Why now is the time to forge your own civil defense network

[Doomsteader1994]

I'm with you till the kids dancing around with the salt water guns. I think a long row of well marked graves outside the perimeter would work well.

You're right, I was just trying to make a point.

I wouldn't use children in reality, squirt guns maybe, but no kids.

I was channeling some Hollywood depictions of Native American responses to outsider hostility with a sprinkling of modern tools of the trade thrown in as a suggestion of possibilities.

What was the line from the movie "Pulp Fiction", something about calling some friends, vise grips, blow torches and "getting medieval on your asses".

Day to day I'm really a nice humble and quiet guy, who is looking forward to being a farmer post event.  But when I read some of the stupid bravado out there in the internet tubes about how my hard fought preparations are going to be swept away by the twit with an AK47 and an army manual who is living in his mother's basement, I get a little worked up.

[wordnerd]

article on kibbutz defense:
http://books.google.com/books?id=OHm34gw9mcsC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=Kibbutz+defense&source=bl&ots=E2bzxaB59a&sig=xa4Z_9_6YfRLpScACzS8CQRTGVc&hl=en&ei=tE7sStHVAcyMlAfSgM3_BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCIQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=Kibbutz%20defense&f=false

From a book called
Family and Community in the Kibbutz
 By Yonina Talmon

[Grower]

True, DS. I think people underestimate teh "humble farmer."

[wardoc]

When the cops are no longer available, every scum bag stranger, by itself or in a group, that comes into our neighborhood zone (day or night) will either be made into dog food or will have their bodies used as noted above (I particularly like the head on a stake model from Vlad the impaler) for sending a message to their scumbag brethren that even tho this is a formerly affluent neighborhood, we are now heavily armed, angry people who blame you, the scumbags of various types, for the economic collapse of our once great system.  We have patrols, alarms and lighting systems run by solar, and more ammo than we could ever use, even assuming that we fire on your group every day all day.  Regardless of how "organized" the scumbags are, it won't matter because they are inferior semi humans. 

So, worst nightmare,  bring it on.  The reason some people are downtrodden and others are wealthy and successful is brain power, pure and simple; forget all the bullshit about advantages and disadvantages and other socialistic crapola.  The downtrodden wandering scum bags, who by definition will have failed to prepare and develop a stable community,  will all learn quickly that those they think they can prey on are and always have been their superiors, in the old society and now in the new one.  When the old system crumbles, People who have formerly appeared professional, quiet and obedient to that system, will be a big surprise to all of the wannabe "nightmares" out there. 

Wardoc,

[rbrgs]

wardoc,

Who does all the scut work?  Seriously, intentional communities made up of only people like you have been tried in good times, and failed miserably.  Do you have farms and factories inside your perimeter? 

If you think you're such a superior being, how about supplying some effective leadership? 

[MEA]

How will you tell the scumbags from the non-scumbags?

[pamela]

So, worst nightmare,  bring it on.  The reason some people are downtrodden and others are wealthy and successful is brain power, pure and simple; forget all the bullshit about advantages and disadvantages and other socialistic crapola.  The downtrodden wandering scum bags, who by definition will have failed to prepare and develop a stable community,  will all learn quickly that those they think they can prey on are and always have been their superiors, in the old society and now in the new one.  When the old system crumbles, People who have formerly appeared professional, quiet and obedient to that system, will be a big surprise to all of the wannabe "nightmares" out there.

Wardoc,

wardoc,  my husband I and, and I'll guarantee you, a bunch of people in this forum, are living proof that not all smart people are rich or "successful". A lot of us are already living on the outside, looking up from the "bottom".
and you better believe that people on top, are there more because of luck and opportunity than any other reason.

[Grower]

Good god. What are you, six, playing army?

[Dry Observer]

Good god. What are you, six, playing army?

Huh?

Wait a second. Grower, are you only now figuring this out? 

Seriously, I have two guys whose biggest contribution to the list is a plan for surrounding your house with huge, homemade, easily detonated landmines... and they've been busy stalking my free alt-energy inventions to tell me I don't know anything.

No, really. Huge, homemade, easily detonated landmines. Because really, your kids had too many limbs to begin with.

On a more realistic note, while I'm not big on the whole Savage Vengeance aspect of community defense, I think any community of a thousand can easily outgun 8 to 14 violent raiders, and a community of 10,000 or more is apt to annihilate them without even being fully aware of their existence before they're snuffed out. To be blunt, if you were heading towards post-crash Boone and the town barely even bothered to resist you... You'd be walking past at least 500 hunters who are effectively all trained snipers (not military grade, but skilled enough).

No post-crash invasion force of less than a thousand troops, or at least hundreds with huge technological advantages (preferably choppers and AC-130 gunships), is going to make it into that town if they don't want it to. They'll be able to mobilize too many thousands of defenders, just within the immediate environs of the municipality itself. And even a force with helicopters and gunships might discover the area to be far tougher than it assumes. Even discounting local National Guard, etc.

In fairness to the guy who wrote the original article... Your worst threat may actually be a small gang of organized guys with no future. Sure, they may get wiped out in a couple more weeks, but that'll be small comfort to you.

My biggest problem with his proposed tactics is that if you have a reasonably functional community around you, you're not just some isolated farmstead surrounded by an abstract space of nigh-infinite wilderness. Where's this guy camping out as he tries to sneak up on you? Does he really think all the farmers/freeholds/villages around him are completely ignoring his presence as he tries to creep around in the backwoods, stumbling across one guarded home after another?

How much stuff is he not carrying around with his band, if they don't have vehicles? If they do have vehicles, why does he think so much as a sniff of woodsmoke or a glimmer of light is a tell-tale clue to him, but a warband's vehicles on the roads or cross-country are going to pass unnoticed? If he's "sneaking around" with ATVs, why does he think he hasn't been ambushed and shot to death yet? Is his the only armed group left on Earth?

Basically, I'd be more concerned about feuds with reasonably capable but crazy/slightly desperate neighbors than the crazy, long-since-dead warband. It could show up, but I'd expect it to be more local if it did, and an object lesson in why you should have built up your community.

[Grower]

Thanks. Score one for the good guys.

[Daewoo2]

No post-crash invasion force of less than a thousand troops, or at least hundreds with huge technological advantages (preferably choppers and AC-130 gunships), is going to make it into that town if they don't want it to. They'll be able to mobilize too many thousands of defenders, just within the immediate environs of the municipality itself. And even a force with helicopters and gunships might discover the area to be far tougher than it assumes. Even discounting local National Guard, etc.

Sorry, but no.  YOu might consider looking at...well....ANY war in the history of the planet earth. 


Paoua (town of 18,000 in the central africa republic) was attacked by a rebel force of 100 men armed with AKs, machetes, and 40 yr old junk russian weapons and they took the town.  Rebels in the Ukraine have taken towns with even worse odds than that.  Every conflict we have ever seen has seen large towns taken by few men.

In the real world, most people will not fight.  They think they will.  They will arm up, strut around, talk tough, and get ready to fight, but when the time comes, they wont.  If you take 100 civilians, arm them all, set them up to defend their town, 25 of them will desert before the enemy ever arrives.  50 will either run the minute a shot is fired or cower behind cover until the enemy comes and kills them (often with a loaded gun in their hand).  Another 20 will fire wildly until they run out of ammunition and then will sit there until the enemy comes and kills them.  You MIGHT get 5 out of that hundred who will actually fight, and they are probably gong to either be ex military (because the military is pretty effective at teaching people to put aside their inhibitions when it comes to killing other people) or not worth a shit. 

I would suggest that before you start adding every hunter who has ever shot a deer to your list of sniper assets you read the book "On Killing The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society".

From a review of the book:

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=5243

"There are no atheists in foxholes," the saying goes, but according to this important book there are many conscientious objectors. In World War II and before, only 15 to 20 percent of soldiers fired their weapons at enemy soldiers in view, even if their own lives were endangered. Lt. Col. (Ret.) Grossman, a military historian, psychologist and teacher at West Point, builds upon the findings of Gen. S. L. A. Marshall in Men Against Fire (1978) and confirmatory evidence from Napoleonic, Civil and other wars. "Throughout history the majority of men on the battlefield would not attempt to kill the enemy, even to save their own lives." (p. 4) This refusal is profound, surprising, and well-hidden. To Grossman this is welcome proof of our humanity. Not a pacifist, he trains soldiers to kill, but wants them to regain the inhibitions needed to function peacefully in society.

In the U.S. Civil War, well-trained soldiers fired over the enemy's heads, or only pretended to fire. Of 27,000 muzzle-loading muskets recovered at Gettysburg, 90 percent were loaded, almost half with multiple loads! That could not be inadvertent. Further evidence was the low kill rate in face-to-face battles.

Frankly, if you have not never killed anybody before, you should probably not plan on doing it in the future because it is not NEARLY as easy as you might think and you sure as hell should not be counting on the people around you to do it.  Keep in mind that the examples above were TRAINED and DRILLED soldiers who knew that not only would there be no negative consequences to their killing the enemy (at least from a legal and social aspect) and that, indeed, they were expected to kill the enemy and would be venerated for it.  Even so, the vast majority could not make themselves do it. 

Of your 500 hunters, ONE MIGHT actually be able to pull the trigger on another human being.

[Grimus]

When the cops are no longer available, every scum bag stranger, by itself or in a group, that comes into our neighborhood zone (day or night) will either be made into dog food or will have their bodies used as noted above (I particularly like the head on a stake model from Vlad the impaler) for sending a message to their scumbag brethren that even tho this is a formerly affluent neighborhood, we are now heavily armed, angry people who blame you, the scumbags of various types, for the economic collapse of our once great system.  We have patrols, alarms and lighting systems run by solar, and more ammo than we could ever use, even assuming that we fire on your group every day all day.  Regardless of how "organized" the scumbags are, it won't matter because they are inferior semi humans. 

So, worst nightmare,  bring it on.  The reason some people are downtrodden and others are wealthy and successful is brain power, pure and simple; forget all the bullshit about advantages and disadvantages and other socialistic crapola.  The downtrodden wandering scum bags, who by definition will have failed to prepare and develop a stable community,  will all learn quickly that those they think they can prey on are and always have been their superiors, in the old society and now in the new one.  When the old system crumbles, People who have formerly appeared professional, quiet and obedient to that system, will be a big surprise to all of the wannabe "nightmares" out there. 

Wardoc,

Every time I think I've seen the dumbest thing I'll ever see, something like this comes along and tops it. What a fucking retard.

[Broil]

How did the early white settlers used to manage it?  I think it was done with a fort being placed first in an area, with a handful of soldiers to guard it and the surrounding territory.  Then a village and farmlands were built up piece by piece, with the men all armed (in fact required to be armed in some places, with financial aid offered to poor people in Massachusetts if they couldn't afford a rifle), and the homesteads having a bell to communicate (usually meals, but also distress).  So a settler might be able to hold off marauders for long enough to sound the alarm or send someone to the fort.

Then trained soldiers and the militia (ordinary farmers and villagers) would go to give aid. The militia drilled and trained periodically, but of course not to the level of professional soldiers.  Militias and training were often a legal obligation of male citizens, thus the amendment to the Constitution that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. ..."

[Daewoo2]

How did the early white settlers used to manage it?  I think it was done with a fort being placed first in an area, with a handful of soldiers to guard it and the surrounding territory.  Then a village and farmlands were built up piece by piece, with the men all armed (in fact required to be armed in some places, with financial aid offered to poor people in Massachusetts if they couldn't afford a rifle), and the homesteads having a bell to communicate (usually meals, but also distress).  So a settler might be able to hold off marauders for long enough to sound the alarm or send someone to the fort.

Then trained soldiers and the militia (ordinary farmers and villagers) would go to give aid. The militia drilled and trained periodically, but of course not to the level of professional soldiers.  Militias and training were often a legal obligation of male citizens, thus the amendment to the Constitution that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. ..."

For the most part they didnt.  While the brave settler holding his home against a band of heathen red skins is an american icon, it is also mostly a piece of historical fiction.  For the most part, indians attacked settlers, settlers died, then the military hunted down the indians and wiped them out a village at a time. 

They also had the advantage of not being burdened  with social attitudes that conditioned them to believe that there was anything wrong with killing indians since the predominate opinion at the time was that indians were not actually human beings. 

If you are planning to kill a bunch of people in the future it may be best to start your conditioning now.  You need to convince yourself that your friends and neighbors are all sub human trash.  It will make it a lot easier to look them in the eye while they die by your hand. 

[Broil]

Huhn?  I'm not planning on killing anyone who doesn't directly attack me with deadly force, and probably it won't come to that.  I'd give them good warning if they haven't already started shooting.

I thought you were the one who was so gung ho about lethal self-defense, with hidden explosives rigged with gas or improvised napalm, and having about a thousand guns and a million rounds of ammunition.