Suicide Bombing Makes Sick Sense in ‘Halo 3’
I’m an adult, with a job and wife and kid, so I get maybe an hour with Halo on a good day. I wind up sucking far, far more than most other Halo 3 players, and despite the best attempts of Xbox Live to match me up with similarly lame players, I usually wind up at the bottom of my group’s rankings — stumbling haplessly about while getting slaughtered over and over again.
So after a few weeks of this ritual humiliation, I got sick of it. And I devised a simple technique for revenge.
Whenever I find myself under attack by a wildly superior player, I stop trying to duck and avoid their fire. Instead, I turn around and run straight at them.
[…]
But at the last second, before I die, I’ll whip out a sticky plasma grenade — and throw it at them. Because I’ve run up so close, I almost always hit my opponent successfully. I’ll die — but he’ll die too, a few seconds later when the grenade goes off.
[…]
It was after pulling this maneuver a couple of dozen times that it suddenly hit me: I had, quite unconsciously, adopted the tactics of a suicide bomber — or a kamikaze pilot.It’s not just that I’m willing to sacrifice my life to kill someone else. It’s that I’m exploiting the psychology of asymmetrical warfare.
Another century or so and the whizbangs in Washington might figure it out, as well.
Asymmetric warfare, that is. They don’t need suicide bombers when there is an adequate number of volunteers to fight their wars for them.
I laughed hard reading this. There are too many cheaters on halo xbox connect. I would shoot a guy 50 times and he wouldn’t die. I get shot once and game over.
This analysis falls down once you take into account that in real life, after you die, you don’t get to respawn.
These people kill themselves probably for the same reason that the kamikazes did… because their culture has programmed them with the mindset that there is more honor in the act than just saying you won.
So, if I kill both myself and my opponent/enemy/object-of-my hatred, do we both go to Heaven, or just me, or do we both go to Hell? Or, perversely, does he/she go to Heaven and I go to Hell? (Yeah, the God of this world IS extremely twisted….I wouldn’t put it past Her).
If I could be certain that I go to Paradise and my nemesis burns in Hell, I’d, truthfully, really like to go for it. It sounds sooo satisfying!
Been there DONE that…
But in real LIFE, if you are getting shot to hell, and you only have 1 WAY OUT to save your family…WHY NOT…Take the Persons WITH you…
Ask those kids from Vietnam war, WHY they had Grenades and walked threw the area looking for military personnel..
I played CS, and found IF I was going to DIE, Pull a gren and HANG on.. Get CLOSE enough and DROP it before I die… I DIE,and BOOM, he comes with me.
He misses an important point. There are no civilians in H3. There are no children, no mothers. It is soldier vs soldier, be it Elite or Spartan.
Soldiers killing soldiers is the nature of warfare, horrific though it may be. But the indiscriminate (often purposeful) killing of innocents is where the “suicide bomber” stops being a soldier fighting for a cause and starts being a murderer.
#7
As you suggested, we have to be careful about how we define “suicide” bomber. All soldiers will try to take out as many opponents as possible if they feel they have no hope of surviving an engagement. Suicide bombers or Kamikaze pilots plan to commit suicide even when not necessary. That is the difference and given that difference I would say this guy qualifies in that he simply evaluates his opponent and rather than running (assuming that is possible), decides to commit suicide in the hope of taking them out. Killing non-combatants in the course of a planned suicide, reprehensible as it is, is simply a variation on the same tactic where the objective is psychological damage rather than deaths in enemy soldiers.
It always sucks when you run at them and still miss with the grenade and they shoot you in the face.
One other point: there are no “real” people in Halo. If you die in the game, you don’t die in real life. If you kill someone else (or yourself) it doesn’t matter: IT”S JUST A GAME.
If we could somehow convince real suicide bombers in Iraq to only kill themselves (and others) in Halo 3, we’d have peace. I don’t think that will happen.
Personally, I like to join a “capture the flag” game, drive a Warthog to near an area where dead players get re-generated. The I sit in the back with the 50-cal and open fire on the players as they re-generate. It really pisses people off.
WOLVERINES!
7,
Frankly, I don’t think the civilians in a war zone care if they die as a victim of a suicide bomber or are “collateral damage” in an airstrike.
Ha I used to do that when someone was upstairs, and i was chasing them. What I would do is throw the sticky grenade down as I was running forward putting the grenade on myself.
WTF!!!!
Ive been doing this since halo 2 (yes the 2nd one) was released. Now I can practically guraentee that i could beat this guy if I had to play with my toes, blindfolded, while undergoing water-boarding – but if im about to die, I sticky the ground & blow myself up – usually kills the guy who was attempting to kill me, and the electronic backlash pops his kid brother’s eyes out of their sockets.
yeah – suicide bombers are leet shit.
What a great idea! I also suck at HALO on XBOX Live! I’m going to give this a try! I might even change my gamer tag!!
In battlefield 2 you can attach c4 to anything, vehicles included. I used to stick 6 of them to a jeep and get up to speed and jump out just before reaching my target then boom! Run in, take their base.
That strategy really doesn’t work, sure, you’ll have some kills, but you’re Kill to death spread is probably still in the shitter…
He forgot to mention the hordes of 12yo gamers filling the Xbox Live realm.
Very interesting. I’ll bet someone gets a grant to study this perspective. It seems also that you have two perspectives to consider: the individual mind set and the group mind set. I would bet we would all be amazed at what military intelligence can be learned by watching decision making by players in virtual settings.
If this was Barren Realms Elite.. I’d still be wondering why the USa stopped buying jets and tanks… to buy turrets
and why fuck with the interest rate.. investments are up.. don’t be afraid to trade
#7, Thomas,
But the indiscriminate (often purposeful) killing of innocents is where the “suicide bomber” stops being a soldier fighting for a cause and starts being a murderer.
That would condemn every army that has ever marched. It would also refute the Pentagon’s “Collateral Damage” excuse.
You also missed the key term here, asymmetrical warfare. . When one side does not have the power to to meet the other side in equal combat, they must improvise. Whether that involves guerrilla warfare, using the terrain to your advantage, surprise attacks, or even suicide attacks is irrelevant. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
But, when you are winning or on top, it is so much easier to deride your opponent as unsportsmanlike for wanting to win.
#22
I did not miss the idea of asymmetric warfare. I agree that generally what is considered “indiscriminate” is actually meant as a psychological attack. When one side is substantially more powerful militarily, psychological warfare through guerilla warfare is one of the few recourses left.
That said there are times when attacks truly appear “indiscriminate” such as when an Iraqi suicide bombs a bus of other Iraqis. The strategic value in such a maneuver is at best questionable.
I suppose most people would consider “indiscriminate” killing as killing with no apparent strategic goal. The catch of course is that “apparent” is based on available information which may not provide enough insight into the reasons for a given attack.
as last as islam is still in minority in the world, the number of potential suicide bombers will alwyas be much lower than number of potential victims, so whats the problem? Let’em all blow themselves (and unffortunately some of us) and be gone / be done with it, for the sake of our offspring…
Also, hypocrisy aside, I have a question: if some non-muslim kills potential muslim “martyr” before he blows himself up, isn’t he giving him a favor by sending him to heaven?
Any muslim here care to explain?
#24 Islam is not a minority. It comprises is number two worldwide. There are 1.5 billion adherents to christianity’s 2.1 billion.
Further the terrorists and the suicide bombers re not muslim. They are atheists who masquerade as pious. Just as any abortion clinic bomber here in the US is NOT christian by the religion’s rules.
This is again why propaganda is more effective than even violence. This is why people are like sheep and will believe anything like the lie that there were communist governments and these said governments were coming after the US so we need CD and rings of missle defense and more nukes that we have earths to bear them all. Every leader from the dawn if civilisation has pulled the “The enemy wants to destroy our way of life” card!
It was ignorance back then that aloowed people to be duped, it is ignorance now.
When you actually take the time to LEARN about people other than your own and those in your town… you realise we are not at all unlike one another.
It is mindless fear that is the true enemy of the world.
Cursor_
#25 I beg to differ.
Yourself you say “There are 1.5 billion adherents to christianity’s 2.1 billion.”. THAT IS minority (although not as small as i.e. Hare Krishna believers).
Furthermore: I never heard of christian *suicide* bombers attacking abortion clinic, and yes, its a big difference: it takes strong beliefs, religiousness on the verge of fanatism actually, to kill yourself in the name of ______ (insert whatever). And for this exactly same reason I don’t believe that the muslim suicide bombers are “atheists who masquerade as pious”. Atheists believe there is nothing after this life they have, thus they generally value their own lives (at least) way too much to ‘sacrifice’ themselves. So I’m sorry, but I don’t buy your wicked thesis about “atheists pretending to be muslim fuckups and blowing themselves” LOL It is preposterus LOL
99 virgins awaits in heaven… That, and financial support to their families, explains mostly why so many young muslim dudes are so eager to blow up themselves in the name of allah.
Well said, Cursor_