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USA Today makes a mock website to see if you'd been drafted for Vietnam

B

BamfMeat

Member
This elicited some Hunger Games shit in me.

My birthday, 12/19,

YOUR DRAFT NUMBER
240
WAS NOT CALLED IN 1970.
Click to expand...

My brothers birthday, 12/20,

YOUR DRAFT NUMBER
135
WAS CALLED IN 1970.
Click to expand...

My first reaction was "I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE". He's 8 years younger than me, no way would I let him go to war.
 
A

ArgyleReptile

Banned
OpDlIwl.jpg
Click to expand...

giphy.gif
 
A

Alphahawk

Member
It seems weird to me that this only covers the year 1970, when this was in place for many years. Telling me I wouldn't of been called in 1970 seems somewhat arbitrary. Maybe I'm missing something.
 
P

Pau

Member
Would have been called if I was a guy. Were permanent residents part of the draft or is it fairly decent that they have to register for Selective Service?

My boyfriend though apparently wouldn't have been drafted.
 
T

TickleMeElbow

Member
My dad was born in 1950.

I entered his birthday, and his number was called, but in actuality he wasn't drafted.

Maybe he got a deferral because he was in college.
 
B

BobTheFork

Member
Just confirmed something my father always told me. He was October 3rd.
He enlisted when the draft was being announced because he didn't think there was any way to avoid it and he wanted to be done as soon as he could.

During boot camp, his commander apparently kept telling him his number was never called and he wouldn't have been drafted.

True, it turns out.
 
B

besada

Banned
Alphahawk said:
It seems weird to me that this only covers the year 1970, when this was in place for many years. Telling me I wouldn't of been called in 1970 seems somewhat arbitrary. Maybe I'm missing something.
Click to expand...

On December 1, 1969, the Selective Service System of the United States conducted two lotteries to determine the order of call to military service in the Vietnam War for men born from 1944 to 1950. These lotteries occurred during a period of conscription from just before World War II to 1973.

The lottery numbers assigned in December 1969 were used during calendar year 1970 both to call for induction and to call for physical examination, a preliminary call covering more men.
Click to expand...
The draft existed before 1970, but the draft lottery was drawn December of 1969, so its first draftees were drafted in 1970. They did another for '71, and another for '72, although the '72 ones weren't used.
 
L

Lord Fagan

Junior Member
This is weird...

I got the, "If you were born just 1 day..." shit, and then I started playing around with the numbers.

I did the day before, when I would have missed, and it says the same thing, "If you were born just 1 day..." and I'm looking through the thread, and I'm not seeing anything past like 3 days.

Has anybody gotten anything other than those responses? I'm not calling this bunk, I'm just not really understanding how this lottery works if everybody misses it or gets hit by 1-3 days? Is it because the site just locks everybody into the same birth year and if that's so, is that really a realistic representation of whether or not I would have been drafted, because it's kind of starting to just look like something that is a number engine and not something that really is supposed to make me say, "whew" but more just kind of wonder if this is what it looks like from a military accounting point of view, where it's mostly just slices of the population.

I guess that still makes me go, "Whew!"
 
Q

Queen Vulpix

Member
Neither my younger sisters or I would have been drafted for obvious reasons but if we were guys I'm the only one who wouldn't have been drafted, if either of them were born just 1 day earlier they would have avoided it it seems.
 
P

perfectchaos007

Member
Lord Fagan said:
This is weird...

I got the, "If you were born just 1 day..." shit, and then I started playing around with the numbers.

I did the day before, when I would have missed, and it says the same thing, "If you were born just 1 day..." and I'm looking through the thread, and I'm not seeing anything past like 3 days.

Has anybody gotten anything other than those responses? I'm not calling this bunk, I'm just not really understanding how this lottery works if everybody misses it or gets hit by 1-3 days? Is it because the site just locks everybody into the same birth year and if that's so, is that really a realistic representation of whether or not I would have been drafted, because it's kind of starting to just look like something that is a number engine and not something that really is supposed to make me say, "whew" but more just kind of wonder if this is what it looks like from a military accounting point of view, where it's mostly just slices of the population.

I guess that still makes me go, "Whew!"
Click to expand...

Mine was 4 days off
 
O

Oriel

Member
Just 1 day out. Whew. Good job I wasn't born a day earlier.



....




Or born in 1950.
Or born in the US.

Really dodged a bullet there! Or several for that matter.
 
legacyzero

legacyzero

Banned
YOUR DRAFT NUMBER
161
WAS CALLED IN 1970.
If your birthday was just 1 day earlier, your draft number would not have been called.

LMAO
 
J

Jive Turkey

Unconfirmed Member
Anybody know how this lottery is calculated? I tried my dad's birthday (he was drafted) but it said he wasn't. The only difference was he wasn't born in 1950 so I'm assuming that plays some kind of role.
 
K

Kill Your Masters

Member
Lord Fagan said:
This is weird...

I got the, "If you were born just 1 day..." shit, and then I started playing around with the numbers.

I did the day before, when I would have missed, and it says the same thing, "If you were born just 1 day..." and I'm looking through the thread, and I'm not seeing anything past like 3 days.

Has anybody gotten anything other than those responses? I'm not calling this bunk, I'm just not really understanding how this lottery works if everybody misses it or gets hit by 1-3 days? Is it because the site just locks everybody into the same birth year and if that's so, is that really a realistic representation of whether or not I would have been drafted, because it's kind of starting to just look like something that is a number engine and not something that really is supposed to make me say, "whew" but more just kind of wonder if this is what it looks like from a military accounting point of view, where it's mostly just slices of the population.

I guess that still makes me go, "Whew!"
Click to expand...
Edit: I'm an idiot.
 
D

daveo42

Banned
YOUR DRAFT NUMBER
310
WAS NOT CALLED IN 1970.
If your birthday was just 3 days earlier, your draft number would have been called.
Click to expand...

Seems I would have lucked out. Same with my two younger brothers. Sadly, both of my parents would have been drafted.
 
B

besada

Banned
Lord Fagan said:
This is weird...

I got the, "If you were born just 1 day..." shit, and then I started playing around with the numbers.

I did the day before, when I would have missed, and it says the same thing, "If you were born just 1 day..." and I'm looking through the thread, and I'm not seeing anything past like 3 days.

Has anybody gotten anything other than those responses? I'm not calling this bunk, I'm just not really understanding how this lottery works if everybody misses it or gets hit by 1-3 days? Is it because the site just locks everybody into the same birth year and if that's so, is that really a realistic representation of whether or not I would have been drafted, because it's kind of starting to just look like something that is a number engine and not something that really is supposed to make me say, "whew" but more just kind of wonder if this is what it looks like from a military accounting point of view, where it's mostly just slices of the population.

I guess that still makes me go, "Whew!"
Click to expand...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_lottery_(1969)

The days of the year (including February 29) were written on slips of paper. These pieces of paper were then placed in separate plastic capsules that were mixed in a shoebox and then dumped into a deep glass jar. Capsules were drawn from the jar one at a time.

The first number drawn was 258 (September 14), so all registrants with that birthday were assigned lottery number 1. The second number drawn corresponded to April 24, and so forth. All men of draft age (born 1944 to 1950) who shared a birth date would be called to serve at once. The first 195 birthdates drawn were later called to serve in the order they were drawn; the last of these was September 24.[1]

Also on December 2, 1971, a second lottery was held, with the 26 letters of the alphabet. Among men with the same birthdate, the order of induction was determined by the permutation ranks of the first letters of their last, first, and middle names.[2] Anyone with initials "JJJ" would have been first within the shared birthdate, followed by "JGJ", "JDJ", and "JXJ"; anyone with initials "VVV" would have been last.[3]
Click to expand...
 
L

Laiza

Member
YOUR DRAFT NUMBER
9
WAS CALLED IN 1970.
If your birthday was just 3 days earlier, your draft number would not have been called.
Click to expand...

There's some appreciable irony in participating in this thing when my parents are Vietnamese refugees.

Of course, it's just a hypothetical, and imagining an alternate-universe self getting sent off to die is certainly thought-provoking if nothing else. But, as mentioned, women don't get drafted...
 
V

verbatimo

Member
YOUR DRAFT NUMBER
323
WAS NOT CALLED IN 1970.

If your birthday was just 3 days earlier, your draft number would have been called.

Close call.
 
B

besada

Banned
Earthbound64 said:
That sounds needlessly complicated.

Aside from the shoebox.
What brand of shoe was it?
Click to expand...

No idea. I was just getting around to being born.

Not only was it complicated, it wasn't random. To be fair, it was way more random than what they had before, which was "oldest first" heavily modified by whomever the Selective Service people owed favors to. The corruption inside the Selective Service was part of the reason they went to a draft lottery.
 
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