There will be only a few WW2 veterans left in 10 years, and none in 20 years. amirite?

My great uncle just celebrated his 100th birthday in October. Dude is still walking on his own, cracking jokes, being an absolute legend.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I am really glad for him and you. I wish I had a family member over 90, it would be great to pass down knowledge and wisdom and to record it.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

All my grandparents died before I was 10. I really regret not knowing them as an adult and hearing their stories.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My neighbor is a WWII vet and he just turned 103 in July. Mentally he's all there, but physically he's having a hard time as of late.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My grandfather just turned 90 this year. Same as your neighbor, he's still mentally there 100%, and is mostly there physically, but you can definitely tell he's getting up there in age. He still walks and drives around fine, but he's just not as quick as he was even a couple years ago.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Can you share more light on how he spent his time back in the day. Eating habits, physical activities, stressing etc etc. you get the point ! What does it takes to live100 lol.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

For the extremely old you'll find it's pretty genetics based. A lot of those 100+ year olds were smokers, eat ice cream all the time, etc. Eating healthy and having good lifestyle habits will help you reach your genetic maximum age and do so with the least amount of issues you would otherwise be having, but genetics determines if that max age is 85 or 110, and it also determines if you get there with not a single health issue or still needing medication halfway through.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Me, relatively healthy but already on meds in my 30s with two grandmothers and a mom who didn't even make it to 65: *Whelp… The old cross your fingers and pray method for me.*

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I've already lived longer than my mom ever did. WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD HERE.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The common thing that my 90+ family did was keep their minds engaged.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

This is the biggest thing that the elderly struggle with. Once they lose that daily interaction with their spouse, and it's just them, they slowly fall apart. I've seen it with my grandpap currently. He's 86.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Obviously exercising and avoiding stuff like cigs and alcohol help, but some people just get the luck. My great grandmother lived to 105, was living on her own in her house shoveling logs into her wood fire stove every winter day. She was a pack a day smoker

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Grandfather just hit 100 in September. Served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam as a marine aviator. Still walking and talking and there mentally, but physically starting to have a harder time walking and getting around. I'm convinced him working in his yard every day and walking his property has been what's kept him ambulatory and in good health all these years.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

my dad turns 102 this month!

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Is he the "*cool uncle*" from the family?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Good on him. That's the way.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The last ww1 vet died in 2011(for perspective), was 110

by Anonymous 1 year ago

That was shocking to learn imo

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Dude was born in 1901. Imagine how much change he saw in his lifetime. It took until 1925 for just half of the homes in America to have electricity. Teddy Roosevelt was only *vice* president when that guy was born.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

There was a guy named Ezra Meeker who as a young man in the 1860s crossed the US on the Oregon trail in a covered wagon, which took months and was a major event in his life. Later as an older man he made the same trip in a couple days in a plane

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It's amazing he didn't die of dysentery.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

He actually lived 140 years and got to play Oregon Trail on his PC daily

by Anonymous 1 year ago

In a plane?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The guy was British

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Fun fact Teddy Roosevelt would still have been VP at that time. No matter where the guy was born.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Source?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Teddy Roosevelt was Vice President in early 1901 regardless

by Anonymous 1 year ago

On the 90th anniversary of the WW1 armistice there were three surviving veterans in the UK, Harry Patch who'd been in the army, Bill Stone from the Royal Navy and Henry Allingham (113) from the Royal Air Force, having been one of the founder members. They attended the laying of the wreaths at the Cenotaph and all three passed away peacefully within a few months. It was as though they were determined to see the 90th anniversary.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

When I was in middle school we learned a lot about the Holocaust and even had a survivor brought in to talk to us. One of the things they stressed was the importance of people being aware that these events happened because soon there won't be anybody left who was there.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Lest we forget and all that jazz

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The youngest World War 2 veterans are 94 years old now, (16 years old at the end of the war ,1945)

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Boys of 14 fought for Japan in Okinawa, and some even younger children manned German artillery. And then there are those who lied about their age - this wasn't uncommon. But yes, while there might be several who are 93, I doubt there are very many at all who are younger than 90.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Tbh, there is a few WW2 veterans alive already at the moment... only remaining czech, that was serving in RAF is 105 years old...

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Yeah I hate to do the math but there are few left now and none in like 10.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Crazy that when my parents were young, *every* old person had been either in WWII or WWI.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Don't worry, in 20 years we will already have WW3 veterans.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

If you're being cynical why say there'd be veterans

by Anonymous 1 year ago

No matter the war, there are always survivors.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

War, war never changes

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Oh yes it does. You didn't have HIMARS and ATACMS and FPV drones and Javelins and landmines and Leopard 2s and Bradleys and F-35s and Mi-28s and integrated battlespace management systems a thousand years ago. You had a guy on a horse with a pointy stick. Pointy stick still relevant, but not *quite* as much.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

we just launch small pointy sticks at each other at thousands of miles per hour now

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Cockroaches maybe?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I think you mean radroaches.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

So far

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Not if it doesn't end

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I think They are being optimistic ... they are saying the wars already over. :)

by Anonymous 1 year ago

can we really consider the dust left behind by nuclear fire a "veteran" though?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

You can consider the people left alive veterans and this is only if nukes are used which they probably won't be because very few people would ever want to destroy the world.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Not everyone will die in nuclear war.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

here we go, finish the trilogy

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I remember a story from a family member about his time in WWII This was my ex wife's grandfather. I was later told he nearly never spoke of his experience. But one family reunion he chose to share it with us and we all listened. He was a tail gunner on a B-17. (For those who don't know, that's sitting in a little glass bubble at the very back end of a giant, slow warplane with twin 50 cal cannons. Probably needed a second seat just to rest his 50 lb stainless steel balls with a job like that. There are no parachutes for tail gunners). The B17 "Flying Fortress" always flew in groups over Europe, providing cover for whatever mission they were assigned. Gunners were a club unto themselves. Essentially family. They flew together, killed together, survived together. On an assignment late in the war they got into a real battle. His best friend's plane was hit and was going down. He looked at him, from his own tail bubble to his friend's. 50 yards away. And his friend waved goodbye to him as the plane fell away to crash in a complete fireball. And that was the end of the story. Rest in peace, Dwight.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The British Normandy Veterans Association disbanded in 2014 after the 70th anniversary of the landings due to dwindling membership.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It's more troubling that we are running out of Holocaust survivors right at the same time that right wing populism and pseudo-fascism is on the rise.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Holocaust survivors, camp liberators, just generally anyone that had firsthand experience of the whole process. Granted, Holocaust survivors can be ten plus years younger than WW2 veterans but those who were very young at the time likely don't recall their experiences as well.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I think the footage from liberated camps should be required viewing for high school seniors. It's harrowing.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Also they generally didn't have the healthiest childhoods…

by Anonymous 1 year ago

So we should keep those people alive and have them lecture everyone about what they went through (so if people learn their history they can't repeat it)

by Anonymous 1 year ago

What part of the fascism on the rise is pseudo?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I bet the Holocaust survivors are stoked to see that Anti-semitism is not only live and well, but overtly accepted judging by how many pro-Palestine supporters can be found on college campuses and social media

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The last US WWI soldier to die was in 2008 at 107 years old -- 90 years after the end of the 'War to End All Wars'. If WWII mirrors this, the last vet to leave us will be in 2035.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

That's how the progress of time works.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

We went thouh this already with WW 1 vets In fact we go through this with all wars, all tragedies, all celebrations, all mundane groups. Titanic survivors, Woodstock attendees, class of 46, Hatfields and McCoys. No matter the group time marches on.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The way things are going there might be civil war veterans in 20 years

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My grandfather, born in 1922, was a WW2 vet and I, born in 1987, had the privilege of 20 years with him. He was a kid when he went. He fought through North Africa into Italy and then Served in Rome with the peacekeeping forces. Learned Italian from it. He told some fun stories about peacekeeping and then going to college after as a GI (the college kids dated the co-Ed's, the GIs went out with the sophisticated downtown secretaries) but never talked about fighting and I know his unit saw a lot of combat. It made him a good person with strong morality but it also haunted him and he spent years as an alcoholic before finding a vets only AA group. I saw guys my age coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and it was like seeing my grandpa at that age. War technology changes, the location changes, but the brutality still stays with the combatants. We think of WW2 as this perfect moral war, but it was still war and it was ugly. I think the best way to serve those vets after they're gone is to serve the vets we still have. You can be against war or against specific wars and still take care of those who fought and suffered.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My father was 18 when he joined the army in 1944. He would be 97 if he were alive today. So there are only a few WW2 veterans left right now.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Assuming we don't invent longevity therapy by that time.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Wait. So time… goes on?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Everyone dies. We should all know this by now.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Don't we need to keep some alive so we don't have another Holocaust

by Anonymous 1 year ago

We won't need them to still be alive. All we have to do is remember our history.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

There have already been many genocides since ww2. Holocaust survivors have not reduced genocidez

by Anonymous 1 year ago

INB4 "that's because they didn't lecture the genociders about their experiences so they learned from history and didn't repeat it"

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Survivors are alive and there's still genocide: for example, the Congo and arguably a holocaust of the Palestinians.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

How about gowt vets? The youngest someone who participated in the initial invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq could be is 38-39. That blows my mind for some reason.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Same with holocaust survivors

by Anonymous 1 year ago

There are no WW1 people left at all now in any form.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

This makes me sad. My dad was a WW2 pilot in the RCAF. He died in '92. WhenI was a kid the War was quite recent, though it still seemed like ancient history to me. Now all that recedes into the past as time keeps racing.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

In three years their wont be any WW3 survivors left.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My great grandma would have been a teenager when WW2 started, shes 94 now, walking, talking, feeding herself, and would prefer to live independently until she dies. She wont talk about the war, or what it was like to live thru it (as a german citizen). I think a lot about how I will never hear her story, or about my great grandpa who was an american soldier. We've lost so much lived history without even realizing it, to time and people thinking their lives weren't important enough to record.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Just in time to repeat the same mistakes leading up to that War

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Yeah, I remember the thing a few years ago with the Last Tommy. Now there's like, one veteran of the Battle of Britain left and the number of WW2 veterans is rapidly decreasing. Soon WW2 will be beyond living memory too.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

You would have a hard time finding American high school kids or even those in college that could tell you when WW2 happened, who was fighting, or why.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Are you hunting them or what

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I just dread the day companies force everything to be done online and paper statements no longer exist

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Cryosleep. Consciousness transference (that'd take way to long to figure out the logistics of though) Another world war but calling it World War Two for some reason

by Anonymous 1 year ago

ten years is pushing it

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I think about that sometimes where it's super weird kids will just grow up and not listen to WW2 vets in a remembrance day assembly at school like I did growing up lol. I always found the stories super interesting and impactful first hand.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The future is not known. They called all die tomorrow.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My grandma fought in her late teens and recently died at 96. I don't think there are too many left already.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

…and then people will deny it ever happened and then…. /s

by Anonymous 1 year ago

In 10 years, who will be the veterans that were 6 years old when the war broke out?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Wait until you hear about Civil War veterans.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It's always a bit disconcerting when I think that when I was born there were still a lot of ww1 veterans alive in their late 70s and early 80s and some ww2 veterans were only in their early and mid-50s.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

You mean ‘time' exists? Whaaaaaaa?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

the one the blows my mind is that i remember meeting WW1 vets and now there's non left

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Crazy that the last surviving WWII vet will probably be some Hitler Youth who got handed a bayonet at age 13.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I've often wondered how long it would take between conflicts before we would have a Veteran's Day without any veterans.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Yes, this is how time works.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

What are you talking about? There are only a few left NOW. And most of them are centennials.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Unfortunately, history shows that once the veterans are all gone, the youth can be convinced to go to war again.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I don't think it takes quite that long, between WWII and now there has been (in US history alone) the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Kosovo war, The Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, and the Syrian war, and that's just the ones I can think of

by Anonymous 1 year ago

100% of civil war veterans are dead

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The oldest male to ever live died at 116yo. If someone was 18 and fought in WWII in 1946, they'd be 116 in 20 years (rounded up bc it's Dec). With the advances in medicine, there will likely be at least a few still alive in 20 years.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

what other things can you tell us about the future?

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Africa will not be the most populous continent in 2100 (assuming Armageddon will be after 2100). It has never had any military technology, and it will be taken over, or other events will happen in it by then.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My grandfather turned 100 this year and joined WW2 when he was 20. I can't imagine most people his age will live much longer!!

by Anonymous 1 year ago

"Year after year the numbers get fewer and soon no one will March there at all". Don't worry there will always be veterans because there are always wars. .

by Anonymous 1 year ago

It's going to be a depressing day when we have no WW2 vets left to keep the unbelievable stories alive , I've already been seeing younger generations not believing a lot of things happened in WW2 , it was all fake propaganda , already groups that think the holocaust didn't happen , it's sad

by Anonymous 1 year ago

WW2 is closer to the Civil War than we are to it today.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

The JWs next apocalypse prediction is when all the soldiers from the 2 great wars are dead. Don't get too alarmed... they have had dozens of predictions that never came to fruition.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Now I'm, just sad. Dad (1927-2015) saw action in Germany. Part of the reason I study ww2 now as a hobby. The Greatest Generation.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I was in 3rd then 4th grade in 1995 and moved to Okinawa that year from Abilene, TX. I remember some older folks at the church we went to talking about serving during the war and one mentioned he never stepped on Okinawa but saw it from the ship he was deployed on. Those men likely passed away years ago. I also remember speaking with a 10th Division vet at a park in NM about his time in Italy and his PTSD after he'd experience driving in mountainous areas. This was about 14 years ago. He was in the same battalion as Bob Dole and how one of his friends who was killed was a kid from old money who used to share fancy sweets his folks mailed him. He mentioned his relief when Japan was nuked because they were going to be deployed in the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland. It'll be the same for my kids talking to Vietnam and Gulf War vets. Hell, Iraq Invasion was 20 years ago. March of time us something else. While there is so much recorded from those who experienced the war it'll be a solemn day when that last remanants of living history of WW2 pass on.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My Opa was 15 when he was conscripted in late 1944, making him almost as young as you could be and be a WWII veteran. He died in 2015 at 85, so yah it's coming fast.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Unless they're immortal 😄

by Anonymous 1 year ago

I lived in Hiroshima and met A-bomb survivors. I've also met many WW II veterans that fought in the pacific. Absolutely mind blowing to consider what they've been through.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My 96 yo grandfather just died in August. He went in young at 17 and didn't see much of the war before it was over. He was a naval gunner in the pacific theatre. Time catches up to us all.

by Anonymous 1 year ago

We will have plenty of WW3 veterans though

by Anonymous 1 year ago

There won't be any living veterans

by Anonymous 1 year ago

None is likely but not gaurenteed

by Anonymous 1 year ago

Sure but by then we'll have WWIII vets

by Anonymous 1 year ago

My grandma was in the WAVES. She just turned 100 a few months ago :)

by Anonymous 1 year ago