Martial law.

[Tartar Horde]

From my experiences of living in a small town/village I can say that it would be impossible to police a lockdown in the countryside, most of the people would tell TPTB to go fck themselves to be honest, and how would TPTB check anyway if we were all behaving, CCTV, tried that, it resembled Swiss Cheese after a week. I can imagine plod telling a farmer he can't leave his farm to walk his land. OH REALLY. They banned hunting with dogs, they banned hunting with Bow, they banned semi auto shotghuns etc, etc, but no one in the countryside gives a toss anyway, how are you going to stop us eh????, you have your hands full controlling the shitholes you call cities. I have NEVER seen a copper in the sticks in my area.

[Scythe13]

I get what you're all saying. I honestly do.

My issue is that if you're law abiding, stuck in a town house or a country house is no different. If you're not law abiding, then it still doesn't make any difference, as SD said, there will be areas where TPTB don't dare to tread. Those places will occupy the police so much that a lot of the city will be free to do as they want.

I see very little of the forces in the country occupying anything at all, with any reasonable effect. Whether police or military, in a rural or urban area.

[Jack]

Having been involved 'loosely' with some of these ideas I can only make an educated guess at the how's... But a nationwide lockdown would be counter productive to man power, as has been the theme of BP's point.
It's likely that large rural areas near cities and towns may have a small detatchment to enforce the entire area but would be more of a visual presence than active. Large urban areas with the heaviest populations would be policed with the best resources and the majority of forces.
Utilising CCTV, ground forces etc and in an extreme situation drones or other aerial recce...
In Afghanistan a curfew was in effect that mainly US and Briish forces governed.
There is little to no CCTV and was to dangerous in some places to deploy ground units, aerial recce was used almost exclusively in finding curfew breakers. One piece of footage I was shown that was shared by the yanks showed three locals near a built up industrial type area, after seconds of detection a chopper was deployed a minute later it was on top of them, one was shredded immediately by the on board cannons, one tried jumping a fence got the same treatment, the third hid under a vehicle which done him no good as the 50mm rounds left the truck showing up as a white blur on the infrared... If the gov wanted to control and enforce a curfew it could and would without warning or hesitation, you can't reason with soldiers that have orders and even less so with ammunition travelling at thousands of miles per hour in your general direction...
So I would say that Scythe and BP are right in what their saying. Being so far out of the way you will not be of interest unless the term 'homegrown terrorism' gets used and then I'd worry even in the remotest of areas (as they will all be monitored - if only periodically).
The benefits are the same that scythe has mentioned with networks of people etc (in towers) and also have the advantage to get the latest news on lifted curfews, aid etc. of course there's an opposit and negative potential that they'd be the first to have the doors kicked in and face a death squad... But these scenarios, though worth talking about, come from an invasion stand point where we would be under occupation. At the very most in the traditional SHTF scenarios (in these cases it would be post shtf but whilst the powers that be tried to hold on) we'd expect the lightest of all restrictions and methods of enforcement discussed until a time that the country recovered or was abandoned...

[Ranger]

Here's a thought. Due to the limitations of manpower, why would they want to control entire cities. Unlike America, we do not have (comparatively), massive amounts of privately held firearms, legal or otherwise and especially ammo would be in short supply. Therefore, the general populace could not mount any kind of concerted attack on any well armed, disiplined and organised (para)military units. They could just defend strategic sites such as the City Of London, power stations, water/sewerage works ETC and let the plebs get on with rioting/destroying themselves and their areas. TPTB would probably bug out to rural retreats (Chequers?) with rings of steel around the major conurbations to keep the masses corralled until they burn themselves out. It wouldn't take long until the people were so weak from lack of resources that they'd welcome whatever forces came to their rescue and be utterly compliant with whatever they're told to do. I don't think they would try and lockdown the countryside, but there would be greater restrictions on movement and "gatherings", and, what with, checkpoints, patrols, observation points (OPs) and drones, movement could be severely curtailed especially if the OPs and drones are backed up with quick reaction forces. This to me, IMHO, would be a strategically more efficient use of limited manpower in a nationwide SHTF situation.
Just my two penneth.

[bigpaul]

i expect TPTB to concentrate on London and Westminster in particular, power stations, the stock exchange, the bank of england...stuff like that, with maybe a smaller force or unit in Birmingham and Manchester...is there anything of strategic value in these places? dont know the area so cant comment. i know there is nothing in my area for TPTB ...farming country.

[David075]

and what about airports ? would they be a priority to secure and the railways ?

[Mortblanc]

It is all in the mindset boys.

We have several types here in the States;

Urban folks that worry about following the rules, even bad rules. Go with the flow, don't draw attention.

That or they are predators with laws written to protect them from TPTB and honest citizens. Swimming upstream against the trends.

Or the rural folk, who say "lets blow off the side of this hill and damn the f&^*ing river and call a hault to this BS."

I was just talking to a man today who runs water lines through rural areas of the Appilations for a living. His job is to go to each and every homeowner and get permission to cross their land.

By law he does not have to do so, but TPTB have found that if they do not they lose equipment to fire, theift and vandalizm, their pipelines are sabotagued and their people are shot by snipers in the woods.

That is today, right now, not 100 years ago.

It is all in the mindset of the people, what they will allow and what TPTB know they can get away with.

---

Urban areas are targeted because they can be saturated with troops. Pure and simple.

The same reason we can control the towns in Iraq and Afganistan or Viet Namn, but the countryside belongs to the enemy and even in town our troops can not move without enough numbers to protect themselves.

[BDG]

(23 April 2013, 18:32)bigpaul Wrote: i expect TPTB to concentrate on London and Westminster in particular, power stations, the stock exchange, the bank of england...stuff like that, with maybe a smaller force or unit in Birmingham and Manchester...is there anything of strategic value in these places? dont know the area so cant comment. i know there is nothing in my area for TPTB ...farming country.

Machines need fuel and people need food. It would be a lot easier to control the farmland and control those in urban areas by controlling the food supply.

The urbanites will survive due to TPTB. Rural folk will have to survive despite TPTB.

[Scythe13]

I think, if the UK was going to implement martial law, they'd go to another country and get their support.

[bigpaul]

oh here we go again," the yanks are gonna save us". god help us in that case!

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(23 April 2013, 21:10)BDG Wrote: The urbanites will survive due to TPTB. Rural folk will have to survive despite TPTB.

we grow food in the country, cities have to bring it in, which do the think will starve first?