[gurps] Re: GurpsNet-L Digest, Vol 66, Issue 19

[Onno Meyer]

Jeff replied to me, but I misfiled it in the run-up to the holidays ...

> > That is mixing the book and the movie. When unarmed bugs in the book
> > are mowed down in close combat, they're non-combattant worker bugs. 
> 
> Workers are still dangerous, and but it's implied that only the warrior 
> caste can move and shoot at the same time. 

IIRC, only warrior bugs shoot at all. Somebody was literally 
swamped by worker bugs but escaped.

> That, and collateral damage 
> to the warmaking capacity would be a good reason for a doctrine that 
> says to attack workers discovered on the move. 

If worker bugs were humans, which they are not, that would
be a war crime by current standards. 

WWII saw lots of those attacks on civilian industry. Back then
the excuse was that they couldn't do precision targeting. The 
letter of the rules, even then, did not allow attacks on women 
and children in air raid shelters.

Things get fuzzy because both worker and warrior bugs are 
literally remote-controlled by brain bugs. If killing a worker 
does not kill a sentient being, is it any worse than wrecking
a machine?

> The bugs are then smart 
> enough to use this against the terrans and use some waves of workers to 
> keep some MI busy engaging them while they move up other forces.

I think they were using the workers purely as decoys, not as
an attack force.
 
> > But what else can you expect from people who consider pocket nukes 
> > the arm of restraint?
> 
> Against a race that uses dirty, strategic-scale ground bursts on their 
> own planets, pocket nukes *are* the arm of restraint.

The bugs did that, but the pocket nukes were against skinnies.