Bay 12 Games Forum

Training to use all of those, something to use them on that's going to actually do something, an end-goal, substantial public support, infrastructure to keep you supplied with all of that, somewhere to hide, the list goes on. Asymmetric warfare is a hell of a lot more than getting Billy and some bombs (never mind not getting yourself killed making those IEDs or "liberating" those anti-tank weapons) and going out and trying to kill people.

That kind of question is one of the reasons I would expect a US grown guerrilla movement to die before it lived

Honestly, I really hope things don't get anywhere near that bad. We're only a little ways away from turning into Afghanistan if that happens.

Well yeah, the chances of it actually reaching that point are incredibly damn slim, almost to the point of impossibility. There's very little profit to be had in that sort of situation, and considerably more to be had in nice and comfortable bread and circus that keeps insurrection safely marginalized.

As to LW, the line of argument isn't to volunteer yourself into definite powerlessness, it's to leverage the actual power you have (social, cultural, economic) instead of a supposed power you couldn't leverage worth a damn even if it was your last resort.

I didn't say there'd be a single unified resistance, I'm counting on countless different cells all across America

Which is a hell scenario in its own right. Most of them working at cross purposes, many of them slaughtering and/or abusing civilians, the entire situation breaking the country into a festering shithole... sounds like a good way to convince the general populace to accept the jackboot instead of live through that.

... though I guess considering you're from Europe, that would fit into some kind of long term plan to reacquire the colonies. Suddenly your words make more sense.

If you expect much of 1 to be able to happen in the US, and even more, for it to make a difference, I have many bridges to sell you. It takes a hell of a lot more than just having firearms to pull off asymmetric warfare, and a junkload beyond that to actually get anything done with it.

Points on 2 and 3, though. I figure we'd be able to OD en masse about as as easily for the suicide option, though. Possibly even cost less.

I'm... not sure why you copied your previous post like that, but regardless, who said anything about the military? I wouldn't really expect the military to get meaningfully involved in insurrection attempts in the future -- the chances of any not getting nipped in the bud (Probably violently, by overenthusiastic police) before they became much of an issue is pretty small. State/federal forces are already frankly terrifying in their capability and willingness to track and suppress civil disobedience, and that's without going full jackboot or working in the face of an actual violent insurrection attempt.

Seriously, when you've got cases where the local cops are better equipped than the national guard, and trending towards even heavier*, and showing quite a large amount of willingness on the national scale to do exactly the things along the lines being discussed, the military's involvement is arguably of secondary concern. Even if they did get involved, it would be defecting military (and, far more importantly, their subsequently stolen hardware) that made the difference -- not civilian gun ownership.

Though again, future being what it probably is, by the time something like a civil insurrection in the USA is even the most remote of possibilities, jackboot forces would likely only need a very small portion of loyal forces (so long as they maintain control of the hardware, which hey, that's what security tech and whatnot is for) to maintain ground control. Drones are a helluva thing already, never mind what's almost certainly coming in the future.

It's just... seriously. Civilian firearms stopped being able to meaningfully do anything against even a halfhearted attempt at full blown oppression years ago, and they're becoming more trivialized by the day. The whole "defense against tyranny" aspect of gun ownership is a joke, and honestly in kinda' bad taste. People who think that's actually going to make a difference if tyranny happens (well, happens more, anyway) are more likely to make poor decisions regarding preventing it from happening, at least from what I've seen.

*As per acquisition attempts re: current drones and heavy equipment, never mind whatever the future brings -- I know we've got legged ground drones already working pretty well (have since a few years back, at least), and they're already producing drones specifically designed to handle civil disturbance. Another decade or three and stuff specifically designed to slice through crowds and invade homes is incredibly damn likely, as is their introduction into normal police use to the extent drones being used on civilians don't raise many eyebrows.

That sounds kinda' horrible. I'll just... stick to Opera, I guess.

Personally I'd prefer they just switch the "Fony" and "WacDonalds" to the actual company logos and get paid that way. Product placement, since they almost have that there now. They'd make more that way than trying to stomp out flames of people sharing files.

Major Kusanagi finally puts on clothes, and it's a red and blue suit with PEPSI stamped all over it.

Yeah, if I were going to suggest a graphical interface, I'd probably suggest something like that one zombie outbreak java game. Basically, different colored/sized squares. Maybe some triangles or circles or whatev' if you were getting frisky. Alternately, very far zoomed supcom style -- just fairly abstract icons, maybe some dakkadots. As per puzzle's suggestion, basically.

Or ASCII

... yeah, don't get me wrong, public schooling has its (pretty damn big) problems, but I'd still state without hesitation that it's a massive goddamn improvement over anything else we've tried, on a societal level. It can screw with the fringes pretty hard, and it's far from optimal at teaching the majority, but it does well enough for enough folks that go through it that the net benefit is ridiculously positive. And I haven't actually seen a proposition for a better system that isn't blatantly bugfuck insane*. S'just... stateside, at least, schools need more and better used money (especially the latter), more and better trained teachers, and a hefty dollop of additional flexibility in their everything -- scheduling, teaching style, materials, and so on. There are folks fighting for all of that, but it's slow going with a lot of resistance

*Like transitioning to more private schools, which hard fucks the poor and are notoriously shitty and/or corrupt in a lot of ways beside, or anything that isn't, well, mandatory public education -- apprentice systems (massively inefficient and inconsistent at scale), more homeschooling (most parents can't afford the time), ad-hoc creche systems (public schools are already those), etc., so forth, so on.