The Power of Fear

SHTF School
Verbatim Post

Most of the questions from people who do not know too much about war is about fighting and shooting of course, man to man fighting.

Some of the worst experiences are from street fighting with stable (more or less) lines of separation between enemy groups. Fighting where there is no real chain of command, real information on positions of enemy, or even real information on positions of your comrades. Not to talk about some kind of support, like logistic, or artillery or air back up.

So if man holds position with rifle in basement of abandoned apartment building of some 6 – 8 stores, and enemy is at distance of some 20 meters, same like you, hidden in basement of abandoned and burned building, or even watching trough some small hole in wall from third floor in some destroyed apartment, and every sound is maybe sound of your death, that can change a man.

Some people literally lose their mind in situation like that, watching, scouting, every second alert.

Most of the folks in some period even did not had real sleep, it was more like some kind of half awake state, delirium, like in trance, after some time folks just shoot on any kind of suspicious thing, without too much checking. Being scared for long time does that to humans.

Funny thing that i realize, folks today basing their ammo stock on fact that they calculate possible chances for shooting at enemy, in real life folks shooted all the time, to shoot someone, to relive stress, to make someone aware that they still alive, to scare someone…

Yes you need a lot of ammo because you won’t be only shooting at someone, shooting becomes a sort of communication as well.

In some places and in some locations, people shot regular following their own schedule, of course with pattern changing, it was a way to keep people away.

Usually during the night and bad weather all things would become even more confused, so people would just go into the enemy territory because taking stuff from other group, using holes in walls between apartments or even sometimes ropes to climb on some other building and attack some positions, not in order to conquer it, but in order to aquire things like food, ammo, weapon, cigarettes etc.

Like in nature when the night comes predators become active. Hungry man can be evil beast.

At the beginning when most of the folks did not know too much about any weapon it was pretty usual to use some kind of “false” weapon. It is for example when 3-4 men held position in some destroyed house with one rifle and one pistol, they would use some pipe, or even piece of exhaust thing of wood stove, disguise it in window, cover it with something, so when someone look from 100 meters distance it looked like big weapon, sometimes like RPG, sometimes like sniper position, it depends on imagination of looker and ability of folks to decorate and of course also depends on peoples knowledge about weapon.

I know, sounds stupid, but it works (so i guess it is not stupid any more).

(Not at all. Confederates used this successfully with tree trunks painted black on the end and protruding from their positions. BT)

When you approach some building and you spot on third floor something that looks like rifle barrel pointed in your direction, you are not going to think about philosophy or agriculture, you are going to switch your survival mode and play safe. You do not want to find out if this thing can blast you to pieces or not the hard way.

It is easy to laugh about man who sought dirty water pipe from 100 meters distance, pointed in his direction, smartly placed on some sand bags and think it is m48 rifle.

In reality it is scary.

So again even “stupid” things work. In a dangerous situation even harmless things can look threatening, use that to your advantage.