2nd Civil War Theorycrafting Thread, Peaches Free

[Bacle]

Umm… pretty sure it’d be suicidally dumb of the Feds to nuke their own soil, friend.

Maybe you’d get a few crazed general officers and seething ideologues who want to, but ultimately, the costs of nuking your own country, your own infrastructure, and millions of your own citizens outweighs the benefits exponentially. In addition to how tons of economic assets are gone if you do that (farms, factories, power stations, and so on), your remaining citizens will run screaming into the open arms of the other side, while other nuclear powers watching from the sidelines threaten to fire their arsenals off at you lest they be next. Sure, I guess it’s theoretically possible the DC elites could become that desperate, but whatever victory they score will be the most pyrrhic in history at best — not the trump card you seem to believe it’d be.

See, this makes massive, massive assumptions about the majority of the populace that I just don't think are true, and also seems to make rather massive assumptions about how widespread support for the rebels would be, how big a warhead we are talking, what gets hits, and also about the ability of any rebels to get to the point nukes are needed to break them instead of glowies or normal LEOs.

I think you are rather naive about how a lot of the populace views nukes as related to civil war situations.

I doubt we will ever get to the point we find out, though, because frankly I doubt another civil war is coming, and frankly think WW3 is far more likely than a US civil war these days.

 

[King Arts]

See, this makes massive, massive assumptions about the majority of the populace that I just don't think are true, and also seems to make rather massive assumptions about how widespread support for the rebels would be, how big a warhead we are talking, what gets hits, and also about the ability of any rebels to get to the point nukes are needed to break them instead of glowies or normal LEOs.

I think you are rather naive about how a lot of the populace views nukes as related to civil war situations.

I doubt we will ever get to the point we find out, though, because frankly I doubt another civil war is coming, and frankly think WW3 is far more likely than a US civil war these days.

Dude nukes would be useless against an insurgency. What will you nuke when the rebels live among you?

 

[Sobek]

Using a nuke on US soil against US insurgents would be a hilariously over the top solution to a insurrection that would signal to the whole world that the US has gone mad.

There is no way you could have a rebellion big enough to justify even the smallest nukes in the US arsenal (other than maybe a old Davy Crocket prototype which is sized to deal with a CHAZ or Waco sized incident but that doesn't count) and have the US government still be stable and popular enough both domestically and worldwide to survive the political fallout.

It would be bad enough calling the National Guard, but that is at least perfectly legal. It would be horrendous to send the actual Army, Air Force and Marines but you can at least do it with authorizations of the President and Representatives agreeing. A nuke is simply not justifiable.

What would you even be nuking? Are you gonna wipe out a city and hope everyone who was rebelling was there and no relatives get any ideas? Are you gonna carpet bomb Texas to get it to behave?

Get your head out of your ass dude. Nukes are a admission of defeat.

 

[Doomsought]

I could see someone in the FBI or CIA to false flag a nuclear attack and be dumb enough to do it with a live bomb.

 

[Zachowon]

Unless the rebels have their own nukes, none of it matters, because the Fed gov will still have the ultimate 'I Win' button for use against any rebels forces that actually threaten DC's control.

People think Swalwell was joking about nukes being the ultimate eliminator of any 'rebellion' in the US, but he's not wrong that most of the Left do expect nukes to be the power keeping any rebellion from actually forming into something that could actually challenge DC's military.

Doesn't matter how well people might build FPV/RPG combo's or get some small arms manufacturing going that DC cannot control, because all that matters is the political reliability of select portions of the nuclear command chain who ensure the security and usefulness of our warheads.

No.
Because that is how you mark the end to your civilization as a whole.
The US nuking its own soil is basically telling your populace that is in the process of organized rebellion to a degree you are basically having states mobilize thier National Guard and the Federal military is forced out of said area, would just make it known that you are the reason for thier rebellion. Nuking these rebels, would basically end any chance of you being a legitimate government.

basically, shit is not gonna happen

 

[Bacle]

No.
Because that is how you mark the end to your civilization as a whole.
The US nuking its own soil is basically telling your populace that is in the process of organized rebellion to a degree you are basically having states mobilize thier National Guard and the Federal military is forced out of said area, would just make it known that you are the reason for thier rebellion. Nuking these rebels, would basically end any chance of you being a legitimate government.

basically, shit is not gonna happen

Tell that to the many, many Leftists who openly talk about nukes as counters to rebellions (Swalwell) or say unless you have F-15s, you cannot challenge the Fed gov meaningfully (Biden), and their base which mostly feels the same.

And also remember, doesn't take that many politically reliable officers to get a domestic strike going during a rebellion; just enough folks to prep, arm and deliver a B-61 grav bomb.

The days a ACW 2.0 could look like the first, and be fought effectively by rebels in any real manner at all, ended when the Trinity Site test was successful.

 

[Zachowon]

Tell that to the many, many Leftists who openly talk about nukes as counters to rebellions (Swalwell) or say unless you have F-15s, you cannot challenge the Fed gov meaningfully (Biden), and their base which mostly feels the same.

And also remember, doesn't take that many politically reliable officers to get a domestic strike going during a rebellion; just enough folks to prep, arm and deliver a B-61 grav bomb.

The days a ACW 2.0 could look like the first, and be fought effectively by rebels in any real manner at all, ended when the Trinity Site test was successful.

You do know, as I said, would be the absolute end of America.
A second civil war wouldn't.

You also seem to think that the Air National Guard units that also have fighters wouldn't get invovled, and that every single person in the military would gladly shoot at the average American citizen.
I can tell you, first hand, it would be a blood bath within the military.
The chance a crew has the exact same political leanings and are willing to kill fellow Americans and atomize them is so small they would have to make a crew just for that.
If they can make it to the bombers without someone stopping them.

Because we all know what would happen to us, who just wanna live, end up.
Moderates don't want nuclear war brought upon by thier own people.

You are an idiot if you think nukes will fly if a rebellion happens.

And if one does, you have started world war 3 within your own country.
States will mobilize, bombers will be shot down, the US will cease to exist should a single nuke be used in a civil war

 

[strunkenwhite]

Certainly there are countless hypothetical scenarios where the use of nukes is inconceivable; there are, however, hypothetical scenarios where it's a serious question. I think it's foolish to jump all the way to talk of nukes with no context as to how we got there or what else is going on in the hypothetical.

 

[Cherico]

Tell that to the many, many Leftists who openly talk about nukes as counters to rebellions (Swalwell) or say unless you have F-15s, you cannot challenge the Fed gov meaningfully (Biden), and their base which mostly feels the same.

And also remember, doesn't take that many politically reliable officers to get a domestic strike going during a rebellion; just enough folks to prep, arm and deliver a B-61 grav bomb.

The days a ACW 2.0 could look like the first, and be fought effectively by rebels in any real manner at all, ended when the Trinity Site test was successful.

Some body should tell the taliban that.

 

[LordsFire]

Unless the rebels have their own nukes, none of it matters, because the Fed gov will still have the ultimate 'I Win' button for use against any rebels forces that actually threaten DC's control.

You keep acting like a civil war would be a rehash of the 1860's, with conventional armies marching down roads and across open fields to line up and shoot at each other.

You keep acting like the government in DC ordering a nuclear strike would help them in some way, not hurt them. Even if the Air Force was willing to launch, even if the trigger men didn't decide that clearly they needed to change the target to DC, even if they blew up a city predominantly held by rebels...

It would be the downfall of that government, not it crushing the insurrection.

If the Federal government in DC successfully launches a punitive nuclear strike anywhere on American soil, 90% of people who didn't want a civil war suddenly take a side. Sure, some craven quislings knuckle under, but tens of thousands of men with rifles, including me, would just load up, take a drive, and look for opportunities to pot-shot anyone wearing Fed colors.

Assuming the rest of the military doesn't respond by taking out the people who ordered the strike for themselves. And that the various Air National Guards don't just load up and bomb DC into rubble. And assuming partisans within DC don't mass and storm the White House and Capitol for real.


There is one, and only one way to enforce a police state, and that is to have police thugs, on the streets, with guns, enforcing your totalitarian decrees. You can call in the military to support them, but they're not very useful if they never get out of their APCs or tanks, and even those can be firebombed with shit children can cook up in a bath tub.

The main threat to DC isn't a militia that's marching on DC as a conventional army. It's 30 dudes with 15 pick-up trucks, chainsaws, and experience working as electrical line-men, road crews, and foresters. That's all it would take to cripple DC's transportation and electrical infrastructure, and while key government buildings would have their own backup generators, those don't last forever, and they don't supply everything.

The reason that even in the modern day, an armed populace is unacceptable to the political left, is because if every statist thug takes his life into his hands every time he walks out on the street in uniform, it won't take long before there aren't any statist thugs willing to walk the streets.

And once that happens, you can no longer have a police state.

 

[Bacle]

You do know, as I said, would be the absolute end of America.
A second civil war wouldn't.

You also seem to think that the Air National Guard units that also have fighters wouldn't get invovled, and that every single person in the military would gladly shoot at the average American citizen.
I can tell you, first hand, it would be a blood bath within the military.
The chance a crew has the exact same political leanings and are willing to kill fellow Americans and atomize them is so small they would have to make a crew just for that.
If they can make it to the bombers without someone stopping them.

Because we all know what would happen to us, who just wanna live, end up.
Moderates don't want nuclear war brought upon by thier own people.

You are an idiot if you think nukes will fly if a rebellion happens.

And if one does, you have started world war 3 within your own country.
States will mobilize, bombers will be shot down, the US will cease to exist should a single nuke be used in a civil war

I think that if there was an open, armed rebellion against DC that had any chance of actually threatening DC's hold on power, or threatened to allow the rebels nukes of their own, nukes are absolutely on the table for domestic strikes.

They won't be the first tools used against rebels, and DC friendly media will prime the information space for reasons the strike needs to be done, both before and after, to help minimize backlash among those still loyal to DC.

Also, I feel rather comfortable saying that the wokification of the military is specifically part of why this is more plausible, and the Air Force is the wokest service of them all.

You keep acting like a civil war would be a rehash of the 1860's, with conventional armies marching down roads and across open fields to line up and shoot at each other.

You keep acting like the government in DC ordering a nuclear strike would help them in some way, not hurt them. Even if the Air Force was willing to launch, even if the trigger men didn't decide that clearly they needed to change the target to DC, even if they blew up a city predominantly held by rebels...

It would be the downfall of that government, not it crushing the insurrection.

If the Federal government in DC successfully launches a punitive nuclear strike anywhere on American soil, 90% of people who didn't want a civil war suddenly take a side. Sure, some craven quislings knuckle under, but tens of thousands of men with rifles, including me, would just load up, take a drive, and look for opportunities to pot-shot anyone wearing Fed colors.

Assuming the rest of the military doesn't respond by taking out the people who ordered the strike for themselves. And that the various Air National Guards don't just load up and bomb DC into rubble. And assuming partisans within DC don't mass and storm the White House and Capitol for real.


There is one, and only one way to enforce a police state, and that is to have police thugs, on the streets, with guns, enforcing your totalitarian decrees. You can call in the military to support them, but they're not very useful if they never get out of their APCs or tanks, and even those can be firebombed with shit children can cook up in a bath tub.

The main threat to DC isn't a militia that's marching on DC as a conventional army. It's 30 dudes with 15 pick-up trucks, chainsaws, and experience working as electrical line-men, road crews, and foresters. That's all it would take to cripple DC's transportation and electrical infrastructure, and while key government buildings would have their own backup generators, those don't last forever, and they don't supply everything.

The reason that even in the modern day, an armed populace is unacceptable to the political left, is because if every statist thug takes his life into his hands every time he walks out on the street in uniform, it won't take long before there aren't any statist thugs willing to walk the streets.

And once that happens, you can no longer have a police state.

You seem to forget how many things can be done by drone these days, you forget that the US gov is putting up recon sats in a Starlink-like constellation so they'll have 24/7 orbital surveillance of all locations on Earth, and forget that a few people fucking with the electrical grid is something DC is prepared to deal with at a level of normal LEO action.

If we are in a situation where there is a rebel military force that is big enough to directly challenge DC, or is about to get nukes of their own, then I think a nuke or two onto the rebel force concentrations or bases would be rather plausible.

As I said, nukes won't be the first weapons used against rebels, however there are absolutely scenarios where DC is able to nukes rebels and do so with justification that would fly with the loyal bits of the populace/politically reliable officers.

Lot harder to get away with shooting everyone who takes orders from DC, in Taliban-like insurgency, if DC has 24/7 orbital imagery of the whole damn planet and drones it can command from distant/isolated bases.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

As I understand it, the core of such an insurgency would be woodsmen. And they'd be a total nightmare to deal with because the bastards can basically just disappear off the face of the Earth whilst taking all their weapons and ammunition with them.

Weapons they are very accurate with, I might add.

I've heard some say there's tens of thousands of them in the US, so in the scenario of an uprising they'd probably make the more rural and wild parts of the country into no-go zones.

The very best thing the Federal Government can do in this situation is not actually apply overwhelming force of tanks and aircraft, but instead the tactical insertion of Commando forces they know to be loyal.

 

[Aldarion]

The Soviet union had nukes it did diddly squat to prevent the fall

Soviet leadership however was far saner than leadership of most of the Western countries nowadays.

 

[Zachowon]

I think that if there was an open, armed rebellion against DC that had any chance of actually threatening DC's hold on power, or threatened to allow the rebels nukes of their own, nukes are absolutely on the table for domestic strikes.

They won't be the first tools used against rebels, and DC friendly media will prime the information space for reasons the strike needs to be done, both before and after, to help minimize backlash among those still loyal to DC.

Also, I feel rather comfortable saying that the wokification of the military is specifically part of why this is more plausible, and the Air Force is the wokest service of them all.

You seem to forget how many things can be done by drone these days, you forget that the US gov is putting up recon sats in a Starlink-like constellation so they'll have 24/7 orbital surveillance of all locations on Earth, and forget that a few people fucking with the electrical grid is something DC is prepared to deal with at a level of normal LEO action.

If we are in a situation where there is a rebel military force that is big enough to directly challenge DC, or is about to get nukes of their own, then I think a nuke or two onto the rebel force concentrations or bases would be rather plausible.

As I said, nukes won't be the first weapons used against rebels, however there are absolutely scenarios where DC is able to nukes rebels and do so with justification that would fly with the loyal bits of the populace/politically reliable officers.

Lot harder to get away with shooting everyone who takes orders from DC, in Taliban-like insurgency, if DC has 24/7 orbital imagery of the whole damn planet and drones it can command from distant/isolated bases.

Woke doesn't mean shit Bacle.
I married a leftist. She doesn't agree with everything the left is doing and hates a good bit of it.
Guess what the vast majority of the Left are? Moderates.
Guess what group of people are the ones who would lose all support for thier government should a nuke be dropped on US Soil.
The vast majority of the US Population.

Fun fact Bacle, Barnes Air National Guard Base will get F-35 fighters, ensuring long-term presence
Even state controlled Air National Guards are getting fucking F 35s.

A nuke is not a simple "rebels are all dead I win" button.
It is the equivalent of stabbing yourself in the gut and saying "I HAVE BEATEN YOU IN A FIGHT AS I HAVE KILLED MYSELF OVER YOU KILLING ME."

The wokification of the military is also an over representation of how it actually is. The US Military is 70% moderates, 20% Conservatives, and 10% Liberals.
That 10 percent will ALWAYS be outnumbered.

Drones still have operators. There is nothing the US has that is fully automated and does not have human input.

And again, this is why nukes will never be used because that trigger puller.
Now has the target on thier back from someone they work with, because the military will already have a divide internally.
Now this fucker just nuked your home. Your family vaporized and they were just living there.
That is when the military stops being the federal government and becomes warlords

 

[Bacle]

Woke doesn't mean shit Bacle.
I married a leftist. She doesn't agree with everything the left is doing and hates a good bit of it.
Guess what the vast majority of the Left are? Moderates.
Guess what group of people are the ones who would lose all support for thier government should a nuke be dropped on US Soil.
The vast majority of the US Population.

Fun fact Bacle, Barnes Air National Guard Base will get F-35 fighters, ensuring long-term presence
Even state controlled Air National Guards are getting fucking F 35s.

A nuke is not a simple "rebels are all dead I win" button.
It is the equivalent of stabbing yourself in the gut and saying "I HAVE BEATEN YOU IN A FIGHT AS I HAVE KILLED MYSELF OVER YOU KILLING ME."

The wokification of the military is also an over representation of how it actually is. The US Military is 70% moderates, 20% Conservatives, and 10% Liberals.
That 10 percent will ALWAYS be outnumbered.

Drones still have operators. There is nothing the US has that is fully automated and does not have human input.

And again, this is why nukes will never be used because that trigger puller.
Now has the target on thier back from someone they work with, because the military will already have a divide internally.
Now this fucker just nuked your home. Your family vaporized and they were just living there.
That is when the military stops being the federal government and becomes warlords

I never said it was a 'rebels are all dead I win' button, just that for certain targets and certain scenarios the US fed gov would very plausibly nuke their own soil to stop rebels from getting certain capabilities.

Particularly if the rebels got close to having nukes of their own, something I notice you neatly dodged addressing in your posts.

Are you seriously saying that if rebels got help, and the offer of nukes of their own from a foreign power, or was in the process of attempting to get nukes via stealing US warheads, that DC wouldn't think of going nuclear in response?

Though realistically, once DC shows it is willing to open canned sunshine on rebels, I expect a lot of the more...on the fence parts of a rebellion will dissipate in the face of force they cannot match, and only hardcore support will be left till they are ground down too.

And it doesn't matter if the military become warlords, permissive action links mean DC still controls the nukes.

 

[Zachowon]

I never said it was a 'rebels are all dead I win' button, just that for certain targets and certain scenarios the US fed gov would very plausibly nuke their own soil to stop rebels from getting certain capabilities.

Particularly if the rebels got close to having nukes of their own, something I notice you neatly dodged addressing in your posts.

Are you seriously saying that if rebels got help, and the offer of nukes of their own from a foreign power, or was in the process of attempting to get nukes via stealing US warheads, that DC wouldn't think of going nuclear in response?

Though realistically, once DC shows it is willing to open canned sunshine on rebels, I expect a lot of the more...on the fence parts of a rebellion will dissipate in the face of force they cannot match, and only hardcore support will be left till they are ground down too.

And it doesn't matter if the military become warlords, permissive action links mean DC still controls the nukes.

But guess what, the people who luanch the nukes? They can say no. They also put in the targeting info.
They can remain vigilant and strong.
It only takes on person to say no to prevent a nuke launch. And if they both don't agree on what is going on, welp there goes those nukes.

Or submarines and the fights that would break out.

The downing of any nuke laden bombers.

and why would the rebels go for nukes? They do not need them to win. Nukes only work if your a foreign power not a rebel.

Also, we havnt nuked Iran yet

 

[Bacle]

and why would the rebels go for nukes? They do not need them to win. Nukes only work if your a foreign power not a rebel.

Rebels would not be able to accomplish anything meaningful without their own nukes, or foreign support, and foreign support of the rebels would likely help justify nuking them if they begin to pose a serious threat to DC.

Also, yes, I know about the two-man rules and how one person is supposed to be able to stop any launch of nukes. Which is also why in the event of civil war, any officer not willing to use nukes against the rebels is going to get purged from the nuclear command chains long before an order comes down.

There is no scenario where the rebels win in another Civil War, just questions of how much force DC needs to use to deal with the most dangerous bits.

 

[LordsFire]

You seem to forget how many things can be done by drone these days, you forget that the US gov is putting up recon sats in a Starlink-like constellation so they'll have 24/7 orbital surveillance of all locations on Earth, and forget that a few people fucking with the electrical grid is something DC is prepared to deal with at a level of normal LEO action.

Lot harder to get away with shooting everyone who takes orders from DC, in Taliban-like insurgency, if DC has 24/7 orbital imagery of the whole damn planet and drones it can command from distant/isolated bases.

You are just constantly revealing exactly how little you understand of how any of this works.

Satellites can't see through forest canopies.

They can't see inside of cars.

They can't see inside the covered bed of a pickup truck.

Even when they can see a dude doing something, they can't make out enough detail to see his face, to see useful details about just how tall and broad he is or isn't.

Also, satellites don't track every single human being under their camera range. They can't. There are hundreds of miles of power lines, of water pipes, of roads, and you cannot watch it all, or even come close to watching it all, with satellites.

Rebels would not be able to accomplish anything meaningful without their own nukes, or foreign support, and foreign support of the rebels would likely help justify nuking them if they begin to pose a serious threat to DC.

You repeat this like a bloody religious mantra, you repeat it like saying it again over and over will make it true.

It doesn't.

You are literally at the stage of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying 'naaa naaa naa, if I can't hear you, then what you're saying isn't true!'

It has been explained to you, repeatedly, in detail, at multiple different levels, why nukes are not 'I win' buttons, and war over the ninety years since nukes became a thing bear this out, especially recently in Afghanistan and Ukraine, but for whatever reason you refuse to pay attention to reality.

Why are you so bloody insistent on being willfully ignorant?

 

[Circle of Willis]

As far as the usage of nukes, drones, etc. go I'll first let this master strategist from 4chan outline my thoughts in a more eloquent manner.

Tl;dr going nuclear is a tacit admission of defeat - saying out loud that you really have no hope whatsoever of uniting & leading the country, or even profiting from the ruins, and would sooner burn it down out of spite. It and the other big fancy engines of death in the US military's arsenal can't actually be used for policing duties on their lonesome, duties which are obviously fundamental to counter-insurgency, and you need people - who have their own thoughts, their own fears and hopes for the country, their own families & friends to think about (who certainly aren't immune to the leadership going full retard with nukes), etc. - to do that.

Besides, nukes are primarily useful against concentrated population centers, and who lives in those mostly? Leftists! I'd expect right-wing rebels in an American context to be primarily operating out in the countryside (too dispersed for nukes to be useful, you might be able to vaporize the leaders of one insurgent outfit or another if you can identify which mountain they're hiding under but leaders can be replaced - AQ is still around long after Bin Laden was killed and Muhammad Omar dying didn't spell the end for the Taliban) or from the suburbs (can't nuke that either without also vaporizing the 'urb' where all your supporters live, nukes aren't exactly a precision weapon).

Also you'd think 20+ years in the sandpits of Iraq and Afghanistan would have taught the brass that doing shit like drone striking weddings, flattening neighborhoods or even paying Antifa (or the John Brown Gun Club, or whatever other psychotic far-left paramilitary outfit you can think of that really wouldn't have a problem with raping and murdering any civilian to the right of Mao) to do their dirty work for them will inevitably backfire and gin up even more resistance, much less even worse terror tactics like nuking entire cities to kill some rebel cells.

 

[Ixian]

Unless the rebels have their own nukes, none of it matters, because the Fed gov will still have the ultimate 'I Win' button for use against any rebels forces that actually threaten DC's control.

People think Swalwell was joking about nukes being the ultimate eliminator of any 'rebellion' in the US, but he's not wrong that most of the Left do expect nukes to be the power keeping any rebellion from actually forming into something that could actually challenge DC's military.

Doesn't matter how well people might build FPV/RPG combo's or get some small arms manufacturing going that DC cannot control, because all that matters is the political reliability of select portions of the nuclear command chain who ensure the security and usefulness of our warheads.

Nukes don't help against a local insurgency.