David Davis, at the Libertarian Alliance, reveals that fortification may not be his strong point*.
Shelling the position of wh00ps, who has elected (as we say in the accident reports) to occupy a tower block, he says:
But you’d better hope your assaulters have not got artillery of any kind, I suppose. That the lifts might be put out of action by it, is the least of your worries! What if the building falls “at terminal speed”?
But then goes on:
How about a Motte-and-Bailey castle, or better, a proper one, or even the really really strategically-focussed ones, such as was built by Edward I…
If they do indeed have artillery, their reduction of any such structure is only a matter of time. More time, perhaps, than might be required to reduce a tower block; it would depend.
What wh00ps needs to resist the artillery, assuming they do have it, is an artillery fortress, such as those constructed with satisfactory mathematicality by Marshal Vauban.
Modern fortification relies so heavily upon secrecy and concealment that it is strategically best if it does not exist at all. At the Villa Underclass we therefore have invested relatively little in fifteen-foot walls, infra-red searchlights and Pilkington’s Optical Sabretape, and hardly anything at all in sirens, Land-Rovers and SMGs, but instead maintain the house in such an ordinary and anonymous condition that it could easily be supposed to conceal the shafthead of some secret underground government bunker.
* these Footlights-grade puns are supplied in tasteful 1lb. tins by Messrs. Harrods.
At risk of seeming all Sun Tzu: if you find yourself (as presumably a guerilla) having to fortify against a state-funded army, you’ve already lost. Palestine, Sri Lanka, Q.E.D. It doesn’t matter that the Palestinian guerillas were able to fire rockets at the end, a lot of people died, and that’s never a good thing.
Richard Morgan has his fictional insurgency leader, Quellcrist Falconer, advocate an interesting strategem:
In his books, the fictional Harlan’s World is run by the corrupt and autocratic Harlan family. Middle class rage spawns a number of insurgency movements, upon which the government begins to crack down. Followers of Falconer bury their weapons in caches across the planet, take up normal jobs, and forget they were ever insurgents.
With the other insurgencies crushed, but the government as despotic as ever, the ex-insurgents spread their creed amongst friends and family, until a generation later they rise up, stronger than they were before.
(they still lose, but that’s not the point I’m making ;-) )
Agreed entirely. The idea is a somewhat silly one, as the late denizens of Waco, Texas might testify.