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In the apocalyptic scenario you and the OP are talking about, society would have collapsed. There would be no services, no commerce, etc.
I hope you keep a few thousand pounds of food and other provisions to go with your ammo. Otherwise when the "commies" are coming for you, you'll be begging them for food and handing over your rifle.
I think the people in the rural states, ones with access to fresh water will be fine. The problem will be with the overflow of people heading to them. And then you will have the gangs that just will take whatever they want. Yeah, not a good scenario, one I hope I never have to live thru.
The US military can handle it fine without you and your AR-15. Most advanced fighting force in the history of humanity with tricks up their sleeve we don't even know about. And anyways, if they can't, the next major war with us will be fought with such advanced weapons that you probably won't even see what killed you. If Russia attacks us, you think they're gonna send one nuke? They'll send hundreds. The technological asymmetry of top-tier warfare capabilities vs. your gun collection has expanded dramatically over the past century and is only going to continue to expand, probably at an increasingly accelerated rate.
And if that doesn't work, we can always look to the rap game. Those guys stay strapped up. Have you seen their videos lately?
The fact is the Taliban have succeeded in fighting off two superpowers.
Not sure what "fact" you are trying to show here. First, they were largely armed with military gear - it is well known that without the Stingers the US gave them, they couldn't have chased the Ruskies away.
Secondly, they LORD over the population with both violence and economics. Are you suggesting that "joe and jane hunter" are going to become warlords and do the same? Does Joe and Jane have both unlimited Opium money and also the support of major powers (heavy military hardware?).......
Perhaps most important for us "soft" Americans to understand, is that it was well known that many of our "assets" (CIA, etc.) in Afghanistan desired nice housing and food each and every night. They did not roam the mountains for weeks living off rice balls and the villagers.
Our military is PAID.....big time, in many cases, when contractors and suppliers and everyone else is figured in. We have no idea what it would take for people to fight without such inducements.
Also, the OP mentioned AFTER the nukes fall...sort of does away with any comparison except perhaps showing how a few Japs in Hiroshima held out after we bombed.....OH, you mean that didn't happen?
Of course not. It's video game and binge TV fodder.
And if that doesn't work, we can always look to the rap game. Those guys stay strapped up. Have you seen their videos lately?
I have more faith in the Brothers facing down a hail of bullets than I do for Robbie Redneck coming out of his shack after the nukes fall. In a general sense, they have less to lose.....and young men with nothing to lose are generally better at such things. Plus, they live closer to where the action is (most wars of modern times are in cities - for example, the Nazis never occupied most of France. Just Paris....and some of the North.)
Shouldn't this be in a "war gaming" forum somewhere.
Hey, come to think of it - my neighbors are all War College teachers. One next door TEACHES the top level of War Gaming. Should I ask her opinion??
Guess what makes up the majority of our military. The same people that everyone thinks can't fight it.
You and I get it. Why these yahoos don't? No military is going to fight militia because most of them are going to be it.
I have read a number of Afghanistan and Iraq memoirs from grunts......my guess is that most people are not either:
1. Grunts who have truly been at one or both of those places - and been in action for a while.
or
2. Have read a number of real truthful memoirs (real memoirs don't look good...that is, they tell closer to the truth, which is very far away from anything we hear normally)....
One needs to remember that many of our military members were forced to fight in these conflicts.....National Guard who weren't supposed to be called up for such things were...and then repeatedly!
Just as in Vietnam, the smart grunt who was over there quickly realized they were not fighting ignorant people. They also realized winning was impossible. So they looked forward to getting out of there in one piece.
Not exactly a movie or a video game. The Real World is very different. We also had one of the largest Recessions of all time and the military increased bonuses to unheard of levels. High school kids were offerred more money in a lump sum than many people ever see in their entire lives (even 10 to 20K fits that description).
Standards were lowered and lawbreakers and/or offenders/druggies...as well as some of lesser intelligence (on the military tests) were accepted...they did this to fill the ranks.
"The percentage of what the Army calls "high-quality" recruits—those who have high-school diplomas and who score in the upper 50th percentile on the Armed Forces' aptitude tests—has declined from 56.2 percent in 2005 to 44.6 percent in 2007."
No, I don't think these are the same people who are active in militias.....US Right Wing Militias are a tiny group and unlikely to enjoy having to be low on the totem pole to others in the real military.
Bottom line - a purely capitalistic society like ours has to spend TRILLIONS to keep people killing others. Without spending that money, it simply is not going to happen until landing craft hit the beaches at Atlantic City.....and that is not going to happen ever.
Therefore....the thread is a joke. In so many ways. Most gun owners in the USA would melt away without their thousands of dollars of heated outfits, vehicles and the ability to go home each night (or at least to a known solid structure).
I lived in the woods for three years in a surplus army tent - our luxuries were a wood pallet floor we eventually put in...oh, and an LP stove. No plumbing or electric of course. No A/C in hot southern weather.
Other than the very young (we did it in a "homesteading" fashion), most people simply would die or get sick in such conditions. You better take along a bunch of medics ready to amputate....heck, I almost lost a foot just from a little infection back then.
Again, the real world differs from storybooks. Or fantasies.
No war is won or lost by one person. Inferior numbers defeat or at least severely delay superior forces plenty, and history has tons of examples.
No way some pajama wearing peasants could hold the mighty US military at bay.
No way some goat herding peasants can hold the mighty US military at bay.
No way pitchfork wielding farmers can hold the mighty British army at bay.
Yep, no way.
Read Sun Tzu. It's a great help to anyone utterly lacking in humility.
Could the single hunter/gun owner of America defeat the entire US military? Nope. Could they defeat a single aircraft loaded with bombs. Nope. Did Easy Company win WW II all by themselves? Nope. Did the Spartans at Thermopylae all live to ripe old ages? Nope.
That's not how war works. Want to know how a single soldier defeats a bomber? They disable/destroy it on the ground. Can't get to the plane? Cool, blow up every fuel truck you see. Can't get to the fuel truck, then blow up the roads leading in/out of the airfield. Can't get more than 4 rednecks organized? Cool, have those 4 rednecks run around in their woods and backyards shooting anyone they think is the enemy. Want to take out a few machine gun nests and 105s in an entrenched, defended artillery battery with a dozen guys who have nothing but small arms and some demolition TNT? Ask 1st Lt Richard Winter and his boys, since they did it, making up their tactics as they went along. Did that win the war? Nope, but it reduced the amount of 105mm artillery fire that was landing at Utah Beach on June 6, 1944. It reduced the enemy's ability, albeit slightly, to wage war.
If just 1 out of every 10,000 rounds of ammunition held by private citizens actually killed an enemy soldier, that is sufficient to wipe out an armed force of 10 million troops. That's how well armed America is. Every hunter/marksman needs 1 in 10,000 accuracy with their own weapons that they are, on average, more skilled with than the average professional military member.
Also, where does the military grow its food to feed it soldiers? Hint, it doesn't. It buys food from farms, same as John and Jane Q American. And if the farmer says no? They going to bomb the farm and destroy all the food? Nuke it? Roll mechanized armor across and trample everything in sight? Nope, they'll use ground troops to take it. Think a farmer with 1,000+ yd sightlines, who has hunted that property since he was a kid doesn't possess certain tactical advantages? Where is their aggressor going to get any of their supplies?
The people they seek to kill ARE their supply chain. Logistics and supplies are always determinants of the outcomes of war. The military, same as the rest of the government, produces nothing. They buy or steal what they need from citizens. Those citizens have lots of guns and lots of ammo. That's what ALL invading and occupying armies have found out since the dawn of time. When you roll in thinking you're badass, you're quickly made aware that you don't know all the tactical advantages that the residents do, and your logistics and supply lines are waaaaaaayyyyyyyy longer than the resident. Everyone gets hungry, everyone gets thirsty.
But keep thinking the free individual who values their freedom enough to be armed is such a soft target. Military leaders way smarter than any of us have thought this same thing since the beginning of time, and have been humiliated, even annihilated in some cases, for their misguided notions of superiority.
Last edited by Volobjectitarian; 10-04-2018 at 10:44 AM..
If just 1 out of every 10,000 rounds of ammunition held by private citizens actually killed an enemy soldier, that is sufficient to wipe out an armed force of 10 million troops. That's how well armed America is. Every hunter/marksman needs 1 in 10,000 accuracy with their own weapons that they are, on average, more skilled with than the average professional military member..
Uh ,in vietnam it was 1 in 100,000 with LOTS of targets nearby, but you say "if 60 yo Joe does 10X better than a trained grunt"...
Yeah, IF.
Most of that Ammo will be blown up when the cruise missiles hit. Or pop off due to excess heat from radiation.
Small killer drones could be built NOW by the millions each year. Not by us...but by the Chinese. They use Ai and can swarm. You can program them to shoot or drop or gas....or just locate so another drone (cruise missile, but smaller and cheaper) can do away with anything living that presents a heat signature.
The manufactured cost of such models would be less than $500 (cost....no profit)....assuming them had only one nice grenade/cluster bomb on each and a decent cam and a reasonable range.
For a little more you can put gas engines or fuel cells in them - or wings (but those are harder to zig and zag)....and keep them in the air for hours. They can land by themselves and self-recharge. The self recharge station can be self defending, so that when Jonnie Reb (any living thing) is seen without a KM or so, they can attack with both auto ground guns or send some drones (or both)......
The actual percentage of long gun owners who can hit things from a KM is tiny. So right away you have to cut the numbers WAY back.......
Why not finalize this whole thing?
IF the world agreed not to have any weapons except rifles.....and IF an army of a million with just these rifles landed on our shores, we could whip them. And my daddy can beat yours. Or could back when......
There. Doesn't that feel like "winning"? IF IF IF IF. But, in reality, those guns do us absolutely no good. We have new things called factories and armories that can crank out the good stuff almost instantly if and when needed. It's not 1776 any longer.....
A larger picture - and a sane discussion - will acknowledge that the USA is no longer able to control the world. Atomic Weapons, even a few of them, scare us away. That is a fact....just as one can claim a handgun is "the great leveler" between a young lady and a would-be mugger, a couple dozen nukes and ANY delivery systems will keep the bad guys or good guys (depending on which "side" you are on) at Bay.
Personally...I honestly believe we are more war-mongering than the Chinese. That is because they are confident in their intelligence and ability to use trade and civilization to advance, while we have already fell behind and see that we have no advantage except in the amount of debt we are willing to go into for Military Matters.
People seem to think that with a total nuclear war they will have weeks/months to form militia groups, etc to fight the invaders. The fact is the war might last one day, perhaps even only a few hours.
The end results would be total destruction from Maine to Florida and all the way to the west coast. There would be nothing left to defend except rubble. No electricity, no transportation, no food and nothing to drink except contaminated water. No hospitals, no medical care, nothing.
Few people would survive. World wide destruction.
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