What should we do if WWIII breaks out?

[Five In One]

With the chaos in the Middle East, the financial instability of several nations around the globe, and unrest growing, what should the average citizen do when war finally breaks loose? With any luck, this thread should be able to answer just that.

Post what you think people should do below, or anything else that could be relevant to WWIII in general (survival methods, how to organize, what to do before war breaks out, shelter, food, etc.). From there, this information will be compiled and reorganized onto this post, taking different situations and degrees of war into account accordingly.

Also, feel free to discuss what you think the war will be like and debate amongst each other. Just try to keep calm, cool, and collected, and respect each other's opinions (not like flaming helps anyone anyway).



UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

How can citizens adapt to an EMP strike on the United States?
How can citizens organize into operable groups to help one another survive?
If alone, how can a citizen survive in a relatively safe, but remote, environment?
Which firearms are the best to defend yourself with?
What constitutes a good shelter?
How can safe food and water be obtained?

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Move to Australia.
Steal all gasoline, weapons, and ammunition you can, wait it out in a strategic location, and sell some supplies later on.
Create an effective group to help each other pull through.
Stockpile goods before violence breaks out.

[Neopergoss]

Responses from previous thread:
Regarding your suggestion that we should disseminate positive propaganda about the US in the middle east, I'd say it's a little too late for that. If we wanted people over there to like us, we shouldn't have dropped so many bombs on them. It's my belief that the US government is doing more to create terrorism than anything else.

I'm not really familiar with EMP's, but I'm not too worried about them. I'll look into it when I have more time. Red Dawn is a movie about Soviet-backed Cubans invading the US. Not too worried about something like that happening.

Doing the same thing as Bush in this area does make headlines for Obama because he promised to do the opposite. I'll show you some later when I have time. Have to go in a sec.

One last note, more directly relevant:
I don't consider WWIII imminent or inevitable, though I will concede that it's a possibility.

[Five In One]

Fair enough.

Now that you've brought up EMP's on this thread, that got me thinking of something that might help this thread get started:

Suppose the U.S. was struck by an EMP. What would be the result, and how would citizens adapt to the changed conditions?

[UTAlan]

Suppose the U.S. was struck by an EMP. What would be the result, and how would citizens adapt to the changed conditions?

It depends on what was struck and how widespread it was. If a populated area was hit (like LA or NYC), that would have a big impact on the daily lives of the people living there (not to mention the danger of planes and helicopters falling out of the sky, hospitals losing power, etc). On the other hand, if a more strategic location was hit (Pentagon, CIA, power stations, etc.), it would not have as big of an impact on daily lives, but it would make us very vulnerable to attack.

I imagine terrorists doing the former and a nation that wants to attack us doing the latter.

[johannhowitzer]

Simplest solution: move to Australia.  Nobody wants to conquer the Outback, they've told the Muslims to get the heck out of Dodge, and you can have a face-eating koala for your guard dog.

[Essence]

Viscous drop bears for the win.

Really, if WWIII happens and it comes anywhere near American shores, the correct course of action is to be the first one to go steal all of the gasoline, weapons, and ammo that you can find, and move out to your parent's house in an obscure and easily defensible mountain range that's at least a couple hundred miles from the nearest population center.   Then, wait, learn to hunt, and when the sh!t has really hit the fan, start selling the gas and the weapons.  Keep the ammo, though.

[Five In One]

Perhaps the first thing to do when war comes to the U.S. is to gather up a team willing to work together and establish a sort of organization. (Joining one of these would also work) Depending on your situation, you'd need to find a suitable shelter, learn to find or create food, and get uncontaminated water.

For the water, stocking up on bottled water might be good, a well can be dug, and water-purification techniques should be learned beforehand. For food, farms can be useful, but perhaps more practical would be, again, to stockpile canned goods, and to learn which plants are edible. Shelter seems to be more difficult. Any suggestions?

Next to basic human needs, firearms are incredibly important. But the question remains: With so many different types of firearms, which ones are the best to use?

EDIT: A list of unanswered questions and possible solutions are now listed on the first post of this thread. Feel free to post more questions or answers here.

[Glitch]

If world war 3 breaks out, it will be over water scarcity.  Personally, I live near the great lakes, so I'd either:
A)  Try and survive up there,
or
B)  Have like the best week of my life, break all the rules, and then get disintegrated instantly and painlessly by a nuke.

[Wardead]

Possible Solutions:

1. Wait for 2012
2. Suicide
3 Get a rebellion going, and create a secret millita/guerilla force
4. Black Market deals, and live like a king.
5. Get the hell outta' USA, Europe or Middle East/And pretty much Asia. Move to Africa, South America, or Carribean ...Or Canada. It's too cold here for any person to live, except us Canadians. 

[ShiningSword]

You want to survive WWIII?
Find out where it is going to be fought.
Stay away from there and go as far away as you can, until you find a neutral country with a very low population that isnt composed of desert(so you can get food and water) and stay there.
If you do get to the firearms part, good luck. What i can tell you is:
a)A pistol with bullets is better than a machinegun with no bullets(in other words, choose the guns you can get bullets for).
b)If the plundering starts, guns and bullets are the first to get(because you dont want somebody else to get them).
c)You will need people to use the extra guns(so consider making a partnership with someone, avoid that if you dont have lots of food or a way to get it)
d)You will want to open fire first(to avoid recieving bullets), and open fire last(to avoid dieing if you cant get them in the first try), so keep both short range and long range weapons if you can.
On the other hand, i hope you never have to get to that, keeping an eye on the international news can help, world wars dont just unpredictibly start one day, or at least thats how it used to be. In the meantime avoid being paranoic(and bringing up threads like this, although americans are always a little paranoic, so that might be just a few wasted bits of info).

[WrekX]

The most important thing is bringing the fight to your enemy.

Strategic points are obviously places like the pentagon or other military intelligence locations but really what wins wars is some combination of troops and technology which I will just summarize as troops. Troops/Strength trumps intelligence. Intelligence can only amplify strength. I would consider the pentagon as more of a shock and awe and disorientation tactic.

Anyways, the core of troop counts comes from 1) economy 2) production.

We're in the middle east likely trying to control their production. We don't want to hurt their economy because we want to leave whatever resources we can to make it worth while. It's also possible we save money by having troops there because we are "bringing the fight to your enemy." When the enemy brings the fight to you, you lose things like the world trade center or Pearl Harbour.

Our economy was attacked because we're a military powerhouse. Our production locations can't be controlled. But our production can be slowed via economy attacks.

Attacking both economy and production is counter productive initially because if there isn't money for our war factories to produce theres no point in attacking them.

This leads me to my next point. A major attack on the USA, possibly, would be in a major resource area. Coal, Iron, Gold, a building comparable to the world trade center, etc, to continue the assault on our economy. This is just my opinion and I am by no means a trained military expert. Certaintly an attack on an intelligence location is also viable.

Anyways, this is my opinion on what locations could be consider more dangerous than others if your worried about a strike on the USA.

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In regards to WW3 if it ever happens it probably won't be spearheaded by middle eastern leadership.

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EMP burst: Electromagnetic Pulse burst. What it dose in a nutshell is damage electrical components. Basically its a burst of EM radiation that cause irregular voltage spikes in electrical circuits. I'm not an expert on the subject though.

I do know a bit about electricity though. Basically an increase in voltage means an increase in amps which is what damages things but almost everything should be protected by fuses that burn out at a certain amperage. So it's not impossible that an EMP burst could be fixed simply by replacing some fuses. Once again I'm not an expert on the subject. Worst case scenario stay as low profile as possible.

BTW I would think an EMP burst would be the precursor to something worse. I just don't have the knowledge or capability right now to explain why. It would seem to me it would knock out defenses for a WMD or communcation to defend against an invasion but I'm not sure how that works.

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If unsure, boil water. There are also water treatment packets. Don't know a ton about them though. It should also be noted we get most of our water from the food we eat. If your worried about food consult a survival book about what bugs and plants are edible. This will supplement your canned food rations to make them stretch.
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And that's pretty much all I know on the subject. I'm pretty much always up for some C&C btw.

[Ryli]

A cheery subject . It's probably an important one to discuss though. I won't give my opinions yet though. Just posting to keep an eye on this.