Which is better: to die fighting or to run away to live another day?
Let’s say there is a war. Things are going terribly for your side. In fact, your team is turning to guerrilla tactics. Many comrades are already dead. Your commanding officer has discretion whether to launch a final desperation attack or not.
He tells you that he would not launch a desperation attack as it is futile. However, he does have a experimental powerful rifle that you could use to attack the enemy base, should you choose to do so alone as a guerrilla. The rifle might or might not work. Odds of it working does not look good based on test results. The terrain does, however, favor you as a guerrilla.
1. Should you take the experimental rifle and attack the enemy anyways, knowing that the situation for your side is bleak and you might be killed during the attack?
OR
2. Should you follow your commanding officer’s lead and not launch the desperate attack?
Note 1: You commanding officer would be ok regardless of what path you chose. i.e. You will not be court-martialed for attacking with the experimental weapon, but you could in fact end up a hero.
Note 2: The gun has been recalibrated after tests. No further tests have been done. Nobody knows how powerful (or weak) the gun would be at this point.
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16 Answers
I think a tactical retreat is in order, live to fight another day & have the gun tested & calibrated to do the job it was intended for…… :-/
@Scooby Your side has very little resources left and would not be able to make any more modifications to the gun.
But thanks for helping me realize an ambiguity in the question.
depends what the benefits are of being a martyr.
I don’t think it is possible to give a simple answer to this question. It depends how important the particular battle you are in is, how successful you expect to be as a guerrilla, and how much ammunition is available for all the weapons controlled by your unit, including the new rifle.
I’m all for the turn round & run like a bitch tactic. Self preservation is the name of my game.
Assuming this isn’t Sparta, I’d definitely go for self-preservation.
I don’t mind going down fighting for something I believe in, but I’d like to put that off for as long as possible.
Since your commanding officer has decided you’ll retreat, this is not your decision to make. An army can’t function if the recruits need to stop and think about things like this while they’re being shot at. I think you’d do well to only second-guess your CO if he’s clearly making a mistake, and not if you don’t even have the answer yourself.
I agree with him, by the way; if your desperate attack goes wrong, which seems likely, then your superweapon could fall into the hands of the enemy. If you run, you’ll be able to use it later, under more favourable circumstances.
Which science fiction game/film/story are you thinking of, by the way?
In your scenario, you always do as the commanding officer commands. Kind of lkike the manager of a baseball team. If he says bunt, you bunt.
And make sure you bring that gun back with you. I’d be sure that the CO would then want to do proper experiements on it to test its abilities for future uses.
It also helps if the Commander In Chief who declared the war to have used more sense to begin with and not invade a country that wasn’t of the best interest of the country he supposedly leads, and not in the best interest of another state he admires more than his own.
It’s a false choice. The entire purpose of guerilla warfare is to fight and run away so you can fight again another day. A rifle can’t do enough damage to warrant getting killed to use it. Wrap the damned rifle around a tree and go plot your next sneak attack. : )
CaptainHarley has a sensible answer and a good one.
I would would live to fight another day. If you die, they will benefit from it. Dying pointlessly would not help your cause. Since the rifle has a high likelyhood of failure, it would be an uneccessary risk. Wait, make the rifle more reliable, Then plan an attack with a higher likelyhood success. There is no point in dying for nothing if all is lost in the process. A rifle just like @CaptainHarley said is not enough to do any considerable damage to your enemy.
If I’m in a video game, I’d take the experimental gun, spray and pray.
In real life, I’d probably poop my pants.
Read Sun Tzu, nothing’s changed since then! : D
Actually, as a guerrilla, I would attack with a small squad (3 works fine) to sneak into the base and destroy or steal resources, then retreat my squad into a zone where I control and use the environment as a trap with the experiment weapon hidden in the forest somewhere. Pull the larger enemy into my zone where I can control most of the outcome. With the bigger force, they tend to create a pattern of fighting as they would seem to have more comfort with what they are doing. I would create fear if the weapon really work into the bigger enemy, increasing the morale and fighting spirit of my surviving comrades.
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