How to disable, or take down, a technical using a hunting rifle while under concealed cover

This post is exactly what the title says. It discusses ways and techniques for a single person to disable an armed technical using only a hunting rifle. It requires the use of stealth so that the shooter can extract a clip of ammo and then egress out of the area immediately afterwards. This is part of my SHTF series, and discusses techniques and means that a person can survive when their entire world is turned upside-down.

Again, this is a post by request. I want to get off the SHTF nonsense, but I find that one of my posts hit the American prepper blog-a-sphere and went exceptional. Since then, I have been getting some requests. So I'm dusting off a few misc post that I need to push out there. I guess that now is the time. I guess.

People!

Keep in mind that most Americans are good. It is an illusion that those at the other side of the political spectrum are evil, or that Chinese are evil, or that Russians are evil. Most people are not. Those that are pushing for a war... 

...they are the evil ones.

You all should stop contemplating fighting each other, and both gang up against the wealthy oligarchy playing you all as fools. They are the ones driving this entire nightmare and pushing it to it's ultimate conclusion.

The world turning upside-down is in process right now. Some areas are worse than others, but the United States is pretty much a “basket case”.

We need to look at other places, other times, other events from the lens of history. And much of what we must read is from sources outside the United States. For the United States media has created insulated “echo chambers” fully intending to keep Americans like mushrooms; in the dark.

Learn from the events outside of the USA, and discard that very popular saying that “America is special, it is exceptional, it is different”. It’s a lie. America is not immune to change. And it is long overdue. Change is coming and you all had best gather all your strength to deal with it.

Learn from other nations and what they have experienced.

Businessman shot and killed by gunfire in the early days of the Bosnian conflict.
Businessman shot and killed by gunfire in the early days of the Bosnian conflict.

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You need to be prepared. No one can predict the future, and it is my sincere hope that history does not repeat itself. Bu you all should be well aware of history and of similar situations that seem to resemble what is now building up inside of America today.

You need to be prepared.

Know your history.

Ad hoc road block established to thwart an attack.
Ad hoc road block established to thwart an attack.

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Be prepared. Part of that is personal. With food, gun training, ammo, and contingency plans. But part of it goes beyond that. Clan up with a group. Know your neighbors in a good and strong way. Identify who will collect your name on a list and be very wary of them. Identify what your weaknesses are and mitigate your concerns.

Do not be like the Bosnian’s who fled their villages for the woods, and then who were hunted down over the next few months by aggressive and very motivated irregulars. It didn’t work out well for them. Don’t allow history to repeat itself.

Don't be like the villagers in Bosnia who fled and ran into the woods when troops came to collect the women and take them to the new rape complexes in the cities.
Don’t be like the villagers in Bosnia who fled and ran into the woods when troops came to collect the women and take them to the (newly established) rape complexes in the cities.

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One of the most important things that you can do is know how to suppress a technical. Their role is to suppress you, and others while active regulars go house to house seizing people.

If you can take down a technical, you will go a long way to suppress their activity, and even gain control of the situation. Realize that the technical is the major source of power in these excursions. Take out the technical, and the leadership and the attack and assault will more than likely break.

What is a “technical”

A technical is a type of improvised fighting vehicle, typically a civilian or military non-combat vehicle, modified to provide an offensive capability similar to a military gun truck. It is usually an open-backed civilian pickup truck or four-wheel drive vehicle mounting a machine gun, light anti-aircraft gun, recoilless rifle, or other support weapon.

Usually it consists of a medium machine gun to heavy machine gun mounted on the bed of a small pickup truck. The vehicle is usually (mostly) unarmored, and the advantage of the technical is rapid mobility while producing substantial small arms firepower.

A basic "technical" vehicle.
A basic “technical” vehicle.

The Toyota pickup truck seems to be a very common platform from which to mount medium and heavy machine guns. Notice that aside from the gun mount, there is very little other modifications. There might be a large ammo box in the bed of the truck for ammo, and maybe a gas can or two, but that is about it. Usually the vehicles aren’t even painted.

Here’s another technical that is very similar to the photo above. But if you look closely you can see differences. And you all should know that one is in Syria while the other was in Libya.

Another basic "Technical" vehicle.
Another basic “Technical” vehicle.

These next two technical vehicles both have an armored shield mounted with the machine gun. They offer protection from defensive fire that originates from the target. In most cases the weapon of choice will be a medium to heavy machine gun, and supports, or is supported by a squad of regulars.

Notice that the technical would typically include a crew of three.

  • A driver.
  • A machine gunner.
  • And someone riding “shotgun”.
Yet another basic technical vehicle.
Yet another basic technical vehicle.

Cautions and limitations

Just because you see something on the internet doesn’t mean that it is wholly and completely accurate. Every person, every situation, every location, and every war is different. You just can’t simply rely on MM here to provide accurate life or death intel. And so don’t. This is just and only an introduction. If you have nothing else to go on, you can use what is printed herein as a guide to help illuminate a path to take to resolve a problem that could very well occur.

Just keep in mind that were a SHTF event to occur, it is highly likely that technicals will be involved. Being a “lone wolf” defending your homestead without a clan or a group of people for support will be lethal. A technical will be used to frighten, harass, scare, threaten, and destroy from a distance. It is not something that you can view as an after thought. It is something that you need to prepare for.

When a technical rolls into you small town or hamlet, will you be able and equipped to suppress it and immobilize it?
When a technical rolls into you small town or hamlet, will you be able and equipped to suppress it and immobilize it?

How they are used

In an anticipated North American SHTF situation (which is pretty much why we are discussing this) these vehicles will more than likely used by progressive Marxists to suppress the countryside. As such they will be used to…

  • Secure major intersections, bridges, and points of interest.
  • Secure “high ground” prior to a larger assault.
  • Capture or suppress key minor-defended targets.

Which should not be a real surprise. Of course they will be used in this role to provide quick and mobile weapons platforms. But what most civilians will need to be concerned about is as a supporting role in local assaults in small villages and hamlets.

  • Harass the civilian population. Cause them to break and be unable to provide a strong unified defense.

The technicals would be used to scare and chase away civilians and cause them to scatter in the directions that they choose. Eventually rounding up and herding the populace towards collection points where others would secure the people for relocation to “safe areas”. You can well guess what these “safe areas” are.

If you can, avoid boarding the trucks to take you to a "safe area". History clearly shows that the likelihood of you and your family surviving in those conditions is small.
If you can, avoid boarding the trucks to take you to a “safe area”. History clearly shows that the likelihood of you and your family surviving in those conditions is small.

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You don’t want to board the cattle cars, hop into the trucks, or be in any way carted off by agents of the enemy.

When Bosnian Serb forces broke through two years later, about 15,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys fled into the woods. And twice as many terrified residents rushed to the U.N. compound in what was formerly an industrial zone at the entrance to town, in the hope that Dutch U.N. peacekeepers would protect them.

However, the outgunned peacekeepers watched helplessly as Serb troops took around 2,000 men and boys from the compound for execution...

... while bussing the women and young girls to Bosnian government-held territory. 

Meanwhile, in the woods around Srebrenica, Serb soldiers hunted the fleeing Bosniaks, as Bosnian Muslims are otherwise known, killing them one by one.

The killers sought to hide evidence of the genocide, piling most of the bodies into hastily made mass graves, which they subsequently dug up with bulldozers and scattered the bodies across numerous burial sites.

In the years since, bodies have been unearthed and the victims identified through DNA testing. About 1,000 victims remain to be found.

A special U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague and courts in the Balkans have sentenced close to 50 Bosnian Serbs, including their top civilian war-time leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, to more than 700 years in prison for Srebrenica crimes.

-Seattle Times
British forces helping collect women and loading them into trucks "for their protection". Of course, we all know the price that the young women had to pay for that kind of safety.
British forces helping collect women and loading them into trucks “for their protection”. Of course, we all know the price that the young women had to pay for that kind of safety.
An estimated 30,000 Muslim refugees packed around the Dutch peacekeeping base in Potocari, just north of Srebrenica, after Bosnian Serb forces seized the 'safe area'. Mladic sought to calm them, telling the crowd they did not need to be afraid.

Bosnian Serb forces put the frightened refugees on to buses to leave. Many of the refugees were evacuated to Kladanj, 30 miles away on the edge of government-held territory.

The UN noticed that most of the refugees arriving from Srebrenica were women, children, and the elderly and became concerned about the fate of the men.

Over the week that followed the fall of Srebrenica, a total of about 8,000 men and boys from the enclave are estimated to have been killed by Bosnian Serb forces in detention or while trying to flee through the woods.

Men were crammed into warehouses, schools and barns in the area outside Srebrenica. They were shot and their bodies were dumped in mass graves. Serb forces subsequently dug up the bodies and scattered them in a systematic effort to conceal the crime. UN war crimes investigators later excavated the mass graves, but over 1,000 bodies are still missing.

-Srebrenica massacre anniversary: Europe's worst atrocity since the Nazis

During this up coming SHTF event, it would be prudent to trust no-one. Absolutely trust no one. Instead rely on your wits, family and closest friends. In times like these betrayal becomes normal. Expect it.

The After Picture.

Remains of the men who obeyed the troops, the police, and the advise of the political personages that were directing the entire situation "to keep order".
Remains of the men who obeyed the troops, the police, and the advise of the political personages that were directing the entire situation “to keep order”.

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Now that you have seen the “after” pictures, let me present to you the “before” pictures. They say that a picture can say a 1000 words. Well, these two pictures taken together should speak volumes. Do not let, or allow, anyone to take you or your family to a “safe area”. No matter what it is called. FEMA camp, “holding area”, “rest area”, “UN compound”, just don’t allow it to happen.

The “before” picture. How the men were rounded up and led to a place for their protection…

The before picture. The round-up of men and women will be orderly. They will say that they will take you to a safe area; an area of peace and quiet. You know one that they have the control and you do not.
The before picture. The round-up of men and women will be orderly. They will say that they will take you to a safe area; an area of peace and quiet. You know one that they have the control and you do not.

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In order for you to avoid the “after picture”, you need to avoid the “before picture“. Don’t you agree?

Other Applications

These technical vehicles can often hold much larger weapons. Typically they are anti-aircraft guns, and other such weapons. They will be able to reduce a house to rubble. We need not quibble about the size of the weapon, or predict what will be made available when. What we do know is that powerful forces are accumulating large stocks of military grade weapons for the progressive Marxists to use. My guess is that this is going to be much more than rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers.

The prepared prepper needs to be ready for anything.

Technical with a mounted anti-aircraft platform.
Technical with a mounted anti-aircraft platform.

And let’s not get all too hung up on terminology either.

A technical is a light improvised fighting vehicle, typically an open-backed civilian pickup truck or four-wheel drive vehicle mounting a heavy weapon, such as a machine gun, anti-aircraft gun, rotary cannon, anti-tank weapon, anti-tank gun, ATGM, mortar, howitzer, multiple rocket launcher, or recoilless rifle, operating similar to a light (unarmored) military gun truck.

-wikipedia

Light improvised fighting vehicles date back to the first use of automobiles, and to the horse-drawn tachankas mounting machine guns in eastern Europe and Russia.

Machine guns are commonly mounted on fast attack vehicles such as technicals to provide heavy mobile firepower, armored vehicles such as tanks for engaging targets too small to justify use of the primary weaponry or too fast to effectively engage with it, and on aircraft as defensive armament or for strafing ground targets, though on fighter aircraft true machine guns have mostly been supplanted by large-caliber rotary guns.

Technicals are typically fitted with heavy machine guns (especially the DShK and M2 Browning).

Also mounted are anti-aircraft artillery (usually the ZPU or ZU-23-2) AA guns.

It is not uncommon to see recoilless rifles (usually the SPG-9 or M40 recoilless rifle) on such vehicles, as they now become able to take down light armored vehicles and provide HE rounds to destroy houses and fortifications.

Technical with a recoilless rifle.
Technical with a recoilless rifle.

Additionally, multiple rocket launchers (such as the Type 63 multiple rocket launcher or the M-63 Plamen) have been seen on these vehicles.

In the 2012 Syrian civil war, the Syrian government said rebels used the gun mounted on cars.

Technical mounting a quad rocket launcher.
Technical mounting a quad rocket launcher.

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Here’s a great PDF writeup on having mounted rocket launchers on technicals.

Makeshift rocket launchers, whether converted from existing rocket pods or of an entirely improvised design, have featured in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Georgia, Libya and, most recently, the ongoing conflict in Syria. 

Most prominent amongst the rockets used in this manner are those of the Soviet (later Russian) S-5 series. 

Over the past half a century, these rockets became one of the standard weapons for the majority of Soviet and later Russian combat aircraft and helicopters. Although Soviet forces began to supplement, and in some cases replace, S-5 rockets in many roles with the larger 80 mm S-8 series in the 1970s, the S-5 remains commonplace amongst the armed forces of many countries, particularly in the developing world.

 S-5 rockets continue to be used in both the conventional manner and in improvised launchers. In many cases, improvised systems based around surface-to-air rockets are employed as makeshift multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS), often in a standalone manner. 

Launchers in this configuration appear to be used predominantly for indirect fire support, and make use of improvised weapons mounts allowing high elevation. 

In other cases, such systems are employed in the direct fire support role. In these cases, the weapons may be used to supplement existing vehicle armaments, or in a standalone fashion. 

Launchers used like this are often pintle-mounted, or mounted in a fixed or coaxial position. In at least one documented example, an improvised S-5 system was claimed to be used in an anti-helicopter role. It is also important to note the existence of other systems, including both towed and immobile launchers, remotely-operated systems mounted on radio-controlled vehicles, and man-portable single-tube launchers, including shoulder-fired examples.

Why is is important?

Well, unless you are able to respond back to an aggressive force strongly, they will destroy everything. Then, they will come back and collect the survivors. And the results will not be pretty.

Arkan's Tigers kill Bosnian Muslim civilians during the first battle for Bosnia in Bijeljina, Bosnia, March 31, 1992. The Serbian paramilitary unit was responsible for killing thousands of people during the Bosnian war, and Arkan was later indicted for war crimes. This image and the series that accompanies it were used for evidence in the International War Crimes Tribunal for the indictment and conviction of Serbian leaders.
Arkan’s Tigers kill Bosnian Muslim civilians during the first battle for Bosnia in Bijeljina, Bosnia, March 31, 1992. The Serbian paramilitary unit was responsible for killing thousands of people during the Bosnian war, and Arkan was later indicted for war crimes. This image and the series that accompanies it were used for evidence in the International War Crimes Tribunal for the indictment and conviction of Serbian leaders.

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When you encounter an armed aggressive force using technicals, understand that it will involve groups of armed insurgents, of which the technical will provide a supporting role. You will need to be calm, steely, and composed. Then you need to carefully identify your targets and with a fixed mind eliminate them.

There will be bedlam everywhere. Shooting, screaming, cries, explosions, fires and smoke. Do not be shaken.

Some technicals will typically fitted with heavy machine guns (especially the DShK and M2 Browning), anti-aircraft artillery (usually the ZPU or ZU-23-2), recoilless rifles (usually the SPG-9 or M40 recoilless rifle), or multiple rocket launchers (such as the Type 63 multiple rocket launcher or the M-63 Plamen).

They can completely and absolutely destroy a small town or community. Being a lone wolf will be lethal.

Burning homes in Bosina. The rural areas were terribly exposed. The aggressors would go after people on a list that they compiled, and if that person was in a small town or hamlet, they completely gutted the entire area.

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The SPG-9 can typically be found mounted on a wide variety of vehicles known as “technicals” in Somalia.

Great resources on this matter

There are military handbooks for this kind of thing. If you have the ability, I would strongly urge you to read and consult those handbooks if you can find them.

A Muslim in Bijelina, Bosnia begs for his life after capture by Arkan's Tigers in the spring of 1992.
A Muslim in Bijelina, Bosnia begs for his life after capture by Arkan’s Tigers in the spring of 1992.

The suggested methods

Remember that during this period of time, long before any shooting starts, the intention of a technical in your region is to kill.

That is it’s primary purpose. It’s secondary purpose is to destroy, and the third purpose is to intimidate.

Technicals are often used to transport people when not engaged as a weapons platform.
Technicals are often used to transport people when not engaged as a weapons platform.

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Your ideal situation is to disable the technical before it gets into a position of control. What ever that might be. If you can disable the technical before it can get to a staging location, or set up a firing zone, then you have completely thrown a “monkey wrench” into the assault plans. You want this.

There are numerous was to disable a technical. In no particular order they are;

  • Immobilize it. (Shoot off it’s tires, destroy the radiator, muck up the gas, destroy the battery.)
  • Kill or disable the driver. While anyone can drive a pickup truck, if you steal the keys, it will be rather hard to move the vehicle.
  • Render the weapon inoperable. Either deny it ammo, remove the firing mechanism or clog the barrel.
  • Kill or disable the gunner. Again, you might need to eliminate numerous people, as one person after the other might attempt to man the gun.

Yah, I get it. Duh!

Now, reread the list. Remember DO NOT ALLOW THE ENEMY to define the time, or the place, or the rules of engagement. When you do, you provide him the keys to success. Do not fight a defensive war. Fight an offensive war.

Destroyed Technical.
Destroyed Technical.

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You have an opportunity during the beginning stages of a conflict to disable the weapons systems, and the techinicals that you enemy is planning on using. It is at this time that he is vulnerable. He is not expecting anything. You need to eliminate the treat, or mitigate the enormity of the threat long before it manifests.

Read that list again.

If you have failed, and the enemy has decided to attack your community with technicals, then you need to still play offense. But only it will be much harder. You will need to have the technical say in a fixed location for enough time for you to attack it. And then, again, disable it so that it cannot move, and then once disabled, attack the gunner.

Do not be intimidated by the presence of this vehicle. Because that is it’s intended purpose.

Advisement’s for America during SHTF

We cannot predict what will happen in the United States. Certainly one half of the nation if pitted against the other half. And both are being gloated on by wealthy interests. Bu I would advised to shake off all of your misconceptions about who the “enemy” is. They are wrong.

Do not expect that the vehicles rolling into your hamlet will be machine-shop modified technicals. They might be pristine, off the factory floor, custom designed technicals designed for the American battle arena. Be wary. Be frosty.

Do not expect that the vehicles rolling into your hamlet will be machine-shop modified technicals. They might be pristine, off the factory floor, custom designed technicals designed for the American battle arena. Be wary. Be frosty.
Do not expect that the vehicles rolling into your hamlet will be machine-shop modified technicals. They might be pristine, off the factory floor, custom designed technicals designed for the American battle arena. Be wary. Be frosty.

Conclusion

It is highly likely that if a SHTF event were to occur in the United States, that urban youth would stream out from “blue controlled” areas and invade the surrounding countryside.

They will have lists and will target those on the lists as their key focus of attacks.

Then they would take on a secondary role. This would be to round up all the people and stream them towards “safe areas” which they control.

Only they won’t really be safe. They will be traps and those going there will expect historically bad treatment, and death.

Technicals form the core "heart" of an insurgency movement. It is used for transport as well as a gun platform. By taking it out, you are best able to gain control of the situation.
Technicals form the core “heart” of an insurgency movement. It is used for transport as well as a gun platform. By taking it out, you are best able to gain control of the situation.

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To control the countryside they will use either existing armored vehicles as part of the DHS, and other alphabet organizations, or “home grown” technicals.

This article focuses on the technical, which is a lightly armored weapons platform that is key to controlling wide areas of contentious population. And remember…

People!

Keep in mind that most Americans are good. It is an illusion that those at the other side of the political spectrum are evil, or that Chinese are evil, or that Russians are evil. Most people are not. Those that are pushing for a war... they are the evil ones.

You all should stop contemplating fighting each other, and both gang up against the wealthy oligarchy playing you all as fools.

Alt-Right are not evil.
Alt-Left are not evil.

Those that are pushing hatred towards others that have different views from you; they are the evil ones!

And one last point…

Perhaps Mike Pompeo would be less inclined to start and fight a war, if he took a couple of tabs of acid, drank some icy cold beers, and sat down and talked deeply about the purpose of life with one of his “enemies”. We all need to chill out, and communicate. That’s a fact, Jack.

Idea: In a small scale social experiment by Heineken, as part of their ad campaign, 3 pairs of complete strangers with (secretly) wildly-differing views went to a warehouse. There, they built various constructions in pairs and asked each other questions that were prepared in advance by the event organizers. In the end, everyone finds out that their partner had completely opposite beliefs than their own. Everyone then decides if they want to talk to their partner over a bottle of beer.

Result: Among the 3 pairs of participants there was a supporter of the climate change theory and an skeptic; a feminist and a man holding conservative views; and a transgender individual, as well as a man against gender reassignment. In the end, friendship and curiosity prevailed, as every single person decided to drink a beer together, chatted, got to know each other, and deepened their knowledge about the questions they thought they had all figured out.

Do you want to see similar posts?

I hope that you found this post curious. Please take care. You can view other similar posts in my SHTF Index, here…

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Law 22 – Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power (48 Laws of Power)

Here is another great law from Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power. This tactic was used by myself to survive prison in the ADC. Which was a hard labor prison in the middle of Arkansas. It was an old cotton plantation, and the purpose of a “hard labor” prison is to make your life so darn uncomfortable that you would never want to re-offend ever again. Anyways, I had to deal with a lot of hard-core criminals there, and the best survival method that I could come up with was to be slow, and dumb and kind of “not quite there”. It worked.

Here is the law. It’s a great read, and alike all of his works, you need to apply it to your own personal situation.

Remember, it is best to smile and be friendly. It’s difficult to be villianized by others if you are kind and smile. And act a little helpless, as it’s human nature to assume that you are smarter than others, and by giving that belief to others, you aptly protect yourself.

LAW 22

USE THE SURRENDER TACTIC: TRANSFORM WEAKNESS INTO POWER

JUDGMENT

When you are weaker, never fight for honor’s sake; choose surrender instead.

Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane.

Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you—surrender first.

By turning the other cheek you infuriate and unsettle him. Make surrender a tool of power.

Remember, boys and girls, time is your friend. Use it, and you decide when to strike and how to strike. Do not let others trick you into premature action when you are not prepared.

TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW

The island of Melos is strategically situated in the heart of the Mediterranean. In classical times, the city of Athens dominated the sea and coastal areas around Greece, but Sparta, in the Peloponnese, had been Melos’s original colonizer.

During the Peloponnesian War, then, the Melians refused to ally themselves with Athens and remained loyal to Mother Sparta.

In 416 B.C. the Athenians sent an expedition against Melos. Before launching an all-out attack, however, they dispatched a delegation to persuade the Melians to surrender and become an ally rather than suffer devastation and defeat.

THE CHESTNUT AND THE FIG TREE

A man who had climbed upon a certain fig tree, was bending the boughs toward him and plucking the ripe fruit, which he then put into his mouth to destroy and gnaw with his hard teeth. 

The chestnut, seeing this, tossed its long branches and with tumultuous rustle exclaimed: 

“Oh Fig! How much less protected by nature you are than I. See how my sweet offspring are set in close array; first clothed in soft wrappers over which is the hard but softly lined husk. And not content with this much care, nature has also given us these sharp and close-set spines, so that the hand of man cannot hurt us.” 

Then the fig tree began to laugh, and after the laughter it said: “You know well that man is of such ingenuity that he will bereave even you of your children. But in your case he will do it by means of rods and stones; and when they are felled he will trample them with his feet or hit them with stones, so that your offspring will emerge from their armor crushed and maimed; while I am touched carefully by his hands, and never, like you, with roughness”

-LEONARDO DAVINCI, 1452-1519

“You know as well as we do,” the delegates said, “that the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel, and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.”

When the Melians responded that this denied the notion of fair play, the Athenians said that those in power determined what was fair and what was not.

The Melians argued that this authority belonged to the gods, not to mortals.

“Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men,” replied a member of the Athenian delegation, “lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can.”

The Melians would not budge.

Sparta, they insisted, would come to their defense.

The Athenians countered that the Spartans were a conservative, practical people, and would not help Melos because they had nothing to gain and a lot to lose by doing so.

Finally the Melians began to talk of honor and the principle of resisting brute force. “Do not be led astray by a false sense of honor,” said the Athenians.

“Honor often brings men to ruin when they are faced with an obvious danger that somehow affects their pride. There is nothing disgraceful in giving way to the greatest city in Hellas when she is offering you such reasonable terms.”

The debate ended. The Melians discussed the issue among themselves, and decided to trust in the aid of the Spartans, the will of the gods, and the rightness of their cause.

They politely declined the Athenians’ offer.

A few days later the Athenians invaded Melos.

The Melians fought nobly, even without the Spartans, who did NOT come to their rescue.

It took several attempts before the Athenians could surround and besiege their main city, but the Melians finally surrendered. The Athenians wasted no time—they put to death all the men of military age that they could capture, they sold the women and children as slaves, and they repopulated the island with their own colonists.

Only a handful of Melians survived.

Interpretation

The Athenians were one of the most eminently practical people in history, and they made the most practical argument they could with the Melians: When you are weaker, there is nothing to be gained by fighting a useless fight.

No one comes to help the weak—by doing so they would only put themselves in jeopardy.

The weak are alone and must submit.

Fighting gives you nothing to gain but martyrdom, and in the process a lot of people who do not believe in your cause will die.

Weakness is no sin, and can even become a strength if you learn how to play it right. Had the Melians surrendered in the first place, they would have been able to sabotage the Athenians in subtle ways, or might have gotten what they could have out of the alliance and then left it when the Athenians themselves were weakened, as in fact happened several years later.

Fortunes change and the mighty are often brought down.

Surrender conceals great power: Lulling the enemy into complacency, it gives you time to recoup, time to undermine, time for revenge. Never sacrifice that time in exchange for honor in a battle that you cannot win.

Voltaire was living in exile in London at a time when anti-French sentiment was at its highest. 

One day walking through the streets. he found himself surrounded by an angry crowd. 

“Hang him. Hang the Frenchman,”they yelled. 

Voltaire calmly addressed the mob with the following words: “Men of England’ You wish to kill me because I am a Frenchman. Am I not punished enough in not being born an Englishman?” 

The crowd cheered his thoughtful words, and escorted him safely back to his lodgings.

-THE LITTLE, BROWN BOOK OF ANECDOTES. CLIFTON FADIMAN, ED., 1985
Weak people never give way when they ought to. 

-Cardinal de Retz, 1613-1679

OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW

Sometime in the 1920s the German writer Bertolt Brecht became a convert to the cause of Communism.

From then on his plays, essays, and poems reflected his revolutionary fervor, and he generally tried to make his ideological statements as clear as possible.

When Hitler came to power in Germany, Brecht and his Communist colleagues became marked men. He had many friends in the United States—Americans who sympathized with his beliefs, as well as fellow German intellectuals who had fled Hitler.

In 1941, accordingly, Brecht emigrated to the United States, and chose to settle in Los Angeles, where he hoped to make a living in the film business.

Over the next few years Brecht wrote screenplays with a pointedly an anti-capitalist slant. He had little success in Hollywood, so in 1947, the war having ended, he decided to return to Europe.

That same year, however, the U.S. Congress’s House Un-American Activities Committee began its investigation into supposed Communist infiltration in Hollywood.

It began to gather information on Brecht, who had so openly espoused Marxism, and on September 19, 1947, only a month before he had planned to leave the United States, he received a subpoena to appear before the committee. In addition to Brecht, a number of other writers, producers, and directors were summoned to appear as well, and this group came to be known as the Hollywood 19.

Before going to Washington, the Hollywood 19 met to decide on a plan of action.

Their approach would be confrontational. Instead of answering questions about their membership, or lack of it, in the Communist Party, they would read prepared statements that would challenge the authority of the committee and argue that its activities were unconstitutional.

Even if this strategy meant imprisonment, it would gain publicity for their cause.

Brecht disagreed.

What good was it, he asked, to play the martyr and gain a little public sympathy if in the process they lost the ability to stage their plays and sell their scripts for years to come?

He felt certain they were all more intelligent than the members of the committee. Why lower themselves to the level of their opponents by arguing with them? Why not outfox the committee by appearing to surrender to it while subtly mocking it?

The Hollywood 19 listened to Brecht politely, but decided to stick to their plan, leaving Brecht to go his own way.

The committee finally summoned Brecht on October 30. They expected him to do what others among the Hollywood 19 who had testified before him had done: Argue, refuse to answer questions, challenge the committee’s right to hold its hearing, even yell and hurl insults.

Much to their surprise, however, Brecht was the very picture of congeniality.

He wore a suit (something he rarely did), smoked a cigar (he had heard that the committee chairman was a passionate cigar smoker), answered their questions politely, and generally deferred to their authority.

Unlike the other witnesses, Brecht answered the question of whether he belonged to the Communist Party: He was not a member, he said, which happened to be the truth.

One committee member asked him, “Is it true you have written a number of revolutionary plays?” Brecht had written many plays with overt Communist messages, but he responded, “I have written a number of poems and songs and plays in the fight against Hitler and, of course, they can be considered, therefore, as revolutionary because I, of course, was for the overthrow of that government.”

This statement went unchallenged.

Brecht’s English was more than adequate, but he used an interpreter throughout his testimony, a tactic that allowed him to play subtle games with language.

When committee members found Communist leanings in lines from English editions of his poems, he would repeat the lines in German for the interpreter, who would then retranslate them; and somehow they would come out innocuous.

At one point a committee member read one of Brecht’s revolutionary poems out loud in English, and asked him if he had written it. “No,” he responded, “I wrote a German poem, which is very different from this.” The author’s elusive answers baffled the committee members, but his politeness and the way he yielded to their authority made it impossible for them to get angry with him.

After only an hour of questioning, the committee members had had enough.

“Thank you very much,” said the chairman, “You are a good example to the [other] witnesses.”

Not only did they free him, they offered to help him if he had any trouble with immigration officials who might detain him for their own reasons.

The following day, Brecht left the United States, never to return.

Interpretation

The Hollywood 19’s confrontational approach won them a lot of sympathy, and years later they gained a kind of vindication in public opinion. But they were also blacklisted, and lost valuable years of profitable working time.

Brecht, on the other hand, expressed his disgust at the committee more indirectly.

It was not that he changed his beliefs or compromised his values; instead, during his short testimony, he kept the upper hand by appearing to yield while all the time running circles around the committee with vague responses, outright lies that went unchallenged because they were wrapped in enigmas, and word games.

In the end he kept the freedom to continue his revolutionary writing (as opposed to suffering imprisonment or detainment in the United States), even while subtly mocking the committee and its authority with his pseudo-obedience.

Keep in mind the following: People trying to make a show of their authority are easily deceived by the surrender tactic.

Your outward sign of submission makes them feel important; satisfied that you respect them, they become easier targets for a later counterattack, or for the kind of indirect ridicule used by Brecht.

Measuring your power over time, never sacrifice long-term maneuverability for the short-lived glories of martyrdom.

When the great lord passes, the wise peasant bows deeply and silently farts.

-Ethiophan proverb

KEYS TO POWER

What gets us into trouble in the realm of power is often our own overreaction to the moves of our enemies and rivals.

That overreaction creates problems we would have avoided had we been more reasonable. It also has an endless rebound effect, for the enemy then overreacts as well, much as the Athenians did to the Melians.

It is always our first instinct to react, to meet aggression with some other kind of aggression.

But the next time someone pushes you and you find yourself starting to react, try this: Do not resist or fight back, but yield, turn the other cheek, bend. You will find that this often neutralizes their behavior—they expected, even wanted you to react with force and so they are caught off-guard and confounded by your lack of resistance. By yielding, you in fact control the situation, because your surrender is part of a larger plan to lull them into believing they have defeated you.

This is the essence of the surrender tactic: Inwardly you stay firm, but outwardly you bend.

Deprived of a reason to get angry, your opponents will often be bewildered instead. And they are unlikely to react with more violence, which would demand a reaction from you. Instead you are allowed the time and space to plot the countermoves that will bring them down.

In the battle of the intelligent against the brutal and the aggressive, the surrender tactic is the supreme weapon. It does require self-control: Those who genuinely surrender give up their freedom, and may be crushed by the humiliation of their defeat. You have to remember that you only appear to surrender, like the animal that plays dead to save its hide.

We have seen that it can be better to surrender than to fight; faced with a more powerful opponent and a sure defeat, it is often also better to surrender than to run away. Running away may save you for the time being, but the aggressor will eventually catch up with you. If you surrender instead, you have an opportunity to coil around your enemy and strike with your fangs from close up.

In 473 B.C., in ancient China, King Goujian of Yue suffered a horrible defeat from the ruler of Wu in the battle of Fujiao.

Goujian wanted to flee, but he had an adviser who told him to surrender and to place himself in the service of the ruler of Wu, from which position he could study the man and plot his revenge.

Deciding to follow this advice, Goujian gave the ruler all of his riches, and went to work in his conqueror’s stables as the lowest servant.

For three years he humbled himself before the ruler, who then, finally satisfied of his loyalty, allowed him to return home.

Inwardly, however, Goujian had spent those three years gathering information and plotting revenge. When a terrible drought struck Wu, and the kingdom was weakened by inner turmoil, he raised an army, invaded, and won with ease.

That is the power behind surrender: It gives you the time and the flexibility to plot a devastating counter-blow. Had Goujian run away, he would have lost this chance.

When foreign trade began to threaten Japanese independence in the mid-nineteenth century, the Japanese debated how to defeat the foreigners.

One minister, Hotta Masayoshi, wrote a memorandum in 1857 that influenced Japanese policy for years to come: “I am therefore convinced that our policy should be to conclude friendly alliances, to send ships to foreign countries everywhere and conduct trade, to copy the foreigners where they are at their best and so repair our own shortcomings, to foster our national strength and complete our armaments, and so gradually subject the foreigners to our influence until in the end all the countries of the world know the blessings of perfect tranquillity and our hegemony is acknowledged throughout the globe.”

This is a brilliant application of the Law: Use surrender to gain access to your enemy. Learn his ways, insinuate yourself with him slowly, outwardly conform to his customs, but inwardly maintain your own culture.

Eventually you will emerge victorious, for while he considers you weak and inferior, and takes no precautions against you, you are using the time to catch up and surpass him. This soft, permeable form of invasion is often the best, for the enemy has nothing to react against, prepare for, or resist. And had Japan resisted Western influence by force, it might well have suffered a devastating invasion that would have permanently altered its culture.

Surrender can also offer a way of mocking your enemies, of turning their power against them, as it did for Brecht.

Milan Kundera’s novel The Joke, based on the author’s experiences in a penal camp in Czechoslovakia, tells the story of how the prison guards organized a relay race, guards against prisoners. For the guards this was a chance to show off their physical superiority. The prisoners knew they were expected to lose, so they went out of their way to oblige—miming exaggerated exertion while barely moving, running a few yards and collapsing, limping, jogging ever so slowly while the guards raced ahead at full speed.

Both by joining the race and by losing it, they had obliged the guards obediently; but their “overobedience” had mocked the event to the point of ruining it.

Overobedience—surrender—was here a way to demonstrate superiority in a reverse manner. Resistance would have engaged the prisoners in the cycle of violence, lowering them to the guards’ level. Overobeying the guards, however, made them ridiculous, yet they could not rightly punish the prisoners, who had only done what they asked.

Power is always in flux—since the game is by nature fluid, and an arena of constant struggle, those with power almost always find themselves eventually on the downward swing.

If you find yourself temporarily weakened, the surrender tactic is perfect for raising yourself up again—it disguises your ambition; it teaches you patience and self-control, key skills in the game; and it puts you in the best possible position for taking advantage of your oppressor’s sudden slide.

If you run away or fight back, in the long run you cannot win. If you surrender, you will almost always emerge victorious.

Image: An Oak
Tree. The oak
that resists the
wind loses its
branches one
by one, and
with nothing
left to protect
it, the trunk fi
nally snaps.
The oak that
bends lives long
er, its trunk grow
ing wider, its roots
deeper and more tenacious.
Authority: Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let them have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. 

(Jesus Christ, in Matthew 5:38-41)

REVERSAL

The point of surrendering is to save your hide for a later date when you can reassert yourself.

It is precisely to avoid martyrdom that one surrenders, but there are times when the enemy will not relent, and martyrdom seems the only way out. Furthermore, if you are willing to die, others may gain power and inspiration from your example.

Yet martyrdom, surrender’s reversal, is a messy, inexact tactic, and is as violent as the aggression it combats.

For every famous martyr there are thousands more who have inspired neither a religion nor a rebellion, so that if martyrdom does sometimes grant a certain power, it does so unpredictably. More important, you will not be around to enjoy that power, such as it is. And there is finally something selfish and arrogant about martyrs, as if they felt their followers were less important than their own glory.

When power deserts you, it is best to ignore this Law’s reversal. Leave martyrdom alone: The pendulum will swing back your way eventually, and you should stay alive to see it.

Conclusion

I see this level of kind restraint being practiced by China while the United States thrashes, crashes, accuses, arrests, and bans the Chinese and their products. China just sails on, politely nodding and being pleasant.

However, you can rest assured that China is not a “push-over” and have made what ever preparations they feel is necessary to suppress American aggression. And that is the surrender technique. It is one where you are in control, and where you control the timing, the battlefield, the methods of warfare all with a singular objective.

Do not be so sure that the United States is as strong, and as powerful and as capable as it appears. Nor should you believe that China is a timid and as weak and “limp wristed” as it appears either.

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