All Time Historical Existential Threats to US Power Rankings

RaceBannon said:

Great Britain too high. They could have won but they would have faced the same kind of price at home that we would face today if we killed all our cousins if we had cousins in a country giving us shit and dumping our tea.

1 Soviets - they had nukes

2. Nazis - they had desire

3. Japan - fuckers were crazy

4. China today

5. Iran today

Fuck the rest

Going to side with David McCullough on this one. King George III in the summer of 1776 through Washington sneak attacking drunk Germans came the closest anyone's ever come to ending the "existence" of the US. You are correct in the sense that the costs became higher than Great Britain was willing to pay, and that's why they gave up, and the French, of course, deserve a lion's share of the credit too. But none of this changes how damn close to got to getting a win in 1776.

Soviets - Clear number 2 I think because they got the bomb and built enough of them to be able to "end" the US by the mid to late 50's or so. Same holds true today with Russia with just less of a stockpile. But MAD always seemed to make it so that cooler heads would prevail excepting a few close calls. Also they were never going to get the bomb first, because they were reliant on western brainpower to figure it out first.

Nazis - Too high here. No doubt that man for man, the Whermacht was probably the best fighting force in WWII (no offense to the Greatest Generation). But they were never going to have the air power or navy to invade threaten the US. U-boats weren't going to stave us out or deprive us of raw materials. Now if Hitler wasn't such a dumb fuck, he could have probably knocked out Britain first- i.e., wait on Russia and take the Suez Canal and all the Middle East's oil. U-boats would have starved out Great Britain and forced them to give up (Churchill would have moved the Royal Navy to Canada, however). If the Germans had knocked out Britain and then found a way to defeat Russia, then we're talking some Man in the High Castle level of existential threat.

Japan - GDP was 10% of the USA's in 1941. They just weren't going to be able to out produce us no matter how tuff they were. We whipped them in 3.5 years with 80% of the war effort going to the European Theater.

Iran - If they manage to build a few bombs or more, they move up the list a lot. But they still wouldn't have an H-Bomb which is a lot more complicated to make than a fission type bomb. And they still have to figure out a way to get it here. That said, they are some apocalyptic mother fuckers facing a major demographic disaster. Fastest falling birthrate in human history.