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Idiot Ball: Difference between revisions
→Literature
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*** This [http://www.alternatehistory.com/gateway/analyses/Drakaproblems.html Alternate History page] actually points out all the historical problems the canon timeline has and how illogical the entire idea is.
*** For the Europeans to view the Draka as harmless requires them to ignore an empire which controls all of Africa and the Middle East, has the world's largest GDP, possesses the most technologically advanced military in the world (as demonstrated in multiple wars Europeans were involved in), and a displays a tendency to kill hundreds of thousands of revolting slaves. Ignoring a entity like that when it's just across the Mediterranean is flat-out insane.
**** They weren't ignoring it. Its just that by the time the Draka were ready to move on Europe, the Alliance's two choices were 'ally with the Draka against the Nazis' or 'ally with the Nazis against the Draka'. In hindsight, it would actually have been less awful for the world to make the second choice, but there is an understandable reluctance to criticize people for not wanting to work with -- and ensure the continued reign of -- the architects of the Holocaust.
* Herodotus tells of a king named Croesus who consults an oracle to determine whether or not he should attack an enemy's kingdom. The oracle says that if he attacks, "a great kingdom will be destroyed," at which point Croesus commits his army and ends up losing his capital city and being enslaved. He could've just asked which kingdom would be destroyed, but that's not nearly as fun, is it?
** The Oracle was always intentionally vague, and there was even a quote upon the entrance to her temple saying, in effect, "Know thyself." In that respect Croesus held the idiot ball in that he overestimated his forces.
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** Without Silas Heap opening the Sealed room in the Palace and unwittingly releasing Queen Etheldredda in the process in ''Physik'', the whole plot wouldn't have occurred.
* ''[[World War Z]]'': A good deal of the entire world (except Israel) seems to have become complete idiots for large portions of the book, by burying their heads in the sand and trying to ignore/suppress the zombie problem until it was too late. Most notably the Battle of Yonkers. The galling part is that many of the same people responsible for that had a [[Smart Ball]] before that and later on. The US military suddenly became absolutely incompetent for that one sequence to happen.
== Live-[[Action TV]] ==
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