reportedly flap around with wings strapped to their arms. This will never be possible on Earth.

So I stress - the first problem with planets is the gravity is not malleable. You're stuck with either one or 38% or a sixth of a Gee, or whatever the local constant is.

Other aspects like temperature, air pressure and humidity can all be adjusted in space like the air conditioning in your home. In fact, this brings us to another major flaw that tends to reduce planet-bound property values.

Planets are dangerous. About a hundred thousand people every year die in natural disasters of some sort. So far in the 2010s, the biggest killers have been earthquakes, temperature extremes, floods and epidemics.

With improved technology, these numbers tend to plummet drastically (the vast majority of these casualties occur in developing countries) but it’s hard to see them ever disappearing entirely. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake released as much energy as 500 million Hiroshima’s while the average hurricane releases more energy than the global annual electricity consumption. It’s hard to see any civilization dismissing such forces as mere trivial concerns.

While such risks may seem minor to us, I fear our descendants will be much more safety conscious, particularly if we end up curing the aging process and living more or less forever. 

I'm not sure that the average person on 21st century Earth has fully absorbed the implications of geology either. The knowledge that we are not in fact standing on solid ground - that thirty or forty kilometers beneath our feet is a broiling sea of liquid magma the same temperature as the surface of the sun, one on which the plates of the Earth's crust slip and slide like rafts...let’s face it, it’s a terrifying reality we're all just quietly ignoring.

But earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning storms, blizzards - all are optional extras on your brand new space habitat.

Another problem is accessibility. Planetary surfaces lie at the bottom of deep gravity wells. On Earth, you have to accelerate anything up to at least 11 kilometers a second just to even reach space. The building of space elevators may reduce launch costs, but passengers will still be subject to lengthy rides up and down the tether that could last for days.

In space meanwhile, a habitat would generate very little actually gravity. Spaceships could dock with it much like a ship at a pier.

A further difference is one of security. Planets, being massive balls of solid matter, are close to impossible to move. They are destined to follow the same orbit around their parent star for millions of years.

To anyone with a vendetta against your civilization, they make fat, juicy targets. All you have to do is fling an asteroid out of orbit or fire a giant space laser at just the right moment, even from light years away, and your salvo will eventually impact with the planet in question. Any idiot with a giant space laser in the Alpha Centauri system could blast the Earth no problem, and with no warning.

Space habitats meanwhile, are much more mobile (except perhaps some of the larger examples mentioned here). As long as you occasionally fire your thrusters to shift your station's orbit, even slightly, this will foil that dastardly plot by the inhabitants of the Alpha Centauri system. It’s like the difference between trying to hit a ship or a city with an ICBM. This is not a foolproof defense of course, but it does make things light years easier.

One final advantage I'll mention is the availability of resources. Potentially habitable planets are not expected to be found in more than maybe 1 in 10 star systems. If we were to remain a planet-bound civilization, the other 90% would go unused.

With space habitats however, you can construct them pretty much anywhere. There’s no reason to believe that asteroids in some quantity won’t be found around virtually all stars. Our own solar system contains at least a million larger than 1km in diameter. Wherever we go, such raw materials should be abundant. The same off course applies to the solar energy you need to power your mining operations.

So as you can see, your brand new Space Habitat 5000 has numerous selling points - greater living space, adjustable gravity, climate control, geological stability, accessibility, security and availability of resources to name a few.

Honestly - what poor fool would still choose to anchor themselves down on a planet?

So What Good Are Planets?

All this isn't to say of course, that our descendants will utterly ignore planets. I'll admit the title of the article exaggerates slightly.

The first exception I'll concede is that we probably will have a crack at colonizing Mars in the near future. We may even succeed if Elon Musk has his way.

There are an enormous number of technological, political, economic and social challenges to overcome however. Are we really going to redirect some asteroids to slam into the Martian poles in order to melt them for instance? Or will the whole thing be interrupted by a band of Greenpeace protesters who've chained themselves to the top of Olympus Mons?

Once we move beyond the Solar System however, what exactly is the appeal of planets?

Admittedly, planets may have a few redeeming features. Any space habitat will be more vulnerable to sudden decompression in the event of a hull breech for instance, but this is probably a manageable risk. After all, houses have walls much less thicker than caves, but we make do. Space habitats will also require more regular maintenance than a planetary environment, especially with regards to issues like the disposal of waste.

And I suppose that even today, caving is still a sport, and there's plenty of interesting creatures to be found beneath the Earth. No doubt they'll always be some mad scientist willing to plant the flag on whatever bizarre, inhospitable rocks we come across in due course. Some offshoot factions of humanity, perhaps homesick for the feel of real rock beneath their feet or the look of a sunset, may go like Gollum and decide to live in these cosmic caves anyway.

So yes, I'll grant a substantial minority of humanity may still call planets home.

What I'm saying is - just as human civilization has not been focused on caves for something like 10,000 years (if it ever was) interstellar civilizations are unlikely to center around planets. Most people will likely live in space.

I would also like to point out, just in case anyone got the wrong idea, that I am not personally in favor of the idea of dismantling the Earth and turning it into millions of space habitats. The Earth, as our home, will always have a special place in galactic history. I personally would be in favor of keeping it as a nature preserve. Its native wildlife - from beetles to lions to Amish, should be able to roam its surface into perpetuity. The rest of humanity, cruising the galaxy in our vast space arks with our minds uploaded into computers, or come what may, should leave them in peace.

Any planets that we discover with their own native life should also be preserved. Aside from covert scientific expeditions, they will probably be basically forbidden for anyone else to visit. As for tourism, I don't see why it can't be conducted virtually. That's probably where our future lies anyway.

But as for the rest of the universe - go nuts. I'd start with Mercury, Its three hundred million, trillion kilograms of barren, iron-rich rock, ripe for harvesting. Can you imagine the solar arrays we could unfurl with such a goldmine?

I am here merely to point out yet another big lie most science fiction clings to. Sci-fi universes like Star Trek and Star Wars are always filled with warring factions competing over precious, precious planets.

Why? 

Why are they doing that? 

Why not just harvest a few asteroid belts, construct a few thousand artificial habitats capable of housing your billions of excess citizens, and call it a day? The total carrying capacity of the Solar System, were we to convert even a fraction of its usable material into biomass, is easily trillions of times that of the current human population.

As has been pointed out before, a plotline that sees aliens invading Earth to steal our water is like Eskimos invading Central America to steal their ice.

Any interstellar empire focused around planets makes about as much sense.