reaction times

tussock

2011-08-04 07:56:03 UTC

Post by Marcus Wellpoth
I was just watching the film "The Mist" after a book by Stephen King.

Haven't seen it, may colour this commentary.

Post by Marcus Wellpoth
I wonder how long it will realistically take for the powers to be to
show up in force if an area the size of an county is overrun by Monsters.
How long will it take for the goverment to notice? (ups, a small town
was just overrun by monster eating our taxpayers)
How long will take to mobilize and what kind of force will arrive after
what time?
And how long can the goverment keep the secret about wwhat happened?

When "the mist" was written, it could be a long time. Now? Twitter,
Facebook, and Google would all crash in about two minutes because everyone
on the planet would be talking about it. Live feeds coming out on all
networks via Skype over mobile broadband, could crash the local cell network
too, but the message is well out by then.
Even the Chinese govt can't keep secrets now, not about unexpected
events. Takes foreknowledge to build a good lie.

Could still take the government a week to move serious numbers of full
time troops into place though. Local police for a few hours, state police
same day with scant military air cover (and no proper observers to help them
strike), a few small anti-terrorist type squads can arrive quickly needing
minimal logistical support, state reservists next day with limited medium
armour support and light artillery.
But massed heavy artillery, heavy armour, constant air support can
easily take weeks to shift into place, as their deep logistic chains aren't
easy to mobilise into unexpected fronts.

May have a good number of quality troops nearby on exercise, but they
often have extremely limited live ammunition supplies, no live artillery
support, only light anti-armour weapons.

Plus, modern nations aren't running huge armies anyway. China maybe, but
only as a wall-of-bodies strategy.

--
tussock