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The Defensive Position
~ A Brief Overview by MEG Raven

All defensive positions can be taken. All it requires is sufficient will and a modicum of intelligence. The purpose of a well-planned defensive position is to provide advanced warning of attack and to delay and withstand any initial assault in order to 1.) Receive aid from an outside ally, 2.) Plan a successful counter-assault and overwhelm the attacker, 3.) Plan and execute a successful escape, or 4.) Negotiate the terms of a surrender.

In all cases, if the attacker is not overwhelmed, the position will be lost - one way or another. All offensive forces must be evaded, defeated, escaped from, or surrendered to. These are the only options, in descending order of acceptability.

Evasion
In a static, or fixed, position the best defense is to limit discovery through location and appearance. If an offensive force remains unaware of your position - or unaware of its potential value as a target - the likelihood of attack is limited. Only the discovery of potential value (or potential threat to their position) will induce an attacker to commit resources against you.

~ Location
Depending upon the resources available to those who may be looking, any position may be located. Governments and military organizations have access to satellites, ground penetrating radar, infrared heat detection, electromagnetic radiation detection and even devices that can "sniff out" the gases released by living and dead creatures - not to mention dogs. It all depends upon how hard someone is looking for you and the available search resources tasked to finding you.

Much of this technology can be obtained on the open market by private organizations.

The war on terrorism and the war on drugs have shown us that remote locations in difficult terrain or, conversely, locations in the most densely populated areas, are the best places to seek refuge in hostile times. There are benefits and problems associated with each.

  : Remote Locations

There is nothing to compare with the mountainous areas of Afghanistan, here in the United States. There are plenty of remote and abandoned mines and caves, but nothing like the system of natural caves and truly brutal terrain Bin Laden and company are making use of. Still, difficult and remote terrain will dissuade most non-governmental marauders from locating your position. If they really want to, the government will find you no matter where you set up a remote refuge in the United States. The benefits of locating here involve relative privacy, a reduced threat of communicable diseases, and the possibility of self-sufficient expansion in the event of large-scale collapse. It is expensive and difficult to build in and stock remote areas, but the limited interference may be worth the cost, if you can afford it. Remember - the trails/roads you use to create your space are glaring signposts for outside discovery - especially from the air. You may need to eradicate these signs upon completion of your refuge.

  :  Densely Populated Areas

In a densely populated area, your refuge must be invisible to the populace and you must be able to "blend" with the indigenous population. The risk of riots by civilians and purges by government forces (or pseudo-government forces) presents the possibility of accidental discovery or depletion of the cover through depletion of the populace. The benefits of locating here revolve around access: access to power and utilities, access to new and salvaged materials, access to targets of opportunity, etc. The drawbacks revolve around disease, increased need of security measures, and accidental discovery.

~ Appearance
Your refuge, regardless of location, must appear to be something less than desirable. Something that would not be worth the effort to investigate or, if investigated anyway, something that would not be worth the effort to expend limit resources to obtain.

Defeating Attackers
There is little hope of defeating government forces or any well-armed and ORGANIZED force of marauders. Nor is there much hope of defending against a horde of disenchanted and/or desperate survivors whose only hope of surviving is taking what you have.  Especially if you are not psychologically prepared and capable of using deadly force to defend yourself.

  :  Deadly Force

The use of deadly force is not something that should be taken lightly. Even the contemplation of the use of deadly force must not be dismissed lightly. You must KNOW well ahead of any demanding circumstance whether or not you are capable of killing another human being. When that time comes, hesitation will mean death - either your own or that of someone close to you.

You must decide AHEAD OF TIME whether you will choose to fight or flee. It is essential to all your survival planning. If you won't fight - and fight to the degree necessary - then you must plan to ensure that you are not discovered AND, should you be discovered, you must be able to take immediate action to abandon your refuge and flee.

Escape
All refuges should have, at a minimum, two obvious entrance/exits and one hidden escape route. The more hidden escape routes the better, especially if you have a large number of inhabitants or your refuge is spread out. Your people will need to be able to access, utilize, and disable the escape route(s) at a moments notice. Always remember that your escape route may have been discovered as well, and plan accordingly. If you can use it to escape, someone else may be able to use it to access your refuge. Too, additional "obvious" entryways will require the attacker's forces to further split up to cover them. False entries - possibly trapped (though not armed until a threat is evident) - could be advantageous.

Surrender
The best case scenario regarding surrender is that you will be sent packing with nothing more than the clothes on your back. Plan accordingly. The worst case scenario is too gruesome to elaborate upon here. Somewhere in the middle is imprisonment, slavery, or being forced to join your attackers and do unto others what they have just done unto you.

Links

Camouflage for Troops of the Line ~ Washington Government Printing Office; 28 pgs 1920: Under the head of camouflage may be included all precautions taken to render positions and moving objects of military importance less visible. These precautions are by no means limited to. work done by specially organized camouflage troops, but every command must think and operate independently to lessen its visibility and to render its movements or positions less easy to range. The subject naturally divides itself into two separate heads: First. Concealment. Second. Camouflage discipline. Neither is of value without the other.

Deep Gallery Shelters: The question of shelters has become a capital one in preparing sectors, because of the increasing intensity of bombardments. As this bombardment is usually effected by medium and large caliber guns, it is absolutely necessary that shelters destined to protect troops be impervious to systematic and regulated fire of 150 c.m. and to individual rounds of a 210 mortar. Experience has proved that shelters covered with logs and earth were unable to resist heavy shells with time fuses. Only shelters in mine galleries, called underground shelters, or deep dugouts, can provide sufficient protection. Therefore they alone should be used.

The Home Guard Formed in May 1940 (and initially known as the Local Defense Volunteers), the Home Guard consisted of an unpaid force of 17 to 65 year olds who had not been 'called-up' into the regular armed services. It's aim was the defense of Britain and to repel an invasion. It formed part of the armed forces of the crown and the men who joined it were subject to military law. Most of it's members had full-time jobs in addition to their Home Guard duties. It consisted of over 2 million men in 1944. The Home Guard was disbanded in December 1945.

RESIDENCE SECURITY: Your residence or estate should be the most difficult target to penetrate and the place where you and your family can feel safe and relax, free of worry concerning personal injury, kidnapping, invasion, and burglary. Safety of a residence can be provided both by technical and physical (human) means of protection.

FM 90-8 APPENDIX D - Patrolling: [PDF] This appendix provides guidance on patrolling. It describes various types of patrols and patrolling techniques.

Home Defense Before you even consider getting a weapon for "home defense," there are a few issues you must take into consideration.

Property crime A deterrent doesn't stop crime, that's impossible. It just prevents it from happening to you. Your goal is to make it more trouble to steal from you than someone else.

Types of thieves and burglars It is important to realize that there is no such thing as a burglar-proof home. A car that cannot be broken into and stolen. Or a lock that cannot be picked. A security system that cannot be bypassed. These take their places up there with the Easter Bunny. If someone is dedicated enough, skilled enough and has the proper tools, he will get in, no matter what measures you take. What you can however do, is make it hard enough that the average criminal will decide to go seek to ply his trade elsewhere. This is not good news for your neighbors, but it keeps you and your property safe.

Burglar proofing your home, Burglar proofing your business, shop or garage, Home security while on vacation

SELF DEFENSE FORUMS: For A Fighting Chance The webs #1 site for the discussion of self-defense

Home-Defense - Home Invasion Home-defense is pretty important. After all, you probably spend a lot of time at home. Let’s take a look at some simple things you can do to make your home, a safer home. We will also look at natural weapons that you can use, and probably already have scattered around your home.

Sensor Fence: A New Approach To Large Perimeter Security File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat

Introduction to Machine Gun Employment

MCDP 1-3 Tactics This publication is about winning in combat. Winning requires many things: excellence in techniques, an appreciation of the enemy, exemplary leadership, battlefield judgment, and focused combat power. Yet these factors by themselves do not ensure success in battle. Many armies, both winners and losers, have possessed many or all of these attributes. When we examine closely the differences between victor and vanquished, we draw one conclusion. Success went to the armies whose leaders, senior and junior, could best focus their efforts—their skills and their resources—toward a decisive end. Their success arose not merely from excellence in techniques, procedures, and material but from their leaders' abilities to uniquely and effectively combine them. Winning in combat depends upon tactical leaders who can think creatively and act decisively.

Attacking Fortifications Enemy static defenses may consist of row of pillboxes covered by deep belts of wire, minefields, and anti-tank ditches. Although these obstacles look formidable at first sight, they can be dealt with if careful preparation is made beforehand. Enemy pillboxes are often concrete, very strong, with steel doors, surrounded by wire belts as much as 50 ft. deep. His minefields, usually consist of anti-tank mines and anti-personnel mines mixed in the proportion of four to one.

House Clearing Field craft does not apply to the open country alone. It must also be used in villages and towns. Villages and towns will most probably be by-passed by the leading troops and will later be cleared by troops following up behind and specially detailed for the purpose. The clearance of buildings may be a costly undertaking and it will end in disaster unless every man knows what he is doing and how to do it. A drill is therefore essential.

Outdoor Perimeter Security Sensors & Systems Outdoor security sensors detect intruders as soon as they enter a protected area and before they can gain access to people or valuable assets.

Door Entry Market Overview Advances in technology mean that many different types of systems are now available, from audio only, audio and video systems in black and white to color systems with memory capability. Systems are also available in analogue, digital and semi digital formats. Equipment is improving in quality and reliability, it is generally easier to install with most systems using just 2-wires and overall prices are getting lower. Security Installers and Electrical Contractors can now source systems to suit every budget and specification, giving end users exactly what they want.

“Protecting Sensitive and Confidential Conversations” Speech surveillance of rooms where decisions are made is as old as the word “eavesdropping”. It gives an unauthorized listener not only the information he desires, but equally important, the lead time he needs to make advantageous use of that information. With modern technology, speech surveillance has expanded beyond the use of microphones as “bugging” devices.

CCTV Use & Abuse For the past decade the use of CCTV has been an ever increasing factor in the lives of citizens in the United Kingdom, now often said to be the most surveillance orientated country in the world, but with the events of Sept 11th in the USA that pre-eminent position could well change, or will it?

COUNTER SURVEILLANCE DETECTION - A SECOND LOOK We are monitored daily by surveillance devices that are scanning us. We welcome the security afforded by some of this surveillance (identifying bank-robbers), may feel ambivalent about other applications (recording traffic violations) and feel downright hostile toward surveillance, which infringes on our personal privacy (covert cameras in hotel rooms and restrooms). In the world of business and government, covert surveillance can reverse a company’s competitive edge, tip-off antagonists to critical design and strategy, threaten lives and even change the course of history.

'Counter Surveillance Detection - A Primer' In recent years, it has become increasingly easier to install and use surveillance devices such as covert cameras and transmitting audio “bugs”. Surveillance devices have mushroomed in number in domestic use, businesses and government fields. This proliferation of surveillance apparatus adversely affects the privacy of everyone. Follow-on articles: Surveillance - Straight Talk and Counter Surveillance Detection - A Second Look

FANTASY & WEAPONRY By Kurt Saxon. If an intruder makes it to your bedroom, shoot him with the pistol. If he's trying to break in, use the shotgun. If he is fifty yards or more away and shooting at you, pick him off with the 30-06. This is the real Survivalist's arsenal; basic, inexpensive, effective. So why all the promotion of rapid-fire weapons? If you aim at a man and don't hit him, he's going to move, and probably shoot you. Banging away in the same general direction is just a senseless waste of ammo. You need practice, not rapid-fire. You also need a realistic attitude, not a fantasy.

SURVIVAL FIGHTING By Duncan Long. Your family survived the economic collapse and the world war that followed. But law and order is a thing of the past. Looters are headed your way and it's up to you and your family to either repel the freebooters or be killed...

USMC Manuals A collection of locked PDF manuals (you can't edit, print or copy from them) mostly outdated but still relatively relevant. Most of these you can't get anywhere else.

Perimeter Security Sensor Technologies Handbook This Handbook has been developed to provide military and law enforcement security managers, and specialists with a reference of current perimeter security sensor technologies, capabilities, limitations, and integration methods. The Handbook provides a compendium of sensor technologies and an explanation of each technology's operating principles and applications, as well as integration techniques that can be used to enhance perimeter security and intrusion detection planning.

How To Select And Prepare Defensive Positions In Built-up Areas (FM90-10, Appendix 'C') This appendix provides "how to" guidance for the selection of defensive positions in built-up areas, preparation of buildings as defensive positions and selection of defensive positions for armored vehicles.

Employment Of Obstacles And Mines In Built-Up Areas This appendix describes how to prepare obstacles in the five types of built-up areas: DENSE, RANDOM CONSTRUCTION (TYPE A) and CLOSED-ORDERLY BLOCK (TYPE B), DISPERSED RESIDENTIAL AREA (TYPE C), HIGH-RISE AREA (TYPE D) and INDUSTRIAL/TRANSPORTATION AREA (TYPE E).

"FM 22-6: Guard Duty"  This manual is for personnel concerned with the organization and functions of interior and exterior guard, It includes orders, countersigns, parole words, and responsibility of the main guard including duties of personnel and methods of mounting the guard. The manual also discusses the duties and composition of special guards.

"FM 21-60: Visual Signals"  The purpose of this manual is to standardize visual signals and to service as a training reference. It is a guide. It does not cover all visual signals used in the Army, only those that are commonly used. Signals used with equipment (for example, mortar) or during operations (for example, pathfinder, jumpmaster) are in manuals that relate to such operations.

Bees As Weapons Of War It would probably be easier to enumerate the cultures which do not chronicle some kind of use of bees as weapons since this motif is so pervasive. Most of these accounts are historical rather than mythical. One of the earliest of these, from the first century B.C., records the misfortunes of a Roman campaign, led by Pompeii the Great, against the Heptakometes in Asia Minor.

Myth: No one has a right to my property. Fact: Our property rights are defined by democratic government, which is the sovereign owner of the nation's territory.

Defending Your Home Several people have mentioned that there are few sites on the web that tell gun owners, especially the novice gun owner, what to do in the event of someone entering their home. Equally important are those things you should not do. Since many people buy a gun for self-defense it would seem logical to discuss some of the issues surrounding self-defense, especially in your home. Whether you have a firearm that you think you'll use for home defense or you're contemplating buying one you should read this page.

Refuge Defense (about 2/3 of the way down the page) There are a number of things to be considered in defending a fixed position. The flanking movement is an important tactic that might be of use to you.

The Land Sheriffs was formed in response to the need for a one-stop shop for organizations that were suffering from encampment by Travelers. This is a UK link. Interesting what you have to do when you are not allowed to defend your own property. The Land Sheriffs is primarily a quick response company that will handle the whole situation for you, from the eviction and clearing away rubbish that is left to securing your land for the future.

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