I Stole this comment from @zerohedge - #Martial #Law

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I stole this from one of those brilliant zerohedge commenters.. Click the link for the post..

I liked it because I find this particular subject to be very fascinating.. Numbers are truly cool things.. If only one half of 1% of the American citizenry get totally FED up and decide to do something about it you're talking about 1.5 MILLION pissed off Americans..
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by Weimar Ben Bernanke
on Tue, 04/26/2011 - 22:45
#1210023

The question I have is how can the military and police maintain martial law in America for an extended period of time during an economic collapse or crisis? Mathematically it is impossible i will explain. I wrote this months ago in response to CD's article if the military would shoot American cititzens.

If there is a major crisis that sends the entire country into chaos, it would highly unlikely that the U.S. military will be able to enforce a lock-down of the entire nation.

Even if the military manages to acquire all 1.5 million reserves and utilize 1 million of it's total 1.5 million personnel in the Navy, Army, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard, it would struggle to control 308-310 million citizens in a land mass of 9,161,966 sq km.

You can confirm these numbers by looking at the U.S. Census or CIA World fact book.

Even this scenario is incredibly optimistic, because it assumes that 100% of the national guard and Army reserves will show up when the dollar has crash and they're worried about their families. The 1.5 million number doesn't even factor in the fact that many of these people are overseas fighting (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and serving on one of the 700 military bases in 130 foreign countries. So if the dollar collapses and the nation erupts into chaos, will the military be able to ship them home quick enough? I doubt. Now many have said "Well what about the fusion centers and local and state police?"



First of all, American law enforcement numbers are not as strong as some of you think. According to the BLS (bureau of Labor Statistics), there were only 883,600 law enforcement personnel in 2008. And that was before the financial collapse and subsequent layoffs in local departments across the nation. The number included detectives, managers, police and sheriff's patrol officers.

So when you add the 2,500,000 soldiers and the 883,000 law enforcement, you have a force of 3.3 million agents. This is less than one percent of America's highly-armed population. Most of these agents will be working logistics and support for handling prisoners, transportation, intelligence and supply. But this isn't even the biggest problem.

The police are used to dealing with people who are afraid of them and have something to lose. In a collapse scenario, the rioters will lack both characteristics. And the military will be poorly suited to police a populace that is desperation for resources. If the soldiers became violent against the population, they could divide the armed forces and spark a civil war. Moreover, Iraq and Afghanistan has shown us that the U.S. military is not invisible and that guerrilla warfare tactics can be deployed successfully against a high-tech army. It would be very difficult for the U.S. military to successfully implement martial law throughout the entire country at any given time. This would mean that they would have to secure hundred of thousands of neighborhoods, while securing all major airports, power stations, communication towers, water facilities, nuclear power plants, military bases, food distribution center, grocery stores, government official buildings and highways while keeping everyone in their homes after 6pm.

Bringing in foreign troops would problematic, because if the U.S. is in a panic, wouldn't the other countries that are so heavily tied to America also have their own problems. Plus, we know how well foreign occupations went in Afghanistan, Vietnam and Iraq.

In conclusion, a military lock-down of the entire country at any given time would be impossible with the assistance of foreign troops. Adding foreign troops would increase the manpower, but severely damage the credibility of the force. Such a situation would encourage more violence against the martial law force. The U.S. government may attempt to lock the country down, but it would end in failure and possibility set the stage for a civil war. Many people assume that the population's current malaise will mean little resistance to martial law, but they fail to understand human nature. If there is a crisis situation, your biggest danger maybe the people around you.