Re: Communication and Travel

>imagine a single farmstead (with adequate raw materials) turning out
>20-25 serviceable assault weapons in a week. Now raw materials, ammo,
>primers, etc. become a bit of an issue, but you'd be surprised what a
>colony of people who live by being self sufficient because most of
>the time help is not nearby or DNE can do.

Homesteaders being a case in point. My great-grandfather established a
telephone system in NW Kansas long before Bell considered it profitable
to
do so by using a local commodity: fence wire. So long as no one opened a
gate, calls went through. :) Kept that going well into the 1950s for
cheap
long-distance into Nebraska (even tied it into Bell's system for a
while)
until they finally figured it out and shut him down.

The point is, given the right sort of attitude and culture, there are
some
surprising things that can be done with "low-tech". I think any
colonists
who have a will to fight, communicate and survive will find a way to do
it
that traditional schools of thought would laugh at.

To go back to the example of Isreal, I highly reccommend the book _O,
Jerusalem_. It's a good looke at how exactly the Israelis did build and
equip an army out of second- and third- hand military surplus and
homegrown
hardware. An excellent book.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
Jim 'Jiji' Foster / jfoster@kansas.net / Jiji @ AnimeMUCK / TIP #28 /
PPIG #42

"The wisest and best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions,
may
be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke.
"
    - Jane Austen, _Pride & Predjudice_