I saw this question posted on a forum earlier asking about what kind of military do we need or are we trending too?

So this would be my reply:

The kind of military we need is one that is more diversified in roles, smaller in individual unit size, easier to deploy thus more rapid deployment ability, and modular. There's no reason we should be deploying whole brigades or corps when we can deploy in different intervals battalion size elements(or smaller). It's after all 1 military, and within 1 organization we all use the same tools between the same MOS (1 supply unit uses the same system as another supply unit).

The only long standing deployments should be intelligence and supply: administrative stays with the unit, legal stays with the unit, infantry is a unit, artillery is a unit, armor is a unit, etc...; but supply comes from higher and requires longer to obtain and distribute, intelligence needs to be in the area longer to actually develop intelligence.

One of the longest hauls was just getting armor across the Atlantic: that delay could mean the difference in having an advantage or not. We already do this with specialized units, for example the entirety of SOCOM, international aid and relief, search and rescue. We need to extend this modular, smaller, rapid unit type into the entirety of the military to be able to wage future conflicts. The Marine Corps almost has it integrated completely which is why a lot of the times they are the first ones in (outside of any SF mission): they have that advantage over the rest of the military.

It seems less and less likely that future conflicts will ever return to being multiple state-on-state wars, and even then we're including more players with more military powers so small rapid units still holds true. Future conflicts seem to be trending towards 4th generation warfare, unconventional warfare (i.e., guerrilla warfare). We don't need large standing armies for these conflicts, we need small, rapid, light units that can go anywhere and reach anyplace. We need less of a state building military because it shouldn't be the military building the state, outside of international relief(the byproduct of a national agenda, with its financing and supply) the military is one of the worst institutions to rebuild a state. We blow shit up, we kill or subdue our enemies and all the jobs in the military support this role. Our job is to instill fear and do the unmentionables for our country.

What we need is an organization of judges, lawyers, lots and lots of cops, doctors, engineers, teachers, etc.. that can be deployed to an area after the military has secured it and declared it safe. We go in and we break it then we hand it over to the proper people who are there to rebuild, heal the people and get on with life post-conflict. I realize that yes, we the military have a lot of this which is why we're also state builders, but what I'm calling for is a complete restructuring of the military and our foreign agencies.

I saw this mentioned awhile back by people analyzing the fallout of the Iraq campaign and where we went wrong. We where ill-prepared and we took too long to make a decision on if we should get involved in the secretarian violence that erupted afterwards.

I feel doing all of this will alleviate not only stress on military units deploying (since smaller units are deploying more often and for shorter periods of time) but also allow that change in focus once the military has done it's job and we deploy the rebuilding organization. Because then it's no longer a conflict but state rebuilding.

There are good days, then there are bad days. I feel like murdering my roommates sometimes, for being so......blatantly rude and disrespectful. Also, girls, particularly my ex, confuse the living hell out of me. I enjoy hanging out with her because she's one of my best friends, however there are times where the closeness can be awkward.

I hate college. I can't believe I'm still in. It's depressing.


Work in progress stuff:

Page 3 wip:

Like the title says:

Some concept art towards my comic.

I had the strangest nightmare. The following is what I can recall:
For most of my nightmare it alternates between 1st and 3rd person perspective viewing. Like a movie, which is a little weird in my dreams.

It began with a full family on a hilltop having a picnic. I remember the colors from these, very vibrant emerald green for the grass hilltop, a very rich blue for the sky, marshmallow white clouds, sun yellow and orange for flowers and what not. When watching the family it was like I was a fly on the wall: I wasn't there but I could control the camera view and distance. The sounds where drowned out by a deep calm breeze. There was no other life besides this family.

So they beginning unfolding their blanket, setting down their cooler and setting up the food and drinks. The kids are running around with kites smiles all around. Grandma is sitting down near a tree, her back towards the family. After the preparations are finished, they begin hollering at grandma to come over and eat. The sky starts getting darker almost like a purple, storm clouds move in, and grandma isn't responding.

She turns her head and you see a huge gouge in her neck and claw marks down her face. Her eyes are jaundice yellow, the pupils heavily dilated, and blood is spewing out of the hole in her neck. Her mouth contorts, she lets out this wailing scream, she's suddenly up, arms flailing about, doing this like demon sprint and engulfs the "camera".

The next thing I remember is a birds eye view that is descending through a cityscape. It's night time and for some reason I know that it's been night time constantly for a few months now, and no matrix-always-night darkness but darkness in that there are no stars in the sky, few street lights work, and it's more like pitch black darkness. A void, and to make it worse, it's raining.

As the camera is descending towards the ground at a slow pace I begin to see shapes and figures. There are no colors except either black or white. I see body pieces littering the ground, I can hear screams and howls going off in the distance. Then I see people running. The camera suddenly snaps to 1st person and I realize I'm one of the people running, running away from a horde of zombies. In my nightmares the zombies are never intelligent, they are more like a pack of angry rabid dogs who only want to eat, claw and bite. They don't organize, they don't rationalize, it's just meat and the craving to consume.

So we're running, there are maybe 4 of us. I can barely make out the city we are running through but buildings are either completely destroyed, abandoned, or on fire. I look back and see what's chasing us and it's 4-6 zombies. Suddenly gunfire erupts and the zombies are now a pile of contorted smoky clumps of meat. We here shouts but I never really hear dialog. We meet up with the people who've rescued us and we vow to save others, as many as we can.

Months pass by and our group has grown. There are approximately 45 of us and we've managed to secure a manufacturing plant. We're losing more than we are saving and the zombie horde is growing too fast for us to fight it. We decide to create protector robots but we have to sacrifice 8 people to do so. The lights in the factory are a very very bright white or pale blue. It burns the eyes after months of being used to darkness. We brandish numbers on these bots, 1-8, and we give them codes to obey. Things seem to be going well with these robots decimating huge swaths of zombies outright, we're able to secure more and more of a foothold in the city but we lose a robot in one of our battles.

The next thing I remember is that somehow the zombies have breached our security and they're "converting" people right in our factory as they work their ways through the remainder of our group. I'm running through a long alley in the factory, pipes and vats on either side of me, and I remember the loud stomping footsteps, the deep breathing, the menacing feel in the air. I'm thrown down and I can only make out the silouette of the beast standing above me. It's not a zombie, it's something else. Where hands and forearms are instead the glint of metal blades cheaply surgically attached to the elbow. It lifts one arm in the air and I can see the dead body of one of the survivors I was with. With his other arm he cuts off his head and I can see a very vibrant red pour out and into this beasts mouth, almost like a shower of blood. He throws the carcass aside and begins walking towards me. He raises his arm back and as he's about to kill me one of the protector bots takes the blow for me. I get up to run and the beasts cuts the bot in two, and another protector bot takes the hit. One by one they all sacrifice themselves for me and begin dying. 4 of us somehow survive, find our escape jeep and we flee. We decide to go the only safe city we humans have been able to sustain and it's called something like Malaboa. From what I can remember, the city is partially underground and above ground and some genius inventor has utilized the huge electric towers to emit a field that placates the zombies so they lose their urge to consume. So they just wander and get in the way, completely docile.

As we are approaching the city we see huge swaths of lights and we grow excited. People are actually living above ground, shopping, eating, enjoying life in the wasteland and darkness. As we are making our way to the command bunker to link up and explosion goes off in the distance and all the lights go off. We hear screaming, howling and growling, and the sounds of flesh being torn off bodies. We turn on the vehicle headlights and where was a huge population of people is now either a scrambling and panicking horde of humans or a growing and hungry horde of zombies, some of them running towards our vehicle. So as we are running the zombies over and trying not to get turned, we finally make it to the command bunker and they let us inside. I remember the main doors that safeguard everyone inside; they are these huge metal, castle like doors with only a small viewport to look outside. The power both outside and inside is flickering on and off and I can tell they are trying to restart the whole system.

I don't hear the screaming and yelling but I see it in their faces. I can feel my heart rate race faster and faster. What am I going to do what are these people going to do, where is my gun? As these people are struggling to regain command and control and calm the panic, I can hear the pounding of flesh on that huge metal bunker door. The pounding sounds are growing, it sounds like hundreds of arms or hands are scratching, clawing, and beating the door. Somehow I can see this taking place from the other side and I can see the zombies losing their fingers and hands to this door, literally scraping and clawing fingers and bone off. So now there is this huge blob of red chunky mess on the door. I slowly walk up to the viewport, hearing the growling and snarls on the other side, I peak through the reinforced glass and see the same beast who was attacking me in the factory, only this time it actually has hands. Well they are more like bear claws, but hands nonetheless. It's trying to pry the control box and short circuit it to open the huge bunker doors. I see more beasts just like him walk out of the darkness and into the faint light, and they are all different in style but obviously, bigger, stronger, and not zombies.

Before waking up, the last thing I remember before the door opens is the branding of the number 7 on it's shoulder.


And now, every time I think about it, I want to turn it into a survival horror comic, using only 4 colors. It'd be in very messy ink style which would go great with drawing rain. So I'd use blue, white, black and red as the only colors in this comic, and the more I think about it the more I want to do it. The problem is, I'm deathly terrified of my zombie nightmares(this isn't the first one; there was one where I killed my best friend by shooting him in the head because he was a zombie, but that's another story), and I know if I continue to think about these nightmares I'll just have them again or have some kind of nightmare.

TL;DR: I had a zombie nightmare and now I want to turn it into a survival horror comic.

Blah, this sucks. Things aren't going right at this moment and it's stressing me out.




I need to quit smoking as well.

Proving to my roommate that I still have it in me to do silly art. I might come back and finish this, I might not, either way I'm pretty happy how it turned out for a quicky.

Work in Progress(Still)