Hopeless War: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|This is it. [[This Is Reality|This is reality]]. Of course it is. How deluded was I?<ref>Because of the sense of imminent danger, the [[This Is Reality]] might not be a joke. He is more comparing reality to a naive-fantasy in which there is a chance of victory. He is not comparing reality to a book or fiction as we normally think of it.</ref> No. No, on some level I knew it all along. I mean when you stop and think for a second it's obvious. There is no winning. Not against them.|''[[Attack on Titan]]'' (english dub)}}
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== Film ==
* Subverted in the ''[[Terminator]]'' franchise (at least the first one) as there is a Hopeless Robot War fought in the
** The war was still quite brutal, and bleak for the humans though. As a good chunk of humanity got hit by SEVERAL [[Depopulation Bomb
** ''Terminator: Salvation'' shows that time traveling has actually [[It Got Worse|made things worse]].
*** {{spoiler|The T-800s come in a full ten years earlier and humans only have normal weapons (which we all know do ''nothing'' against the 800s), not plasma guns from the first version of the war, and while the main network and production base is destroyed along with a large number of unfinished 800s it's heavily implied Skynet has many many more. However, it would seem Skynet didn't go as heavy on the Nukes this time and the humans have A-10s and tanks}}.
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* The Cylons from ''[[Battlestar Galactica]]'' nuked most of the humans and are hunting down the few tens of thousands of survivors in a ongoing costly war. In fact things got so bad the crew of the Pegasus started to cannibalize civilian ships for spare parts.....by ''force''
** It became somewhat of a hopeless war for both sides after the Cylons lost their ressurection technology.
* The ''[[War of the Worlds (TV series)|War of the Worlds]]'' TV series has [[The Squad]], called the Blackwood Project (which also has [[The Cavalry]] as back up) fighting remnants from the original 1950's invasion guerrilla style. The Blackwood Project has it
** The Mor-Tax aliens don't have it very easy either, as they have to struggle to adapt to earth and free their comrades and war ships that are being held in military storage. Which, of course, is hard due to the interference of the Blackwood Project. In fact during the second season one of the leaders of the second wave of aliens (the mothren) questioned another lead mothren over the choice of picking planet earth in the first place.
** Most of the time neither side ever actually accomplished anything, outside of stalemating each other. And if either side actually got a victory it was usually a very [[Pyrrhic Victory|hollow one]].
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** ''The End of Time'' revealed that {{spoiler|the Time Lord-Dalek war ended up as an example of this. The Time Lords became morally corrupted to the degree that the war ended up being between two different types of [[Omnicidal Maniac]], as the Daleks wanted to destroy every living thing in the universe that wasn't a Dalek and the Time Lords wanted to escape the war by '''destroying the entire universe''' so they could [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|ascend]]. Whole planets full of people were time-looped to be repeatedly resurrected only to die horribly again. The damage to the timeline was unleashing several sorts of [[Eldritch Abomination]] on the universe. At which point the Doctor decided to <s>just kill absolutely everyone involved</s> time-lock the entire era so that nothing can get in or out and the whole thing is just shunted off into its own little pocket of space-time.}}
** The Fourth Doctor serial "The Armageddon Factor" featured one of these between the peoples of Atrios and Zios. The [[Attack! Attack! Attack!|suicidally aggressive Atrian commander]] didn't help things.
* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'' had a mild version of this trope. Much was made of the superiority of Goa'uld technology and the near-hopelessness of a war against them, especially in the earlier seasons. The last episode of Season 1 showed us an alternate Earth where the Goa'uld were slowly but unstoppably obliterating city after city. In later seasons, there was an episode where it turned out Teal'c never ''truly'' believed the Goa'uld could be defeated, and a number of episodes where every seeming victory over the Goa'uld just seemed to make things ''worse'' in the end. On the other hand, the Goa'uld's over-the-top villain act (often lampshaded in the show), the [[Villain Decay]] of their mooks,<ref>
* [[Falling Skies]]: the worlds military has been devastated, and civilians are all that's left of any real resistance.
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== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Warhammer 40000]]''. Let's see:
** The Necrons, a race of formerly humanoid but short-lived people [[Immortality Immorality|turned brain-dead immortal androids]], are reawakening after 50 million years to [[Omnicidal Maniac|kill literally everything in the galaxy]] and ''eat all souls''. Oh, and they brought their [[Eldritch Abomination|gods]] with them. Oh, and they were only stopped before by the entire galaxy being overran by
** The Tyranids, a race of [[Hive Mind|psychic locusts]] that ''eat planets'', have attacked the galaxy 3 times, being held at bay only by strokes of luck and the sacrifice of
** [[Cosmic Horror|Cha]][[The Heartless|os]] is sending out stronger and deadlier incursions from their alternate universe than ever
** The Orks, being a race of fungus-people, are ''everywhere'' (killing one releases spores that grow more Orks) and nearly impossible to get rid of. The only thing preventing them from taking over the galaxy in very short order is that they have just as much fun killing ''each other''.
** The Eldar are dying, having destroyed themselves accidentally creating a rogue god/dess of
** The Dark Eldar are missing these hypertech soul capturing crystals, so they keep the god/dess of lust away by causing as much random pain and misery as possible, by doing slave raids and torturing the slaves to death. It doesn't work
** The Humans in the setting? They're a civilization of [[Omnicidal Maniac
** The Tau may be the most "hopeful" or "positive" civilization in the
* ''[[Warhammer Fantasy]]'' is, if possible, even bleaker than 40K.
** Orcs are still there. They outnumber mankind and most other races combined. As usual the only thing keeping them from taking over the world is the lack of unity.
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* The humans of the ''[[Halo]]'' series were spread out as far as the outer rim of the galaxy with their many planet colonies, which were in the hundreds . But eventually they were pushed all the way back to Earth's solar system, and their numbers reduced greatly to a mere 200 million. And of that 200mill, all that's left of the vast UNSC military was a few 10's of millions. 10's of Million UNSC forces may seem like a lot but when you put it into proper context of the UNSC formerly being in the high 10's of millions (if not hundreds of millions), and the human civilians at over 39 BILLION!! (A rough estimate by the [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Human#Population according to Dr. Halsey]) It really put the casualties of war into perspective. The reason for this was because of an invading collective force of [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]] called ''The Covenant'' who saw humanity's existence as a form of heresy. Oh and then there's the alien parasite known as [[The Virus|''The Flood'']] [[Zombie Apocalypse|which is a huge threat to both humans AND covenant forces.]]
** Specifically the battle of Harvest that dragged on for 5 grueling years, and the fall of Reach which was a HEAVILY guarded and fortified planet (more so than Earth).
** What's sobering about this war is the fact that the [[Space Marine|U.N.S.C.]] was filled with legendary [[
*** The 200 million figure is for Earth; canon says many or most inner colony worlds were bypassed to attack it after Reach. The death toll is still horrific, but there are probably tens of billions of survivors at least.
*** Not to make light of a horrific death toll, the inner colonies were among the most industrialized and populated, though they don't really get mentioned much with the notable exceptions of Reach and Earth (the most important). Stands to reason that, there are many billions of survivors yet.
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*** Maybe..the relationship between humans and Sangheili are still dicey at best...if ''Halo: Glasslands'' is to be believed.
* ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'' sometimes portrayed the war against the Kilrathi as hopeless, especially in the [[Tie-in Novel|Tie In Novels]]. So much so that the only way that humanity could come up with to win was a desperate strike against {{spoiler|the Kilrathi homeworld, completely destroying it and killing millions, if not billions of civilians to demoralize the entire race.}} The fact that it works is a miracle.
* The ''[[Free Space]]'' series consistently portrayed the war against [[Omnicidal Maniac|the Shivans]] as hopeless, especially in the succession of [[Hope Spot
* The Virtual Console title ''[[Sin and Punishment]]'' screws this trope up entirely. Originally released on the N64 in 2000 exclusively to Japanese audiences, the story of the game takes place in the near future, where nearly everyone has been screwed over into becoming psychotic killer mutants of any given breed. In 2007, it was localized and released on the Virtual Console to English-speaking audiences. The screw-up? ''The game takes place in the year 2007.'' [[Hilarity Ensues]].
** This seems more like a problem with [[Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale]].
** ''[[Sin and Punishment 2]]'' fits better: it's revealed that humanity only exists because some [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] called the Creators need a massive supply of [[Red Shirt
* One of the major themes of ''[[Half Life]] 2''. In the 'Episode' expansions it's heavily implied that even if the Combine occupation forces are driven from the Earth, the retribution from the Combine proper will be even worse than their current regime.
** All accounts seem to suggest that the Combine are going out of their way to preserve humanity in order to turn us into slaves (thanks to Doctor Breen's "efforts"), and that they need but a ''nudge'' to destroy us all utterly.
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** It wasn't {{spoiler|Vekta's navy, it was the ISA fleet, as in the ''entire human forces'' and the Helghan fleet was ''most of their force'' (hence why Visari claim "We have lost nothing")}}
** The ISA managed to pull a {{spoiler|last minute victory from the Helghast which involves triggering [[Hoist by His Own Petard|the Petrusite Bomb]], which came at the cost of billions of Helghast lives.}}
* The protagonist of ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'' wages a [[One-Man Army|one man war]] against the legions of the Infected and the full military might of the [[Punch Clock Villain|United States Marines Corp]] and [[Armies Are Evil|Blackwatch]]. It is completely
* The ''[[Resistance]]'' series. A war that mankind is losing because their enemies, [[Alien Invasion|the Chimera]], are so advanced that everything the humans have tried against them has been proven either obsolete (like {{spoiler|the anti-Carrier serum in ''Resistance: Retribution.'' Even if James Grayson succeeded in killing off all the Carriers with it, it did nothing at the end, since the Chimera had already changed their conversion methods beforehand}}) or ends up [[Plethora of Mistakes|failing horribly]] (examples in question: {{spoiler|the British capturing an Angel in the second game, basically becoming bait for an attack, and the [[Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb|Fission Bomb in the second game]] ended up triggering the teleportation of Earth into some other place in space}}). It's also implied that {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|Daedalus']]}} [[Evil Plan|plan]] [[The Bad Guy Wins|worked.]] And finally, with most of the key characters [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog|either dead or incapable of recovering]] from [[The Virus]], [[Failure Is the Only Option|the situation]] [[It Got Worse|just keeps getting worse.]] However, in the third and final installment, {{spoiler|The human managed to pull through with a cure and the more obvious problem was solved through liberal application of firepower from an [[One-Man Army]].}}
** {{spoiler|As of the end of Resistance 3, it seems that the hope is back into the world.}}
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* In ''[[Dragon Age]]'', the dwarves are fighting one against the darkspawn. Due to the darkspawn's overwhelming numbers, as well as the dwarves' low population and slow birth rate, they are slowly losing, down to only two cities (which hate each other). It's made worse by the fact that a large portion of their population is not allowed to fight, due to how dwarven culture forbids the massive surface-caste and castless population from serving as warriors. It's theorized that if the dwarven culture doesn't change soon, then it will be destroyed, even if the dwarves live on.
** Depending on your decisions, things may start looking a lot less bleak for them, even getting human troops to help out. Or, you could [[It Got Worse|inadvertently cause them to be permanently sealed off from the surface]]...
*** The first Blight had seemed like a
* [[Jade Empire]] had ghosts overrunning the Empire {{spoiler|thanks to the Sun brothers massacring the Spirit Monks and enslaving the Goddess in charge of the dead}}. There was no hope of winning: every ghost disrupted would eventually reform, and everyone killed by a ghost would eventually become one. And to make matters worse, the imbalance caused by the appearance of the ghosts is empowering demons.
* ''[[Gratuitous Space Battles]]'' is set in a galaxy where ''everyone'' is at war with everyone else. [[Bug War|The Alliance]] and [[Church Militant|the Order]] are on genocidal rampages to wipe out everyone who isn't them, [[The Empire]] is out to conquer whatever parts of the galaxy they don't rule already, [[The Horde|the Swarm]] are invading with their endless fleets, [[La Résistance|the Rebels]] are fighting to overthrow the Empire and survive amidst all these crazy lunatics trying to wipe them out, and the Tribe have decided that the only way to bring peace and harmony to the galaxy is to blow everyone else to atomic ribbons. And all of the above owe [[The Federation]] money, and their [[Private Military Contractors|"Contract Enforcement Division"]] is coming to collect.
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* The Elder Wars in ''[[Lusternia]]'', fought between the [[Precursors|Elder Gods]] and the [[Cosmic Horror|Soulless Gods]]: not only did the Soulless outnumber the Elders, they ''ate them'' upon defeat and [[Cannibalism Superpower|gained their powers]]. The Elders tried the same tactic against them, but it didn't go so well.
* This is how the war in ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'' was viewed by many Gallians {{spoiler|before Alicia's Valkyrur side awakens,}} as Gallia was severely outnumbered and didn't have many of the technological advances that the Imperials did. In fact, the battle in which the spoilered event occurs would have garanteed Gallia's defeat had said event not happened.
* A gameplay example: in MOBA games like ''[[League of Legends]]'' it is possible to realise your team is going to lose in the first
* In [[Digital Devil Saga]], it's heavily implied that before the events of the game, the Junkyard was in a perpetual stalemate. To the point where an alliance is ''almost unheard of''.
* ''[[The Babylon Project]]'' plays out several battles of the Earth-Minbari war from ''[[Babylon 5]]'', mentioned above.
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== Web Original ==
* ''[[Tech Infantry]]'' features an Earth Federation that is in two endless Hopeless Wars at once. The first is against [[Bug War|The Bugs]], large insectoid aliens that never seem to be defeated, no matter how far they get pushed back at the cost of horrific casualties. The second is against itself, in a seemingly endless series of Civil Wars, coup attempts, resistance movements, and supernatural secret wars carried on behind the scenes inside the very power structure itself. Even when the Eastern Bloc conquers the Federation, beats the minor alien races along the border into submission, and seems to finally reach some sort of low-grade stalemate with the Bugs, the former Federation military-political power structure becomes the NEW [[La Résistance]], carrying on the tradition of endless civil war from the other side of the barbed wire. Meanwhile, the Vampires, Mages, Werewolves, and other supernatural creatures continue their private and not-so-private power struggles as usual.
* The USA in the [[Alternate History]] ''[[Decades of Darkness]]'' become an expansionist, slave-holding [[Evil Empire]]. Mexico and other Latin American states are fighting a
* In ''[[The Salvation War]]'', the forces of Hell find themselves in this situation when they try to conquer 2008 Earth and Humanity kicks their tails and proceeds to conquer ''them''!.
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** And the German soldiers, especially on the Eastern Front, knew what was at stake if the Russians made it to their homes, especially considering what they had done on their advance East and the likely reponse. Several historians have suggested that the wisest course of action would have been for the Germans to surrender on the Western Front and throw everything to the East to keep the Russians out, but Hitler wouldn't hear of it until they were literally right outside the city. Those decisions doomed Eastern Europe and Germany to nearly a half-century of Warsaw Pact oppression.
*** ''[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/remarks.php?trope=Main.HopelessWar Discussion]''
** Similarly, the first, few successful years of Germany's Operation Barbarossa saw what ultimately boiled down to a German effort to annihilate all (or, at least, a majority) of human
*** The turn-around on the Russian Front in WWII from 1941 to 1943 is the real life equivalent of a ''[[Rocky (film)|Rocky]]'' film, where he's beat up for most of the fight, then gets up off of the canvas to win.
*** The cracks in the German strategy were showing up even during the initial offensive. The first Battle of Rostov proved that blitzkrieg couldn't deal with Russian weather and Russian counterattacks. Whether any significant portion of the Soviet army was aware of this is a different issue,
* Japan at the end of WWII. By the end, they were litterally fighting the whole world. Germany had surrendered and Italy, along with others of Japan's allies, had pulled a [[Heel Face Turn]], leaving Japan to fight on alone against the allies. This was the phase of the war that added the world 'Kamikaze' to the english language, even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese generals had an audience with the Emperor where they ''demanded'' the right to fight on.
** It goes beyond that, in order to fight on they actually decided to [[Rage Against the Heavens|Rebel from the rule of the emperor]] (who at that time was thought to be a [[Physical God]] to fight the Americans
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* Great Sioux War of 1876-77
** Particularly the Battle of the Little Bighorn
* The Battle of Thermopylae, long remembered as one of history's greatest [[Last Stand
** And if they had held there, the Naval fleet at Artemisium would have kept fighting the hopeless battle against the larger fleet. It was only retreating to Salamis that they were able to turn the tables.
* The [[War of the Triple Alliance]]. Paraguay decided that it would be a good idea to invade Brazil and crushed their army. Then, as if that wasn't enough, they went to war with Argentina and Uruguay at the same time. Paraguay won early victories, but ground down over six years.The war only ended with the complete conquest of Paraguay by the Alliance and the death of their dictator. Over half of the prewar population of Paraguay died before they finally surrendered.
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* The Invasion of Iraq, the Iraq forces had very little chance on standing against the Coalition forces. Hussein utterly fooled Iraq into thinking they could stand up against invasion with big speeches and mass propraganda, while in truth the invasion forces were having little trouble fighting of Iraqi forces. Many Iraqi forces instead try to avoid fighting the Coalition forces, some were desperate into surrendering than fighting back, one instance is a buch of Iraqis surrendered to a news crew. In the end the Coalition have captured Baghdad, Hussein went into hiding, and the statue of himself was brought down.
** More than one commentator has suggested that the very phrase "War on Terror(ism)", in both its' variants, is by design unwinnable; terrorism is a ''tactic'' used by stateless groups too decentralized to ever sign formal articles of surrender while "terror" is an ''emotion''.
* The [[Arab-Israeli Conflict]], for both sides. The idea that Israel could ever be decisively defeated militarily is laughable, the fate of the Gaza strip is a prime example. On the other hand, Israel can not maintain the current status quo forever, Jewish birth rates are far lower than Muslims, the [[wikipedia:Demographic threat#Israel|'Demographic Bomb']] that Right Wing politicians have warned about is very real, by 2050, Jews will be a minority in their own land, from then Israel will truly feel besieged. The obvious solution is of course, an end to the conflict - the 'Two State Solution', but that has been a
* The conflict between South and North Korea, which has not officially ended since the beginning of the Korean War. For the forseeable future, both countries are locked in an eternal stalemate, constantly fearing an attack by the other nation. South Korea doesn't want to attack because of North Korea's massive army while North Korea won't attack due to South Korea's massive technological advantage (and rather large army). Not to mention, [[World War III|the United States and China are guaranteed to back their respective allies should hostilities break out.]] Finally, the ideological differences and stubborness of both sides means a peaceful solution won't be likely either.
** If it came to it, the South will probably win. Chinese support for the North is far from certain, and the US is not likely to support Southern aggression either. The South can rapidly build up its military, but the North cannot rapidly close the technological gap.
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