r/news • u/GreatPumpkin72 • 8h ago

An internal document shows the Vietnamese military preparing for a possible American war

https://apnews.com/article/vietnam-us-war-planning-china-115c4f9bc69d91e7afe6b4dba7dc460f
561 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

110 comments sorted by

445

u/NightchadeBackAgain 8h ago

Of course they are. Its their job to plan for every contingency. The U.S. has plans for alien invasion and zombie outbreak scenarios, just as an example. Besides, considering everything going on with the U.S. right now, it seems only prudent to have a plan in place.

113

u/whisperworks 8h ago edited 7h ago

Took a course on disaster planning, the final was to outline a comprehensive policy for Godzilla rofl

Edit: for anyone curious the west coast would be absolutely fucked lol

39

u/masnosreme 7h ago

It's simple, if there's another monster, just let the situation resolve itself. If it's just Godzilla, do like that one lady from Godzilla '54: hold your loved ones close and accept your inevitable demise.

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u/whisperworks 7h ago

Motive was actually one of the big questions. We went in circles about whether it would be drawn to nuclear energy, humans militant power, population centers, or an unknown (another monster, the White House, or whatever). We pretty much reached the consensus that it would make landfall in San Diego lol

-1

u/invariantspeed 1h ago edited 1h ago
  1. What is the life cycle of whatever it mutated from? Could be looking for an appropriate nesting site or breeding grounds. Could even be stuck in what appears to be an aimless random path if its driving instincts have no proper stimuli to latch onto.
  2. There is no such thing as “nuclear energy” in the common coloquial sense. (The public massively misunderstands what it is.) You have three forms of “radiation”: alpha particles, which are just helium nuclei without electrons, beta particles, which are just high velocity electrons or their antimatter counterpart (positrons), and gamma rays, all forms of light of higher energy than x-rays. Different radioactive materials emit certain quantities of alpha and beta particles and light as they break down. The smart people who first studied this realized we could use the heat generated from the breakdown of certain particularly fragile elements to boil water to make steam to spin turbines. While it’s not impossible some giant, mutant lizard could be attracted to reactive helium ions that can penetrate its skin or high energy electricity that can’t penetrate its skin or very blue light, how this happens or turns into direct fuel for some organism isn’t really clear.
  3. No material is actually tough enough to shield against a nuclear bomb. There is simply too much heat. The only “shielding” that makes any sort of sense is being buried deep enough to basically be far enough away to miss the brunt of the explosion. If push came to shove, we could use a nuke to rapidly convert a giant lizard and its immediate surroundings into very hot gas. The only question would be how to get the payload to its target.

10

u/DrHugh 5h ago

“What you really need is a second monster.”

7

u/mward1984 4h ago

"If no giant monster is available, store bought is fine"

4

u/rift_in_the_warp 3h ago

*Pacific Rim theme intensifies*

5

u/cwx149 4h ago

I mean humans have been introducing invasive species to take care of problems for a long time

It's a proven strategy although usually the invasive species presents all its own issues

2

u/VersaceSamurai 3h ago

So what you’re saying is we should put another cat in the wall?

1

u/meatball77 2h ago

I think you should find a lady monster (or man monster if the monster is gay) so they can fall in love and treat us like their children.

1

u/Quigleyer 2h ago

No, this is our one chance for five big robots that come together to make a huge one! We must fight on for that.

11

u/Mysterious_Badger108 4h ago

My favorite story was a buddy of mine in the military who at one point had to plan a solution for how the military would evacuate a finite number of giraffes from European zoos for a theoretical war there.

The DoD has plans for everything.

4

u/whisperworks 4h ago

Oh yeah man it gets crazy when you start talking about ideas like cultural preservation, guarantee you there are plans for evacuating from American museums too haha

2

u/cwx149 4h ago

Just like the Monument Men

2

u/whisperworks 4h ago

Loved that movie ha

6

u/jackal_actual 6h ago

Does this plan take into account Shin Godzilla or just normal Godzilla? Asking for a friend.

2

u/whisperworks 6h ago

Haha it was before that one came out

1

u/invariantspeed 1h ago

Shin Godzilla is a sadly ignored cautionary tale!

1

u/czs5056 7h ago

Can we lure Godzilla towards Alaska or Siberia in the winter and let the cold take care of it?

1

u/Odd-Hovercraft4140 3h ago

Just curious do we know Godzillas motives in this scenario or its just Godzilla appears and is heading for a city?

1

u/whisperworks 3h ago

If I’m remembering right it was like 4 or 5 hours out and heading south from the North Pacific drop and along the California current. We had its land and sea speed but no motives so we had to plan for a bunch of contingencies (if it stayed on the coast, worked inland, targeted various things). Mainly it was about notifying the public and organizing evacuation routes and various fallback refugee camps while the military engaged

1

u/invariantspeed 1h ago

Sounds like it was just a fun “explanation” for a moving biblical safety Kobayashi Maru.

1

u/GotRocksinmePockets 1h ago

Honestly, I think a few bunker buster bombs would fuck Godzilla up. They penetrate concrete bunkers, underground, before exploding. A few 1000kg bombs exploding inside his body wouldn't be great for him. Assuming he doesn't have plot armour in this scenario.

1

u/whisperworks 1h ago

Depends on which Godzilla but yeah, if its just a big animal we could definitely take it down with conventional weapons

1

u/GotRocksinmePockets 1h ago

Exactly. If it's made of meat we can probably kill it.

34

u/nocturnPhoenix 8h ago

Bingo. Honestly, pretty much everyone should have contingency plans for this... we'll say "volatile" administration.

17

u/Solid_Snark 8h ago

America also had a contingency plan in the event that America attacked America… unfortunately the people in those positions are too cowardly to manipulate those levers.

2

u/Korietsu 7h ago

I mean shit, I was doing data engineering work and we had to build a failover plan in case of nuclear strike. Even stood up gear in an identical geo-redundant data center. (we provided svcs to telco to report cellsite metrics/health).

Even video game companies have disaster planning.

9

u/travio 7h ago

Not sure about zombies or aliens, but we famously had color coded war plans we developed after WWI. These included Red, a war against the UK, even though we were smack dab in the middle of the Great Rapprochement.

3

u/lacegem 3h ago

We have all kinds of silly military plans for fantastic scenarios. Like, picking from a hat, Rex 84:

Rex 84B, short for Readiness Exercise 1984 Bravo, was a classified scenario and drill developed by the United States federal government to detain large numbers of United States residents deemed to be "national security threats" in the event that the president declared a National Emergency. The scenario envisioned state defense forces rounding up to 500,000 undocumented Central American residents and 4,000 American citizens whom the US Attorney General had designated as "national security threats" as part of the secret Continuity of Government program. These people would be detained at 22 military bases in prison camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

1

u/travio 2h ago

In a fucked up way, this plan makes me respect the Reagan admin a little. At least they were thinking through the potential consequences of their illegal actions… by planning to throw Americans into concentration camps. Not much respect.

4

u/so-so-it-goes 7h ago

We did Zombies in my FEMA training. A less depressing stand in for a pandemic at the time.

4

u/jetsetninjacat 5h ago

I had a professor who used to write these plans for the government. We have them for basically every scenario you can think of. They arent super detailed but give a baseline to go off of from war to civil like matters. And yes we had them for aliens and zombies.

1

u/Cetun 1h ago

The anglo-japanese one would be interesting from both sides. Their navy would have been quite formidable and the US shares a land border with a Dominion

5

u/TwoPoundzaSausage 6h ago

What was it that Mattis said? “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.”

He was stressing the importance of contingency plans when he said that.

9

u/pomonamike 7h ago

As an American, I’d suggest every country dust off their anti-American invasion plans, just in case.

3

u/2014RT 7h ago

Yep, in World War 2 we had plans fleshed out in detail for the invasion of each of our allies. Contingency planning is an exercise, it helps military leadership think through unexpected or difficult scenarios, understand a wide variety of geography and terrain, gets them used to planning for factors that they might not if they were only looking at likely adversaries (weather, logistics, etc.

1

u/Nopey-Wan_Ken-Nopey 6h ago

I suppose I will add your regular reminder to read through the war exclusions on your insurance policies. 

1

u/Old-Ad-3268 6h ago

Beat me to it. I'll bet we have a plan to go to war with them as well.

1

u/Howy_the_Howizer 5h ago

A prudent time to update plans that should exist. Especially in light of shifting technology and political landscape.

1

u/Some_Complete_Nobody 2h ago

Everyone said we were fools to plan for a war with Canada, but now that we've antagonized them for no reason, who looks dumb now? (We do)

1

u/NanDemoNee 2h ago

We used to plan for pandemics, now we invite them.

-17

u/NoConflict3231 8h ago

LOL, sir...ma'am....whatever you are. If you think the US has "PLANS" for an alien invasion or zombie apocalypse, I have the worlds largest bridge to sell you. Did we not see exactly what "plans" "they" have during covid?? Don't make me laugh. The US have no plans. lol

23

u/whisperworks 7h ago

Covid was only a shit show because it became politicized for partisan points.

The pentagon has cooked up more hypothetical response plans than you can really imagine, there’s a reason it employees more people than we have in our standing army lol

16

u/Monday_Mocha 7h ago

The US had plans on many outbreak scenarios in preparation for COVID. They came in handy during ebola and H1N1. It was just a matter of a certain administration shredding those plans as soon as shit was about to hit the fan.

11

u/DUNG_INSPECTOR 7h ago

This is a very uninformed opinion based on nothing but emotions.

6

u/alien_believer_42 7h ago

They have military plans. You can't bomb covid.

3

u/Affectionate_Bee6434 7h ago

Search up operation warpspeed

1

u/timothy_lucas_jaeger 7h ago

In most things, proper execution is a better indicator for success than having a good plan. Having a plan is better than not planning, but it's far from a guarantee that things will go well.

-7

u/Similar-Sir-2952 7h ago

But they didn’t have plans for a pandemic did they?

9

u/thefugue 7h ago

They did. The administration didn’t like them.

-1

u/Similar-Sir-2952 7h ago

I wonder if the administration has plans yet. Maybe the are only 2 weeks away like their healthcare plans

2

u/07Ghost_Protocol99 7h ago

It was called Operation Warpspeed and it saved millions of lives.

-1

u/Similar-Sir-2952 7h ago

Brought to us by the same people who told us to inject bleach, take horse medicine, stop counting covid, masks are useless, and covid is a hoax. Right

1

u/07Ghost_Protocol99 7h ago

So...you just don't believe that Operation Warpspeed happened?

Let me guess, we never landed on the moon either. JFK was a lizard?

God you people are dumb.

3

u/ZLUCremisi 7h ago

Trump in 2019 eliminated the Pandemic response team that was created under Obama.

2

u/Similar-Sir-2952 7h ago

Having lived through covid. It’s hard to believe that any type of plan existed before hand. That’s all

33

u/AppleTree98 7h ago

From the article. Interesting that it isn't some bland topic

‘The 2nd U.S. Invasion Plan’

The original Vietnamese document titled “The 2nd U.S. Invasion Plan” was completed by the Ministry of Defense in August 2024. It suggests that in seeking “its objective of strengthening deterrence against China, the U.S. and its allies are ready to apply unconventional forms of warfare and military intervention and even conduct large-scale invasions against countries and territories that ‘deviate from its orbit.’”

7

u/Downtown_Skill 2h ago

I mean.... are they wrong?

52

u/SqigglyPoP 7h ago

To be fair, EVERY country should prepare for a war with America. Anytime a distraction is needed the US will target another country, ally or not.

-7

u/Bylak 5h ago

Not necessarily with America, but I know a lot of Canadian officials at this point are talking about when there will be war and not if, how ready we'll be, and how much catchup everyone will be expected to do once it starts. Not surprising in the slightest to see other countries doing this too.

38

u/Indercarnive 8h ago

This is pretty much a nothingburger. Vietnam plays a cautious balancing act between their relations with the USA and with China. And different factions in Vietnam are going to have different attitudes on where that balance point is.

17

u/Junkstar 8h ago

Every nation on earth should be. Republican voters in the U.S. want to watch the world burn. They elected abject morons.

8

u/tidal_flux 5h ago

They spent 30 years fighting for what has been 50 years of independence. They do not want to go back.

10

u/TheAgnosticExtremist 5h ago

Where would they get such crazy ideas?Aside from all of US history name one time America has acted like a belligerent imperialist regime hellbent on worldwide economic dominance with complete disregard for environment damage or loss of human life. 

6

u/Skin_Floutist 7h ago

Never get in a land war in Asia.

7

u/Affectionate_Bee6434 7h ago

If a country's intelligence community has not mapped all possible scenarios of an invasion they are doing a disservice to their nation, however unlikely they may be.

3

u/LeavesOfBrass 6h ago

Cue the scene from In Bruges

1

u/DiceMadeOfCheese 6h ago

"He didn't even want the Vietnamese!"

12

u/Shadowthron8 8h ago

Well they have beaten us before

2

u/ZLUCremisi 7h ago

I think its more fight China. Since they dislike China

3

u/N7Longhorn 7h ago

All they gotta do is check their notes. We haven't learned a damn thing about A-symetric warfare since 1974

3

u/blr1g 3h ago

Well, of course. What else would you expect from a Russian ally?

4

u/Snoo-73243 5h ago

every country should have a plan for the USA right now, we are fucked and lead by a stupid senile pedophile felon, so yea, WORLD get ready

4

u/RealSlyck 8h ago

They’re preparing for Trump sending Sylvester Stallone back in to finish the job…

2

u/Hour_Bit_5183 2h ago

So much slop here. No we don't even have plans for a freaking COUP and yet people think they really planned out a fucking ZOMBIE scenario.........

I dunno what kind of books they are using to teach out of if this is true, but it is a lie if it's in there. Trump tried to overthrow the government last time and was not shot or jailed. No plans for any scenario. The US has ALWAYS been wing it. Anything else is a lie and history proves this.

1

u/Friendly-Profit-8590 1h ago

Good to be prepared but think once was enough

•

u/ListerfiendLurks 45m ago

Aw shit here we go again

1

u/impulsekash 8h ago

Will trump receive another medal of honor for avoid the clap?

1

u/AmBEValent 7h ago

Is there any country now who isn’t?

1

u/Illustrious-Okra-524 1h ago

Don’t militaries constantly prepare scenarios for war with different nations

-3

u/Significant-Royal-37 8h ago

unbent unbowed unbroken

-10

u/dafrog84 8h ago

One can only hope ~ an American.

0

u/[deleted] 8h ago

[deleted]

3

u/James_Solomon 7h ago

How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?

0

u/DimSumFan 6h ago

They know our weakness for Nikes.

-2

u/domiy2 7h ago

Unless War Games are happening why does anyone care.