The only places I've seen full service gas stations in the last 20 years are Oregon, New Jersey, and somewhere in Ontario.

Hey AC. :)

It's all good, I know things don't always come across quite right. I didn't consider it too trollish.

More than likely if it did come down to a large faction versus another large faction, and the authorities (law enforcement and/or military) were divided on the cause, they'd be handing out weapons and gear anyways, and still run out of ammo too fast.

Either side would probably have to "borrow" from gun stores anyways. I don't think even most local law enforcement has enough real firepower to handle war like battles.

Look at cases like this. 23 officers fired at least 377 rounds in less than a minute. Even the professionals don't control themselves in less than critical situations. If that was a combat situation and they reloaded, they'd all be out of ammo before the fight started, and realize they took out an empty vehicle or apartment. Well, hopefully empty.

I happen to be one of the people who does have weapons, including an AR-15. I have quite a few magazines, and I buy ammo by the case. I really don't like paying range prices for ammo, and I don't like wasting range time reloading magazines.

As I recall, if you are a soldier and follow an unlawful order, you and your superior who gave the order, are responsible for that action. It is your responsibility to refuse the order and report it up your chain of command.

I did a lot of mental wargames with ex-military people over the years. They are interesting to think about. I wouldn't want to be anywhere near it if it happened.

This is just a frontal assault scenario, extremely simplified. It also assumes the rebel faction has sufficient numbers to make it past the first encounter.

Imagine the first wave is 100 rebels storming the White House. The Secret Service and local law enforcement will be calling for a cleanup of 100 bodies on the lawn. Possibly the arrest of a few injured survivors.

You can be sure reinforcements will be called in.

The second wave of 1,000 rebels attempt to storm the White House. They might make it to the newly extended buffer zone, blocks away.

As someone else said, these civilians with weapons and passenger vehicles are facing the military at this point. They aren't just going to hang out waiting at the perimeter. They're going to aggressively hunt and stop the threat. So word will spread when that hunting goes a bit wrong. Like a AH-64 lights up a suspected rebel faction stronghold with the M230. That may turn out to just be an apartment building with women and children in it. That could have even been

Around the 4th or 5th attack, assuming the rebel propaganda machine was working, soldiers are going to start questioning what they're doing. They might sympathize with the rebels. They might recognize the fact that they're fighting other Americans. Who is right, a bunch of people willing to die over their belief, or the people who sign the paychecks. This is when the power may shift. The military would still have superior communications. Rebel factions would have poorer communications and intelligence, but would have numbers and motivation.

BTW, I intentionally wrote that with no motives behind it. It really doesn't matter what the reasons are. It will be messy.

There are other tactics that would change things dramatically. Say it were done quieter and a single shift at a single air base was infiltrated. They could put a few squadrons of fighter/attack aircraft in the air and on target in less than an hour. It could be booked as an "exercise". There is one I found with just a few quick searches that has enough aircraft and weapons to take a small country. I'm sure there are others.

pnutjam said in another comment, that won't happen and to use Syria as an example.
ISIS did that in Syria. Al-Tabqa air base, Aug 2014. That was less than 1,000 ISIS fighters in 3(?) waves.

I read mixed reports on how many aircraft they captured, how many were functional, and if they were used. Some said none were functional. Another report said two ISIS MiG-21Bs were shot down there. Other reports say that they are still using some MiG-21Bs on ground strikes.

So, yes, civilians with any sort of weapon can be dangerous. It doesn't even have to be homemade AR-15s.

Luckily, American civilians are disorganized and poorly motivated. Hell, look at OWS (New York). They had up to about 50,000 marchers. That's not a little protest. That's an army. They had no goal and no coordination, since they were intentionally lacking leadership. It could have flipped from being unarmed, to capturing everything the police brought. But even if they did that, they wouldn't have a clue where to go after that.

Places I've been in the US, there was no requirement that my weapons had to be at my residence. Not unless you have NFA restricted weapons.

From what I was reading elsewhere (mostly ATF stuff), they can be sold.

Firearms without serial numbers can be passed through a FFL dealer. There are antique firearms and custom firearms which simply don't have a serial number.

If so desired, a gunsmith (I believe with a FFL) can give a weapon a serial number, and file a form with the ATF.

I haven't looked into it any farther than reading. I have no legitimate purpose to ask, as I don't happen to have one, nor do I see it happening any time soon.

Also, in my state, there is no requirement of any paperwork when privately selling to another individual. I've bought a few weapons that way. I hand them cash, they had me the weapon, and we're done. I usually deal with FFL dealers though, just because they have stores I can shop in.

There are always a lot more variables than "untrained guys with guns vs the military". Especially where the ex-military population in the US is *huge*.

A guy with just enough chemistry knowledge can make an IED, and doesn't even have to be there for it to work.

A single sniper can hold down a squad of well armed and trained soldiers. He can be a half mile or more away to do it, and only needs to fire off a shot if they move.

Gaining access to non-civilian gear is inevitable if the war runs long enough. That can be gear captured in the field, overrun bases, or even supply drops from other nations friendly to the cause.

ISIS/ISIL have been using a lot of captured equipment.

If several thousand armed civilians showed up in Washington DC, air strikes are out of the picture. Heavy armor is questionable at best. Even heavy weapons fire isn't a good thing. "1,000 terrorists dead, 10,000 unarmed civilians killed" is never going to go over well.

That's not to say it would work. If someone did start a civil war with good cause, but poor planning, they may as well consider themselves dead before it starts. But enough people with light weapons (pistols, AR-15, hunting rifles) and an awesome plan can (possibly) go a long way.

A million angry people carrying torches and pitchforks could take over DC if they wanted. There wouldn't be a million surviving attackers though.

The Branch Davidians were a special bunch. Nothing about what they did really made sense. Fortifying yourself in a building with no escape route is suicide. They had no real motive or plan. Or if they had a plan it was a horrible one.

There's no good reason we can't set up a Mars colony. Ideas on how to do it have been floated since the late 1940s. Feasible plans have been around since the 1960s. The only thing holding us back is the fact that governments prefer to fund killing people more efficiently, than to extend the reach of the human race.

The way we're going, the human race will die with this planet. We're trying hard to make sure that happens.

There's nothing misleading in what I wrote. He asked about those, so I answered those.

On the submarine reactors, I would have preferred to only give the weight on the reactor portion, but I couldn't find any numbers. It's almost like the DoD doesn't want you to know. :) I have seen pictures of decommissioned submarine reactor compartments. They just slice out the whole compartment and bury it.

I'm sure they could make something a bit more portable, but chasing down test or theoretical reactors that would be sized appropriately to send to Mars, that would give an unspecified power output, is silly.

I've gotten pretty confused by this thread already. If I understand it to this point, they want the nuclear reactor to provide heat, to make dry ice sublimate, to spin turbines, to make power. I intentionally ignored the obvious problem.

For the dry ice in general, we've detected it's present. We don't know how much there is though. Even if we know that there's 100,000 acres covered dry ice in the target zone, that doesn't say if it's a fraction of an inch thick, or a mile thick.

Nuclear satellites and probes use tiny reactors only capable of watts of output. Voyager 1's has 3 MHW-RTG weighing 37.7 kg, and making 147w each.

The S5G reactor compartment weighed 650 tons.
The S9G reactor compartment weighed 1,400 tons and measures 31 ft in diameter, 37 feet deep.

We (anyone on Earth) don't have anything that will lift a submarine reactor to LEO. To the best of my knowledge, nothing like that has even been designed.

For comparison, the ISS is about 460 tons, and it wasn't delivered in one shot. I believe most of what's there was delivered in 31 flights.

Also, nuclear reactors don't last forever. From what I could find, the S9G is designed to be refueled at about 30 years.

I've only been to a few places up there, but the places I noticed everything was accessible. It wouldn't involve acrobatics, it would just take someone walking quietly in the tree line, and then to the house.

I guess where ever AK Marc is, the are amazingly secure, with fences and cameras everywhere. That sounds more like a federal prison or doomsday cult commune than a residential or farm area. Maybe he's just thinking of the hardest way possible to approach, rather than "walk down street, walk up driveway, [pop] [snip], walk inside"

Most homes, it's just a matter of walking up to the side of the house. That's usually the ugly side where the utilities all come in. I've never cut power outside, but pulling the meter usually does it.

I have worked with the phone and cable service frequently, since that point is where your house wiring meets the provider. It can be snipped outside of the box, or if they're nice they'll just open it and unplug it. Generally, people don't notice. I've gone to help friends out, and been completely ignored by neighbors, even if my friend isn't home at the time.

Heh, their "comfort zone" is funny. They clearly haven't seen what summer weather is like in the southern US. I guess iStuff users are suppose to turn off their devices to go outside.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Hey, I was very happy with my Rollex. Made in China, and sold in Mexico for $20. That thing lasted me months. :)

But the Rolex won't be obsolete in a year. :) And you are pretty much guaranteed that the Rolex will still be working 24 hours later. The Apple Watch has an estimated 18 hour life.

I don't know about the Apple fanclub, but I've had plenty of days where I didn't get home for 24 hours. Needing to feed my phone twice a day seems just about as needy as a tamagotchi.

I guess I could explain it a bit better.

It was payroll. The first bank was the bank the payroll checks were drawn on. That wasn't my account. That bank actually wouldn't have me as a customer, because my credit rating wasn't good enough without adding more fees. They also charged fees for *everything*. If you were rude enough to talk to a teller, that was $5. Using a check cost. They had all kinds of creative ways to hit you with fees just because.

On the credit rating part, it wasn't "bad". It was good enough to have credit cards, get a car loan, etc. They were just dicks. So an extra service charge for my credit score.

If I deposited in my bank, it could take a week for the funds to show up. I just mentioned it as writing a check in the previous post.

They still charged me the $5 for showing up to cash the check, and I still argued against it every time. It required 2 forms of ID, verification of the signature card, manager approval, calling my boss to verify that he wrote the check, and whatever else they could do. Sometimes I had to wait for "the cash truck". No truck ever arrived, but suddenly they'd have more cash. That was basically that they ran out of ways to annoy me, other than to make me wait.

So I'd take the cash, put it in my pocket, and walk down the street to the second bank to deposit it.