h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Do any of you peoples know of a war that resulted in the complete and utter destruction of both sides? I can think of examples that destroyed one side, but not both. Obviously the Cold War could have, but it didn't really, so that doesn't count.

Easter islanders possably

Crop depletion, more like.

No good. Europeans and South Americans did it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Easter_Island#Destruction_of_society_and_population

There may be examples around the Euphrates area but records at obscure, however the Chaldeans were one of the nations involved I think

What's the time frame? The Romans destroyed Carthage, even sowing the land with salt. Later the Romans came a cropper, though not as a result of their war with Carthage.

How about three-way devastation? One country annihilates another, and then gets destroyed by a third country.

Any old time, I don't care. But it has to be a war where all of the belligerants die as a direct or inderect result of the war. Not killed by something else later.

If everyone on both sides dies, who would be left to tell the rest of the world about it? Might this lack of witnesses be a reason why it's so hard to get information about the phenomenon?

That... already occured to me, yes. Still, the world doesn't exist in isolation. There's no inherent reason why a variety of onlookers couldn't have recorded the tragedy. Or that someone else couldn't have stumbled upon the remains, even centuries later.

Basically I want to know if there's a historical precedent for such a thing.

The details aren't very important.

The simultaneous extinctions of the Neanderthals and the Cro Magnons was apparently due to emergence of a hydrid population, the Magdalenians.

The classical example would have to be the Battle of Asculum. It didn't result in the utter destruction of both sides but from it we do now that the phrase Pyrrhic Victory.

"If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined".

Does it have to be a full-scale war? If not, how about the 1889 Samoan Naval Disaster?

Germany and America all wanted the Samoan Civil War to end with an outcome in their favour, with Britain taking a keen interest also. Three American, three German and one observing British warship were in Apia's harbour undertaking a little gunboat diplomacy when a cyclone came. The British ship left harbour to safe waters, but the German and American fleets didn't want to lose face and leave port before their opponents. Both the American and German ships stayed in harbour and refused to allow their supporting merchant vessels to leave harbour either, and all sank.

True, it only hurt America or Germany's pride and the families of those who lost their lives rather than being a complete apocalypse, and didn't stop Samoa from being divided between American and German held islands. But in a battle against nature, there's only one winner.

<BB<

Why the question, Mr X? Do you have something to hide?

>>No good. Europeans and South Americans did it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Easter_Island#Destruction_of_society_and_population

That's interesting, it doesn't seem long ago that earnest ies were being made about how they died out after deforesting their own islands and then fighting over the remaining resources.

Complete destruction of a society is not usually sought even by arch enemies. In Finland, an invasion from the East seems to have killed all the male Finlanders, but they married the women and produced a crossbreed race. In the rape of the Sabine women, the Romans did likewise: killed the men and took the women as wives. The Romans did not always kill all the men they conquered, especially if they needed to add to their slave labor pool.

Me>> ...it doesn't seem long ago that earnest ies.../

Earnest ies? It should be earnest 'documentaries'.

I remember a song about a war between the people of the valley
and the people on the mountain which in the bloody aftermath saw
one tin soldier ride away.

~jwf~

"Why the question, Mr X? Do you have something to hide?"


Who, me? No, no, of course not. Move along, nothing to see here...

One Tin Soldier - Cher
http://youtu.be/Vg84L84uop8