Today private combat training in martial arts or sports, Police tactical and military training is drill based. That means that the trainee goes through repeating fixed movements from a training book.
Exceptions and individualisations are forbidden. They keep repeating and repeating certain movements and combinations all together until they perfectly can execute them like a Karate black belt does Katas.
Our entire education system is drill based from primary school on to university level, it is all about repeating.
Every time I watch videos from official NATO and affiliate Army channels to Police force on their training, knowing that many of these men will eventually join a Rocker Gang or even found their own Kartell, I wonder what these troops would do in a Cyberpunk world.
They all need fixed hierarchies and structures. They are rule based. They need an order to function. They fit into this structured and organized system of nations and societies.
In the Cyberpunk dark future none of this still exists. The closest to today's structures are the MegaCons that have their own Private Army's and today Blackwater made the public aware that hired guns are again big business. Any chance a Blackwater soldier gets a Kudos letter to print out for the locker instead of that pin up?
The runs and all stories of Shadowrun and also the latest Cyberpunk Video Game are all about the creatures in the shadows of the save MegaCon world. They are so many that no one calls them terrorist or criminals anyone, they are the runners of a world without order, a world in chaos.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks and the think tanks of our society that consider getting into serious trouble with another nuclear power over a little peninsula or a coast region with some fish and many tiny islands are proof of that.
Any chance that their infantry rule book trained forces wont even see this dark future, if it would come true, but that they are gone when Cyberpunk turns real for all of us?
Let's consider the odds. We have a Virus up for his 4th and 5th wave of which no one knows how it'll develop further. We have an economy deep in financial depth, becoming more and more difficult to manage and predict. We have monopoles in most key industries from mobility over information to entertainment and food production. We have record amounts of drugs found and no one can tell if this a success or just a sign for a new drug wave flooding society. We have more and more turmoil in troubled areas from Haiti to Lebanon to Afghanistan.
In the best case scenario we just continue as usual and that shitty world keeps spinning, while we all drive electric and take two more hours on every trip per 300km, stretch our credit line to national level in percentage of income and can finally get propa drugs on prescription against boredom or at least dirt cheap on the streets while buying even more consumer shit we still don't need ever, but that looks nice in the catalogue and will get exchanged after some time credit line dependend turning into recycling material at best. Trash turnover as the ultimate status indicator.
In the worst case scenario Corona keeps coming for the next decade in waves and turnes deadly and crippling. The vaccine campaign starts showing unknown and unpredicted side effects creating long term patients in the millions. The economy crashes, but does not recover because structural problems turned too big to be fixed instead of companies too big to fail. Organised crime from gang level to para military like Kartells take their chance and take out Police and Military leaving the law back on paper. The masses start starving and blood runs in the streets creating space for a new society that we today call a dark future utopia or Cyberpunk or Mad Max depending on which region of the world you live in.
I was in the past always pretty good in estimating, if I would be next year unemployed on social welfare or in a shitty job getting abused on almost minimum wage or homeless, but at least happy and how long that time might last. This ist the first time that I have no clue and do not dare to make any estimation at all for the years to come.
So, I hope for the best and prepare for the worst. (Visa Infinite or a used Police gun out of ammo in my baggys ;-))
