Season 5
EP09 - Targeting Infrastructure (Crimes Against Humanity)
Examine the laws of armed conflict around targeting civilian infrastructure like power grids, water, and hospitals. Learn when dual-use infrastructure becomes a lawful military target and the humanitarian consequences of infrastructure warfare.
Ignore the paladins! Ignore the defensive towers!
Ride straight past their army!
I'm going for the economy! Harass the gold-mining peasants! Burn the food-generation buildings!
I'm sending them back to the Stone Age!
If they don't have food or power, they can't spawn new units! I win by economic starvation!
"What kind of cheese strategy are you scheming this time...?
I'm avoiding their army! I am harrassing their power plants, their farms! Without infrastructure, their civilization just stops working!
You are correct. The civilization stops working. But the humans do not.
A modern city is not a natural habitat. It is an artificial machine.
It requires a constant influx of electrical energy to pump water up to the tenth floor of an apartment building, and to keep the food in the supermarkets from rotting.
Go ahead. Be the genius strategist. Try sending them back to Stone Age.
Boom! No power! No water!
Now they have to surrender! Their peasants are paralyzed!
In your video game, when an NPC's AI routine is interrupted, they just stand there and idle.
Real biology doesn't have an idle animation.
A human being requires 2000 calories and 3 liters of clean water every single day.
When the power grid dies, the water pumps stop. Within 48 hours, the toilets break. The grocery store shelves are stripped bare.
A city without power ceases to be a machine for living. It instantly becomes a concrete death trap.
And people do not just sit in the dark and wait to die.They move.
Okay... so they’re running away.
That’s fine! Let them run! They’ll just go flood the enemy king's other cities and eat all his food! I’m burdening his economy!
Refugees do not march toward the enemy's military bases. They march away from the famine. They march toward safety. They march toward the lights.
And whose border has perfectly functioning power grids, running water, and a booming economy?
Yours. Or your closest allies.
No! Close the gates! Lock down the border! Don't let them in!
There is no wall tall enough to stop the biological imperative of survival. You just initiated a Refugee DDoS Attack.
By plunging a city of five million people into the Stone Age, you weaponized their biology.
You created a tidal wave of desperate human traffic and aimed it directly at your own border checkpoints.
But... they’re unarmed! My guards have guns!
Shoo! Shoo! Go away!
They are dying of thirst, Shez. They have starving children in their arms. They are not going to turn around and walk back into a dark desert because a guard told them to.
You are forced to process them. You have to build massive refugee camps. You have to provide medical care, clean water, and food for millions of unexpected people.
My treasury... it’s draining!
Wait. What if I don't feed them? What if I just order my border guards to... to open fire?
Of course, let's play that out if you want to lose your next election.
You order your military to gun down millions of unarmed, starving civilians on live global television. You are now a genocidal pariah
The entire global server instantly sanctions you. Your allies abandon you. Your trade routes are blockaded. Your own citizens riot in the streets. You lose the war immediately.
If I let them in, my economy crashes...
If I shoot them, my empire is deleted...
This is why professional militaries are terrifyingly careful about targeting civilian infrastructure.
They will use precision munitions to hit a specific military bunker just to avoid the water treatment plant next to it.
If you break the water plant, you don't just kill the enemy army. You break the social gravity that keeps the civilians tethered to their homes.
I thought I was being a genius by ignoring the army and hitting the spawn camps.
But I just aggro'd the entire map.
War is an exercise in managing order. This is why targetting civilian infrastructures is permabanned.
EP08 - Human Shields (Moral Race to the Bottom)
Understand the tactical logic of human shields and why they trigger a moral race to the bottom in armed conflict. Learn how combatants exploit civilian presence to degrade enemy targeting rules of engagement under international law.
EP10 - Child Soldiers (Bricking Your New Game Plus)
Explore the recruitment and use of child soldiers as a war crime under international law. Learn the psychological exploitation of children in armed conflict, the legal framework of the Rome Statute, and the long-term consequences on societies.
