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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3950 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 23, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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If they went to boot camp

A lot of men today (including myself) can credibly say they wouldn't have been allowed in or made it through boot camp.

The 40s version of themselves obviously was more likely to have done so have but that version doesn't exist so why center them in any discussion? If I ask what you'd do on the Titanic it's not interesting to swap in a median English male of the time is it?

Finland has a conscription, with a possibility to obtain a deferment, a release or a possibility to do a civilian alternative. The last stat I managed to find was that, in 2016, 72 % of men who had turned thirty at the end of that year had completed military service. In 2008 that was still over 80 %. So at least a large amount of Finnish men are provably capable of going through a boot camp, and probably at least some share of those who chose a civilian alternative would have also been capable of doing it if push came to shove.

You might say they’re overwhelmingly sisu-fied.

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