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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2140 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 16, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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The new nerd-sniping question is circulating on Twitter. Who would win in a war: 1939 Europe or 2026 Africa? As usual, both camps are 100% their side would win.

My bet is on 1939 Europe. As the Russo-Ukrainian and the US-Iran wars show, ammunition stockpiles run out in a couple of weeks. Africans won't have missiles for their fighter jets and shells for their MBTs, while Europeans will be cranking out bombs and strategic bombers to turn Cairo into Dresden. When German subs destroy whatever boats Africans have, French and British navies will perform naval landings, their troops armed with reverse-engineered AKs.

I’ve been thinking about posting this one but haven’t because yes it’s kind of racists so too much for main thread but too cultural war for fun thread. To clarify the question is Europe without US but with Russia. Assumption wise is its win or die. So Europe would get all the Jews who left who ended up inventing nuclear bombs. But Africa gets S Africa which I’m fairly certain in an Africa versus Europe war S Africa and there ability to build the bomb people all side with Europe.

In conventional war I am going with Europe but it would mostly be a Cold War for a long time. I’ve seen two things to convince me of this:

  1. The high tech planes Africa has mostly don’t have range to bomb prime Europe
  2. There are like 6 landing crafts in Africa so the early tank advantages means they can’t land the US tanks they have in Europe

Other issues are like Africa only supplies 2/3 of their food supply I’ve seen so internal riots on food are an issue.

So either it’s a race to nukes or neither side has the ability to invade the other early. And eventually Europe catches up on tech and crushes Africa.

Maybe Europe can win quicker with meat assaults against modern tech if they are willing to take massive casualties. Or 30 special ops guys can cause internal coups once food supplies run out.

The initial rounds I think are mostly both sides being better at defense.

That’s my logic.

The high tech planes Africa has mostly don’t have range to bomb prime Europe

Algeria has air-to-air refueling. Tangier is 1500 miles from Berlin, which is within ferry range of Algerian strike aircraft, so it's very likely they could refuel over France and strike anywhere in Germany or England.

I think the actual problems are:

  • Not knowing what exactly to target in 1939 Europe (this problem cuts both ways, of course!)
  • Not being able to run enough strike aircraft to materially disrupt industrial supply chains, and
  • Russia (assuming they are included)

The African win condition is to shock Europe into surrendering quickly and/or do enough material disruption to buy time to get their own industry spun up. I think they would have a hard time actually doing anything besides temporarily setting back European industrial might with their current aircraft inventories, but I do think they could pretty much knock out European naval power.

Using Bing AI summaries as a reference, Africa currently has something in the ballpark of 4000 military aircraft, including helicopters and transports. Europe had ~933 naval vessels.

Is 1-2 "modern" (I assume a fair bit of that stuff is decades old tech) aircraft reasonably sufficient to take out a WW2 era ship?

You don't even need modern aircraft, the aircraft of the time were tremendously overpowered relative to ships. Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk in exchange for 4 aircraft destroyed (although plenty more were damaged).

With a modern aircraft, you'd just fly at a high speed and altitude - say, 40,000 feet, .9 Mach - where enemy aircraft cannot realistically intercept you. Then you drop a single laser-guided 2000-pound bomb right through the deck and repeat as often as necessary.

If you run out of guided munitions, you can do this with dumb bombs, you're just not as likely to hit. Or you can, e.g., launch a night attack where you are likely to hit your target without them being able to effectively engage you due to their lack of night-vision capabilities and your high release speed.

I would not be surprised if many of the 933 naval vessels in Europe in 1939 weren't particularly fit for a Mediterranean campaign against Africa. For instance, a lot of the German U-boats were short-ranged Type IIs. A lot of the British Navy isn't even in Europe (do they get Thanos-snapped in this thought experiment, or what?)

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