I have been reading these boards for a while, and on several occasions I have read skeptics that don't think martial law would be possible in the US.
I'm here to tell you that it is not only possible, but the plans have already been made. One thing our government is good at is hypothisising about hypothetical contingencies.
What I intend to do is illustrate one possible scenario based part on conjecture and part on experience.
It may well begin with an actual or contrived terrorist attack, but in todays climate of fear and paranoia, an actual event is not realy needed. Just the suggestion that an attack is impending is enough.
Today the public is being prepared for government intervention for any number of crisis.
Every day we hear about terrorist who want to kill us, or climate that will kill us, or pandemic that will kill us, or crooked politicians that will kill us.
The list is long, but there is a central theme. What ever the threat, it is life threatening, and whatever the threat only the goverment is in a position to save us.
One thing I have seen stated here is that we don't have enough military to impose martial law. If only it were that simple.
In addition to active military units, there are guard units in every state. In addition to guard and military, there are multiple layers of civilian law enforcment personel. In addition to military and law enforcment, there are multiple layers of first responders such as EMT's and fire departments
In addition to those agencies, there are private contractors and private security companies.
Now add to all of those the civic minded , if misguided, civilians in our midst who will volunteer to assist because they mistakenly think they are on the right side, or because the expect to better thier own situation by co operating with the " authorities".
That amounts to millions of personel that can be mobilized to contain the public.
With the personel in place to enforce martial law, they need to pacify the public. I would suggest that the psychops to obtain that objective are already at work.
Between the apathy and the gullibility of the general public, the majority of people will do nothing to save themselves. The majority just wont believe it could happen here. By the time they figure it out, it will be too late.
For the majority, they will be happy to surrender thier freedom for the promise of safety and security.
For those who have already abdicated thier personal responcability for themselves, they will welcome the goverment intervention and relocating them to a " safe" place.
These are just the preliminary steps by which martial law can be imposed.
If there is interest, I will explain the mechanics of phase 2.
As always i welcome questions and comments.

You know my thoughts! How about phase 2, give us a breakdown if you will.

Thanks for your post. People need to think about this topic.

I feel, however, that it would not even take a third party actor to result in martial law. A pandemic is all we would need, manufactured or not.

Otherwise rational citizens would be clamoring for government lockdowns to restrict travel and protect towns, cities and regions from further spread of the contaminant. Hell, any given neighbohood would be in lock down by vigilantes.

Martial law may be applied for a short duration in an emergency. The economics of any duration beyond what the participants are willing to give up will be the determining factor as to when they give up. The govt can not afford to take on the financial burden of keeping and thats the key word keeping reliable dependable people. These sorts can make far more on thier own and in industry than being a bit player in uncles limited run play. I suspect they will wander off quickly. The drones may stay on but they are easily duped and no real security at all. There are 300 million people here and if lucky there are a total current availability of less than 3 million to enforce martial law, and that is if we bring our real talent back stateside. If it was a false threat and the population found out they would be over ran and a new leadership installed. Its money and numbers.

The part people are not paying attention to is a nation , or even a world population can be cut 90% with simple two stage poisoning, of the food and water supplies. Now I'm not saying poison to kill, they simply provide birth control in a two stage dose, then limit the food supply so after your first round in the form of vaccines, the second round combines slowly to limit the production of children, and cause damage to the ones that re being born. In five years time they say 1 in 4 kids will be autistic way up from the current 1 in 50 reported back in 2003. Why do you think there is such a rush to build seed banks all over the world? Its because your genetically modified crops have already cross pollinated with almost all known viable strains. Yes the food will do it. Its already doing it to the bees. The canary in the coal mine. They stop reproducing from collecting the tainted pollen.

They take the world without ever firing a shot. In one generation the earth becomes quit and sustainable.


Thoughts?

You are correct in as much as martial law is not sustainable for the long term.
What you over look is that martial law is an operational condition, not a sociatal one.
More accurately martial law is a means to an end, not the end it's self.
As for sustaining a population in lock down. You have control of all the food and materials, and you now have an unlimited amount of slave labor.
As for sustaining the force nessisary to maintain control.
Malcontents will be shot, deserters will starve or be shot. It wont take long for those in the enforcement arm to figure out it's better to take orders than die.
While i'm at it ( using your numbers) thats 300 captive civilians to every one armed soldier. Compound that ( pun intended) by containing those civilians in one area and you have maybe 30 soldiers to control 3000 captives. rest assured that is very doable when you have absolute control over the captives.
Those who think it could not happen will be the easiest to round up.
I will write more on phase 2 The mechanics of occupation in a little while after supper.

Great post!

I'm looking forward to reading Phase 2.

I think the German population never believed Hitler and his cronies would impose a fascist regime either. Like us, they thought it couldn't happen here and they didn't heed the warnings.

Phase two,
Alot of the preliminary preperations for phase two are already in place.
After the initial declaration of martial law, and the mobilization of containment forces, comes the round up and containment.
The first step would be to control interstate transportation and mobility.
The average small town is in much the same boat as the large cities, in that they are dependent on supplies from out side.
The average city or town can last about 7 days without being re supplied from the outside. After the first panic, store shelves will be empty. Warehouses will be nationalized by the local authorities. The general public will be totaly dependent on the authorities for food, water, and " protection"
As people report to distribution points to get thier rations, they will be identified, counted, and most probably marked.
Right about now your thinking, those who stocked up in advance will have an advantage, but you would be wrong.
As I said at the beginning of this post, many of preperations are already in place, just waiting to be exploited.
One of those preperations is documenting who has a stock of food, weapons, and or amunition.
If you use a credit card, or a debit card, or a personal check to purchas any of your supplies, your already on a list.
Mandates against hoarding will seem entirely reasonable to those who have not prepared.
With your name and address on a list of hoarders, all they have to do is wait for you to show up at a distribution point, or come knocking on your door.
Data mining the net will augment that list by pointing out anyone who has posted anything on the net with key words applicable to survival strategies.
Cross referencing the registered fire arms list with the list of amunition sales will pin point anyone buying amunition for unregistered firearms.
Those who fit the psychological profile of a dissident or protestor, will also most likely be the people who have made some degree of preperations or expressed an interest in elaborate survival scripts.
If you think to do your reserch the old fashioned way and use a library instead of the net, you should be aware that library usage is already tracked and some books flagged.
Those with weapons or those labled as dissidents will be the first to be rounded up and seperated from the general population.
Those who are in denial now, or those who can't concieve of this happening, along with those who will welcome the goverment intervention, will be left in place and contained by thier own geographic seclusion as well as control of the resources.
You might rightly ask at this point, what would be the purpose of such a radical shift in our goverment. I would suggest to you it's all about power, and power is gained by control of resources. In this case the people are considered one of those resources.
If you study WW2 and Hitlers reconstruction of the German economy as well as his massive and rapid build up of the military, it was all done with slave labor from those imprisoned by his conquests of his neighbors.
If you extrapolate Germany's social conditions just prior to WW2 and then apply the huge technological advantage of the U S Military complex, The resultant uber power of a dictatorship backed by the U S anvanced military weapons programs would make a virtualy un stoppable war machine.
If anyone thinks Bush's " shock and awe"was wrong, imagine if he had total control and didn't give a tinkers damn about world opinion or consequences.
As I write this I am thinking how i started out by pointing to all the reasons we are given to be afraid and worried today.
I do not intend this thread to be one more item on that list.
I do believe however, that to be informed is to be forwarned, and I do have suggestions on how to survive the scenario I have posted.

[edit on 8-3-2008 by 1ShotDeal]

If you want to know what they are doing there is a great film called World War II The German Front. About 4 hours of documentary file footage by a company called DigiView Entertainment. It does have a clip of the baby farm production where they made soldiers that had never seen a parent, piles of the babys are shown on huge tables. It show them replacing the crosses on the churches and how the children in school had to pray to Adolf Hilter their Lord and Savior, every day.

Some sick stuff but they are writing it slowly out of history and few people know that Bush is setting himself up as a modern day Hitler.

I have to admit, 1ShotDeal, your proposed scenario is not only
a bit frightening, but quite true. I, like so many others talk the talk of
resistance; but when it happens, will we walk the actual walk?

Probably not. Cooperation gets one safely by, while they persue more
radical persons, who do not see the futility of acting against their own
gov., which labels them a "terrorist" at that point anyway.

Wow! You've woken up a more logical part of my brain, here. Thanks.
Perhaps peaceful, civilized, non-violent political participation is really all
that's left! And to become a home gardener, of course!

I actually think it will happen, and when it does, people will accept it because they dont have any other choice.

Excellent post; very well thought out and makes too much sense. Any ideas as to how to fight back?

Good post! If all that you say is true ,I hope it is not, then death will be the least of peoples worries. Enslavement would be the icing on the cake for the people who want slave camps. The cake itself would be the degradation of the people enslaved. It does not take a great imagine to realize that terrible things would happen to pretty women and children in such hell holes. People have no choice but fight. One thing we could do is write every congress man and demand that Fema officials be given a battery of psychological tests probing them for sociopathology. Fema is long over due an investigation.

To declare martial law, whoever the executive were would need the approval of the judiciary to suspend the Constitution.

Bush/Rep. Congress have already shown they have nothing but contempt for the Constitution by authorising warrantless wiretapping of US citizens, in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

By ordering NSA warrantless wiretapping in the US, he was in fact committing an impeachable crime - a felony - pursuant to Section 1809(a) of the FISA.

Nixon before him.

Great thread! I am afraid however that this survival forum is indeed watched with a close eye as well as the rest of ATS. So I think its a safe bet to say that we are all on the list. We do have to be careful about what we say and how we say it, When I was brand new to ATS I posted threads and posts all the time and im afraid I may have given too much info about myself, I have learned to slow it down a bit, But if there is a list then im sure im on it as well as many of you, so our survival plans have to include this fact. Im sure when they do their round ups they will have a priority list, there will be people higher than us and lower than us but rest assure, because of the forums we visit on ATS we are on that list.