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In this day and age of gangster billionaires and private armies, if there was deep unrest enough for the masses to try putting the elites heads on a spike, would they even get one of them?


Or would they be smothered by all the protection money can buy?

Just ask the US/USSR and the "freedom fighters" in Afghanistan: is conventional warfare viable against an uprising?

No. Still isn't.

The corporate mob bosses can hole up in their facilities with their paid guards. That might work for a while. But eventually, a decently coordinated raid will end their turtling attempts. We've seen this with dictators and drug cartel compounds.


Also, if the dystopia you describes comes to fruition, money might actually be useless.



Chinese light-novelists have been writing about modern societal breakdowns for almost a decade, now. Some put good thought into including stories that follow raiding military compounds (legit installations).

Originally posted by cdtm
In this day and age of gangster billionaires and private armies, if there was deep unrest enough for the masses to try putting the elites heads on a spike, would they even get one of them?


Or would they be smothered by all the protection money can buy?

In the very short term, if some of larger militant and paramilitary groups banned together, say hundreds of people all working together, they might be able to take over a small area of a town or city for a bit.

As a recent smaller example, look at the Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, aka the second Bundy uprising, when 26 terrorist took over a national wildlife refuge to pressure the government to bend to their demands.

In reality, the authorities could have easily gassed them, stormed the place and taken them out in less than an hour. But they where White males and not Muslims, so the standoff lasted 40 days.

Revolutions are never fun, and in the aftermath, you are left with violent groups unhappy with the outcome, they are usually not clean or final and often wrong people takeover as they are the most organised. I've only actively experienced one revolution first hand. It was the military taking back Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood hijacked the Arab spring. It wasn't fun and led to Sisi...

Ask Gaddafi.

Assuming WOMD are allowed, hell no they're not viable.

WOMD would be useless against an insurgency in one's own state.

Originally posted by ares834
WOMD would be useless against an insurgency in one's own state.
Why not? Use a neurotoxin that government loyalists have immunity to on the insurgents.

Yeah. This isn't Metal Gear. Maybe in a hundred years they will develop something like that but until then...

Originally posted by cdtm
In this day and age of gangster billionaires and private armies, if there was deep unrest enough for the masses to try putting the elites heads on a spike, would they even get one of them?


Or would they be smothered by all the protection money can buy? if the situation gets bad enough and people becoming polarized enough, civil conflict is always a possibility.

I think in America, the idea of a United front of rebels vs the govt is unlikely in the modern age because of the wide variety of ideologies at hand and the logistics of modern warfare. It's much more likely to look something like Syria where various different brands of rebels are at war with the govt while simultaneously battling against each other. In other words, it would likely be a complete bloodbath and would more likely lead to a destabilized/balkanized breakdown of the country than anything better than what we currently have. Similar to the situations in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. Or perhaps just a more robust military dictatorship like in modern Egypt or Russia after the 1918 revolution.

The difference between this and either the American revolution or say the Soviets vs the freedom fighters in Afghanistan is that in both those cases it was seen as a fight against imperialists from abroad. Govts become much more blood thirsty and determined when they are fighting for self preservation rather than occupied territory.