Alright, so I'm going to pose a long list of factors and you give me your honest opinion on if you would do this. Let's say you are a tyrant, an overwhelming douche who doesn't care about the people he rules and only does so because he has power to command. Now, for the sake of this argument, let's say that there are a group of "terrorist" in your kingdom surmised of say 3 million people when rounded down. The terrorist are hiding within your kingdom and you don't know where, but you know that if they continue their terrorism then others will pick up their cause and join them. Now, the biggest leap of thought for this experiment, let's say you have a bomb. it is a special bomb, one that will only KILL the terrorists. It only has the power to kill terrorists, however dropping the bomb will blow up your kingdom causing extensive damage to the city but not touching your castle. you know you can put your remaining citizens to work rebuilding the nation in a few short months. Now, do you drop this bomb, which has the power to but may fail to kill the terrorists, or do you let them carry on while trying to hunt them down by other means, even if it means they may continue to gain power and support to eventually overthrow you?
"Let's say" s/he says... you know me well I think it depends on whether I'm a capricious tyrant or a calculating tyrant. If I'm a hothead and have a bee in my bonnet about those cheeky terrorists, bombs away! If I'm rational, I'd want to see a plot on the probability of killing x% of the terrorists, and I'd play the odds. I think this is basically a problem requiring cost-benefit analysis. I am confused about the mechanics of the bomb. When you say it will 'only KILL the terrorists', do you mean it will kill only terrorists and not my peons (but it still causes extensive damage to the city?)? Or do you mean that if I use it, death is the only option for both terrorists and serfs (there's no chance they'll live to fight another day)? I assume the latter. If it's going to kill my loyal peons, I'd need to weigh up how many I'd have left post-explosion for rebuilding. I'd probably want some way of targeting the bomb to maximise terrorist mortality while minimising other mortality... but you're suggesting that I have no idea who's who... so I'd probably want an estimate on what percentage of the population are terrorists, and what the conversion rate is. Based on that, I'd establish a threshold terrorist percentage at which I'd use the bomb (working under the tyrannical assumption that this act of intimidation would reduce or reverse the conversion rate amongst survivors - not necessarily the case, but if I were a tyrant, that's what I'd hope for). ... Did I just fail a psychopath test?
Damned peasants, they're worse than cattle... at least my herds of cows and sheep march dutiful to their deaths without asking 'why am i here' or 'is there a god' before they're slaughtered... Such an annoyance. The only way to deal with rebelliousness is the same way we've been doing it with animals since the dawn of man. Breed it out of them. Wolves used to be such pesky bastards, until we killed the ones that bit us until only the loyal were left. Let them turn, lets these rebels gather together, in fact i'll help! I'll create my own secret police, ones that impersonate rebels. Those that try and join their cause will be murdered, those that don't will find my graces appealing. Once i have a suitable breed of rebel resistant peasants, ill show an opening, a deliberate weakness. The rebels will think 'this is our best chance' and 'only if we all attack can we win our freedom!' The only freedom they'll find is from their bonds to this life. Also a bomb. A very big bomb.
How well informed are your peasants? Drop the bomb, call it a heroic war, and blame the terrorists for the destruction of the city. Hilter attacked a German station in Gleiwitz and blamed the Poles to justify the invasion of Poland.
He also burned the chancellery and blamed the communists. He's actually probably a very good role model for your
Perhaps you did fail. this is a parallel to a situation in a story I'm writing. I was trying to get a mindset for what was needed to do such a heinous act. You believe that if you drop the bomb, there is no chance for the rebellious terrorists to survive, of course since my story focuses on the terrorists in question, they will survive, probably by hiding underground. But to you the tyrant, you believe that there's a good chance that the bomb will kill your enemies. Neither the bomb, nor the destruction of the town will be able to kill your citizens. They will be fine, for the most part, but the terrorists can die in this bomb strike. your kingdom will be in ruin, but you can rebuild easily enough using your citizens **cough cough* *slaves* **cough cough** You have the option, drop the bomb that you are rather sure will kill the terrorist, cost your kingdom the price of repairs and rebuilding, or hunt them down the traditional way even though you have little Intel on where they are hiding in your city and they will continue to have the chance to gain support for their revolution.
I was thinking about that, they're not informed all that well about other nations or anything, but the citizens have grown to care for and support the terrorists because they do more to care for and support the citizens than the tyrant actually does.
I'd never throw the bomb, out of diplomacy. Ever heard of a vendetta getting out of control? It gains even more terrorists. Numbers always win in the end.
I'd rather not drop the bomb. I would have my government pretend to yield to the terrorists' demands and implement a new leader to represent their ideology. Then, I'd have my mainstream media publicly endorse an increasingly radicalized form of their ideology while implementing a system of free speech that allows for anonymous dissent. People will eventually notice the corruption and call for change again. When the next wave of counter-culture reaches critical mass, I will rise again behind a figurehead.
Are you thinking about the kind of revolution that Che Guevara engineered? Or the kind that didn't happen in Nazi Germany? I'd suggest that the differing levels of economic development in the two countries had an impact on the outcomes; i.e. the near-subsistence level farming of much of Central America, allied to the large rural population, allowed the revolutionaries to embed themselves within the peasant proletariat and win hearts and minds. Whereas I'd suggest that Germany's prosperity was largely spent upon a repressive and far-reaching police state, where freedom of speech and thought are suppressed; even the HitlerJugend were indoctrinated to rat on their own parents.