Didn’t Ender recognize that the buggers had a hive mind? He figured it out by watching the news/propaganda reels. Did the military understand the hive mind issue?
Not a nuke, they call it the MD devive (molecular distortion?) nicknamed “little doctor”. Destroyed the entire planet and both fleets when set off at the right point.
Molecular dissassociation.
I seem to recall that a major point was Mazer was the first person in the Terran military to figure that out, and Ender under Mazer’s tutelage was the second. So while the military knew about the hive mind, they didn’t understand it well enough to defeat it.
Which, come to think of it, sounds wrong. OSC may have screwed up.
Don’t forget that Rackham and the other adults also know there are human crews on the ships. And that was part of the deception for the kids - that there were no “real” human consequences to their “training”.
The adults’ mindset would have been different, since they would have been asking humans to deliberately die in a plan that may or may not have worked. That was also one of the points Rackham made to Ender - that knowing your orders will send men to their deaths can be a psychological stumbling block. IIRC they also weren’t entirely sure the device would work on a whole planet.
Ender and the others realized the “test” was fundamentally unfair and simply decided to “cheat” by going straight for the planet. They wouldn’t have had any qualms, as they thought the crews were electronic - not meat. That’s not necessarily true for the adults, who may have subconsciously made a suboptimal move in order to further preserve the human crews.
The military knew about the hive mind. In fact, the instantaneous way the Buggers communicated across space allowed the humans to develop the ansible, a device that allowed faster-than-light communication across space to be used for their space battles. Ender figured it out by watching the news vids but I think Mazer explained it to him once he caught on.
Thank you.
At 15?
I’m not sure I understand the distinction you’re drawing. Ender was apparently the only one capable of fighting the buggers effectively, but his strategic inspiration in the final fight was to go for the planet. The buggers were unable to stop him not because he sacrificed a ship, but because they couldn’t really believe that he’d attack the planet and all the queens. Rackham describes that “queen attack blindness” in his account of his battle with them, and Ender echoes it in the final battle.
Ender wasn’t particularly conservative about retaining ships at the beginning of his simulator training. It was only after Rackham chastised him for losing a few ships that he tightened up his play considerably.
The central premise that Card was investigating in the novel was the paradox that effective military command required both extreme empathy and ruthless determination, how you could not help but love and respect an enemy you had truly come to understand but must nevertheless, crush.
Anyone could have come up with the idea of dropping the MD on a planet. But anyone willing to do so would not have the abilities to pilot the ships close enough and anyone with the abilities would not have the heart do pull the trigger. The only way he could see to resolve that paradox was to exploit the innocence of a child. Everything leading up to the dropping of the MD was a way for the adults around him to forge Ender into the person who could resolve this paradox.
You can question the validity of the premise but it was laid out pretty clearly in the book and the entire structure of the book revolves around this core concept.
From Ender’s Shadow:
"They’ve never seen us make a move like that. They don’t understand that, yes, humans will always act to preserve their own lives - except for the times when they don’t. […] In all of Ender’s study of the buggers, in all his obsession with them over the years of his training, did he somehow come to know that they would make such a deadly mistakes?
I did not know it. I would not have pursued this strategy. I had no strategy. Ender was the only commander who could have known, or guessed, or unconsciously hoped that when the flung out his forces the enemy would falter, would trip, would fall, would fail. "
From Ender’s game:
“Ender dodged downward, north, east, and down again, not seeming to follow any plan, but always ending up a little closer to the enemy planet. Finally the enemy began to close in on him too tightly. Then suddenly, Ender’s formation burst. His fleet seemed to melt into chaos. The eighty fighters seemed to follow no plan at all, firing at enemy ships at random, working their way into hopeless individual paths among the bugger craft.
After a few minutes of battle, however, Ender whispered to his squadron leaders once more, and suddenly a dozen of the remaining fighters formed again into formation. [etc]”
So, I think it’s quite clear that the whole thing was not just getting the idea of nuking the whole planet. It was about sacrificing your own troops, understanding the mind of the opponent, and realisizing that there was an opportunity at all for such a move.
Actually, going by memory …
There is not supposed to be torture and murder at Battle School, other than typical “hazing” - the murder came about because Ender came into conflict with Bonzo Madrid, and they fought in a shower. Ender killed Bonzo to make the conflict end. It was not sanctioned that the kids attending fight to death. The actual sanctioned combat took place in a battle room in a uniform designed to freeze the kid when pinged by a low power laser pistol. Of course null-g combat [some form of ‘karate’ art] was taught, but then again you can take 'karate’arts on earth now. Accidents happen both in the book and now on earth [we just were talking with a friend of mrAru’s and he got a broken cheekbone by accident from sparring. The opponent slipped and whacked Kurt in the face harder than planned.]
In the 40 or so years that Battle School had been functioning, I seem to remember there were only a handful of accidental deaths. Injuries happened, they will happen anytime there is a bunch of kids running around - you get accidental injuries in gym class in schools now. So Battle School was not set up to kill kids.
Another thought is that the adult military commanders needed a fig leaf for their own consciences. They couldn’t bring themselves to personally commit genocide, but they still considered it necessary. So they put a scapegoat into a position where he would do it for them, and they could tell themselves late at night that it wasn’t their decision, it was all Ender’s fault, they had nothing to do with it.
I’d have to disagree, given what Mazer said afterwards to Ender. In trying to reassure him, he told him that the adults were the ones responsible, that they pointed Ender, the weapon, and he shouldn’t feel bad about it. I don’t have the book anymore to quote, but I’m pretty sure that was what Mazer said at the end. Then again, it could all be designed to trick him like the whole school was set up to do
Mazer wasn’t the top brass, though. I meant the guys who were giving Mazer and Ender orders.