Contact!

by Max Velocity

  Casualties & Prisoners

  Just because it’s TEOTWAWKI doesn’t mean that we forget our humanity. You can’t murder prisoners and enemy casualties will require treatment. Officially casualties are treated as equals in order of severity of wounds for triage purposes. Post-event you may not have the resources for this but you should act humanely and do what you can even though your people will be a priority. You may have just violently assaulted the enemy in their position, but it’s just business, so don’t get over-excited about it.

  If you are forced to actually fight through an enemy position, then this can result in some serious operational and moral dilemmas. You can’t leave live enemy behind you, but you can’t murder prisoners. It is also an ineffective tactic by any enemy to wait till you are that close to try and surrender, because at that point you are fighting through and the battle is on. It is also hard to take the surrender of a group of enemy if other enemy positions continue to fire on you. If you are maneuvering onto an enemy position and the enemy does not flee or surrender before you actually fight through their position, then generally they are in for the whole deal; however, consider the situation and if they have an opportunity to flee. Did you trap them?

  When searching enemy dead, be aware of enemy shamming death. Search procedures will involve two people, one to cover and the other to search. As you approach and one covers, the searcher should give the body a hefty boot to the groin area: if they are shamming, you’ll know about it then. Then the searcher gets on top of the enemy body and rolls it away from the cover guy. If it’s clear, he says “Clear!” and the searcher can roll the body back down and conduct a search. If there is a grenade or booby trap, the coverer calls out and the searcher drops the body back on top of it, they then both dive away, and take cover in the prone position, feet towards the booby trap. Hopefully the enemy body absorbs most of the blast.

  Grenades

  Post-event, you may or may not have access to fragmentation or phosphorous grenades. You may be able to fabricate improvised grenade type devices such as small pipe bombs with fuses. Molotov cocktails would be of limited use for mobile operations: you would have difficulty carrying them in an assault. If you do have grenades, then you should think about how to utilize them. A grenade incorrectly used will be as dangerous to the user as to the enemy.

  Grenades are best used in an enclosed space. If you are assaulting a bunker or a building then you will want to place the grenade into the bunker or room that you are assaulting. This is done by ‘posting’ the grenade: physically put your fist with the grenade in through the aperture and drop it. You don’t want to try and toss or throw grenades at an aperture because they will likely miss and bounce back. If the enemy is in the open then it is possible to get to a position within throwing range and hit them with a volley of grenades before assaulting through the position. It is also possible to ‘grenade your way up’ a feature, such as a hedge or ditch-line.

  Also, you may want to think about utilizing a couple of grenades, slightly spaced, so that if the enemy leaves the bunker or room and tries to re-occupy it after the grenade blast, they will be caught by the second blast. Grenades are not as destructive as you may think. You only have to get on the ground to avoid the shrapnel. You will get more concussion effect in an enclosed space but if there is any sort of cover in there then there will be unharmed survivors. Phosphorous is worse, and is nasty stuff, and will burn the enemy out. But if you use blast or fragmentation (or stun ‘flash-bang’ type) grenades, then you need to follow it up rapidly with an assault into the room or bunker to take advantage of the shock and disorientation the grenade will create.

  Bunker Drills

  If assaulting an enemy in a bunker or dug in position, there are variations to the drills previously mentioned under squad battle drills. The key thing is that a bunker will provide protection to the defenders but will restrict their fields of fire due to the firing port opening. This means that to suppress a bunker, you have to be in a position to fire through the firing port, which also places you in the killing area of the bunker. The good news is that it only takes a deliberate stream of accurate rounds fired through the bunker opening to kill or neutralize the machine gun crew inside. Volumes of inaccurate fire will have no effect whatsoever on the performance of the enemy gun team, but accurate fire through the slit will keep them suppressed.

  To assault a bunker, conduct the squad battle drills as outlined above and move to a flank. When you are to a flank, the bunker cannot get you, but you will have to worry about any depth or mutually supporting positions. The mechanism of the assault phase is amended to take account of this. If you find yourself attacking a network of mutually supporting bunkers with your squad, then you will need to rethink what you are about and go and get some support. For the purposes of this instruction, the type of bunker envisioned is a dug-out trench type with overhead cover and firing ports, not the kind of concrete monstrosity that you will have seen in Second World War movies.

  Once you move the assaulting team to the flank, you will split the four man team into two teams of two. The squad leader and another will be the assault team; the other two will be the ‘point of fire’. You will need to make a decision as to whether your point of fire is best deployed to cover ‘inside’ as close fire support towards the bunker you are assaulting or ‘outside’ to cover any depth or mutually supporting positions i.e. flank protection.

  For the close support option, angles of fire may be an issue and you may be best supported by your fire support team, which should be situated at close to a 90 degree angle to your assault and best able to get fire in through the bunker opening. As you move up towards your FUP you will make a decision on where to place your point of fire team and they will go down either to provide more close support firing at the bunker, or as flank/depth protection outwards from the assault into depth to cover you from that direction; situation and ground dependent.

  You will place the point of fire and continue on towards the flank of the bunker. The assault team will then crawl up to the side of the bunker. The squad leader can lead from the front or he can act as backup to a competent rifleman. Either way, one assaults while the other is behind them to act as a backup in case the assaulter is wounded or has a weapon stoppage. Ideally, you will have grenades and the assaulter will post a couple of grenades into the bunker and once they detonate he will follow up by crawling in there and finishing off any enemy inside, followed by the other rifleman as support. This second rifleman can also cover to the rear of the bunker to catch any fleeing enemy. Bayonets are ideal for this, but of course you may not have them.

  As the assault team crawls up to the bunker it is an important trust point between the assault team and the fire support team. The fire support team should put accurate fire through the bunker opening even as the assaulter is laid there by the side preparing his grenade to post. Only at the last moment should fire switch away from the bunker to cover any depth positions or fleeing enemy. Once the position is taken it may not be possible to use the bunker to occupy and cover to the rear because it may not be set-up like that, so you may just have to use the ground around as cover as the fire support team joins.

  Figure 18 - Bunker Assault

  Secondary Positions

  For the purposes of a squad assault you should only really consider attacking two separate enemy positions with perhaps two or three enemy in each, so long as you feel that you have a chance of your accurate fire being able to win the fire fight and suppress the enemy to allow you to assault.

  The simple drill for a second position is for the assault team to take the first position and then bring fire support onto the second position, thus allowing the fire support team to maneuver and become the assault team for the secondary position. Depending on the ground they will either move through the first position if the second is in depth, and launch from there, or they will launch from their fire support position and take a separate route to an FUP relevant to the second position.r />
  If both positions are mutually supporting, which means they can both cover each other with fire, then both will have to be suppressed to allow the assault to go in on the first position. This is where fire control orders and the use of a point of fire buddy team come in, to suppress these positions while the first attack goes in, and continue to suppress the second position throughout as the fire support team transitions to the secondary assault team. It may be possible for the assault team to take on both positions, with fire support remaining in place, but that is a lot to handle for a spent team.

  Potentially, the assault team could provide fire support from the first enemy position to allow the fire support team to maneuver to a secondary fire support position, and then the original assault team could assault the second position. There are multiple iterations depending on the situation, enemy and ground. The important thing is not to bite off more than you can chew and to ensure that there is never movement without effective suppressive fire. The key to all of this is use of ground and use of accurate suppressive fire.

  Figure 19 - Secondary Objective

  CHAPTER NINE

  DEFENSE

  “He who defends everywhere, defends nowhere.”

  Introduction

  Defense of your family/team and location is one of the key skills for a post-event situation. You are far more likely to be conducting defensive rather than offensive activities, although you should know how to do one in order to best do the other. The purpose of this chapter is not to recommend a best strategy to adopt in your prepping plans, in terms of moving to the ‘American Redoubt’ or staying in Suburbia, or living in an RV, but rather to give you the knowledge and skills to best defend wherever you are, and also to help you make choices about which locations to set up in. It is true that for many, they will have no choice to at least initially remain in situ in a less than ideal location, such as suburbia. It may make no sense for those that do not already own or live at a redoubt, to try and head out into the mayhem following an event. It may be best to remain in place, wait it out for a little bit, then make an extraction plan once the initial chaos is over

  The Principles of Defense

  The following are the principles of defense:

   Offensive Action, in order to seize or regain the initiative.

   All Round Defense, in order to anticipate a threat from any direction.

   Depth, in order to prevent penetration or its effects

   Mutual Support, in order to increase the strength and flexibility of a defense

   Concealment and Deception, in order to deny the adversary the advantages of understanding

   Maintenance of a Reserve

   Administration

  And to add, because we are not a military force:

   Numbers of trained personnel

   Weapons and equipment

   A watch system for early warning

  We will also discuss the types of defense, which are static and mobile, which will tie in to a discussion of point and area defense and how we can best incorporate these principles.

  Remember, the best form of defense is to AVOID THE FIGHT. But, that may not be possible and you have to always plan and prepare for that fight.

  It is true that most family homes and locations where we live do not hold up well to a defensive plan. It is one thing to react inside your house to intrusion in the night by burglars. It is another to be inside your house and be targeted by a raiding party intent on killing you and looting your house.

  Most homes do not lend themselves to defense. The structure is vulnerable to high velocity rounds which will pass through multiple frame, wood and plasterboard walls, and also simple mechanical breaches are possible with tools and even vehicles used as rams. If you try and defend your house from the windows, then you will not be protected by the walls framing those windows and the room can be filled full of high velocity rounds by an attacking group. If you stay back from the windows, then you limit your fields of fire and unless there are enough of you defending then the enemy will be able to take advantage of blind spots to close with and then breach the house. It is limited what you can achieve even by running about from room to room.

  This would make it very hard for a single family to defend itself from a determined attack from inside of a family home. You better hope you have a basement or other safe room ballistic protected for your protected personnel to be inside while you have this fight, otherwise they will not be protected from the violence and from the high velocity rounds ripping through the walls.

  One of the key things for a prepper defense of a location is to have a decent number of trained personnel with weapons and equipment to defend. If we look at a single family situation, then you may have a husband armed and acting as the defending force, with a wife also armed but doing close protection of the kids in a specified safe location such as the basement. That one man on his own is very vulnerable and once he is wounded or outflanked then there is only the wife left between the attackers and your children.

  If you are defending your suburban home, then it would be better if others on the street were armed preppers, and then you have the potential for a mutual defense with killing areas between properties. But we like to keep our prepping secret, so our neighbors don’t come looting us when they are starving, and we don’t want people to think we are crazy, so maybe you don’t know any preppers on your street. But there may be some like-minded armed citizens who you can get with pre or post-event and set up a neighborhood defense group.

  You may even be able to set up positions and roadblocks to defend a neighborhood such as a dead end road. If you are forced to defend in limited numbers then consider having at least one of you outside the property in a position to over-watch and fire onto raiders trying to breach the building; how you do this will depend on the ground.

  You will also have to take measures to harden the building to slow down attempts to breach. You need to consider whether or not you want your property to look derelict; this could be good or bad in the circumstances. It would be worthwhile to consider boarding up at least the ground floor windows and think about putting up door bars or even board up some of the doors. This will also help with light discipline; external boards can make the place look derelict and will also help if you have to abandon the property and hope to come back to it one day, but looking derelict will also encourage squatters. There a lots of pros and cons each way. You could put up the boards internally, or something similar, in order to maintain a low profile, slow any breaches and also help with light discipline. Perhaps boards on the lower floors and light proof curtains/cloth upstairs?

  The important point is not so much what approach you take for the appearance of your property, which is tied in with your survival tactics; rather, for the purposes of defense you need to harden both a low or high profile property if you intend to defend it against a raid. When boarding up doors, ensure that you have at least two independent exits that can be used both for routine tasks but also for egress if you have to bug out. You may decide to make your front door entirely impassable, keeping the lower profile back door for normal use, but then you will need an alternate exit in case of fire or hostiles at your back door. This could even be a ladder (solid or rope) that can be used as an escape from an upper floor if necessary.

  But even boarding up your windows and doors does not make them ballistically hardened. Again, we encounter questions of pre-event storage and low and high profile measures. You could have sandbags ready to go, but then you will need to consider a big pile of sand to fill them from. Sandbags need to be at least two deep in order to protect against high velocity rounds. If you try stacking these on a modern upper floor, or even a ground level floor with a basement beneath, then the weight of a constructed fighting position may cause a collapse! You could stack sandbags externally around designated window fighting positions on the ground floor, but you will need a lot of them.

  Other alternatives would includ
e filling a chest of drawers with soil to create firing positions, or maybe even material such as steel plate that will weigh less but will provide ballistic protection. A basement has excellent protection, but you usually can’t fight from it; perhaps you can from the small basement windows but your fields of fire will be very restricted and if the enemy get to the walls, they will be able to approach your ‘bunker’ and post a grenade, Molotov cocktail or other nasty down into the basement with you.

  Let’s look in detail at the Principles of Defense:

  Offensive Action, in order to seize or regain the initiative: This is effectively the saying ‘the best form of defense is attack’. This principle says that you should have an offensive mindset. This would mean that you will proactively take measures to actively defend your property, and to counterattack the enemy where possible to seize the initiative. Offensive action could be something as simple as putting some of your group outside of the property in static or mobile fighting positions, which could be permanent watch observation posts (OPs) or perhaps temporary ‘stand to’ positions that will be deployed to as a response to observed enemy approach and may also depend on the direction of that approach.

  All Round Defense, in order to anticipate a threat from any direction: You cannot simply defend from one direction. You defense should cover all approaches. If you imagine defending a central point in a military sense, then the trench or bunker system surrounding that point would go around that central point in a 360 degree circle. If your defense only points in one direction, for instance the driveway or street approaching your house, then you are not defending against flanking attacks or covert approaches to the other sides of your property. This means that you must have fighting positions that orient 360 degrees around your property.