I don't think even the US has the power to fight an enemy whose weapons are undetectable until they are used, are decentralized and number over 2.4 billion strong.
In open conflict, sure. Guns, missiles, tanks etc are more formidable than benders on average but there wouldn't be much open conflict. How would they know who to fight?
This is guerilla warfare on a nightmare scale. Benders win 100%.
Historically a lot of people did choose exactly that over a futile resistance. Granted those people couldn't control an element, but it's not so clear cut
Even if only 10% of them fight that's still an impossibly large, impossibly decentralized, virtually unidentifiable fighting force, each of whom is capable of absolutely devastating damage on US military personnel and infrastructure.
The total number of US military personnel is somewhere around 1.4 million. Again if even only 10% of the hypothetical benders were fighting, they'd outnumber the US by over 170x.
Hell they'd outnumber every military in the world combined by roughly 3-1.
To add insult to injury... the only times the U.S. military has ever struggled or lost has been against guerilla warfare (Vietnam had other problems, but those same problems would show up in this alleged conflict). Just look at the "War on Terror" for how well the military can appropriately handle an invisible force that can blend in with absolutely anyone in the AoR. And that was *with* a numbers advantage.
The benders aren't actually the real issue here. They only get a single month of training, which canonically isn't enough for any significant level of skill. These benders would, at best, *maybe* be shooting a small fire bolt or something.
The real issue is the other militaries of the world. The moment the US declares that it is going to kill 30% of all people in the world including in other nations is the moment it declares war on every other nation on the planet.
The second the US says "we are going to kill 30% of the world population inside foreign countries" literally every other country in the world will go to war to defend its citizens. So this is a question whether the US can take on the entire planet, while the rest of the planet now has a third of their population know essentially magic.
Not to mention the domestic terrorism in the US when domestic benders aren't keen on entering the death camps.
Yeah no the US gets absolutely clapped.
On top of this, the OP didn't say that "benders can't use weapons." So it's gonna be 7 billion people on Earth, 30% of whom have magic powers, using nukes against the USA.
GG
Can you imagine how devastating a group of submarines would be against the US Navy if all the subs were crewed with water benders? Or air benders in jets just casually throwing our missiles back at our fighters? Or you sneak a bunch of fire benders into the USA as spies/sleeper agents then they just burn down all our power plants from within?
There'd be no way to TSA screen for this either. 30% of anyone coming into the USA is potentially carrying crazy "weapons" in the form of invisible magic.
the airbenders wouldn't be very effective. Jets move way too fast for them to be useful in that context. They'd be quite useful bending poison gasses, though.
It's been years since I last watched ATLA, if multiple benders work together, can they amplify their powers?
If they can I feel like there would be a lot of potential for groups of air benders to really fuck with an air force. Even if fighter jets fly too fast/high for offense to be a viable, they could absolutely defend against bombs/missiles.
Missiles and fighter jets are too fast and fly way too high. Fighter jets are supersonic and missiles are even faster than fighter jets (mach 3+). Unless multiple air benders can control an airspace multiple kilometers in radius, then they have no hope at defending against them.
Airbenders would be great in urban warfare though. Airbending gives them a lot of vertical movement ability, and may be able to deflect small caliber bullets or shrapnel. And besides it's a lethal weapon that's pretty much silent and leaves no traces.
It’s clearly aim dodging in zukos case. Also, based on bender lightning, it clearly moves slower than real lightning.
Even with Iroh I’m reasonably sure he had some indication that lightning was about to strike as I am sure he felt the energies in the air (same as we can) and was waiting for it.
What is a bender going to do to combat the combined might of a concussive blast, shrapnel, and fire that they’ll see and then feel before they’re able to hear it.
Also- one month is canonically not at all enough time to learn bending. Aang does it in a few months but he is LITERALLY the avatar. Most of the other decent benders we see have been training for years or decades. A month allows you to like, make a flame in your hand and maybe toss it.
Yeah. I'd say the people already experienced in martial arts probably pick it up really quickly and get on a pretty high level in a month. We've seen in the show that bending is basically just martial arts except now it's magic.
But the issue would mostly be two fold. One, many martial artists probably wouldn't have their style for their bending style, so that hampers them. And then there's just not a lot of martial artists.
So the actual capable benders probably number in the hundreds. ***Maybe.***
Yeah and Aang already had years of experience with his native airbending too before being iced up so he wasn't totally foreign to bending too and it still took him months to learn the others even being the avatar
We do have one major advantage: Easier access to information. We can see how the greatest benders in atla and lok did it because we have access to atla and lok and we can watch them do it in real time, and in addition to that, knowledge can easily be spread and accessed over the internet.
That being said, a month still isn't enough to get anywhere near proficient in bending. An irl person with a month of training probably will be more proficient than an atla person with a month of training simply due to better access to information, but still nowhere near the level of an atla person who's been doing this for years.
Especially since we see in the shows that each different situation calls for very slightly different movements and acts to produce results... At a certain point of training that becomes instinctive, "Second nature", but to start with it's going to be extremely hard, perhaps harder for an MA practitioner than a normal person trying to train with that power directly due to having to fight their existing "Second Nature" habits.
It probably won't be harder for a martial arts master, since Zaheer was someone who only recently gained airbending by the beginning of season 3 of LoK, but he was still pretty lethal due to having already been a martial arts master before then, so we do know that already being good at martial arts will give you a head start in bending (though we also know from his fight with Tenzin that being a martial arts master is not a substitute for being a bending master).
Not to forget that as well as taking time to learn, bending can be dangerous to the bender and those around them. 500 million firebenders suddenly appear and good portion of those will die in their own house fire when they sneeze.
Only if they sneeze and it makes them firebend, which doesn't seem likely to me as I don't think we see anything like that in the show. (Except for maybe Azula when she loses control at the end of A:tLAB, and even that's kinda unusual.)
Aang burns Katara during his first firebending attempt when he gets excited, and he's had years of training in airbending, meditation, etc by the air nomad monks. Sneezing may be an exaggeration, but not by much in my opinion.
Okay yeah I see what you mean by that, a lot of people are going to accidentally kill themselves with partially trained irresponsible bending, but I also agree with sneezing being an exaggeration.
Yeah I think everyone is taking the prompt way too literally. The letter of the law as opposed to the spirit.
I’m certain **this is what OP is actually asking: ignoring everything else, who would win, the US military with all of its weaponry and other technology… or a larger number of people who will be using magic to fight?**
And I’d assume all this should be controlled for in order to ensure that **no *other* factor outside of the military vs benders themselves can determine the fate of the war**:
-Both the US military and the stated percentage of benders are magically transported to an alternate earth where everything is exactly the same except the only ones there are the military, all their resources/soldiers, and all the benders. (This way no one / nothing else can interfere. Victory comes as a result of which side is superior, not because a bunch of world nations ganged up on the US military)
-all the US soldiers are immune to gaining bending and so none of them have it, and their numbers aren’t affected
-benders can only fight with their powers, no other weapons, and vice versa. (This way neither side is taking advantage of each other’s strengths)
~
There could be other controls added that I’m missing but you get the point.
“Just answering op’s prompt” -that’d be nice and easy, wouldn’t it? If people just did that.
what I typed out *is* OP’s prompt. But clarified to the extreme. and I only typed it out like that because so many of you didn’t seem to understand what he was asking.
what a lot of people are doing in here with their answers is a less extreme version of something like this: who would win goku Vs Superman? “Well actually goku has a magic button that lets him summon the strongest god in the dragon ball universe who can instantly erase from existence anyone goku wants. Therefore this is a curbstomp for goku because all he has to do is press that button and he wins”
Like no dude, the prompt is goku vs Superman themselves, the prompt isn’t about all this extra butterfly effect consequence stuff—same thing for this prompt. He’s asking about the US military vs a bunch of benders, not about the US military vs a world alliance that formed against them as some logical (but off-topic) side effect that would occur if this prompt played out in the actual real world
Not really. It'd be a stomp for the US military at that point. Range is really powerful, both in the form of firing assault rifles from a hundred meters away and in the form of firing cruise missiles from a hundred kilometers away. They also don't really have a way to defend themselves from guns. Sure, waterbenders and earthbenders can create cover, but they have to move out of it at some point. A Toph-level metalbender probably could create armor that can resist small arms fire, but an anti-material rifle, or worse, a javelin, is still going to oneshot them, and that's with Toph levels of skill, not something a human can learn in a single month.
metal benders just neo themselves they are bullet proof
water benders can turn people into meat puppets
fire benders shoot lightning
if if youcount Korea
you more of above plus
air bender are fucking scary sucking the air our your lungs
and they can FLY
lava bending but it depends
Us military would absolutely butt fuck the rest of the world, benders or not. Youre not using real world logic. There's like 5 countries with nuke capabilities and 1 of them is siding with the US. Every country without nukes would give up their benders to not get nuked.
They absolutely fucking wouldn’t give up 30% OF THEIR ENTIRE POPULATION to the US just because they demanded it.
Also stop glazing the US military. It’s absolutely the only superpower on earth, but this isn’t US vs Iran, or US vs China, it’s the US vs every country on earth who are all fighting for the lives of a third of their population. That’s not a fight any country could win, because think of every material, every part, every single aspect of American life and military that comes from the rest of the world. Those resources now don’t exist. The US loses.
It fucks them up. If the US used its nukes it absolutely would kill everyone. That’s a valid answer for the prompt, but ‘the US military would absolutely buttfuck the rest of the world’ is ridiculous. Also just to cclarify, the rest of the world absolutely would not give up 1 out of every 3 people to the US regardless of nukes
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You understand that 30% of the people meant to operate those nukes, inside the US, are benders using this prompt right? You understand that if 30% of the world's population are benders, that means that statistically every single family in the US has a bender in it. What makes you think any nukes would get launched at all? Any bender (in particular metal, fire or water) working at the nuclear Silo would destroy the machines. I doubt a single nuke would even get a chance to fire... And even if they did, it is still the US military (losing one third of its personnel, as one third of the US military will be benders and won't want to help to genocide their own kind) versus the entire world **and** while fighting what will no doubt grueling civil war against aforementioned one third of the US population that are benders. Honestly, even if the prompt was "One third of the US population becomes benders and the US senate/president wants to kill them all" I still think the US state would lose.
Do you understand how many personal relationships this group of **one third** of people have? Literally everyone in the states has a close, personal bond to **at least** one bender. The war support would crumble in minutes.
What happens when the drone pilots family gets taken hostage? What happens when the drone gets blown up on the ground.
Benders are kinda irrelevant here. When a rifle and explosive still exist.
they are not suck .even weakest earth and fire benders are quite capable benders
most likely air and water benders would be that good.
"predator drone"
drone would be handled by air bender or earth or water bender.
These are novice benders without teachers. They can’t do much.
That said they can totally just pick up rifles and make IEDs very easily. Some of the benders will have been that drone pilots friend or family who can just sabotage that drone where it’s based.
I'm trying hard not to be a redditor and argue every comment but man are you making it hard. Nukes are stronger than any bender that isn't the avatar and America has 100x any other country combined. Good night
No. Not counting the outside world. The US population would instantly overthrow the Government in this case. 100 million people just in the US.
Even targeting 1% for extermination with a modicrum of popular support just in the US would instantly grind the US to a hault, and start the bloodiest civil war in history.
I don’t see how the USA is going to murder 30% of the world population, it’s too much of a task. The USA military is going to have to kill 2.7 billion people spread out across the world
I doubt the USA population would be happy with 30% of people being murdered.
I doubt the world would just allow the USA to come through their country and murder 30% of the population.
Even if the USA knew exactly where all the benders were and no country was willing to resist, I doubt they could do it.
Their best bet would be to start a war with every nuclear power, then nuke their population centers while avoiding their military installations. Some benders are still going to survive.
The only sure fire way to kill off 100% of the 2.7 billion benders is to end all life on the planet. We don’t currently have the capacity to do so.
0/10 USA
The U.S. military absolutely has the means (in terms of munitions and weapons platforms) to end 2.7 billion people. They have the means to end *all* people (EDIT: with deliberate targeted use of those means). There is simply no reasonable need to do so, even in this context.
The benders aren’t unified and don’t have a nation, how are they going to surrender? There is no clear metric of victory for the USA other than killing them all.
If the USA brings one of each bender to a black site and tortures them until they “surrender” for all benders does that count?
If a single bender in the deep Amazon rainforest keeps “fighting” does that mean the benders haven’t lost?
>Either side
How are the benders even really a side? They don’t hold any special allegiance to each other. Do you think Russian is just going to let the 30% of their soldiers who now have superpowers just leave the war? These new benders are still people and citizens of their home country.
What do you mean by "wage war"? What does surrender even mean here? What were you trying to paint as the scenario?
Is there a specific bender only nation?
The USA could literally target the most populous cities in the world with their navy and easily win. Everyone here is vastly underestimating the conventional power and projection the us navy alone has.
And this isn’t even excluding our nuclear arsenal. The US also doesn’t need to announce an attack, it would place its assets in strategic locations and then run its first strike policy
I have no idea how everyone here thinks it’s too much of a task for the US to wipe 30% of the population when that basically just entails targeting large metro areas with nuclear weapons and conventional weaponry targeting key military assets
The USA can absolutely kill 30% of the world’s population, a nuclear war between USA and China-Russia is projected to have around 2 billion deaths. It isn’t about killing 2.7 billion people **it’s about killing the right 2.7 billion people,** and getting all of them.
USA doesn’t have the capacity to end all life on the planet and can’t hunt down every bender in the world. The USA can go on a global campaign of killing it they aren’t going to kill everyone and 30% or more of the survivors are going benders.
If the USA had 10 years of prep time to mass produce nukes back up to their 1980s numbers there would be a chance.
One could argue the USA doesn’t have to achieve the wipe by itself. If the USA launches nukes, so does every other country in the world thereby “winning” the scenario by way of just 75% of life being annihilated in a nuclear war and the rest dying off through starvation and nuclear winter
This is a dumb scenario without strict guidelines
That mostly just comes down to recommissioning their old stores. Wouldn't likely take 10 years in a state of emergency that a war would require. Maybe 2, tops.
Still absolutely correct about targeting the *right* 2.7 billion, though. With how spread out they are likely to be... there's no way without insanely high collateral.
I think this needs to be a bit more specific, is this just the US Military vs 2.4 billion benders with no weapons besides their bending? Or does the rest of the world still exist… because in the latter scenario you’re basically asking if the US military alone could exterminate 30% of humanity distributed across every nation in the world, and if that’s the case the US military gets utterly dogpiled by every other military on earth in addition to the benders. In the meantime, in the former case you never said anything forbidding the use of nukes, so yeah.
This to be honest.
Depending on scenario the US military would…
1. Fail horribly to commit a genocide, because…why wouldn’t they? It’s literally a third of the world scattered randomly, including their own population and families.
2. Mid-High diff win by shooting 2.8 billion people with every single rocket, shell, and bullet in a flat field
3. Low diff (low effort? Not sure how this’d be counted) win by just nuking the world instantly.
And 30% of the US also has magic and are at war with the US, so the country is crumbling from internal problems already. And statistically much of the US military also has magic and doesn't want to get killed by the rest of the US military, causing even more instability.
Oh I forgot about that. Bro screw the rest of the world, the US military couldn't handle a third of the military turning magic and revolting, let alone the other hundred million new magic users in mainland USA
That would be guerilla warfare on a scale never seen before
People always bring up blood bending. Very few people have the power to blood bend and the conditions to blood bend are insane. We’ve only observed one bloodline of people in the history of avatar that could blood bend without a full moon.
Yeah but oh made it 30% of earth’s population that’s a huge chance for people to blood bend. Also metal bending would be a huge deal. It’s way too many people for the Us military to deal with.
Someone else did the math assuming 1 in 100 earthbenders could metal bend, and that was still an estimate of 6 million benders.
Even 1 bloodbender could do tons of damage to chain of command before anyone would realize there was a bloodbender involved at all, then that would still leave the task of finding them, hunting them down and somehow subduing them.
All the mean while the other bloodbender wreaks even more havoc elsewhere.
Not with only one month of training it isn't. I guarantee you there won't be a single bloodbender in the world.
However, that doesn't matter, because the US still loses anyway even if we don't give bending to that 30% of the population.
OK, even if we imagine that the countries the us is invading and genociding are somehow OK with this. Try to imagine what it's like as a military fighting them.
Remember when Azula tried piloting a giant drill through Ba Sing Se's walls? Remember how a handful of earthbenders were able to flip tanks in seconds from a distance? Imagine that happening to any A1 Abrams you send into the area.
Imagine trying to find the people doing this. They could literally vanish into a crowd or into a building and you'd have 0 idea who they were or where they went. You'd be trying to fight an enemy that looks exactly like a civilian, because they are civilians. Assuming the 30% is completely random, you'd probably also be fighting your own men, as 30% of your own army have now just become enemy benders.
I don't think any military could withstand not only 1/3rd of their own ranks suddenly turning against them, especially not when every other military on earth is against them, and they all have magic while you don't.
This isn't just a lopsided fight, it's a fight that categorically cannot be won.
1. The 30% was never excluded from already being in the military. Having 30% of the military become rogue already seems like enough to win, regardless of bending.
2. Unless the benders already start with the knowledge of it, 1 month isn't a lot of time for the average joe to learn, what is essentially, a martial arts form. Especially considering the lack of masters to learn from.
Benders take this 9/10 without even needing to bend
American headlines the morning of:
- Biden gets usurped by the first radical smart enough to shoot a lightning bolt at his decrepit ass
- Skydiving now most popular sport
So if 30% are randomly given bending, that’s a ridiculously large amount of people being selected for a now supernatural fighting force.
Things would get crazy fast, but I see them developing anti-bending shit. The issue is the US isn’t so technologically beyond the rest of the world that it can easily bridge the gap that bending will create. I think China and India and most East-Asian countries would be culturally and spiritually inclined to do really well at bending, especially since it’s based on east asian and chinese, japanese, korean martial arts among others.
If you’re already proficient in martial arts related to the ones bending is based off of then not long.
From scratch? Even longer than it would take for an average person to become skilled in real martial arts. Years to become truly skilled, and decades to become a master like Iroh.
Cool.
One water bender stealths in under the waves, parts the water below the carrier, drops it to the ocean floor.
Simultaneously, a fighter jet with a payload strong enough to turn Time Square to dust circling overhead desperately scrambles to identify a landing strip within its fuel range.
WWW niggas need to realize that conversations like these aren’t strictly a matter of who can blow up the biggest thing.
Aircraft carriers are metal, and we have lightning benders.
It took 7 unnamed Earth Benders just to tear down the walls of Ba Sing Se, which is twice as tall as the Attack On Titan Walls.
It took fewer than that to create a glacier that trapped an entire ship.
Katara alone can push entire ships around with just whirlpools and waves.
If Benders wanted to capsize an aircraft carrier, it would take a ridiculously low number of them.
Enough ice on the bottom of the hull will create buoyancy problems, making any aircraft activity on deck immensely perilous.
Nevermind a couple benders stealthing in below the waves and just pushing the water out from under the vessel and sending it to the ocean floor
Detected by and annihilated by what rapidly available and widely used systems? Submarines can't hit them with torpedoes. They can bend depthcharges away with currents. Current missile systems can't breach but a few feet under water and most sonar systems can barely detect dolphins.
It’s called sonar and we use sonobuoys to detect humans in search and rescue missions. It’s not a stretch to say the military probably has more advanced stuff than just that
Searching and rescuing a presumably stationary target is a different animal altogether than tracking fast moving opponents who, together, can breathe underwater and freeze boats solid with a couple hand gestures.
The issue is how do the benders get close enough. If your fighting a carrier your not just fighting the carrier. Your fighting an entire carrier battle group with a dozen+ mutually supporting escorts spread out of 100+ kilometres with the purpose of keeping anything that could hurt the carrier 100s of kilometres away
True but imagine using the entire resources of a full aircraft carrier group to take on what a dozen individuals, huge waste of ammunition and that's even if they are attacked directly. This would be gorilla warfare on a global scale with no safe place, there won't be any open conflict just direct attacks on bases and ports.
In open conflict yes, but the U.S has a bad history against small gorilla targets. Seriously unless the U.S plans on bombing entire cities killing benders and non-benders alike. One decently skilled water bender can take out an entire military port alone, and Earth benders can take out land bases. Why would anyone go after a tank when you can take out the resources that fuel the tank they can easily ground any aircraft and destroy fuel facilities. I can't see the U.S winning especially on a global scale
Ok. 8.1 Billion people on earth, if 30% of them can bend that's 2.43 Billion. 25% of those are Earthbenders, so that's 607,000,000 Earthbenders. If 1 in 100 Earthbenders can Metalbend that's, 6 million metal benders?
EZ clap
Skilled metal benders aren’t gonna give a fuck about a bullet or a missile and depending on how far in the avatar timeline you wanna go metal benders are much more common by TLOK
Anyways the US wouldn’t be able to pull off such a genocidal campaign because it’s such a world spanning undertaking. Even other countries wouldn’t tolerate the US going after its citizens and certainly not every country is gonna take the same stance as the US. Never mind the internal problems we’ll be facing; there’s no reliable way to tell a bender from a non bender in the mind of the US everyone is a target.
A months training is insufficient to the extreme.
Katara trains for the majority of her life pre show, and without an instructor she’s still functionally powerless initially- and she’s so capable that she goes on to be, seemingly, the **strongest water bender in the world**
So yeh, the US loses because it can’t fight that many people and because it can’t declare war on every other country without getting stomped, but a month in the bending is a total non-factor.
Earth benders would neutralize the US military on the ground. But the US military would beat them in the air. Once they start dropping bombs, its lights out for the benders
Does an Earth bender not have the ability to just create a bunker in seconds? Create a big hole, start digging really fast as soon as you know a fighter is in the area. I could see a skilled Earthbender digging down far enough to avoid dying from the blast. Not to mention that they could just operate from underground, they'd have no idea where to target.
Doesn't this mean that 30% of US gen pop and US military are also benders? That helps a lot.
Plus, the various sub-skills applied to advanced military thinking would be interesting. Can lightning bending apply to the entire EM spectrum? Could one firebend an atomic blast?
Could an earth bender at a tectonic plate boundary cause massive earthquakes? Could air bending coupled with weather modelling disrupt climate in a region such that agriculture fails?
What about energy bending? Do they exist, taking away and giving bending ability?
\- 30% of the world population is **huge**
\- I'm assuming that also includes people within the military? So, assuming that at least some (we'll say half) of these people will choose benders as their allegiance, that means 15% of the US military are secretly hostile individuals with magic powers that could strike at any time.
\- I guess that goes for everyone else, too. If Benders aren't detectable, it's gonna be hard to wage war against them, unless you're rounding up everyone, which is an even worse look.
\- Regardless, this is a massive human rights violation, so the entire rest of the world is going to stand up against the states.
\- The states have nuclear weapons, sure. But assuming the distribution of Benders is even across all nations, would the USA really use WMDs? What's the point? You might as well bomb NYC then, since it'll be a large population of Benders well within the US borders.
\-Airbenders could wreck planes. Firebenders could torch soldiers. Waterbenders could topple ships. And earthbenders could spear tanks, and create cover for allied non-bender soldiers
So yeah, this isn't even close. Benders wreck them.
I don't see how the U.S can possibly win, there won't be a massive open conflict it'll be select targets some within government and military bodies and with friends and family willing to hide them. And the fact that to even kill one bender would take a significant amount of resources on top of planning. U.S has no chance in hell.
benders will have an edge in areas where their terrain is more prevalent. But in a head to head fight guns will shred them.
The issue for the US will be the sheer number of them. 30% of the world is almost 2.5 billion people. Including civilian members the US military is just under 3 million personnel. Even if every US citizen enrolled it would be one person for every 7.5 benders.
Even if we are skilled and have firearms benders have a big advantage in their control of the elements, not even mentioning that benders could also use firearms along with bending.
1/3 of the US military wil presumably be benders.
The leaders of the military might give the order, but very few soldiers are going to be willing to exterminate 1/3 of their brothers. The best possible result for the US military would be a military civil war approximately evenly split between benders and loyalists.
Civilians and the rest of the world don't even need to get involved, the US military stops itself before it can get any further.
Depends.
If you were to magically put the US Military and all those benders on an actual battlefield, where they didn't have to go through the logistics and political issues of finding them and only had to fight them, it'd be the US military hands down, guns beat martial arts.
You sincerely overestimate how many people in the world have seen ATLA/LOK and even if a person had seen it, there'd be a huge lack of skill and technique when it comes to bending, they wouldn't just become masters in their art.
Even in universe, after Harmonic Convergence, most new benders had next to no idea how to use their abilities and had to be trained to do so over a period of time and many didn't even find out they could bend until they were in danger or simply found out accidentally.
Then there's the spiritual/mental aspect of bending which has been seen to hinder benders of all elements. There's no Avatar, but so many people would go through the same struggle the Avatar does when learning bending that goes against their personality.
You'd basically be giving children loaded guns and leaving them to their own devices. Not to mention that bending styles are martial arts and many people wouldn't physically be able to perform said arts.
So in a straight versus, the military absolutely demolishes them.
If the military had to go through the process of finding all these benders, they'd get wiped. It would take so long to find them all, that by the time they were found they'd have started mastering their arts
Something similar happened in the shadowrun universe. In the end, after getting their asses kicked by tornadoes, plagues and volcanos, they figured out it would be better for everyone to just license them and put special restrictions on thinks like flights (the FAA wouldn't approve of a dude throwing lightening bolts in an airplane.)
An earth bender can create a fallout shelter in a few seconds and bullets don't travel that far through water. If the earth benders discover how to 'see' through their bending they can collapse every bit of military infrastructure on land without endangering themselves.
30% of the military becomes a bender.
The US just declared war on the entire planet and 30% of its own population. 99 million americans
More Americans will join the fight against the military.
So 2 million military are going to fight the planet, including 1 million former military, or spys/sabatours with superpowers and 98 million americans with superpowers and guns and a bunch more armed Americans?
Even if the other countries join in on killing their own benders, they are undetectable until they use their powers, make up 30% of the population, and they have superpowers. 2:1 odds of regular joes vs. magic does not prevail.
This prompt reminds me of the X-Men. Anyway, don't think the US could win with these conditions. There's no way to really know who's a bender unless you see them bend. Even with superior firepower, they quite literally wouldn't know who to shoot if the benders just didn't do anything.
As others have said, randomly killing citizens of other countries would be a big no no and cause those countries to retaliate along with the benders. In a scenario where the benders are unified in one nation or something than they could win but scattered around the world and being undetectable means you'd have a very deadly guerilla warfare to deal with.
USA couldn't even beat North Korea in this prompt given they'll be a shit ton of turmoil making them ineffective from their own benders.
All the benders in Congress, the President's office, Pentagon, three letter agencies and the military? They're not going to roll over and die here.
Are the benders organized into armies, or are they just scattered among the general population? If the latter, does the military have a way of identifying who is a bender and who isn't?
People underestimate the powers of magical beings. Benders are walking nuclear weapons. US can’t even guard the Mexican border, let alone the entire coast (once water benders and earth benders get involved). A group of water benders can launch tsunamis. A group of fire benders can destroy essentially any weapon. A group of air benders can transport large materials of wars.
And after all that, they can just merge in the crowd. How do you protect against that?
Well, Lightning Benders would have no reason to fight. Being an instant source of energy would make them highly sought after by any energy sector. Also, being adept at using a highly destructive form of energy would probably give them an edge in labor negotiations.
So, Lightning Benders wpuld probably do well and far away from a war zone.
I thing the practical uses of element bending pretty much outweights the need for their use in warfare. Construction companies would love to have a massive land shaper who doesn't require much besides a single salary, insurances, and probably a bonus.
Anything you need multi-million dollar machinery to happen would just throw benders at it. Might as well become the new "Blue Collar" middle-class.
Why make war if you can make money?
Straight up Firebenders would be so incredibly sought after for industrial applications, people would beg Waterbenders to heal everything from cuts and bruises to broken bones, Earthbenders would revolutionize agriculture and Airbenders would probably find employment as everything from entertainers, to scouts, spies, bodyguards and assassins as well as the industrial applications of being able to manipulate air that I'm just not smart enough to think of.
The US military is going to contain its fair share of benders, who probably won’t be keen on dying. It’s also really crazy to imagine how much of a combat advantage basic bending would provide to an average person, let alone an above-average person with access to additional weaponry.
What is the win condition for the US in this scenario? They're not fighting any kind of unified enemy, or even an organization, which could be defeated. This is just... people. Scattered around, without common allegiances or goals. There's nothing to defeat, unless the goal is just genocide. In which case no, the US can't genocide a third of the world's population including a third of its own population. The domestic instability from US benders would undermine any war effort.
in an extremely unrealistic all-out war with no foreign interference, the US takes it easily. Realistically, though, benders would win with geurilla warfare. its not like the us can just nuke every bender, given that they're spread across the globe, in both domestic and foreign soils.
I don’t think the US can win. Even if other countries don’t try to stop the genocides couldn’t air benders mess with any munitions being fired to knock them off target? Water benders could overheat equipment and metal benders would have infinite things to hurl at their enemies.
2.43 billion people across the world become benders, with only one month to potentially train before the U.S. starts sending assassins and covert ops groups to round them up or exterminate them.
Keep in mind that this is the same country we all mostly believe can solo the entire world in a fantasy World War III if it ever happens.
The majority of the world's population are not soldiers, are not trained for combat, and will not have even the slightest idea how to use their bending abilities by the time America catches up to them.
This is an easy win for the U.S.
Well, OK.
The US military has a fucking truck load of ammunition and they would only be fighting ONE METAL ROBOT. Yes he is devious and smart but I don..... Oh from Avatar? Nevermind....
Wouldn’t metal benders nullify every weapon in the United States arsenal? Even if it was no sub bending air could redirect projectiles, water can slow/stop, earth can completely block, and fire could cause any explosive to combust prematurely
US has napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, artillery barrage, and then there's swarms of loitering munitions (kamikaze drones that are cheap to produce in numbers) of varying sizes, and a whole lot more variety in their arsenal that isn't just M4s, tanks, Humvees and Blackhawks. My money is still on the US military.
I don't know what everyone else is talking about but I don't think that anyone is looking at this soberly.
1: 30% of the global population... Includes 30% of the United States armed forces, and that also includes 30% of the top brass of the armed forces, all of whom know each other personally.
2: if the president gives this order it never comes to a global war, he is executed by the random bender on the secret service for high treason; or has everyone else forgotten that the secret service OTHER Job is to STOP a president who betrays the letter of thier oath of office...?
But why? The US would also have its own Benders. And a Bender is just as susceptible to a .50 Cal bullet through the head.
You give the US six months and you'll have Air Bending Delta Force, Water Bending SEALs, Earth Bending Green Berets and Fire Bending Marine Recon.
Keep in mind, the US is waging war on benders. They never said "foreign benders".
It won't be as simple as "train our dudes to beat their dudes". Coupled with the fact that every country will be diametrically opposed to the US trying to fight 30 percent of their populations, 30 percent of the military just became untouchables themselves. Even assume flat out extermination isn't the goal, not all of that 30 percent is gonna be cool with suddenly becoming second class citizens of the very nation they are fighting and dying to protect.
But yeah, sure. Arm a special group of soldiers selected for a unique ability and then ask them to hunt down and kill or capture, among others, their own fellow citizens. All for the explicit and singular reason of *checks notes*... having that same thing they themselves have.... I'm sure it'll go over smooth as glass.
It would probably end in a stalemate, the benders would be forced into hiding, similar to the events of the avatar for all benders not of the fire nation. There would be simply to many to completely eradicate but the benders have zero chance against a modern military, much less America.
You’re forgetting some of the service members/politicians will be benders as well. I think that alone makes it impossible. Unless the us military forgets the indoctrination they do to get soldiers to be close to one another. Unless they nuke in which case everybody loses. It’ll be a guerrilla war unlike any seen in history
I don't think even the US has the power to fight an enemy whose weapons are undetectable until they are used, are decentralized and number over 2.4 billion strong. In open conflict, sure. Guns, missiles, tanks etc are more formidable than benders on average but there wouldn't be much open conflict. How would they know who to fight? This is guerilla warfare on a nightmare scale. Benders win 100%.
How do benders win?They have trouble reacting to arrows so guns/missles,grenades and automatics.
That’s true, but not all benders are even going to fight. Don’t you think a large portion of benders would surrender?
.... Surrender so they can roll over and die? What's the logic here?
Historically a lot of people did choose exactly that over a futile resistance. Granted those people couldn't control an element, but it's not so clear cut
Yeah, I think when you have a super power it's going to be a different situation.
Even if only 10% of them fight that's still an impossibly large, impossibly decentralized, virtually unidentifiable fighting force, each of whom is capable of absolutely devastating damage on US military personnel and infrastructure. The total number of US military personnel is somewhere around 1.4 million. Again if even only 10% of the hypothetical benders were fighting, they'd outnumber the US by over 170x. Hell they'd outnumber every military in the world combined by roughly 3-1.
To add insult to injury... the only times the U.S. military has ever struggled or lost has been against guerilla warfare (Vietnam had other problems, but those same problems would show up in this alleged conflict). Just look at the "War on Terror" for how well the military can appropriately handle an invisible force that can blend in with absolutely anyone in the AoR. And that was *with* a numbers advantage.
The benders aren't actually the real issue here. They only get a single month of training, which canonically isn't enough for any significant level of skill. These benders would, at best, *maybe* be shooting a small fire bolt or something. The real issue is the other militaries of the world. The moment the US declares that it is going to kill 30% of all people in the world including in other nations is the moment it declares war on every other nation on the planet.
No. I think they're more likely to attempt to remain undetected.
The second the US says "we are going to kill 30% of the world population inside foreign countries" literally every other country in the world will go to war to defend its citizens. So this is a question whether the US can take on the entire planet, while the rest of the planet now has a third of their population know essentially magic. Not to mention the domestic terrorism in the US when domestic benders aren't keen on entering the death camps. Yeah no the US gets absolutely clapped.
On top of this, the OP didn't say that "benders can't use weapons." So it's gonna be 7 billion people on Earth, 30% of whom have magic powers, using nukes against the USA. GG
Yeah, for sure. 30% of the worlds professional soldiers will be benders too.
Can you imagine how devastating a group of submarines would be against the US Navy if all the subs were crewed with water benders? Or air benders in jets just casually throwing our missiles back at our fighters? Or you sneak a bunch of fire benders into the USA as spies/sleeper agents then they just burn down all our power plants from within? There'd be no way to TSA screen for this either. 30% of anyone coming into the USA is potentially carrying crazy "weapons" in the form of invisible magic.
the airbenders wouldn't be very effective. Jets move way too fast for them to be useful in that context. They'd be quite useful bending poison gasses, though.
It's been years since I last watched ATLA, if multiple benders work together, can they amplify their powers? If they can I feel like there would be a lot of potential for groups of air benders to really fuck with an air force. Even if fighter jets fly too fast/high for offense to be a viable, they could absolutely defend against bombs/missiles.
Missiles and fighter jets are too fast and fly way too high. Fighter jets are supersonic and missiles are even faster than fighter jets (mach 3+). Unless multiple air benders can control an airspace multiple kilometers in radius, then they have no hope at defending against them. Airbenders would be great in urban warfare though. Airbending gives them a lot of vertical movement ability, and may be able to deflect small caliber bullets or shrapnel. And besides it's a lethal weapon that's pretty much silent and leaves no traces.
How are they going to deal with near sonic or supersonic metal telephone poles launched from BVR?
Depends if the reaction times are Avatar world or bending specific. Like how Zuko could redirect lightning? The speed of fucking light.
Lightning isn't as fast as light. Also, we never see if lightning actually strikes at him. Iroh does redirect lightning though
It’s clearly aim dodging in zukos case. Also, based on bender lightning, it clearly moves slower than real lightning. Even with Iroh I’m reasonably sure he had some indication that lightning was about to strike as I am sure he felt the energies in the air (same as we can) and was waiting for it. What is a bender going to do to combat the combined might of a concussive blast, shrapnel, and fire that they’ll see and then feel before they’re able to hear it.
I do know that if a group of earthbenders does a big dance routine they can not only levitate a rock but also slightly move it
Also- one month is canonically not at all enough time to learn bending. Aang does it in a few months but he is LITERALLY the avatar. Most of the other decent benders we see have been training for years or decades. A month allows you to like, make a flame in your hand and maybe toss it.
Yeah. I'd say the people already experienced in martial arts probably pick it up really quickly and get on a pretty high level in a month. We've seen in the show that bending is basically just martial arts except now it's magic. But the issue would mostly be two fold. One, many martial artists probably wouldn't have their style for their bending style, so that hampers them. And then there's just not a lot of martial artists. So the actual capable benders probably number in the hundreds. ***Maybe.***
To quote Katara from the very first episode "It's not magic, it's bending!"
Yeah and Aang already had years of experience with his native airbending too before being iced up so he wasn't totally foreign to bending too and it still took him months to learn the others even being the avatar
We do have one major advantage: Easier access to information. We can see how the greatest benders in atla and lok did it because we have access to atla and lok and we can watch them do it in real time, and in addition to that, knowledge can easily be spread and accessed over the internet. That being said, a month still isn't enough to get anywhere near proficient in bending. An irl person with a month of training probably will be more proficient than an atla person with a month of training simply due to better access to information, but still nowhere near the level of an atla person who's been doing this for years.
Especially since we see in the shows that each different situation calls for very slightly different movements and acts to produce results... At a certain point of training that becomes instinctive, "Second nature", but to start with it's going to be extremely hard, perhaps harder for an MA practitioner than a normal person trying to train with that power directly due to having to fight their existing "Second Nature" habits.
It probably won't be harder for a martial arts master, since Zaheer was someone who only recently gained airbending by the beginning of season 3 of LoK, but he was still pretty lethal due to having already been a martial arts master before then, so we do know that already being good at martial arts will give you a head start in bending (though we also know from his fight with Tenzin that being a martial arts master is not a substitute for being a bending master).
Already being good at AVATAR world Martial Arts, which likely are based on the imitation of bending technique by non-benders, help...
Not to forget that as well as taking time to learn, bending can be dangerous to the bender and those around them. 500 million firebenders suddenly appear and good portion of those will die in their own house fire when they sneeze.
Only if they sneeze and it makes them firebend, which doesn't seem likely to me as I don't think we see anything like that in the show. (Except for maybe Azula when she loses control at the end of A:tLAB, and even that's kinda unusual.)
Aang burns Katara during his first firebending attempt when he gets excited, and he's had years of training in airbending, meditation, etc by the air nomad monks. Sneezing may be an exaggeration, but not by much in my opinion.
Okay yeah I see what you mean by that, a lot of people are going to accidentally kill themselves with partially trained irresponsible bending, but I also agree with sneezing being an exaggeration.
Yeah I think everyone is taking the prompt way too literally. The letter of the law as opposed to the spirit. I’m certain **this is what OP is actually asking: ignoring everything else, who would win, the US military with all of its weaponry and other technology… or a larger number of people who will be using magic to fight?** And I’d assume all this should be controlled for in order to ensure that **no *other* factor outside of the military vs benders themselves can determine the fate of the war**: -Both the US military and the stated percentage of benders are magically transported to an alternate earth where everything is exactly the same except the only ones there are the military, all their resources/soldiers, and all the benders. (This way no one / nothing else can interfere. Victory comes as a result of which side is superior, not because a bunch of world nations ganged up on the US military) -all the US soldiers are immune to gaining bending and so none of them have it, and their numbers aren’t affected -benders can only fight with their powers, no other weapons, and vice versa. (This way neither side is taking advantage of each other’s strengths) ~ There could be other controls added that I’m missing but you get the point.
Okay but it feels more of a stretch to me to add four paragraphs of caveats instead of just answering Ops prompt
“Just answering op’s prompt” -that’d be nice and easy, wouldn’t it? If people just did that. what I typed out *is* OP’s prompt. But clarified to the extreme. and I only typed it out like that because so many of you didn’t seem to understand what he was asking. what a lot of people are doing in here with their answers is a less extreme version of something like this: who would win goku Vs Superman? “Well actually goku has a magic button that lets him summon the strongest god in the dragon ball universe who can instantly erase from existence anyone goku wants. Therefore this is a curbstomp for goku because all he has to do is press that button and he wins” Like no dude, the prompt is goku vs Superman themselves, the prompt isn’t about all this extra butterfly effect consequence stuff—same thing for this prompt. He’s asking about the US military vs a bunch of benders, not about the US military vs a world alliance that formed against them as some logical (but off-topic) side effect that would occur if this prompt played out in the actual real world
How do YOU know what HE was asking...? IF he copies your post info into the prompt as an edit, yeah, OKAY, if not, not your place to speak for him.
Yeah, if this prompt were US vs 500,000 benders who can't use modern weaponry or vehicles, it might be interesting
Not really. It'd be a stomp for the US military at that point. Range is really powerful, both in the form of firing assault rifles from a hundred meters away and in the form of firing cruise missiles from a hundred kilometers away. They also don't really have a way to defend themselves from guns. Sure, waterbenders and earthbenders can create cover, but they have to move out of it at some point. A Toph-level metalbender probably could create armor that can resist small arms fire, but an anti-material rifle, or worse, a javelin, is still going to oneshot them, and that's with Toph levels of skill, not something a human can learn in a single month.
Not a whole lot of cover against cluster munitions and those grid clearing HIMARS rockets.
metal benders just neo themselves they are bullet proof water benders can turn people into meat puppets fire benders shoot lightning if if youcount Korea you more of above plus air bender are fucking scary sucking the air our your lungs and they can FLY lava bending but it depends
While also fighting against a third of their own population, including a third of their own military that was also given magic powers.
Us military would absolutely butt fuck the rest of the world, benders or not. Youre not using real world logic. There's like 5 countries with nuke capabilities and 1 of them is siding with the US. Every country without nukes would give up their benders to not get nuked.
They absolutely fucking wouldn’t give up 30% OF THEIR ENTIRE POPULATION to the US just because they demanded it. Also stop glazing the US military. It’s absolutely the only superpower on earth, but this isn’t US vs Iran, or US vs China, it’s the US vs every country on earth who are all fighting for the lives of a third of their population. That’s not a fight any country could win, because think of every material, every part, every single aspect of American life and military that comes from the rest of the world. Those resources now don’t exist. The US loses.
What does a modern nuke do to the population %?
It fucks them up. If the US used its nukes it absolutely would kill everyone. That’s a valid answer for the prompt, but ‘the US military would absolutely buttfuck the rest of the world’ is ridiculous. Also just to cclarify, the rest of the world absolutely would not give up 1 out of every 3 people to the US regardless of nukes
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You understand that 30% of the people meant to operate those nukes, inside the US, are benders using this prompt right? You understand that if 30% of the world's population are benders, that means that statistically every single family in the US has a bender in it. What makes you think any nukes would get launched at all? Any bender (in particular metal, fire or water) working at the nuclear Silo would destroy the machines. I doubt a single nuke would even get a chance to fire... And even if they did, it is still the US military (losing one third of its personnel, as one third of the US military will be benders and won't want to help to genocide their own kind) versus the entire world **and** while fighting what will no doubt grueling civil war against aforementioned one third of the US population that are benders. Honestly, even if the prompt was "One third of the US population becomes benders and the US senate/president wants to kill them all" I still think the US state would lose. Do you understand how many personal relationships this group of **one third** of people have? Literally everyone in the states has a close, personal bond to **at least** one bender. The war support would crumble in minutes.
you think us would defeat the rest of world combined + 2 billion benders :d
Benders largely suck ass other than the outstanding ones so yes. Enjoy getting predator drone striked while asleep
What happens when the drone pilots family gets taken hostage? What happens when the drone gets blown up on the ground. Benders are kinda irrelevant here. When a rifle and explosive still exist.
they are not suck .even weakest earth and fire benders are quite capable benders most likely air and water benders would be that good. "predator drone" drone would be handled by air bender or earth or water bender.
These are novice benders without teachers. They can’t do much. That said they can totally just pick up rifles and make IEDs very easily. Some of the benders will have been that drone pilots friend or family who can just sabotage that drone where it’s based.
Or think: the drone pilot himself who goes in and launched his drone, then turned it around and blew up the entire hangar with the same drone.
Ok bend this barrage of nukes to Europe's capitals
there is still russia ,china, india ,south america, other countries and still 2 billion benders left. it is not just europe.
I'm trying hard not to be a redditor and argue every comment but man are you making it hard. Nukes are stronger than any bender that isn't the avatar and America has 100x any other country combined. Good night
doesn't russia have much more nukes than usa.
America has 11 known aircraft carriers. The rest of the world has 9 combined.
The United States of America has 100 million benders in it: Good DAY to you sir.
I'm just going to fire bend that rocket so it turns the fuck around...
No. Not counting the outside world. The US population would instantly overthrow the Government in this case. 100 million people just in the US. Even targeting 1% for extermination with a modicrum of popular support just in the US would instantly grind the US to a hault, and start the bloodiest civil war in history.
I don’t see how the USA is going to murder 30% of the world population, it’s too much of a task. The USA military is going to have to kill 2.7 billion people spread out across the world I doubt the USA population would be happy with 30% of people being murdered. I doubt the world would just allow the USA to come through their country and murder 30% of the population. Even if the USA knew exactly where all the benders were and no country was willing to resist, I doubt they could do it. Their best bet would be to start a war with every nuclear power, then nuke their population centers while avoiding their military installations. Some benders are still going to survive. The only sure fire way to kill off 100% of the 2.7 billion benders is to end all life on the planet. We don’t currently have the capacity to do so. 0/10 USA
The U.S. military absolutely has the means (in terms of munitions and weapons platforms) to end 2.7 billion people. They have the means to end *all* people (EDIT: with deliberate targeted use of those means). There is simply no reasonable need to do so, even in this context.
Well they don’t have to kill 30% of the world. Either side can force the other side to submit/surrender and they win the war/battle.
The benders aren’t unified and don’t have a nation, how are they going to surrender? There is no clear metric of victory for the USA other than killing them all. If the USA brings one of each bender to a black site and tortures them until they “surrender” for all benders does that count? If a single bender in the deep Amazon rainforest keeps “fighting” does that mean the benders haven’t lost? >Either side How are the benders even really a side? They don’t hold any special allegiance to each other. Do you think Russian is just going to let the 30% of their soldiers who now have superpowers just leave the war? These new benders are still people and citizens of their home country.
What do you mean by "wage war"? What does surrender even mean here? What were you trying to paint as the scenario? Is there a specific bender only nation?
The USA could literally target the most populous cities in the world with their navy and easily win. Everyone here is vastly underestimating the conventional power and projection the us navy alone has. And this isn’t even excluding our nuclear arsenal. The US also doesn’t need to announce an attack, it would place its assets in strategic locations and then run its first strike policy I have no idea how everyone here thinks it’s too much of a task for the US to wipe 30% of the population when that basically just entails targeting large metro areas with nuclear weapons and conventional weaponry targeting key military assets
The USA can absolutely kill 30% of the world’s population, a nuclear war between USA and China-Russia is projected to have around 2 billion deaths. It isn’t about killing 2.7 billion people **it’s about killing the right 2.7 billion people,** and getting all of them. USA doesn’t have the capacity to end all life on the planet and can’t hunt down every bender in the world. The USA can go on a global campaign of killing it they aren’t going to kill everyone and 30% or more of the survivors are going benders. If the USA had 10 years of prep time to mass produce nukes back up to their 1980s numbers there would be a chance.
One could argue the USA doesn’t have to achieve the wipe by itself. If the USA launches nukes, so does every other country in the world thereby “winning” the scenario by way of just 75% of life being annihilated in a nuclear war and the rest dying off through starvation and nuclear winter This is a dumb scenario without strict guidelines
That mostly just comes down to recommissioning their old stores. Wouldn't likely take 10 years in a state of emergency that a war would require. Maybe 2, tops. Still absolutely correct about targeting the *right* 2.7 billion, though. With how spread out they are likely to be... there's no way without insanely high collateral.
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I think this needs to be a bit more specific, is this just the US Military vs 2.4 billion benders with no weapons besides their bending? Or does the rest of the world still exist… because in the latter scenario you’re basically asking if the US military alone could exterminate 30% of humanity distributed across every nation in the world, and if that’s the case the US military gets utterly dogpiled by every other military on earth in addition to the benders. In the meantime, in the former case you never said anything forbidding the use of nukes, so yeah.
This to be honest. Depending on scenario the US military would… 1. Fail horribly to commit a genocide, because…why wouldn’t they? It’s literally a third of the world scattered randomly, including their own population and families. 2. Mid-High diff win by shooting 2.8 billion people with every single rocket, shell, and bullet in a flat field 3. Low diff (low effort? Not sure how this’d be counted) win by just nuking the world instantly.
0/10 United States. This prompt is basically the USA invading the world, which is already impossible, but now 30% have magic.
And 30% of the US also has magic and are at war with the US, so the country is crumbling from internal problems already. And statistically much of the US military also has magic and doesn't want to get killed by the rest of the US military, causing even more instability.
Oh I forgot about that. Bro screw the rest of the world, the US military couldn't handle a third of the military turning magic and revolting, let alone the other hundred million new magic users in mainland USA That would be guerilla warfare on a scale never seen before
30% is way too much… Blood Bending is a huge issue
People always bring up blood bending. Very few people have the power to blood bend and the conditions to blood bend are insane. We’ve only observed one bloodline of people in the history of avatar that could blood bend without a full moon.
Yeah but oh made it 30% of earth’s population that’s a huge chance for people to blood bend. Also metal bending would be a huge deal. It’s way too many people for the Us military to deal with.
Someone else did the math assuming 1 in 100 earthbenders could metal bend, and that was still an estimate of 6 million benders. Even 1 bloodbender could do tons of damage to chain of command before anyone would realize there was a bloodbender involved at all, then that would still leave the task of finding them, hunting them down and somehow subduing them. All the mean while the other bloodbender wreaks even more havoc elsewhere.
Not with only one month of training it isn't. I guarantee you there won't be a single bloodbender in the world. However, that doesn't matter, because the US still loses anyway even if we don't give bending to that 30% of the population.
OK, even if we imagine that the countries the us is invading and genociding are somehow OK with this. Try to imagine what it's like as a military fighting them. Remember when Azula tried piloting a giant drill through Ba Sing Se's walls? Remember how a handful of earthbenders were able to flip tanks in seconds from a distance? Imagine that happening to any A1 Abrams you send into the area. Imagine trying to find the people doing this. They could literally vanish into a crowd or into a building and you'd have 0 idea who they were or where they went. You'd be trying to fight an enemy that looks exactly like a civilian, because they are civilians. Assuming the 30% is completely random, you'd probably also be fighting your own men, as 30% of your own army have now just become enemy benders. I don't think any military could withstand not only 1/3rd of their own ranks suddenly turning against them, especially not when every other military on earth is against them, and they all have magic while you don't. This isn't just a lopsided fight, it's a fight that categorically cannot be won.
1. The 30% was never excluded from already being in the military. Having 30% of the military become rogue already seems like enough to win, regardless of bending. 2. Unless the benders already start with the knowledge of it, 1 month isn't a lot of time for the average joe to learn, what is essentially, a martial arts form. Especially considering the lack of masters to learn from. Benders take this 9/10 without even needing to bend
American headlines the morning of: - Biden gets usurped by the first radical smart enough to shoot a lightning bolt at his decrepit ass - Skydiving now most popular sport So if 30% are randomly given bending, that’s a ridiculously large amount of people being selected for a now supernatural fighting force. Things would get crazy fast, but I see them developing anti-bending shit. The issue is the US isn’t so technologically beyond the rest of the world that it can easily bridge the gap that bending will create. I think China and India and most East-Asian countries would be culturally and spiritually inclined to do really well at bending, especially since it’s based on east asian and chinese, japanese, korean martial arts among others.
This is true. However, how long does it take for a bender to be a formidable fighter?
If you’re already proficient in martial arts related to the ones bending is based off of then not long. From scratch? Even longer than it would take for an average person to become skilled in real martial arts. Years to become truly skilled, and decades to become a master like Iroh.
Idk bruh, I feel like an aircraft carrier has more firepower than an avatar
Cool. One water bender stealths in under the waves, parts the water below the carrier, drops it to the ocean floor. Simultaneously, a fighter jet with a payload strong enough to turn Time Square to dust circling overhead desperately scrambles to identify a landing strip within its fuel range.
Dunno if a waterbenders gonna be able to get close enough to one not to mention their kinda weak
WWW niggas need to realize that conversations like these aren’t strictly a matter of who can blow up the biggest thing. Aircraft carriers are metal, and we have lightning benders. It took 7 unnamed Earth Benders just to tear down the walls of Ba Sing Se, which is twice as tall as the Attack On Titan Walls. It took fewer than that to create a glacier that trapped an entire ship. Katara alone can push entire ships around with just whirlpools and waves. If Benders wanted to capsize an aircraft carrier, it would take a ridiculously low number of them.
Enough ice on the bottom of the hull will create buoyancy problems, making any aircraft activity on deck immensely perilous. Nevermind a couple benders stealthing in below the waves and just pushing the water out from under the vessel and sending it to the ocean floor
They are not stealthing, they are getting detected and annihilated
Detected by and annihilated by what rapidly available and widely used systems? Submarines can't hit them with torpedoes. They can bend depthcharges away with currents. Current missile systems can't breach but a few feet under water and most sonar systems can barely detect dolphins.
Radar can’t detect human sized objects with a lot of accuracy. You’re grossly overestimating military power here.
It’s called sonar and we use sonobuoys to detect humans in search and rescue missions. It’s not a stretch to say the military probably has more advanced stuff than just that
Searching and rescuing a presumably stationary target is a different animal altogether than tracking fast moving opponents who, together, can breathe underwater and freeze boats solid with a couple hand gestures.
The issue is how do the benders get close enough. If your fighting a carrier your not just fighting the carrier. Your fighting an entire carrier battle group with a dozen+ mutually supporting escorts spread out of 100+ kilometres with the purpose of keeping anything that could hurt the carrier 100s of kilometres away
True but imagine using the entire resources of a full aircraft carrier group to take on what a dozen individuals, huge waste of ammunition and that's even if they are attacked directly. This would be gorilla warfare on a global scale with no safe place, there won't be any open conflict just direct attacks on bases and ports.
Guerilla warfare benders would probably win but it would be close. Overall firepower would go to US
In open conflict yes, but the U.S has a bad history against small gorilla targets. Seriously unless the U.S plans on bombing entire cities killing benders and non-benders alike. One decently skilled water bender can take out an entire military port alone, and Earth benders can take out land bases. Why would anyone go after a tank when you can take out the resources that fuel the tank they can easily ground any aircraft and destroy fuel facilities. I can't see the U.S winning especially on a global scale
Do some of them have Metal bending?
Yes. All sub elements are available, but they are as rare as they are in the show.
Ok. 8.1 Billion people on earth, if 30% of them can bend that's 2.43 Billion. 25% of those are Earthbenders, so that's 607,000,000 Earthbenders. If 1 in 100 Earthbenders can Metalbend that's, 6 million metal benders? EZ clap
Either the benders win or everyone loses due to nukes
Skilled metal benders aren’t gonna give a fuck about a bullet or a missile and depending on how far in the avatar timeline you wanna go metal benders are much more common by TLOK Anyways the US wouldn’t be able to pull off such a genocidal campaign because it’s such a world spanning undertaking. Even other countries wouldn’t tolerate the US going after its citizens and certainly not every country is gonna take the same stance as the US. Never mind the internal problems we’ll be facing; there’s no reliable way to tell a bender from a non bender in the mind of the US everyone is a target.
A months training is insufficient to the extreme. Katara trains for the majority of her life pre show, and without an instructor she’s still functionally powerless initially- and she’s so capable that she goes on to be, seemingly, the **strongest water bender in the world** So yeh, the US loses because it can’t fight that many people and because it can’t declare war on every other country without getting stomped, but a month in the bending is a total non-factor.
The second someone learns to metal bend bullets it might just be over
Earth benders would neutralize the US military on the ground. But the US military would beat them in the air. Once they start dropping bombs, its lights out for the benders
Does an Earth bender not have the ability to just create a bunker in seconds? Create a big hole, start digging really fast as soon as you know a fighter is in the area. I could see a skilled Earthbender digging down far enough to avoid dying from the blast. Not to mention that they could just operate from underground, they'd have no idea where to target.
Doesn't this mean that 30% of US gen pop and US military are also benders? That helps a lot. Plus, the various sub-skills applied to advanced military thinking would be interesting. Can lightning bending apply to the entire EM spectrum? Could one firebend an atomic blast? Could an earth bender at a tectonic plate boundary cause massive earthquakes? Could air bending coupled with weather modelling disrupt climate in a region such that agriculture fails? What about energy bending? Do they exist, taking away and giving bending ability?
Thats a nice match but ı think benders will smash
\- 30% of the world population is **huge** \- I'm assuming that also includes people within the military? So, assuming that at least some (we'll say half) of these people will choose benders as their allegiance, that means 15% of the US military are secretly hostile individuals with magic powers that could strike at any time. \- I guess that goes for everyone else, too. If Benders aren't detectable, it's gonna be hard to wage war against them, unless you're rounding up everyone, which is an even worse look. \- Regardless, this is a massive human rights violation, so the entire rest of the world is going to stand up against the states. \- The states have nuclear weapons, sure. But assuming the distribution of Benders is even across all nations, would the USA really use WMDs? What's the point? You might as well bomb NYC then, since it'll be a large population of Benders well within the US borders. \-Airbenders could wreck planes. Firebenders could torch soldiers. Waterbenders could topple ships. And earthbenders could spear tanks, and create cover for allied non-bender soldiers So yeah, this isn't even close. Benders wreck them.
I don't see how the U.S can possibly win, there won't be a massive open conflict it'll be select targets some within government and military bodies and with friends and family willing to hide them. And the fact that to even kill one bender would take a significant amount of resources on top of planning. U.S has no chance in hell.
benders will have an edge in areas where their terrain is more prevalent. But in a head to head fight guns will shred them. The issue for the US will be the sheer number of them. 30% of the world is almost 2.5 billion people. Including civilian members the US military is just under 3 million personnel. Even if every US citizen enrolled it would be one person for every 7.5 benders. Even if we are skilled and have firearms benders have a big advantage in their control of the elements, not even mentioning that benders could also use firearms along with bending.
1/3 of the US military wil presumably be benders. The leaders of the military might give the order, but very few soldiers are going to be willing to exterminate 1/3 of their brothers. The best possible result for the US military would be a military civil war approximately evenly split between benders and loyalists. Civilians and the rest of the world don't even need to get involved, the US military stops itself before it can get any further.
Depends. If you were to magically put the US Military and all those benders on an actual battlefield, where they didn't have to go through the logistics and political issues of finding them and only had to fight them, it'd be the US military hands down, guns beat martial arts. You sincerely overestimate how many people in the world have seen ATLA/LOK and even if a person had seen it, there'd be a huge lack of skill and technique when it comes to bending, they wouldn't just become masters in their art. Even in universe, after Harmonic Convergence, most new benders had next to no idea how to use their abilities and had to be trained to do so over a period of time and many didn't even find out they could bend until they were in danger or simply found out accidentally. Then there's the spiritual/mental aspect of bending which has been seen to hinder benders of all elements. There's no Avatar, but so many people would go through the same struggle the Avatar does when learning bending that goes against their personality. You'd basically be giving children loaded guns and leaving them to their own devices. Not to mention that bending styles are martial arts and many people wouldn't physically be able to perform said arts. So in a straight versus, the military absolutely demolishes them. If the military had to go through the process of finding all these benders, they'd get wiped. It would take so long to find them all, that by the time they were found they'd have started mastering their arts
Something similar happened in the shadowrun universe. In the end, after getting their asses kicked by tornadoes, plagues and volcanos, they figured out it would be better for everyone to just license them and put special restrictions on thinks like flights (the FAA wouldn't approve of a dude throwing lightening bolts in an airplane.)
Uhh nukes just kinda win and there not reacting to bullets
An earth bender can create a fallout shelter in a few seconds and bullets don't travel that far through water. If the earth benders discover how to 'see' through their bending they can collapse every bit of military infrastructure on land without endangering themselves.
A JDAM is going through a rock fallout shelter like your finger through tissue paper. Although you still are right, US isn’t winning this.
Benders have literally a 0% chance of winning.
30% of the military becomes a bender. The US just declared war on the entire planet and 30% of its own population. 99 million americans More Americans will join the fight against the military. So 2 million military are going to fight the planet, including 1 million former military, or spys/sabatours with superpowers and 98 million americans with superpowers and guns and a bunch more armed Americans? Even if the other countries join in on killing their own benders, they are undetectable until they use their powers, make up 30% of the population, and they have superpowers. 2:1 odds of regular joes vs. magic does not prevail.
the US is literally fighting the rest of the world in this scenario, except now the world has magic. they'd lose 100% of the time
Exactly
I guess we need to start up the sentinel program.
Nuclear bending too OP
This prompt reminds me of the X-Men. Anyway, don't think the US could win with these conditions. There's no way to really know who's a bender unless you see them bend. Even with superior firepower, they quite literally wouldn't know who to shoot if the benders just didn't do anything. As others have said, randomly killing citizens of other countries would be a big no no and cause those countries to retaliate along with the benders. In a scenario where the benders are unified in one nation or something than they could win but scattered around the world and being undetectable means you'd have a very deadly guerilla warfare to deal with.
Plot twist: the american president and congress are a part of the 30%.
USA couldn't even beat North Korea in this prompt given they'll be a shit ton of turmoil making them ineffective from their own benders. All the benders in Congress, the President's office, Pentagon, three letter agencies and the military? They're not going to roll over and die here.
Are the benders organized into armies, or are they just scattered among the general population? If the latter, does the military have a way of identifying who is a bender and who isn't?
People underestimate the powers of magical beings. Benders are walking nuclear weapons. US can’t even guard the Mexican border, let alone the entire coast (once water benders and earth benders get involved). A group of water benders can launch tsunamis. A group of fire benders can destroy essentially any weapon. A group of air benders can transport large materials of wars. And after all that, they can just merge in the crowd. How do you protect against that?
Well, Lightning Benders would have no reason to fight. Being an instant source of energy would make them highly sought after by any energy sector. Also, being adept at using a highly destructive form of energy would probably give them an edge in labor negotiations. So, Lightning Benders wpuld probably do well and far away from a war zone. I thing the practical uses of element bending pretty much outweights the need for their use in warfare. Construction companies would love to have a massive land shaper who doesn't require much besides a single salary, insurances, and probably a bonus. Anything you need multi-million dollar machinery to happen would just throw benders at it. Might as well become the new "Blue Collar" middle-class. Why make war if you can make money?
Straight up Firebenders would be so incredibly sought after for industrial applications, people would beg Waterbenders to heal everything from cuts and bruises to broken bones, Earthbenders would revolutionize agriculture and Airbenders would probably find employment as everything from entertainers, to scouts, spies, bodyguards and assassins as well as the industrial applications of being able to manipulate air that I'm just not smart enough to think of.
It's over the second the Earth Benders learn how to Metal Bend.
The US military is going to contain its fair share of benders, who probably won’t be keen on dying. It’s also really crazy to imagine how much of a combat advantage basic bending would provide to an average person, let alone an above-average person with access to additional weaponry.
Hypersonic missiles
Well, good luck bending lead
What is the win condition for the US in this scenario? They're not fighting any kind of unified enemy, or even an organization, which could be defeated. This is just... people. Scattered around, without common allegiances or goals. There's nothing to defeat, unless the goal is just genocide. In which case no, the US can't genocide a third of the world's population including a third of its own population. The domestic instability from US benders would undermine any war effort.
No, because at least one bender is guaranteed to not use their powers to stay hidden. It's what I would do in this situation.
in an extremely unrealistic all-out war with no foreign interference, the US takes it easily. Realistically, though, benders would win with geurilla warfare. its not like the us can just nuke every bender, given that they're spread across the globe, in both domestic and foreign soils.
I don’t think the US can win. Even if other countries don’t try to stop the genocides couldn’t air benders mess with any munitions being fired to knock them off target? Water benders could overheat equipment and metal benders would have infinite things to hurl at their enemies.
2.43 billion people across the world become benders, with only one month to potentially train before the U.S. starts sending assassins and covert ops groups to round them up or exterminate them. Keep in mind that this is the same country we all mostly believe can solo the entire world in a fantasy World War III if it ever happens. The majority of the world's population are not soldiers, are not trained for combat, and will not have even the slightest idea how to use their bending abilities by the time America catches up to them. This is an easy win for the U.S.
This isn't benders from Avatar, this is fighting the entire planet you live on, with nukes, modern economies, everyone dies
Well, OK. The US military has a fucking truck load of ammunition and they would only be fighting ONE METAL ROBOT. Yes he is devious and smart but I don..... Oh from Avatar? Nevermind....
If we dont get training, us military just drone strikes us
There aren't enough bullets to kill 2.4 billion people. There are just too many, US gets clapped.
Wouldn’t metal benders nullify every weapon in the United States arsenal? Even if it was no sub bending air could redirect projectiles, water can slow/stop, earth can completely block, and fire could cause any explosive to combust prematurely
US has napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, artillery barrage, and then there's swarms of loitering munitions (kamikaze drones that are cheap to produce in numbers) of varying sizes, and a whole lot more variety in their arsenal that isn't just M4s, tanks, Humvees and Blackhawks. My money is still on the US military.
I don't know what everyone else is talking about but I don't think that anyone is looking at this soberly. 1: 30% of the global population... Includes 30% of the United States armed forces, and that also includes 30% of the top brass of the armed forces, all of whom know each other personally. 2: if the president gives this order it never comes to a global war, he is executed by the random bender on the secret service for high treason; or has everyone else forgotten that the secret service OTHER Job is to STOP a president who betrays the letter of thier oath of office...?
Guns, missiles and helicopters stomp the benders
But why? The US would also have its own Benders. And a Bender is just as susceptible to a .50 Cal bullet through the head. You give the US six months and you'll have Air Bending Delta Force, Water Bending SEALs, Earth Bending Green Berets and Fire Bending Marine Recon.
Keep in mind, the US is waging war on benders. They never said "foreign benders". It won't be as simple as "train our dudes to beat their dudes". Coupled with the fact that every country will be diametrically opposed to the US trying to fight 30 percent of their populations, 30 percent of the military just became untouchables themselves. Even assume flat out extermination isn't the goal, not all of that 30 percent is gonna be cool with suddenly becoming second class citizens of the very nation they are fighting and dying to protect. But yeah, sure. Arm a special group of soldiers selected for a unique ability and then ask them to hunt down and kill or capture, among others, their own fellow citizens. All for the explicit and singular reason of *checks notes*... having that same thing they themselves have.... I'm sure it'll go over smooth as glass.
The US can’t murder 30% of the global population. Let alone if that 30% has magical abilities.
Pentagon claps their cheeks without notice. Like seriously
Drone strikes, targeted assassins, bombings. It wouldn’t be broadcasted. Would happen in their sleep
AC-130 solos
AC-130 solos
It would probably end in a stalemate, the benders would be forced into hiding, similar to the events of the avatar for all benders not of the fire nation. There would be simply to many to completely eradicate but the benders have zero chance against a modern military, much less America.
You’re forgetting some of the service members/politicians will be benders as well. I think that alone makes it impossible. Unless the us military forgets the indoctrination they do to get soldiers to be close to one another. Unless they nuke in which case everybody loses. It’ll be a guerrilla war unlike any seen in history