[swaghauler]

Originally Posted by simonmark6

In the situation you describe, Swag, we'd be lucky if we had armed factions running around to extort food and terrorise people. We aren't a Third World country used to scrapping along on the bottom of the barrel and subsisting on what we can grow. We are a nation of nearly seventy million people in a country that you can walk across in less than ten days and walk the length of in two to three weeks. No area apart from a very few are more than a week's walk from a population concentration of ten million people or so.
Add to that the fact that we have about three weeks' of food in storage and the capacity to feed at best a tenth of our population off our farmland then any situation that led to a breakdown of our armed forces into warring factions is going to mean that we have seventy million starving people swarming the country in search of food.
I doubt that any amount of guns is going to be able to stop that. If you are positing a situation where society breaks down militarily yet we are still able to feed the population for long enough to be oppressed and terrorised by factions then I can't see what circumstances would lead to that.
The 28 Days later scenario needs some sort of major disaster hat kills off large numbers of the population before they can use up all the supplies. That means a disaster that kill 99% of the population in less than two weeks. If we have faced a problem of that magnitude, we're going to be more worried about the sixty million rotting bodies spreading disease amongst the survivors than a few squaddie survivors with guns terrorising a population of survivors.
That said, I have no problem with Americans bearing arms: it is the will of the people that the population can go armed and I support that with every fibre of my body.
I also respect your right to express your opinions about the political system that I live under and support. It is the will of the majority of our population that guns are regulated. There is no right or wrong in either system just different although I am a little fed up with the attitude of some American pro-gun supporters (Not anybody on these pages I hasten to add) who state that the British are some sort of sheep who are terrorised by an oppressive government who deny us our God-given right to carry weaponry around wherever we wish. I am a proud participant in our democratic process and whilst I disapprove of many of the policies of the governments that represent me I fully support the rule of law presented to us by our democratically elected representatives, just as I would support the same establishments in America and as I support your right to bear arms and engage in democratic lobbying ad discussion should you feel those rights are being eroded.
In short, I am not criticising the American ways and I would appreciate it if such courtesies were reciprocated.
As for my earlier posts, people from America expressed an interest in a UK resident's take on whether there was a right of redress established in English law before the American Revolution. There was, it may not have been ideal or easy for the common person to access, but it was there. That does not suggest that I feel it was better than the American alternative, it merely means that it existed.
Personally, I feel the American system was fairer from the start but part of that stems from the fact that the drafters of the Constitution were able o build upon precedent and correct the perceived injustices rather than try to work within a system that had been evolving through the use of interpretation and precedence over several hundred years.
I have nothing more to contribute to this debate and I'm worried that I'm getting combative therefore I'll bow out. This isn't because I have been offended by anything anyone has said, the quality of debate is, as always, excellent but I can feel my passions rising and I try to never post angry.
I will continue to watch the posts with interest.

My point was not to criticize Great Britain but to point out the conditions there in game. When you look at the Version 2.2 list of British Nuclear Targets; You have exactly that mass extinction event I was talking about. Assuming the "Best Case Scenario" of 10 km surrounding the airburst being totally uninhabitable due to fallout and secondary disasters (industrial explosions, natural gas explosions, toxic or human waste release, etc) you are looking at the loss of nearly 1000 km of habitable land after plotting the strikes on a map. Chernobyl and Fukushima both have taught us the dangers of radioactive releases into the atmosphere. While the more deadly remnants of an airburst will decline to a temporarily safe level (without remediation) in about 2 years; Chernobyl has shown us that poisonous Caesium 137 (a byproduct of Nuclear weapons and liquid metal cooled reactors, but not found in atomic bombs or water cooled reactors) still needed remediation TEN YEARS after the accident to avoid poisoning humans with food or water from the contaminated soil. These nuclear attacks would claim at least half of the British population directly or indirectly. The remaining population would be forced into a much smaller physical region in order to avoid the ongoing environmental disasters. This "population pressure" combined with only a small portion of the populace being armed would create the situation I'm talking about. That very same situation was created right here in America during the Katrina disaster. After Katrina hit; the local authorities confiscated the resident's firearms and then left. Local gang members and people who entered the disaster area looking for "salvage" (the words of those who were prosecuted for looting) did not surrender their firearms. A trend of wholesale robbery began as the gang members took precious resources from the unarmed inhabitants. only when federally contracted security officers from Blackwater and Securitas showed up did the looting stop. It can happen ANYWHERE. It even happened here.
It would be worse in both Poland and Germany. I could see as much as 25% to 30% of their territory being essentially uninhabitable after "The Exchange" has subsided.
Russia, The US, Canada, and Australia would fare much better. Why? The US would be severely damaged at the coastline but much of her interior would be untouched. Looking at GDW's map; I would estimate The US has about 10% of her coastal landmass listed as uninhabitable. The people who were subject to the attacks not only have the ability to defend themselves but also the ability to "migrate" from the affected areas. The Australians, Canadians, and Russians may not have the same level of personal armament as US citizens; But they too have a very large geographic area to flee into.

This does bring up a couple of flaws in GDW's line of thinking. I don't believe that either side would risk even "limited nuclear war." First; Is there really such a thing? I don't think so. How do you know what your enemy's intention really is? Even a limited "strike" could trigger a "total retaliation" by the enemy. That's why I envision The Exchange occuring much later in the timeline. I think it would occur in 1999 with both NATO and Chinese forces knocking on Russia's doorstep. The ideological push would be a launch with a ground offensive in followup. The Russians would then "sue for peace" right at the tail end of the offensive. This is where I place my 5th Division crew. Ten months after The Exchange, and at the tail end of a fitful nine month offensive that sees EVERYONE essentially destroyed and incapable of any large organised action.