You wake up and read that China decisively has moved in to unload it's military in Taiwan. What do you do?

jonuno@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – -16 points –
15

Nothing, yo. I'm just some middle management dude in New England what the fuck would I possibly do? What action could I take that would affect that situation at all? What would I have to even protect myself from in that situation that would warrant any action?

Same here. Well, aside from being a completely different person from TheAlbatross. I guess I'd go shopping, just in case there ends up being a big rush on supermarkets (and thus ironically contributing to any such rush). I'd also ping my financial manager and let him know he can do whatever he needs to with my investments to keep them healthy in the no doubt very turbulent financial times to come.

Anything else, it's probably too late to "get ahead" of (such as for example buying new computer hardware before Taiwan's chip fabs go offline for a while) so I'll just make do with what I've got and keep watching the news with interest.

This is the New England way. "Shit, somethings happening? Better make sure I got milk bread and eggs"

You'd still be able to get Intel chips, so an upgrade wouldnt be impossible. However, they would probably get overloaded and always be out of stock due to having to supply for literally everyone.

I would teleport myself to Taipei and immediately engage the entirety of the Chinese invasion force in furious hand-to-hand combat. Then I would stick around for the victory parade before heading back home to tell my boss why I missed work.

Make a cup of coffee, open up Lemmy and start scrolling for the news articles.

Feel for the people of Taiwan, including people I know and work closely with, who are very worried about this exact thing.

Assume I’m not getting paid for a TON of work, plus work people who work for me did, as we have a large client in Taiwan who work directly for the Taiwanese govt.

Reach out to the people I know there to see if they need / want help getting out / getting friends or family out / anything else they need.

Tell people in my life and on the internet “Fuck bullies, fuck all these aggressive state level actors beating up on ethnic groups, smaller countries and small regions that just want peace, autonomy and self determination. And fuck us for letting them. Like seriously, fuck all you all.”

Go back to work.

Well, doing nothing isn't really an option. I live right next to China.

Stock up on essentials before everyone else does, learn some Mandarin, and keep my head down while trying to move my family further away from the conflict.

Otherwise, keep going to work. Like many software developers, I'm of no use with an assault rifle, but at least I could keep earning money and paying taxes instead of panicking.

At some point we'll have repeated our mistakes so many times over that the history book will become too heavy and hit the floor with a loud BANG.

Well that's what the book I'm currently reading says, so it must be true.

This would likely mean my country's (Australia) biggest trading partner going to war with our biggest ally (USA). We're also close to this conflict geographically speaking so would likely play a key role in it. Honestly this conflict would really fuck our economy and make the entire region more unstable than it already is.

So I'd be quite concerned if this happened. It would destroy my country and be yet another reminder of how we are tied to the USA and will literally follow it to our own destruction.