Horses good. They have autopilot as standard, can be driven or sent autonomously, they run on fuel found lying around and if you get hungry enough you can eat them.
Horses bad.
They have autopilot as standard,
Horses have LLM autopilot. They’ll go somewhere, and it might even be the place you want.
they run on fuel found lying around
Grass isn’t nearly everywhere, especially not if you bring a few thousand horses. It takes forever to refuel them, horses need to graze for hours every day. The energy density of feed is very low, so its hard to transport. Growing horse fuel often takes up the same land as growing human food does.
and if you get hungry enough you can eat them.
If you run out of food, you can always eat the thing that brings you more food. Not a winning longterm plan.
It also takes several years to build a new horse, though it does very little time to set up a production line.
And as anyone who’s been around horses knows, they have near magical self injury powers, require lots of maintenance, and they don’t really make spare parts for them.
And as anyone who’s been around horses knows, they have near magical self injury powers, require lots of maintenance, and they don’t really make spare parts for them.
I hear they complain if you try to swap out parts too, smh.
I had an ancenstor who went blind from diabetes, but still got around because he had one who remembered where everything was, and he just had to tell it the destination.
Horses good.
Compared to having nothing, sure.
Compared to an actual motorized force, not so much.
Explanation: While the opening campaigns of WW2 had the Nazi Germany military utilize motorized transport and logistics to a greater degree than the German military did in WW1, the Nazi German war machine was still overwhelmingly reliant on animal power for the majority of its logistics and non-train transport work.
People talk about tanks and planes, but the shear number of trucks and jeeps the U.S. produced is astounding
From a Cold War-era Soviet defector, ‘Victor Suvorov’:
I adore weapons. Of every sort. I love military equipment and military uniforms. One day I shall open a small museum, and the first exhibit which I shall buy for my museum will be an American jeep. This is a real miracle weapon. It was designed before the Second World War and it served from the first day to the last, like a faithful soldier. It was dropped by parachute, it was soaked in salt water, it smashed its wheels on the stony deserts of Libya and sank into swamps on tropical islands. It served honourably in the mountains of Norway and of the Caucasus, in the Alps and the Ardennes. And, since the war, can any other military vehicle have seen so many battles–Korea, Vietnam, Sinai, Africa, the Arctic, South America, Indonesia, India, Pakistan? And is there any sort of weapon which has not been installed on a jeep? Recoilless guns, anti-tank rockets, machine guns. And it has worked on reconnaissance duties, as an ambulance, a patrol vehicle, a commander and an ordinary military workhorse.
And how many types of tanks, guns, aircraft, rockets have come and gone in the time of the jeep? They were important and impressive, the jeep was grey and undistinguished. But they have gone and the jeep is still there. And how many times have they tried to replace the jeep? But it is indispensable. In the desert, more reliable than a camel, in the grasslands faster than a leopard, in the Arctic hardier than a Polar bear.
Oh, so when the history books write “The army destroyed all the crops as they advanced.”
it was actually, “The horses were hungry and ate the crops”
lol
While grazing concerns could actually be very serious historically speaking, generally horses just don’t eat fast enough for rampant destruction of that type. Much easier to set a few fires, or get some farm-boys with sickles to cut it all down.
So they… were, in fact, horsing around?
I’ll show myself out.
I’m pretty sure the actual front line bit was motorised, though. It wouldn’t be very blitzy otherwise.
