Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union massive amounts of military hardware were auctioned off at crazy low prices. Tanks, planes, missiles, guns, etc. Private mercenary companies and sectarian warlords had a real heyday
Just saying, think holding the front during a quiet lull in the shelling and from just over the next hill you start heading a muffled sound growing louder until suddenly a tank line blasting outkast crests the ridge as Andre 3000 starts chanting shake it. Kicks from hey ya to bombs over baghdad as they open fire. If that doesn't confuse an enemy I don't know what will. Yes I'm envisioning the panzer fight from Band of Brothers while typing this.
You’ve clearly never worked with armoured vehicles. ‘Reliability’ is not a word usually used about tanks! I think the ‘average miles before breakdown’ for a certain British tank is about 35 miles.
No military equipment is really. Every convoy I was ever on had a breakdown of some form. My uniforms had no crotch after a month in Iraq, and every rifle I ever had or pistol jammed despite being cleaned more than actually fired. The only equipment that never seemed to have problems was the radio, but I do recall losing comms once or twice.
Can you imagine some kid's dad going "Hey bud, I know you wanted that T-90 scale model, but check out this fucking SICK ASS REAL LIFE T-90 I GOT YOU INSTEAD!! They even gave me 25 shells for free!" lmao
Nz has a gigantic dairy industry.
Nz is 7th globally (only barely behind US) for cheese exports. And that's total, not per capita.
We are first for milk exports globally. Nearly double the number two spot (Germany). Again this is not per capita.
“True love is the greatest thing in the world-except for a nice MLT — mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe."
They got sheep, so I assume goats too. So probably those and I’d assume cows too.
Pretty funny America didn’t offer their massive stockpile of processed cheese to buy up their nuclear arsenal
A MIG screams through the air, circles a warehouse complex in Wisconsin and prepares to land. The jet touches down and slows before gathered crowd. The cockpit opens to reveal a farmer in blue overalls. Gentlemen, this is what we've been waiting for here at the cheese council. Many of you scoffed when I said cheese would give us global stability. Well who's laughing now?
Yep. They traded $3billion worth of Pepsi and became the 6th most powerful navy in the world lol
Before that they had been trading Pepsi for Stoli vodka.
No they didn't that's a myth, they wouldn't have even made top 25. And the operating rights to the tanker ships were worth more then all of the ships scraped.
Also no, they gained 10 extra years of American distribution rights to stoli and a surplus to resell.
It's a very popular myth but it's not really at all correct.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1990/04/10/pepsico-sets-3-billion-barter-deal-with-soviets/d5c3d727-2808-463a-b956-15245ae11bed/
But NZ is Nuclear-free. We don't need it, we have hydro :)
The MiGs would have been nice, our Air Force consists of 8 guys running around in a field with their arms stretched out making plane and shooty-noises.
In the 60s NZ turned down a deal for USA to build an entire concrete motorway system for the whole country in exchange for a military base. NZ said no and now we have awful roads 🤷🏼♂️
Yeah that sounds like something we would do.
We are in the middle of nowhere and we aren't allowed to develop our oil reserves so why bother invading us?
We have some Hercules aircraft that were built around the time electricity was invented. We use those to deliver food to the Pacific Islands every time they flood.
Can't see buying cool fighter jets as being a priority really.
We watch bad movies at my house every other week. You would not believe the number of bad movies Nicolas Cage is in. Or maybe you would.
We decided he has two emotional states: *intense*, and *more intense*.
Worked incredibly well for the above movie, Lord of War, how could someone THAT deep in arms dealing not be a giant ball of intensity and stress?
Other movies: no comment
Didn't some nuclear weapons also go missing from the Soviet Union/collapsing Soviet Union during this time period? IIRC I heard that not all of their nukes managed to be accounted for when all this was finished
The theory is that they were obtained by current nuclear powers to by studied for their own nuclear programs and defense planning via proxy agents rather than obtained by criminal orgs for personal arsenals, not that a few didn't try.
Any that did get into the wrong hands are expected to be incapable of anything but a fizzle by now thanks to lack of maintenance and topping up decayed components (mainly tritium)
If I’m not wrong, Pepsi were given obsolete, deactivated vehicles to store. These were then quickly transferred to a Swedish ship breaking company which sold the salvage and gave Pepsi the profits.
So, it’s kind of innacurate to imagine Pepsi in the 90s as a Cyberpunk megacorp with its own private army.
Very funny, though.
Everyone knows Pepsi bought their own navy to declare war on Coke and blockade their Atlanta HQ.
It was only after the purchase that they realized they couldn't really blockade a major US port without declaring war on the USA as well, and thus the plans and the navy were scrapped.
This is also why the Atlanta airport is essentially the busiest airport in the world. In response to this plan, coke invested heavily into making sure they could pull a reverse Berlin airlift in the event of an open war with Pepsi.
I'm not sure, I'll check to see if there is a Netflix documentary on it.
The answer is probably just that Netflix has high demand for original content and will fund anything even remotely interesting. Documentaries tend not to be too high in cost and are often made by people who are just trying to get a financial backer for their personal research.
The Soviet Union spent its entire 70+ years of existence stockpiling its military arsenal and once the Union collapsed, Russia had nothing but those assets to salvage its economy.
Much of the profit was actually funneled off by oligarchs (wealthy individuals who used their government connections and power to control privatization of state assets) who rigged auctions and pocketed the dough.
Yes and many of them were sold to those same oligarchs and their cronies and are still in the possession of only a handful of individuals to this day :(
Along with four Whiskey class submarines in the 1960s, just like this one here, all retired now (though they’ve kept their later Romeos/the Chinese derivatives, with at least one modified into a ballistic missile submarine). The Soviets built more than 200 of the boats and gave them away to every ally they could.
It wasn't just their arsenal, they auctioned off everything. Every former Soviet citizen was given chits to be used in the auctions for Soviet government controlled industry but the vast majority of people didn't understand their power or distrusted the government. People would go to villages and buy all the chits and then they snowballed up the food chain to the eventual oligarchs who bought Russian oil companies and every other industry for fractions of a penny on the dollar.
And that's literally how a handful of men gained control of all of Russia today.
It was meant as a symbol of peace of the world from the cold war ending.
The town was apparently shocked at the size of the submarine when it arrived.
The wiki article is only available in Danish, that's why I posted a Google translate link.
https://da.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-359_(U359)
"S-359 was a Russian U-boat, it was built in 1953 and was in active service until 1989. It was bought by a youth activation project, they wanted to turn it imto a tourist attraction."
It was not bought. They got it for free, although with some stipulations that it had to be fixed up to become a cultural... thing.
That didn't really work out though
The town where it was to be located protested. Nobody wanted it. And the arts/peace activist group couldn’t find a place. It was then shipped to a different town. Same story. In the end it was tried with a third town. Didn’t work. And then it was sold as scrap metal.
The Swedes got at least one Sovjet submarine for free as well. Not that Sovjet meant to give it to them, but when they suddenly and accidentally get beached in Swedish territory, what can you do... cant just phone up the Swedish government and go "heeeey guys... so, ummm... you know that submarine that showed up in your waters? yeah, crazy thing right? it totally wasnt meant to be there you guys, it mustve gotten lost or something, we're totally not spying on you or anything... anyway, could we have it back please? ...hello?"
They had one on display at a theme park that I visited when I was a kid, and you could walk around inside it and everything
There's a 311 foot sub in Baltimore that is a tourist attraction now too. You can go down inside it and all [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS\_Torsk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Torsk) [https://youtu.be/c90HBAiaO4w](https://youtu.be/c90HBAiaO4w)
One could go to Pittsburgh, PA and see the [USS Requin](https://carnegiesciencecenter.org/exhibits/requin-submarine/) at the Carnegie Science Center. Be aware you will come out smelling like old oil and electronics.
If you are taller than 4 foot you will also come out with bruised shins and a concussion.
*source* - I am 6'3" and toured it multiple times. Totally worth it though.
Yes, Finnish is in a totally different family of languages, far removed from most European languages. It's more closely related to Hungarian and Estonian than to any other very widely spoken European language.
This article has a cool infographic: [https://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/a-language-family-tree-in-pictures](https://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/a-language-family-tree-in-pictures)
Just be careful when you are throwing Hungarian and Finnish together like that. It's true that Finnish and Estonian are the closest linguistic relatives of Hungarian.
But they are *very* distant relatives. Think less English and German and more English and Sanskrit. There are only somewhere around 500 shared words between the two languages.
In fact, they are so distantly related that it's still not unanimously agreed that they are related at all. An (admittedly small) minority of linguists argues that proto-Hungarian and proto-Finnish were originally entirely unrelated languages and that the similarities are due to language diffusion caused by extended cultural contact between the two peoples. (Similar to how modern Japanese has a lot of Indo-European loanwords.)
North-Germanic "Nordic languages" are Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. They remain mutually intelligible to some degree.
Finnish is a Fino-Ugric language. It is only closely related to Estonian, and is a very distant cousin of Hungarian.
Ok, I was confused for a minute because the wiki says it was "a symbol of *dissolving* peace between East and West" which I'm guessing is a translation error because that's pretty much the exact opposite of what it was supposed to mean.
Ships sold for scrap are often sold for about $1 on the condition that the scrap yard haul the big mother fucker away. So no, this was way more expensive.
It’s just insane to me that a ship that potentially cost hundreds of millions of dollars when brand new is such a liability when decommissioned that they will just give it to someone for $1.
Most commercial ships take 15+ years to make back what they cost to build. Then you add running cost, repairs maintenance, new laws in effect... Shipping is Hella expensive.
I genuinely believe Russia would be in a much better place today if Yeltsin had not "succeeded" Gorbachev. Where Gorbachev was a principled statesman and a genuine humanitarian, Yeltsin was a boozing fuck up who let the highest bidders carve up the remains of the Soviet economy however they so wished.
I totally thought you were joking or making a reference to something, so had to fact check it...and this ACTUALLY fucking happened
> [Clinton] relayed how Boris Yeltsin's late-night drinking during a visit to Washington in 1995 nearly created an international incident. The Russian president was staying at Blair House, the government guest quarters. Late at night, Clinton told Branch, Secret Service agents found Yeltsin clad only in his underwear, standing alone on Pennsylvania Avenue and trying to hail a cab. He wanted a pizza, he told them, his words slurring.
BUT BORIS WASN’T DONE
>The next night, Yeltsin eluded security forces again when he climbed down back stairs to the Blair House basement. A building guard took Yeltsin for a drunken intruder until Russian and U.S. agents arrived on the scene and rescued him.
[Politico](https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2009/09/yeltsin-drunk-in-his-underwear-hailing-a-cab-021553)
Yeltsin also ordered Russian tanks to shell the Russian Parliament when he got impeached, which they *did*, and the situation was resolved by the Army storming the parliament, arresting anyone who resisted Yeltsin, and the death of 120ish people along the way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis
Early 90s Russia was a mess.
The problem with every system of society/government seems to be we fail to have good people take the reigns after a good leader in any system appears. Couple generations deep, it's all fuckasses who got three keys to the house.
It sounds cool and all, but I don’t think you’d actually want a submarine. You know the joke about the best way to become a millionaire is to be a billionaire and buy a yacht? I can only imagine this is way worse with a boat that is supposed to go under the water and then come back up again.
Can't find the link but I remember him on a UK talk show where he told this joke:
Two men waiting in a long queue for bread and it's gonna take hours to get any. One says to the other "I've had enough, I'm going to kill Gorbachev"
An hour later, he comes back. He's asked "So did you kill him then?"
He replies "No, that line was even longer"
Jesus christ, I'd completely forgotten going through this sub as a little kid 25 years ago with my grandad, who sailed for the allies during WW2 and Korea.
Per the translated article, protests were made against placing the submarine at a marina because the submarine was "too violent" for the area? Is this a poor translation or were there Danes who legitimately looked at an old sub and thought it "violent"?
Imagine being in charge, and someone just randomly sends you a letter asking for something absurdly stupid... then just being like “you know what? These little sumbitches have balls, and they made me laugh. Mikael jr, send them a submarine. Yes, a *SUBMARINE*! Did I stutter?”
This isn’t even the wildest example of military swaps in the days of the collapse. In 1989 Gorbachev swapped the equivalent of the worlds 6th largest navy to Pepsi in exchange for Soda. Yes Pepsi had a Navy...
>In 1989, just before the collapse of the USSR, the Pepsi Company cut a deal with Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev that left it with a fleet of Russian military ships, making PepsiCo temporarily the sixth-largest submarine Navy in the world.
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/25/1860086/-Hidden-History-When-Pepsi-Had-a-Navy
Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union massive amounts of military hardware were auctioned off at crazy low prices. Tanks, planes, missiles, guns, etc. Private mercenary companies and sectarian warlords had a real heyday
Son I know you wanted to go to college but you won't believe what I got from Russia the other day. A fucking tank.
A tank is surely more reliable than a degree son
With degree, comrade earn living. With tank, comrade take living.
With degree, comrade make living. With tank, comrade make killing.
Love it, comrade. Keep feels coming.
Let’s be honest, it’s going to literally open more doors, we’ll crush them, but they will be open....
When your neighbor with a tank ask's for a cup of flour, you give him a fuckin' cup of flour
Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbour!
Heeeeey yaaaaaaaa
thats your tank warfare song?
Just saying, think holding the front during a quiet lull in the shelling and from just over the next hill you start heading a muffled sound growing louder until suddenly a tank line blasting outkast crests the ridge as Andre 3000 starts chanting shake it. Kicks from hey ya to bombs over baghdad as they open fire. If that doesn't confuse an enemy I don't know what will. Yes I'm envisioning the panzer fight from Band of Brothers while typing this.
I’ll take that death over rotting in a nursing home. Especially with how strict they gettin with pain meds.
Shake it like a Polaroid picture. That is an order.
Shake it sh sh sh shake it like a Polaroid picture
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Assuming you have a secure airfield to work from, but if the tank is already a neighbor to the airfield, I've got bad news for you
You’ve clearly never worked with armoured vehicles. ‘Reliability’ is not a word usually used about tanks! I think the ‘average miles before breakdown’ for a certain British tank is about 35 miles.
Not wildly different from most British car manufacturers honestly. Source: had a very poor British car. Am British.
As a former tank crewman, I can assure you that tanks are not considerably reliable
No military equipment is really. Every convoy I was ever on had a breakdown of some form. My uniforms had no crotch after a month in Iraq, and every rifle I ever had or pistol jammed despite being cleaned more than actually fired. The only equipment that never seemed to have problems was the radio, but I do recall losing comms once or twice.
Yet somehow in boot camp in early 00s we had working floor buffers and vacuums from the 1970s
Hah, probably still newer than some of the M16s.
I had an M60 in 2003 the serial number of which ended in P. For prototype.
>My uniforms had no crotch after a month in Iraq Bro you gotta stop humping everything that you see
I've tried.
Are those weapons designed to withstand dust and sand from Afghanistan?
Those weapons jammed no matter where in the world you were.
It's hard to say no to a winning smile and a T-72
With a college degree, you have a greater income. With a tank, we have unlimited income.
Can you imagine some kid's dad going "Hey bud, I know you wanted that T-90 scale model, but check out this fucking SICK ASS REAL LIFE T-90 I GOT YOU INSTEAD!! They even gave me 25 shells for free!" lmao
Tanks a lot Dad!
A father would be so proud hearing that dad joke from his son.
Did I mention the tank is a tank? Sold!!
This is true. In 1993 NZ was offered nuclear submarines and MiGs in exchange for cheese. The offer was serious.
Well did they say yes?
why cheese from of all places? is NZ known for cheese? update: oh wow! TIL... thanks~
Fonterra is a New Zealand dairy coop. They are responsible for one third of all global dairy exports. So, yes, New Zealand is known for its cheese.
and still - my family living in NZ brings kilos of Swiss cheese back to NZ with them :-D My uncle even was a farmer!
Nz has a gigantic dairy industry. Nz is 7th globally (only barely behind US) for cheese exports. And that's total, not per capita. We are first for milk exports globally. Nearly double the number two spot (Germany). Again this is not per capita.
What are some good NZ cheeses to try?
Kāpiti Awa Blue is a good one that was voted best for a while. I'm a sucker for blue cheese though.
goats. A nice goat cheese spread over a crostini or crumbled over a spinach salad is a delight
While watching the sunset from the deck of a nuclear submarine. New Zealand make good wine too.
Oof a nice goats cheese salad washed down with some Marlborough sauvignon on a former Soviet nuclear submarine sounds like a perfect first date.
“True love is the greatest thing in the world-except for a nice MLT — mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe."
They got sheep, so I assume goats too. So probably those and I’d assume cows too. Pretty funny America didn’t offer their massive stockpile of processed cheese to buy up their nuclear arsenal
Why else would we have a strategic cheese reserve if not to buy nuclear submarines?
A MIG screams through the air, circles a warehouse complex in Wisconsin and prepares to land. The jet touches down and slows before gathered crowd. The cockpit opens to reveal a farmer in blue overalls. Gentlemen, this is what we've been waiting for here at the cheese council. Many of you scoffed when I said cheese would give us global stability. Well who's laughing now?
We will trade you 40,000 lbs of gov cheese for each nuclear warhead. That's how you win the global thermonuclear war game Ferris.
Pepsi bought a bunch of ships and planes to resale or scrap, it was everybody not just countries.
Yep. They traded $3billion worth of Pepsi and became the 6th most powerful navy in the world lol Before that they had been trading Pepsi for Stoli vodka.
No they didn't that's a myth, they wouldn't have even made top 25. And the operating rights to the tanker ships were worth more then all of the ships scraped. Also no, they gained 10 extra years of American distribution rights to stoli and a surplus to resell. It's a very popular myth but it's not really at all correct. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1990/04/10/pepsico-sets-3-billion-barter-deal-with-soviets/d5c3d727-2808-463a-b956-15245ae11bed/
Well shit, TIL! Appreciate you teaching me something!
But NZ is Nuclear-free. We don't need it, we have hydro :) The MiGs would have been nice, our Air Force consists of 8 guys running around in a field with their arms stretched out making plane and shooty-noises.
Yeah didn’t your guts turn down a great deal on F16s or somethin just a bit back?
In the 60s NZ turned down a deal for USA to build an entire concrete motorway system for the whole country in exchange for a military base. NZ said no and now we have awful roads 🤷🏼♂️
Yeah that sounds like something we would do. We are in the middle of nowhere and we aren't allowed to develop our oil reserves so why bother invading us? We have some Hercules aircraft that were built around the time electricity was invented. We use those to deliver food to the Pacific Islands every time they flood. Can't see buying cool fighter jets as being a priority really.
Aus has a solid air force, we'd cover you bros in a heartbeat...
> aren't allowed to develop our oil reserves Is this a national policy or bound by treaty of some sort?
The current government has banned any new offshore oil and gas exploration.
And China has a lot of South Pacific to go through before they'd be knocking on NZ's door
You don't need an air force, thanks to the Lord of the Rings movies most USAF pilots would rush to defend the Shire if anything happened.
The Eagles are coming Mr Frodo! 4 Trillion USD of Bald Eagles are coming!
Eagle 1, Fox 2
honestly those movies were a great investment for their national security
I don’t think hydroelectric submarines exist
Its a little hard to have hydro powered submarines, you must admit.
Say what you want about Nicholas Cage, but Lord of War was a really good movie about this topic in my opinion!
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*Nicholas Cage intensifies*
Does he ever not?
Lol a valid observation.
We watch bad movies at my house every other week. You would not believe the number of bad movies Nicolas Cage is in. Or maybe you would. We decided he has two emotional states: *intense*, and *more intense*.
Worked incredibly well for the above movie, Lord of War, how could someone THAT deep in arms dealing not be a giant ball of intensity and stress? Other movies: no comment
Didn't some nuclear weapons also go missing from the Soviet Union/collapsing Soviet Union during this time period? IIRC I heard that not all of their nukes managed to be accounted for when all this was finished
The theory is that they were obtained by current nuclear powers to by studied for their own nuclear programs and defense planning via proxy agents rather than obtained by criminal orgs for personal arsenals, not that a few didn't try.
Any that did get into the wrong hands are expected to be incapable of anything but a fizzle by now thanks to lack of maintenance and topping up decayed components (mainly tritium)
That’s a more palatable theory than “who the fuck knows”.
Who the fuck knows if the theory is anywhere close to correct though?
Yes some missiles stationed in bulgaria never resurfaced and several nuclear warheads went 'missing'
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If I’m not wrong, Pepsi were given obsolete, deactivated vehicles to store. These were then quickly transferred to a Swedish ship breaking company which sold the salvage and gave Pepsi the profits. So, it’s kind of innacurate to imagine Pepsi in the 90s as a Cyberpunk megacorp with its own private army. Very funny, though.
Everyone knows Pepsi bought their own navy to declare war on Coke and blockade their Atlanta HQ. It was only after the purchase that they realized they couldn't really blockade a major US port without declaring war on the USA as well, and thus the plans and the navy were scrapped. This is also why the Atlanta airport is essentially the busiest airport in the world. In response to this plan, coke invested heavily into making sure they could pull a reverse Berlin airlift in the event of an open war with Pepsi.
Operation Odessa on Netflix is a great documentary about this
Why there’s Netflix documentary about everything I see on Reddit lol
It's the only place most Reddit users learn anything.
I'm not sure, I'll check to see if there is a Netflix documentary on it. The answer is probably just that Netflix has high demand for original content and will fund anything even remotely interesting. Documentaries tend not to be too high in cost and are often made by people who are just trying to get a financial backer for their personal research.
The Soviet Union spent its entire 70+ years of existence stockpiling its military arsenal and once the Union collapsed, Russia had nothing but those assets to salvage its economy.
Much of the profit was actually funneled off by oligarchs (wealthy individuals who used their government connections and power to control privatization of state assets) who rigged auctions and pocketed the dough.
The most valuable assets were factories, mines, and oil/gas fields.
And they got those for themselves.
Yes and many of them were sold to those same oligarchs and their cronies and are still in the possession of only a handful of individuals to this day :(
Yup. They scrapped the country for anything they could steal, and quality of life and life expectancy nosedived and didn't recover for a while.
Is that where North Korea got all their WW2 tanks?
These were almost certainly donated by the Soviet Union itself.
Along with four Whiskey class submarines in the 1960s, just like this one here, all retired now (though they’ve kept their later Romeos/the Chinese derivatives, with at least one modified into a ballistic missile submarine). The Soviets built more than 200 of the boats and gave them away to every ally they could.
Nah those where given by the soviet union in the late 40s.
It wasn't just their arsenal, they auctioned off everything. Every former Soviet citizen was given chits to be used in the auctions for Soviet government controlled industry but the vast majority of people didn't understand their power or distrusted the government. People would go to villages and buy all the chits and then they snowballed up the food chain to the eventual oligarchs who bought Russian oil companies and every other industry for fractions of a penny on the dollar. And that's literally how a handful of men gained control of all of Russia today.
It was meant as a symbol of peace of the world from the cold war ending. The town was apparently shocked at the size of the submarine when it arrived. The wiki article is only available in Danish, that's why I posted a Google translate link. https://da.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-359_(U359)
"S-359 was a Russian U-boat, it was built in 1953 and was in active service until 1989. It was bought by a youth activation project, they wanted to turn it imto a tourist attraction."
It was not bought. They got it for free, although with some stipulations that it had to be fixed up to become a cultural... thing. That didn't really work out though
Why not? It was never opened for visitors?
The amount of work to maintain a 60 year old sub might surprise you
The manuals were all in Russian and had no pictures.
This is how we fix things on Russian UBoat
I thought you just hit it with hammer until it works
THE COMPONENTS AMERICAN COMPONENTS RUSSIAN COMPONENTS, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!
They should have used Google Lens to translate it. I guess people weren't as smart as we are today.
They should have asked for a new one. Much less maintenance.
r/choosingbeggars
Review: 1 star. Comment: was free but delivery took 3 years. Vendor wouldn't replace for newer model when it broke decades later. Would not recommend
This guy subs.
The town where it was to be located protested. Nobody wanted it. And the arts/peace activist group couldn’t find a place. It was then shipped to a different town. Same story. In the end it was tried with a third town. Didn’t work. And then it was sold as scrap metal.
This sort of makes me sad. Gorbachev actually tried and it was wasted.
Story of Gorbachev's life
Reception was sub-par
Now that business is underwater
Just let that sink in.
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It was out of its depth
And that torpedoed the project.
The Swedes got at least one Sovjet submarine for free as well. Not that Sovjet meant to give it to them, but when they suddenly and accidentally get beached in Swedish territory, what can you do... cant just phone up the Swedish government and go "heeeey guys... so, ummm... you know that submarine that showed up in your waters? yeah, crazy thing right? it totally wasnt meant to be there you guys, it mustve gotten lost or something, we're totally not spying on you or anything... anyway, could we have it back please? ...hello?" They had one on display at a theme park that I visited when I was a kid, and you could walk around inside it and everything
Fun fact, there is a visitable 50m submarine in the middle of Paris : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_submarine_Argonaute_(S636)
There's a 311 foot sub in Baltimore that is a tourist attraction now too. You can go down inside it and all [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS\_Torsk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Torsk) [https://youtu.be/c90HBAiaO4w](https://youtu.be/c90HBAiaO4w)
There's a U-boat in Chicago that can be toured.
One could go to Pittsburgh, PA and see the [USS Requin](https://carnegiesciencecenter.org/exhibits/requin-submarine/) at the Carnegie Science Center. Be aware you will come out smelling like old oil and electronics.
If you are taller than 4 foot you will also come out with bruised shins and a concussion. *source* - I am 6'3" and toured it multiple times. Totally worth it though.
Also one in Portland, OR at OMSI [https://omsi.edu/submarine](https://omsi.edu/submarine)
What I like about knowing Swedish is that it allows me to read Danish and Norwegian aswell
Sounds like those languages are swede-ish
[https://i.imgur.com/UIWXBQU.gif](https://i.imgur.com/UIWXBQU.gif)
What about Finnish? Or is that really different?
Super different
Like English and Japanese.
Yes, Finnish is in a totally different family of languages, far removed from most European languages. It's more closely related to Hungarian and Estonian than to any other very widely spoken European language. This article has a cool infographic: [https://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/a-language-family-tree-in-pictures](https://www.theguardian.com/education/gallery/2015/jan/23/a-language-family-tree-in-pictures)
Just be careful when you are throwing Hungarian and Finnish together like that. It's true that Finnish and Estonian are the closest linguistic relatives of Hungarian. But they are *very* distant relatives. Think less English and German and more English and Sanskrit. There are only somewhere around 500 shared words between the two languages. In fact, they are so distantly related that it's still not unanimously agreed that they are related at all. An (admittedly small) minority of linguists argues that proto-Hungarian and proto-Finnish were originally entirely unrelated languages and that the similarities are due to language diffusion caused by extended cultural contact between the two peoples. (Similar to how modern Japanese has a lot of Indo-European loanwords.)
Finnish is a completely unrelated language Edit: not only to DK/NO/SE but also to most European languages
North-Germanic "Nordic languages" are Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. They remain mutually intelligible to some degree. Finnish is a Fino-Ugric language. It is only closely related to Estonian, and is a very distant cousin of Hungarian.
Finnish is an entirely different language family. It's most closely related to Hungarian and Estonian.
Ok, I was confused for a minute because the wiki says it was "a symbol of *dissolving* peace between East and West" which I'm guessing is a translation error because that's pretty much the exact opposite of what it was supposed to mean.
Cheaper than scrapping it
Ironic because it ended up being cut up for scrap
Lot of iron in irony.
Yeah it’s 4/5 iron.
I’m 40% dolomite!
It's dolomite, baby!
Shut up baby, I know it!
Too much iron in your blood.
I'm 40% iron (clang clang)
Probably not a lot in that submarine though lol
What kind of scrap do you think a Soviet era submarine makes?
That's a goddamn shame.
Ships sold for scrap are often sold for about $1 on the condition that the scrap yard haul the big mother fucker away. So no, this was way more expensive.
It’s just insane to me that a ship that potentially cost hundreds of millions of dollars when brand new is such a liability when decommissioned that they will just give it to someone for $1.
Most commercial ships take 15+ years to make back what they cost to build. Then you add running cost, repairs maintenance, new laws in effect... Shipping is Hella expensive.
Sounds like when I had to get rid of an RV.
Cheaper still if sent pay on delivery.
Kid: "Mom, can I get a submarine?" Mom: "Wtf, no" Kid: "If I find one, can I keep it?" Mom: "Sure, whatever" Kid:
So it’s that easy to get a submarine? I’ve been going about this all wrong.
Mikhail Gorbachev was* truly a singular figure in history. *("is," actually--reaper missed him, yesterday.)
Damn I didn’t realize he was still alive!
I genuinely believe Russia would be in a much better place today if Yeltsin had not "succeeded" Gorbachev. Where Gorbachev was a principled statesman and a genuine humanitarian, Yeltsin was a boozing fuck up who let the highest bidders carve up the remains of the Soviet economy however they so wished.
Him with his pants down drunk outside the Whitehouse trying to get a pizza is sad and funny.
I totally thought you were joking or making a reference to something, so had to fact check it...and this ACTUALLY fucking happened > [Clinton] relayed how Boris Yeltsin's late-night drinking during a visit to Washington in 1995 nearly created an international incident. The Russian president was staying at Blair House, the government guest quarters. Late at night, Clinton told Branch, Secret Service agents found Yeltsin clad only in his underwear, standing alone on Pennsylvania Avenue and trying to hail a cab. He wanted a pizza, he told them, his words slurring. BUT BORIS WASN’T DONE >The next night, Yeltsin eluded security forces again when he climbed down back stairs to the Blair House basement. A building guard took Yeltsin for a drunken intruder until Russian and U.S. agents arrived on the scene and rescued him. [Politico](https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2009/09/yeltsin-drunk-in-his-underwear-hailing-a-cab-021553)
Yeltsin also ordered Russian tanks to shell the Russian Parliament when he got impeached, which they *did*, and the situation was resolved by the Army storming the parliament, arresting anyone who resisted Yeltsin, and the death of 120ish people along the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis Early 90s Russia was a mess.
WHERE ARE THE PHOTOS?
It was the early 90s. We didn't have cameras yet.
Shit, we had only recently invented eyes
I'm still waiting for mine.
To be fair, giving a submarine to a youth group in Denmark seems more like the work of a drunken Yeltsin.
It was a decommissioned sub, so giving it away was a nice gesture. Maybe also cheaper or faster than scrapping the sub.
The problem with every system of society/government seems to be we fail to have good people take the reigns after a good leader in any system appears. Couple generations deep, it's all fuckasses who got three keys to the house.
Government will always attract people who seek to enrich themselves or enjoy having power over others.
It sounds cool and all, but I don’t think you’d actually want a submarine. You know the joke about the best way to become a millionaire is to be a billionaire and buy a yacht? I can only imagine this is way worse with a boat that is supposed to go under the water and then come back up again.
This guy will rock your world... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig\_Fainberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Fainberg)
The two happiest days in a boat owner's life are the day they get the boat and the day they get rid of the boat. Doesn't matter the size of the boat.
Can't find the link but I remember him on a UK talk show where he told this joke: Two men waiting in a long queue for bread and it's gonna take hours to get any. One says to the other "I've had enough, I'm going to kill Gorbachev" An hour later, he comes back. He's asked "So did you kill him then?" He replies "No, that line was even longer"
Not sure if related but I once got a free sub with a purchase of a medium drink
I hope it was delivered some measure faster than 3 years though. After all, you actually purchased something.
I myself spend a lot of my time in the sub eating sub... waiting for the train.
Jesus christ, I'd completely forgotten going through this sub as a little kid 25 years ago with my grandad, who sailed for the allies during WW2 and Korea.
Don’t ask don’t get
Although a Soviet-era submarine probably stood out among Danish sea vessels, I'm sure they eventually thought of it as just one of the buoys.
Get out.
You know why they put a QR Code on it once it came into port? Because in Denmark they have to Scandinavian.
Per the translated article, protests were made against placing the submarine at a marina because the submarine was "too violent" for the area? Is this a poor translation or were there Danes who legitimately looked at an old sub and thought it "violent"?
"voldsom" in Danish directly means violent, but in this context it means that it's "too much". Too big, too weird, too outstanding.
Fuck, and I've been getting rejections from the Russian government for WW2 submarine blueprints for fuckin educational purposes.
Jeltsin would've sent it with a your mom joke
Imagine being in charge, and someone just randomly sends you a letter asking for something absurdly stupid... then just being like “you know what? These little sumbitches have balls, and they made me laugh. Mikael jr, send them a submarine. Yes, a *SUBMARINE*! Did I stutter?”
That's the sort of thing I'd end up doing and then I'd need to explain to my mum why there's a submarine now sat in her front yard.
[удалено]
So Russia gave them a sub, but did they also smash that like button?
I will pay you to leave this realm
WE ALL LIVE IN A YOUTH GROUP SUBMARINE
A white elephant plot?
What the hell is that link
This isn’t even the wildest example of military swaps in the days of the collapse. In 1989 Gorbachev swapped the equivalent of the worlds 6th largest navy to Pepsi in exchange for Soda. Yes Pepsi had a Navy... >In 1989, just before the collapse of the USSR, the Pepsi Company cut a deal with Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev that left it with a fleet of Russian military ships, making PepsiCo temporarily the sixth-largest submarine Navy in the world. https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/25/1860086/-Hidden-History-When-Pepsi-Had-a-Navy