> This goes over it slightly but more in a what happens sense rather than what's needed. I can't find the image I'm thinking of. This post is fun, and I'm thankful. Nevertheless I will tell you what I see with this post. If not for the opening, this would be a plausibly true post. RAND corp runs tabletop exercises like this all the time, as do many other NGOs and institutions. The opening reads tit-for-tat like multiple larp shitposts I've written, really what gives it away. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the guy talking about this has *some* experience with such exercises, because it should be understood these are exercises, and not *simulations*. The key thing to understand, assuming the tom part of the story isn't completely made up for effect, is that very small variables and very large variables can have outsized effects on whats plausible *within* simulation. 'The map is not the battlefield' so to speak. Abstractions especially, used to 'gamify' these, both change the plausible strategies and tactics available, as well as determine whats available simply on the *type* of abstraction. A lot of government employees fail basic math, don't understand how to design experiments in order to test hypothesis beyond the mechanics offered, and over or underweight important details. They also have a habit of glossing over things that are in hindsight, important. What this means is that, knowing the government and affiliates are incompetent at some level, we cannot rely on the outcome of their exercises to begin with. Take the morale problem as just one example of the dimensions of war that are glossed over or misunderstood in the design of the example exercises in the /k/ thread. Assuming the entire thread is not a government narrative to encourage people down a certain path (because even believing you can win is a perquisite to fighting)--*assuming* that, they gloss over morale immediately. How did tom do it? They won't discuss. It's left to us to insert our own opinions rather than look at the data. That doesn't tell us anything, which isn't terrible all in all, because most of us have some experience or knowledge to gauge new information by. But what it *does* tell us is that the game designers don't understand how morale works. They've gamified it by making it number, but by itself that number has no connection to the real world. It's outcomes are therefore only relevant to the tabletop exercise. What happens in the tabletop exercise based on a given morale number, will not tell us what would happen in the same real world scenario given the same "general morale" level. And therein is the problem. Because thats even assuming morale can be sufficiently generalized. It's not that they *can't* learn things from simulation, it's that they haven't taken the time to actually understand their variables. Morale might not be generally measurable at all. It might be an ephemeral or emergent property measurable as a certain level of potential *effective* action by a party, but whose to say what those actions are, or what the outcomes mean. Does low morale mean no one tries any particular tactic? Does low morale apply universally? Or can morale be broken into types. So 'subterfuge-prone' groups or segments of the population are less prone to sneak out at night and commit sabotage in areas with really strict security because of martial law? Does that have an effect on alternative routes, like more visible actions, because the others are less possible? is this even a question of moral or some availability heuristic about approaches? Maybes its a matter of leadership style match to the average group personality of recruits? You see why I avoided wading into the weeds on this? Why I only look at the numbers? Assume the 'will' is there among the public, for some sort of civil conflict. How much raw damage, given the percentage of vets, hunters, an shooters, and given their equipment, can we expect? Iterate the number of vulnerable points, infrastructure, power nodes, etc. Assume a certain percentage of the rebels will target these. What is the percentage chance week on week? And you do this for every mass variable. You don't "what are the BEST options for some group given some scenario?" you quantify the potential damage for *all* options given various percentage ranges of response and relative force strengths. This goes all the way back to old school warfare, where to assure victory, it was assumed, you needed a three-on-one advantage. And then you run a hands off simulation varying all these factors and you save it out. And from there, as events unfold, you can refer back to known *partial* details and say "current events match xyz subset of scenarios", and then you have a general picture of the future. For example, a civil war, an emerging one anyway, would very quickly suffer under a near-guaranteed covert campaign against rebel morale. And it would work and be moderately to severely effective. People would quit. The movement would splinter. It would be bogged down in recruiting to stop the membership-roll bleeding. How do I know this? It's what the regime already does to political, social, and economic movements. It's actually a little more complicated than that, because it's more like a lawnmower. A big green field full of grass-roots, as all normal movements are, and if any of them stop serving some function that they've been found useful for, or become too big to manage if they keep growing, then *out comes the lawn mower* of federal disruption and media operations. Don't like the right? Boost a nascent movement, the alt-right, replace or control its leadership, and then frame it as responsible for a heinous act ("they murdered some girl with a car!"). Isn't public division. Instantly radioactive to moderate elements. Instant legitimacy hit. Rinse and repeat using all sorts of approaches. Their big problem is legitimacy-focused grievance-based (reactionary) movements, which are forming all the time, all over america, like weeds popping up. They mow one down, three more form. Which is why they want to either lockdown and disarm the public and break them using the economy and CDC and DHS and other agencies, or pre-empt a civil war into a staged fight thats tightly controlled using informants and psychological operations and infighting, and blow steam on the lid before the whole thing blows up in their face. Predetermined outcome, and a public that loses the will for a bigger fight once it loses in the regime's national 'civil war' show-circus. I talk, and mostly I listen. To a lot of people. From all over. From all different sides. The '1-5 in every 100' estimate for a civil war, is being fairly generous. It wouldn't look like vietnam and 'jungle warfare'. it could and would look like afghanistan (lots of splintered factions all fighting a common enemy, while failing to cooperate, or being blasted to pieces when they *do* cooperate). Afghanistan meets the indian wars (mainly balkanization and infighting between whats left of the middleclass and the newly poor), while ever more policies are rushed through the cracks in the dam to stir up the melting pot even more, till 50% of *every neighborhood in america* is section 8 and is as dangerous as chicago. Chicago poverty and crime meets asian police state levels of control and surveillance, thats the model. The rural and urban divide will grow, and to compensate, we'll see a LOT more public transportion to rural areas, a LOT more public housing projects, restrictions on rural areas, and the same sort of tactics that were used to force integration. People will fight it in all sorts of ways, be it politically, socially, religiously, economically, or even military, and even form local associations and grass roots parties to do it . As a consequence the RNC will split down the middle, maybe 60/40, or 80/20, with the bulk going ever further left as "the reasonable and moderate party of peace", while the remaining will be allowed on the tacit condition that any gains they make are of the '1 step forward 2 steps backward' model. In short the "at least they're not democrats!" model of voting will be forced onto everyone that doesnt support the political process anymore in its new incarnation "at least they're not RINOS!" And we'll have 5, 10, maybe 20s of the same conservatives-conserve-nothing strategy, just with a new label, and new hopium. And by then the demographic replacement will be complete. And thats just one of the administrative regime's plans. How they're beat is anyones guess. A very very rapid increase in widespread anger, discomfort, dissatisfaction, and lowering of standard of living, combine with a sense of anything-goes lawlessness, is probably the way forward. Antifa and blm and immigrant riots, provocations, and escalations, combine with hugely injust and overbearing unequal application of law, escalating in rhetoric and severity, not just every year, or every season, but every month, every *week*, even multiple times a week--as examples on the news, would probably do it. Americans are angry but also barely out of our stupor and theirs a risk everyone could go right back to sleep if things change quickly enough and simmer down in severity. Complacency is the ultimate enemy. Also, most people are not familiar with militias. Even people who might support the idea, most haven't met guys in militias. Militias worry about recruitment, when really they should be fighting a media-war to be better known as a system and concept at all. If every small town had one person that claimed to be militia, not STARTED a militia, not RECRUITED, just *claimed* to be militia, and explained what militias are with a level head, it would I think go a *long* way to normalizing and popularizing the idea. Before people will militarize, they have to think of themselves, in some manner, as being soldiers. Most people find their identity in the institutions they belong to. And the regimes takeover of our society was based on this very thinking. That institutions are the praxis of power in complex societies. What is a trend or an idea but the institution of all those people who support it?