How big do you consider Cobra to be?
 

I was thinking about army building of figures, and my thoughts wandered to how big everyone considers Cobra to be in their own Joeverse - is it an organisation of a few hundred, a few thousand or a mega army of 100,000? In my case, I tend to think of it as a world wide organisation of fairly large numbers. Take Cobra Island for example (if it exists in your Joeverse). It's the official Cobra "nation" so to speak, and it's main base of operations. There would have to be at least 20,000 troops of various specialties based there. After that I imagine Cobra would have everything from major bases to regional outposts all over the world, staffed by varying numbers of troops. That's going to add up to a lot of people. And how many vehicles would they have? 5,000 HISS tanks? 300 or 400 Mambas? How do you guys see it?

All I know is that it is way larger than the figures & vehicles that I own! :mad:

I don't have any numbers but I imagine Cobra to as large as any other army in the world, if not larger. They would have to be to achieve their goal of world domination.

They gotta have at least 10,000 people minimum

Hmmm. In all honesty I don't know if I can really put a number on it, but here's how I see it.

Cobra Island is the main base of operations. That's where the main Terrordrome is, Cobra Commanders temple and whatnot. It's not neccessarily a soveriegn state but it's got enough support and whatnot in the UN to keep Joe from traipsing in whenever they want. Not to mention the high level officials that secretly Cobra agents. Personnelwise I'd estimate it to be in the mid thousands, ballpark figure.

Outside of the Island it's a global network of groups in many countries around the world, certainly on all the continents. The networks break down in factions and while not all of them know they are Cobra agents, the Commander certainly has them in his grasp. All working, whether aware of it or not, toward the same goal. These would all ranged from 50-100+ depending on how big the branch is. For ex. Springfield would be much bigger as it's an entire town rather just a few scattered warehouses in say London.

I'm going to give it some more thought, but I think that's a good start.

Mmmmm.... dont know. Have you thought about how many civilians would Cobra have?

As far as toy universes went at some point I said the figures I had were the total of Cobra. Yeah, that may have been as little as 2 dozen guys at one point. It didn't matter since my toy universe wasn't based on the real world at all.

In the popular media, I imagine membership/troop strength has fluctuated over the years. From grassroots movement of hard core fanatics to a larger more bureaucratic organization of international malcontents, mercs, thugs, etc.

I'd probably say that armed forces are outnumbered by agents, operatives, etc...since where would armies be but cobra island and a few hidden bases. And Cobra Island isn't that big to support, even house, thousands of people.

OK, at least in my joeverse Cobra would be in the 100,000 's catagory. As a slight sneek peek into my diostory currently in production Cobra is a massive organization that has been building its numbers in secret for two decades. They are comprised of all the worlds malcontents from Islamic facists to disgruntled former KGB angry about the collaps of their empire. IRA terrorists who have been misplaced by cease fires and mercinaries out to see the world burn. All of them united by individual promisises made by Cobras charismatic and deceptive recruitment machine. Many fight under the banner of Cobra and many fight obliviouse to Cobras manipulation. All to achieve the tyrannical vision of a modern day mad man!

Well said... that about sums it up for me too. I 'd agree with most of your points... Cobra Island being the main point of operations (shaped like it is from Resolute :D ) and various other "stations" through-out the world. I would picture the Cobra Armies to number somewhere in the half-mil range... but thats just my opinion.

To follow up Craig's question, does Cobra do much outsourcing? Let's face it, to quote Randall from Clerks "what does the average stormtrooper know about installing a toilet main?" Would that fall under a toxo-viper's specialty? Think of all the extra man power needed ON TOP of world domination.