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Posted: 2/13/2013 3:35:17 PM EDT
What other books or stories are out there like this? Stories that can help me to understand defending our home and farm. I've read the ranger's handbook, but it's really not about static defenses. I don't want to read about building huge sandbag fortifications. I just want to have some ideas to think through fluid situations.
Link Posted: 2/13/2013 3:53:58 PM EDT
[#1]
We are - for the most part - civilians...

So we're either en route to home or we're at home when SHTF in a kinetic way.

Now, if we're en route to home and we walk into the Chinese paratroopers/MZBs/Ms-13 gangbangers... I assume our mission will be to survive initial contact and then E&E so as to continue on our way home by another route (which probably includes a detour or 3, one of which will involve a change of clothing).

If we are at home then it's Fort Apache or gated fort 'neighborhood....and the goal is not just to survive initial contact but to force them to E and E.

While it's generally true most homes cannot be suitably fortified (especially from fire) I think this re-directs us to the obvious..... trenches, berms, hedgerow landscaping, ha-has... and bunkers, tunnels, geo-caches....



Link Posted: 2/13/2013 7:05:44 PM EDT
[#2]
It's virtually impossible to retrofit a normal house, and where possible, very expensive.





You can build a pretty decent "fort" if you set out to do it.  You can even (depending on where you're building it) make it not look like a fort.  You'll have to pay attention to the aforementioned landscaping and etc, but you can make a pretty nice, fairly bullet proof house for not a whole lot more than the cost of a regular home.  Just hope you like the southwestern look, because it's gonna be polycrete/foamcrete parabolic frame disguised as adobe.  You should be good against most small arms.  If they show up with arty, though, you're about done unless you've built and manned your own firebase.



I've never run into any books that treated the idea in any sort of reasonable fashion, which is why I didn't post earlier.



 
Link Posted: 2/13/2013 7:27:52 PM EDT
[#3]
I'd rather use hedges to build stand off.  Bollards just wouldn't landscape well.
Link Posted: 2/13/2013 8:05:33 PM EDT
[#4]
If you've never read the online story, Aftermath, by Al Steiner, you might enjoy it. While I was reading it I was thinking it was an almost perfect textbook example of the concept of "defense in depth". That's the term the military uses to describe making attackers pay for every inch of ground they attack through.
Link Posted: 2/13/2013 8:22:12 PM EDT
[#5]
The reason it is difficult to find a book/account akin to "Duffer's Drift" is because of evolution in warfare. With artillery, it is dangerous to stay in a fixed position. In the age of bows and catapults, castles are still viable as semi-permanent fighting positions. With the proliferation of gunpowder, all fighting positions became temporary. Therefore, your scenario/premise is faulty to begin with: Any defensive works (trenches, et al) is only a means to gain time, time to evacuate your dependents and stores.

If you want stories on fighting from trenches, working on trenches, books on Vietnam and WW1 are probably your best bet. (Korea has plenty of positional warfare, but most accounts are in official history forms.)  McDonough's Platoon Leader is a good book on being in combat, setting up a Platoon Patrol Base, and leading patrols.  Command Legacy is also a great starter/complement to Ranger Handbook and FM 7-8 on how to set up a defense.

For more thoughts on defending a homestead, check out my blog. Will put down more thoughts in my next reply.
Link Posted: 2/13/2013 9:03:36 PM EDT
[#6]
Contrary to popular misconception, WW1 was not a triumph of machineguns and trenches. More properly, WW1 was the triumph of the railroad, the counter-attack, and artillery.  The allies and Germans usually succeeded in breaching the trench/defensive line. However, they were never able to exploit the breach. Artillery meant that it was almost impossible to mass your reserves close enough to exploit the breach. Even if you did breach, the railroad was always able to bring in the defense's strategic reserve and set up a defensive line to contain your exploitation and counter-attack. Mass conscription meant that there was always a strategic/operational reserve.

The Blitzkrieg, more than anything else, was the tactic to exploit a breach made by the infantry. Rommel's WW1 memoir, Infantry Attacks, is a classic on the German stormtrooper tactics for breaching trenches. On Infantry is another classic that discusses infantry principles.

Therefore, as Command Legacy says, your defense consists of 3 things: Combat Patrols, Fighting Positions, and the Counter-Attack Reserve. Combat patrols are fairly obvious, you patrol to disrupt enemy reconnaissance, provide advance warning, and make the enemy to commit prematurely. The combat patrol is what you use to take out enemy snipers, and helps you pincer during your counter-attack.  You use your Reserves and stragglers to ambush the enemy when they breach your defense, and to counter-attack when he culminates in his exploitation.

For fighting positions, you try to set up 3: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary. When the enemy makes a hole in your defense, you do not try to plug it immediately. Instead, your defenders, who are now in untenable Primary positions, withdraws to their 2ndary in an orderly fashion, while your Reserve sets up an ambush. When the enemy now comes through that beautiful hole they just made, you cut them down, repel. Then while the enemy is re-organizing, your defenders go back to their Primary positions, and you plug that hole then.

If the enemy is overrunning your defense, and you have to continue holding your position (ie, evac is not complete), then that's when you fall back to Tertiary (ie, squad bunker/safe room). From your Tertiary position, you wait as the enemy rushes past you, then shoots them from behind. Hopefully you have a Reserve/Reinforcements coming to rescue you, but if the numbers are against you, then this is either where you fight to die or where you fight to breakout. In Vietnam, that's when they call in the artillery on their own positions. In your case, you might blow up your own house when the attackers are all On The Objective.

Therefore, obviously, your Primary positions may be quite a distance away from your homestead. If they are sieging your house, then it's a very bad situation. You want to keep the defense mobile so you can trade space for time. In WW1, German infantry took to using allied shell craters as their 2ndary positions, using a limited form of mobile defense.

As you can see, a proper defense takes a lot of people. If you are less than platoon-size, then you should commit to staying mobile. Not to say you shouldn't be farming, but don't get married to your land unless you're willing to stake your lives on it. You can always come back to the land later (root crops), but you can't exactly replace your family.
Link Posted: 2/13/2013 9:39:20 PM EDT
[#7]
Buy a back hoe and keep it at the farm with some fuel.  You could construct a earthen fort real ricki-ticki with a  little practice.  Train the kids or wife on how to sharpen stakes for the bottom the mote and you will be set
Link Posted: 2/13/2013 9:52:06 PM EDT
[#8]
When defending a fixed position, Rorlke's Drift is the exception, the Alamo is the rule.  Plan accordingly.

Ops
Link Posted: 2/14/2013 3:52:23 AM EDT
[#9]
Quoted:
When defending a fixed position, Rorlke's Drift is the exception, the Alamo is the rule.  Plan accordingly.

Ops


Granted, but the Alamo they were outnumbered 9 to 1, and took 600 Mexican Soldiers to the afterlife for their 200 losses.  Granted I would rather live another day, but for the "over my dead body" crowd good defences can turn the MZB's victory into a pyrrhic one.
Link Posted: 2/14/2013 6:45:54 AM EDT
[#10]
Quoted:
Buy a back hoe and keep it at the farm with some fuel.  You could construct a earthen fort real ricki-ticki with a  little practice.  Train the kids or wife on how to sharpen stakes for the bottom the mote and you will be set [/quote


We have a small backhoe at our place and one of our guys is a road contractor with all of the heavy equipment that implies. We intend to create REAL defensible space- 100's of yards of it (not hard to do if you have ever been to the Texas Panhandle).....Nobody is "lobbing a molotov" through a window at our place...... Fixed positions CAN be defended if well planned out and you aren't dealing with real artillery and air assets.

If you can't defend this....you have failed as a survivalist-

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://christinablom.com/SEtrip/LlanoEstacado.JPG&imgrefurl=http://christinablom.com/SEtrip/DAY12.HTM&h=270&w=360&sz=20&tbnid=hi7nVpQ9DSj5bM:&tbnh=92&tbnw=123&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dstaked%2Bplains%2Bpictures%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=staked+plains+pictures&usg=__z2GicBliedviZD-Ao9zdjBxxnL0=&docid=CbNv3vLEzHNZ2M&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QwcdUdH6Lsmp2gW0-4DwDQ&ved=0CDwQ9QEwBA&dur=3594


http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://library.ndsu.edu/exhibits/text/greatplains/fig04.jpg&imgrefurl=http://library.ndsu.edu/exhibits/text/greatplains/text.html&h=428&w=675&sz=63&tbnid=JLi0y1OEFjTUwM:&tbnh=75&tbnw=119&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dstaked%2Bplains%2Bpictures%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=staked+plains+pictures&usg=__GeDDUcGhc3L09V0SlVCWPh3L-94=&docid=he-KPEc2cPM5FM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QwcdUdH6Lsmp2gW0-4DwDQ&ved=0CEIQ9QEwBg&dur=7366


http://www.google.com/search?q=amarillo+texas+pictures&hl=en&tbo=d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=2QcdUZDiBcq02gW_4oGABw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=909#hl=en&tbo=d&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=llano+estacado&oq=llano+e&gs_l=img.1.0.0j0i5j0i24l8.27519.28935.0.30870.7.7.0.0.0.0.125.745.2j5.7.0...0.0...1c.1.3.img.Ma0Rq_XB7yw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.42452523,d.b2I&fp=e294e5c36caf67b2&biw=1280&bih=909&imgrc=l6es5TjjR6BFAM%3A%3Bsp-cQnGBHHJCLM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.pixtus.com%252Fforum%252Fattachments%252Flandscapes%252F103128d1243955013-llano-estacado-tpf-landscape.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.pixtus.com%252Fforum%252Flandscapes%252F101223-llano-estacado.html%3B900%3B611
Link Posted: 2/14/2013 3:34:24 PM EDT
[#11]
I forget the link but someone had a post in the pdf thread with a few zillion of the military manuals.



While dry reading I would see what they say about sandbagging a position as well as attacking said position.



I need to do some reading on this topic regardless because I had to scratch my head and realize I could not place exactly what the thread title was referring to book wise.



One thing I have always kept in mind is that camoflauge like a damaged or burned house on top of a bunker/basement might cause most folks to travel right on by but of course stuff like a garden or wood smoke or just the smells of cooking food will draw people and animals like crazy.



This sort of thing is what causes me to plan on rebuilding and needing to figure out some points on streets into towns to work on figuring things out because a force against one dwelling is hard to handle.
Link Posted: 2/14/2013 4:51:04 PM EDT
[#12]
Found this picture online and thought it might fit this thread:
Link Posted: 2/14/2013 6:52:59 PM EDT
[#13]
Quoted:
Buy a back hoe and keep it at the farm with some fuel.  You could construct a earthen fort real ricki-ticki with a  little practice.  Train the kids or wife on how to sharpen stakes for the bottom the mote and you will be set


My home sits on the side of a ridge.  I would need 60ft+ berms to conceal my location.  I think the only way to defend this particular stationary location is to be unpredictably mobile.
Link Posted: 2/15/2013 6:42:14 AM EDT
[#14]
"I would need 60ft+ berms to conceal my location."

Or a 20-foot berm and some trees on top of them.
Link Posted: 2/15/2013 7:35:08 AM EDT
[#15]
If you live in the city or the burbs you are SOL if you ever have to defend against 10+ well-armed and determined bad guys.  It would take hog wire over all windows, burglar bars and superior firepower to keep out people and fire bombs.  All exterior and interior doors would have to be heavy duty and reinforced with multiple steel cross bars.   Even then you could easily be burned out with exterior fires, or a door/window taken out with a battering-ram or vehicle.  Forget about it!  Fixed positions are death traps, except "maybe" on large acreage.

On a positive note, I don'r see any realistic event that would lead to massive armed civilian attacks on private homes, and as a street cop I've worked three major race riots so I;ve "been there".  Even during the worst riots/looting/arson/assaults, mobs were easily put to flight at the first sign of serious defender firepower.
Link Posted: 2/15/2013 7:56:49 AM EDT
[#16]
I live out away from the city with a big open area out across the road. What is to stop a gang or just one person from pumping a dozen or more trascers into my roof gable and see if it lights up. If that happens I will be going out the front or back door in a hurry with just what I can carry.
Link Posted: 2/15/2013 9:07:52 AM EDT
[#17]
USMC Doctrinal Publications.

These have good general information.  Start with Warfighting.
Link Posted: 2/15/2013 11:36:05 AM EDT
[#18]
Quoted:
Contrary to popular misconception, WW1 was not a triumph of machineguns and trenches. More properly, WW1 was the triumph of the railroad, the counter-attack, and artillery.  The allies and Germans usually succeeded in breaching the trench/defensive line. However, they were never able to exploit the breach. Artillery meant that it was almost impossible to mass your reserves close enough to exploit the breach. Even if you did breach, the railroad was always able to bring in the defense's strategic reserve and set up a defensive line to contain your exploitation and counter-attack. Mass conscription meant that there was always a strategic/operational reserve.

The Blitzkrieg, more than anything else, was the tactic to exploit a breach made by the infantry. Rommel's WW1 memoir, Infantry Attacks, is a classic on the German stormtrooper tactics for breaching trenches. On Infantry is another classic that discusses infantry principles.

Therefore, as Command Legacy says, your defense consists of 3 things: Combat Patrols, Fighting Positions, and the Counter-Attack Reserve. Combat patrols are fairly obvious, you patrol to disrupt enemy reconnaissance, provide advance warning, and make the enemy to commit prematurely. The combat patrol is what you use to take out enemy snipers, and helps you pincer during your counter-attack.  You use your Reserves and stragglers to ambush the enemy when they breach your defense, and to counter-attack when he culminates in his exploitation.

For fighting positions, you try to set up 3: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary. When the enemy makes a hole in your defense, you do not try to plug it immediately. Instead, your defenders, who are now in untenable Primary positions, withdraws to their 2ndary in an orderly fashion, while your Reserve sets up an ambush. When the enemy now comes through that beautiful hole they just made, you cut them down, repel. Then while the enemy is re-organizing, your defenders go back to their Primary positions, and you plug that hole then.

If the enemy is overrunning your defense, and you have to continue holding your position (ie, evac is not complete), then that's when you fall back to Tertiary (ie, squad bunker/safe room). From your Tertiary position, you wait as the enemy rushes past you, then shoots them from behind. Hopefully you have a Reserve/Reinforcements coming to rescue you, but if the numbers are against you, then this is either where you fight to die or where you fight to breakout. In Vietnam, that's when they call in the artillery on their own positions. In your case, you might blow up your own house when the attackers are all On The Objective.

Therefore, obviously, your Primary positions may be quite a distance away from your homestead. If they are sieging your house, then it's a very bad situation. You want to keep the defense mobile so you can trade space for time. In WW1, German infantry took to using allied shell craters as their 2ndary positions, using a limited form of mobile defense.

As you can see, a proper defense takes a lot of people. If you are less than platoon-size, then you should commit to staying mobile. Not to say you shouldn't be farming, but don't get married to your land unless you're willing to stake your lives on it. You can always come back to the land later (root crops), but you can't exactly replace your family.


Very incite-full post. Thank you.
Link Posted: 2/15/2013 11:43:06 AM EDT
[#19]
I appreciate the incite-full posts.

I do not think that an automatic bug out from a place of huge survival advantages is a smart idea just because 5-10 armed guys want to take the place. We will have our extended family and all the neighbors on our side. Once you get that many eyes on the situation it can and will turn rapidly in our favor. I know no plan survives first contact with the enemy.


What I am looking for is stories that help me see into the decision making process, not books to make decisions for me. I don't want answers. I want ideas and concepts and the ability to put those ideas and concepts into practice in a fluid environment. I have the ability to think in under stress. I just need the exposure to concepts that I can use at my discretion while events are happening around me.

My opponents will probably not have artillery. They may very well have rifles and know how to use them. Molotov cocktails are another matter as well.
Link Posted: 2/16/2013 3:21:47 AM EDT
[#20]
Quoted:

Granted, but the Alamo they were outnumbered 9 to 1, and took 600 Mexican Soldiers to the afterlife for their 200 losses.  Granted I would rather live another day, but for the "over my dead body" crowd good defences can turn the MZB's victory into a pyrrhic one.


If you're with your family of what....4 or 5 people...how hard will it be for a roving looter band to have that kind of numerical superiority over you? Not hard. Gangs already routinely number in the dozens
Link Posted: 2/16/2013 4:44:14 AM EDT
[#21]
Quoted:
Contrary to popular misconception, WW1 was not a triumph of machineguns and trenches. More properly, WW1 was the triumph of the railroad, the counter-attack, and artillery.  The allies and Germans usually succeeded in breaching the trench/defensive line. However, they were never able to exploit the breach. Artillery meant that it was almost impossible to mass your reserves close enough to exploit the breach. Even if you did breach, the railroad was always able to bring in the defense's strategic reserve and set up a defensive line to contain your exploitation and counter-attack. Mass conscription meant that there was always a strategic/operational reserve.

The Blitzkrieg, more than anything else, was the tactic to exploit a breach made by the infantry. Rommel's WW1 memoir, Infantry Attacks, is a classic on the German stormtrooper tactics for breaching trenches. On Infantry is another classic that discusses infantry principles.

Therefore, as Command Legacy says, your defense consists of 3 things: Combat Patrols, Fighting Positions, and the Counter-Attack Reserve. Combat patrols are fairly obvious, you patrol to disrupt enemy reconnaissance, provide advance warning, and make the enemy to commit prematurely. The combat patrol is what you use to take out enemy snipers, and helps you pincer during your counter-attack.  You use your Reserves and stragglers to ambush the enemy when they breach your defense, and to counter-attack when he culminates in his exploitation.

For fighting positions, you try to set up 3: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary. When the enemy makes a hole in your defense, you do not try to plug it immediately. Instead, your defenders, who are now in untenable Primary positions, withdraws to their 2ndary in an orderly fashion, while your Reserve sets up an ambush. When the enemy now comes through that beautiful hole they just made, you cut them down, repel. Then while the enemy is re-organizing, your defenders go back to their Primary positions, and you plug that hole then.

If the enemy is overrunning your defense, and you have to continue holding your position (ie, evac is not complete), then that's when you fall back to Tertiary (ie, squad bunker/safe room). From your Tertiary position, you wait as the enemy rushes past you, then shoots them from behind. Hopefully you have a Reserve/Reinforcements coming to rescue you, but if the numbers are against you, then this is either where you fight to die or where you fight to breakout. In Vietnam, that's when they call in the artillery on their own positions. In your case, you might blow up your own house when the attackers are all On The Objective.

Therefore, obviously, your Primary positions may be quite a distance away from your homestead. If they are sieging your house, then it's a very bad situation. You want to keep the defense mobile so you can trade space for time. In WW1, German infantry took to using allied shell craters as their 2ndary positions, using a limited form of mobile defense.

As you can see, a proper defense takes a lot of people. If you are less than platoon-size, then you should commit to staying mobile. Not to say you shouldn't be farming, but don't get married to your land unless you're willing to stake your lives on it. You can always come back to the land later (root crops), but you can't exactly replace your family.


It was actually a confluence of multiple technologies and techniques, the machine gun,  barrier material, entrenchments, quick fire artillery, explosives, techniques for predictive fire of artillery and finally the failure to adopt open order battle tactics.
Link Posted: 2/16/2013 8:53:58 AM EDT
[#22]
Hedgerows and Roman era city walls stood up amazingly well to modern warfare in WW2 and the Balkans where lightly armed infantry were dug in but facing overwhelming air power, artillery, and tanks.

Now in a SHTF scenario, the local mechanized infantry brigade or artillery company will be attacking your BOL why...? At most we might be talking SWAT with an APC.

So kill dozers, and armored backhoes..... and parity.

Molotov cocktails you say? how far can a man throw one? If they've a mortar are they going to risk their precious ammo for a home? As for trabuchets.... those can work both directions....

But this is all supposing a Lucifer's Hammer level EOTWAWKI event. It's far more likely that we'll be facing either gangs or rogue SWAT teams (who don't want the general populace to know what's up so can't afford a long seige).
Link Posted: 2/16/2013 3:54:31 PM EDT
[#23]





Quoted:



I appreciate the incite-full posts.





I do not think that an automatic bug out from a place of huge survival advantages is a smart idea just because 5-10 armed guys want to take the place. We will have our extended family and all the neighbors on our side. Once you get that many eyes on the situation it can and will turn rapidly in our favor. I know no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
What I am looking for is stories that help me see into the decision making process, not books to make decisions for me. I don't want answers. I want ideas and concepts and the ability to put those ideas and concepts into practice in a fluid environment. I have the ability to think in under stress. I just need the exposure to concepts that I can use at my discretion while events are happening around me.





My opponents will probably not have artillery. They may very well have rifles and know how to use them. Molotov cocktails are another matter as well.



It's surprisingly difficult for some folks to grasp that, when "they" come for you, "they" are probably not going to be the marines or some equally formidable force.  They're the same folk who're terrified of molotovs while living in a brick building with metal roof





Speaking as somebody who sincerely HOPES he's paranoid, and as somebody who's wargamed various scenarios back and forth over the years, static defense isn't the insurmountable peak some would have you believe, so long as you don't have an actual army after you.





Look at the old Mexican gentleman a year or so ago.  Yeah, they got him eventually, but he racked up a pretty impressive count against the cartel soldiers with nothing more than hunting rifles and an unfortified house.  And this was a man well on in years.





You've got the right idea.  Start figuring things out now and you'll be in solid when/if.





In fact, I wrote one of the stories you're referring to, though the manuscript is unfortunately trapped on a 3" disk which requires an Amstrad computer to read.  The only example of which I own is broken.  Hopefully, I'll get the parts for the Amstrad before the disks decay beyond redemption.  I kinda liked that story





Here are some of the things I figured out.





You have to be able to see what's going on.  That means cameras positioned for complete fields of view, but placed so that they aren't obvious targets.  If you're in wooded areas, it means game cameras of the type that can send you alerts.  Available, but expensive.  





Track strips (if I remember the name properly) are cheaper.  and can alert you if anyone is driving on your private road.  Like the old gas station bells that rang when you tires passed over them.





Clear field of view for the first hundred yards or so.  This helps against burglars now and attackers later.





Concealment in likely places can actually be your friend.  Channel attackers into hiding behind bullet permeable objects.  Not as good as having them out in the open, but better than having them rush you all at once because they THINK it's their only way.  So long as you know what's cover and what's concealment (and you should-- it's your place) you can engage when they think they're safe.





Terracing is possible if you have the wherewithal.  You want the land to slope away from the house so they'll have to climb to get to you, even if it's only a slight slope.  The drops from the terraces should be on your side.  Not ideal for drainage, but it denies attackers a hid, while making it more difficult for them to traverse with a vehicle.  





Channeling.  go out to the road or wherever you think they'll be coming from and watch your own house.  Figure out how YOU'D get control.  Then walk it to figure out how you'd best lure such observers into a good field of fire.  





In the story, the protagonist was a member and leader of an outlawed opposition party near post-socialist takeover, when the political discussion had gone hot and the government was using its pet media to help it wipe out the partisans.  As such, the guy's entire property was one long series of increasingly deadly traps that relied almost entirely on enemy action to activate.  Much of that would be ridiculous in the real world, but it was a fun exercise, and would certainly have worked.  At the time I wrote it, Ruby Ridge and Waco were still fresh news, and still none of us even guessed at some of the shit that's going down in Washington today.




 
 
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