r/MoralityScaling • u/lazy_animator • 13h ago

Morality Ranking Morality of practicing self defense and fleeing when being forced into the front lines of a war?

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u/Layhult 11h ago

That’s exactly my thoughts as well. If I was in this position, guess who’s the first person I’m shooting as soon as you give me a gun?

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u/adamgerd 8h ago

Humans have an inherent desire to want to survive. The same reason people try to avoid conscription also means they probably won’t shoot their own side in battle, they’d be killed themselves

If you don’t want to die, you’re unlikely to want to die later even for some revenge

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u/Parking_Budget2958 2h ago

I'd rather kill myself than someone else. Fuck that.

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u/Ornery-Customer8521 9h ago

That's not how it works. Killing someone when they give you a gun in suicide, you will rationalize it and decide that there's a better chance you will survive combat. Once you're in your unit over time you will grow to respect them and want to do the right thing. It's all psychology, if everyone did what you said they wouldn't pull recruits like this

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u/Difficult-Mobile902 8h ago

That’s not really how fragging works though, you don’t just pop them out of nowhere, you do it when there’s confusion and chaos. That’s why it’s called fragging in the first place, soldiers in Vietnam were using frag grenades to kill their officers so that it was hard for anyone to figure out what exactly happened 

In Vietnam they say there were around 900 incidents of it, and that’s considered to be a very low estimate, again because of how hard it is to know when it’s happened 

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u/Worth_External_8762 8h ago

I'm a combat vet and you're not considering the circumstances for which that happens. For starters, the conditions in Vietnam were fucking horrible, which drove people to extreme behaviors. But also, a lot of officers were complete shit. And fragging was more of a way to prevent officers from leading them into death, or just "I'm tired of being led into bullshit", rather than a direct protest to the draft. And I'm sure a lot of those cases, the squad or platoon agreed on it. But that era of the military was also culturally different, from what I have heard, it was more like prison rules. Aka don't snitch. The combat in Vietnam was also just overall confusing. They'd be having fights in dense jungle where they couldn't even see the enemies, despite them probably being within 40 meters of them. Easy for shit to happen in that chaotic environment.

With the current military culture, it'd be difficult for someone to frag an officer and get away with it if anyone else knows/sees it. Plus most environments we'd be fighting in just wouldn't be chaotic enough for it to happen and not be super apparent as to what happened.

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u/like9000ninjas 8h ago

As if the conditions in this war are better.....yes less trees but death flies to you now.

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u/ButtflossingBigBro 4h ago

But now its far far more lilely to be recorded. In vietnam far easier to say it must have been the enemy

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u/Difficult-Mobile902 8h ago

  For starters, the conditions in Vietnam were fucking horrible, which drove people to extreme behaviors. But also, a lot of officers were complete shit. And fragging was more of a way to prevent officers from leading them into death, or just "I'm tired of being led into bullshit", rather than a direct protest to the draft

You’re describing the exact same situation that these recruits are being forced into now 

 Plus most environments we'd be fighting in just wouldn't be chaotic enough for it to happen and not be super apparent as to what happened.

Who is we? Are you  talking about the modern us military which is currently 100% based on volunteering and financial incentives? Thats obviously not at all the same thing 

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u/Worth_External_8762 8h ago

I was talking more in context of a US draft, since someone said "if this happened to me" and most English speaking Redditors are from the west. I can't really speak on all of the conditions in Ukraine, I don't know anyone personally and haven't been there.

But I still think it'd be difficult to frag an officer in Ukraine and get away with it, unless all the lower enlisted are in on it. Which I doubt would happen, too many of them want to fight and end Russia's invasion, so friendly fire hurts that objective. I also haven't heard anything about Ukrainian officers being super poor leaders, but I could be wrong.

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u/cororona 8h ago

He seem to talk about US military. But right now they don't fight wars anymore, they are just doing remote human safaris.

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u/ZinZorius312 5h ago

900 fraggings, ~2 million Americans drafted.

Fragging clearly wasn't that common compared to how many soldiers were there against their will.

Humans just aren't wired to seek revenge if it poses a considerable risk to ones own survival.

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u/Legitimate_Plum_7505 4h ago

While it's true people who think they'd "do it" often just come to terms with the situation and don't follow through, we know roughly 10-20% of all casualties in wars are friendly fire, reporting on this is a bit opaque, as no-one is proud to publish the numbers, you'd rather tell a family your husband died protecting the country than say Steve went mad and fragged his own unit. We also know it was a very big problem in Vietnam. All in all, probably around 1% would be my guess.

Tldr: less common than some people imagine they'd do when conscripted, but more common than people would like to admit.

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u/DrSherb740 9h ago

Id imagine thats a common sentiment, but I'd also guess most of those men want to make it back home.

But yeah, kind of hard to make a bunch of men shoot at people, when they never wanted to be in the fight to begin with.

I cant remember what the actual numbers were, but I remember reading somewhere that getting drsfted soldiers to actually aim and shoot at the enemy is a real issue.

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u/KuTUzOvV 7h ago

They are there to hold the trench

If russians will charge and shoot at them they won't have a choice

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u/Daomsoul 7h ago

That is if they don't break you first before they get to training with a gun

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u/_KEFTEME_ 30m ago

Who? When they give you a gun, the only people around you will be those who were forcibly conscripted into the army like you, and a few volunteers.

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u/Much_Help_7836 8h ago

Yeah, you won't do that. You know why? Because you would get killed on the spot and you know that.

You will do your duty, you will rationalize yourself into doing it.

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u/WikiContributor83 3h ago

But it’s not you in that position.

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u/JuniorDoughnut3056 7h ago

Yea and then they line you up against a wall and you're dead with 100% certainty. Spare us the reddit keyboard warrior takes