The topic of worst case scenarios comes up a lot in the Survivalist community. I got to thinking about them and then unconsciously started using the type of thinking I am indoctrinated to on the problem. Not saying it is the right way parse; unlike some obvious cases such as tactical gunfighting or battle drills where that is what we do there are a lot more options here. This is just a way I am used to dealing with problems. Figured you all might be interested.
Do not plan on fully getting into intelligence preparation of the battlefield today. It is good stuff but well today is Friday so I just dowana. So I'll skip some parts, briefly touch on some parts and dig into what I feel like.
We start by defining the environment we will be operating in. Next we evaluate the threat. First we look at how the threat would fight in an unconstrained environment. For old school conventional fights against folks who have and use doctrine, like the Russians, it is pretty simple to accurately lay out how a mechanized company will act in the defense (or whatever). Now it gets interesting.
What happens now is we apply their order of battle to the terrain/ environment and come up with a situational order of battle. This is how we think the enemy would be arrayed in the current operating environment. After that we look at the enemies potential courses of action.
Right or wrong we typically look at 2 courses of action most likely and most dangerous. The most likely is just that, what we expect the enemy to do based on their tactics, the terrain, etc. Most Dangerous is if the enemy decided to go 'all in' with an aggressive high risk/ high reward plan what it is what we think they would do.
What we do after identifying the templates two plans is figure out the differences between the plans. Those differences are targeted as part of our overall intelligence collection plan to hopefully determine the enemies disposition (most likely, most deadly or something else). Along with high value targets these differences will make up the bulk of our intelligence collection efforts.
It is worth mentioning that neither the most likely COA or most dangerous COA are exaggerations or fantasies. Both need to be grounded in the enemies capabilities and if possible historic activities.
Obviously you will not be looking for the enemies scouts to be templated at location 1 vs location 2, obstacles in a given location or battle positions to determine between 2 COA's as a survivalist. However the principle is the same.
Example time:
Lets say Bob thinks our country has real economic problems. He sees the best case as 8-15% real inflation coupled with a stagnant economy a la late 70's to early 80's stagflation. The worst case he sees is a complete economic collapse of Argentina like proportions. So obviously Bob will not be templating these COA's on acetate then looking for the differences. He will however be identifying the differences all the same.
Some differences might be:
-Continued increase in the monetary supply (most dangerous)
-Rapidly increasing inflation (most dangerous)
-Decrease/ a slowing of the increase in government spending (most likely)
- Slow increase or steady inflation (most likely)
Next we would need to drill down those differences (Priority Intelligence Requirements AKA PIR) into specific identifiable indicators. We will do this for one of our PIR:
-Rapidly increasing inflation (most dangerous)
-Inflation above 9%
-Inflation increasing more than 1% in a month
-The spread between inflation as measured by .GOV and Shadow Stats increasing 25% in a month.
Anyway after a bit more consideration I will share my thoughts on Worst Case Scenarios.
Imagine a bunch of drunks driving around with a trunk full of dynamite to get revenge on a psycho murderer during a tornado. There are multiple risks in play. It should be noted this method only really works to compare similar courses of action (in this case risks). It would not work to compare an economic collapse to a pandemic or Chinese invasion. Looking at 2-3 areas that worry you could be assessed between most likely and most dangerous to determine whether the drunk guy behind the wheel will drive you off a bridge, the tornado will get you or the dynamite will blow up. Hope my iffy analogy makes sense to you.
Do not plan on fully getting into intelligence preparation of the battlefield today. It is good stuff but well today is Friday so I just dowana. So I'll skip some parts, briefly touch on some parts and dig into what I feel like.
We start by defining the environment we will be operating in. Next we evaluate the threat. First we look at how the threat would fight in an unconstrained environment. For old school conventional fights against folks who have and use doctrine, like the Russians, it is pretty simple to accurately lay out how a mechanized company will act in the defense (or whatever). Now it gets interesting.
What happens now is we apply their order of battle to the terrain/ environment and come up with a situational order of battle. This is how we think the enemy would be arrayed in the current operating environment. After that we look at the enemies potential courses of action.
Right or wrong we typically look at 2 courses of action most likely and most dangerous. The most likely is just that, what we expect the enemy to do based on their tactics, the terrain, etc. Most Dangerous is if the enemy decided to go 'all in' with an aggressive high risk/ high reward plan what it is what we think they would do.
What we do after identifying the templates two plans is figure out the differences between the plans. Those differences are targeted as part of our overall intelligence collection plan to hopefully determine the enemies disposition (most likely, most deadly or something else). Along with high value targets these differences will make up the bulk of our intelligence collection efforts.
It is worth mentioning that neither the most likely COA or most dangerous COA are exaggerations or fantasies. Both need to be grounded in the enemies capabilities and if possible historic activities.
Obviously you will not be looking for the enemies scouts to be templated at location 1 vs location 2, obstacles in a given location or battle positions to determine between 2 COA's as a survivalist. However the principle is the same.
Example time:
Lets say Bob thinks our country has real economic problems. He sees the best case as 8-15% real inflation coupled with a stagnant economy a la late 70's to early 80's stagflation. The worst case he sees is a complete economic collapse of Argentina like proportions. So obviously Bob will not be templating these COA's on acetate then looking for the differences. He will however be identifying the differences all the same.
Some differences might be:
-Continued increase in the monetary supply (most dangerous)
-Rapidly increasing inflation (most dangerous)
-Decrease/ a slowing of the increase in government spending (most likely)
- Slow increase or steady inflation (most likely)
Next we would need to drill down those differences (Priority Intelligence Requirements AKA PIR) into specific identifiable indicators. We will do this for one of our PIR:
-Rapidly increasing inflation (most dangerous)
-Inflation above 9%
-Inflation increasing more than 1% in a month
-The spread between inflation as measured by .GOV and Shadow Stats increasing 25% in a month.
Anyway after a bit more consideration I will share my thoughts on Worst Case Scenarios.
Imagine a bunch of drunks driving around with a trunk full of dynamite to get revenge on a psycho murderer during a tornado. There are multiple risks in play. It should be noted this method only really works to compare similar courses of action (in this case risks). It would not work to compare an economic collapse to a pandemic or Chinese invasion. Looking at 2-3 areas that worry you could be assessed between most likely and most dangerous to determine whether the drunk guy behind the wheel will drive you off a bridge, the tornado will get you or the dynamite will blow up. Hope my iffy analogy makes sense to you.
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