What if the Tank Rampage of San Diego was worse than it was?

But you do know the tank rampage really did happen right? Not as potrayed in this thread, but in real life.

It never would have happened. I was on Camp Pendleton at that time and had a good friend in the Air Wing. He told me they had a Cobra armed with TOW missiles waiting for the phone call from Washington.

If that madman had made it on I-5 he would have died soon after when a USMC missile destroyed his stolen M-60.
 
Now, the "Killdozer" incident on the other hand, that incurred some serious property damages and had great potential for loss of life. That guy had scoped rifles, firing slits, concrete-slab armor, and just about everything else kitted out on his vehicle. IIRC, it was a few hours before the authorities ordered the Air National Guard scrambled and on alert to take him out before he got stuck and committed suicide.
 

GarethC

Donor
Where is the closest National Guard armory with an AT-4?

It should be simple to throw one (or four) in the back of a police car (if not a police helicopter), close up to the M60, and try for a track hit to immobilize it, which will dramatically impair the damage it can do.
 
Couldn't extremely bad weather ITTL have kept attack helicopters grounded? Of course, that means the tank would be destroyed by fighter-bombers instead.
About the ammunition, maybe ITTL the tank was already loaded?

Maybe. That could be possible.
 
It never would have happened. I was on Camp Pendleton at that time and had a good friend in the Air Wing. He told me they had a Cobra armed with TOW missiles waiting for the phone call from Washington.

If that madman had made it on I-5 he would have died soon after when a USMC missile destroyed his stolen M-60.

They actually call the air force for stuff like this?
 
789 deaths seems excessive. And $120 billion definately is. That's three times the damage of the Northridge Earthquake. I'm not sure you could do $120 billion worth of damage to San Diego.

Even if he were able to load the munitions and operate all the weapons while driving, your outcome is ASB.

I thought tanks had the potential to cause that much damage.
 
Maybe the POD is that he steals an AT-AT walker instead?

For that kind of damage, he would need to steal Metal Gear.

I presume the most difficult part of the operation would be to sneak past the sleeping guards inside a cardboard box.
 
I thought tanks had the potential to cause that much damage.

No doubt you can cause some real damage with a full crew. But the scenario went over the top with the numbers, especially the economic damage. I suggest you bring the number of killed and injured down to 10%, and economic to 1% with a full crew. One guy will need to go from the driver's seat to the loader's position to load, then move to the commander's position in order to fire. This takes time. When he moves over to the loader's position again to reload another round, cops will be climbing the tank already. If not, then they will by the third round. If he tries to move too fast from one position to the other in order to get the fourth shot, he might be too careless to notice if the gun's recoil path is clear, and might get himself hit by the firing gun/empty casing. He might even be severly injured by the time the cops open the hatches and shoot him.

A loaded tank incident might end faster (then 23 minutes), and with less damage.
 

Hyperion

Banned
I thought tanks had the potential to cause that much damage.

Hundreds of tanks, fully armed, fully manned, and with a proper logistics support chain to keep the gas and ammo coming could do that after about a week or so.

One crazy guy in what at the time was considered a second rate model, with no ammo, no other guys helping him, and zero experience firing a tank cannon....

More than likely his best chance of killing anybody would be to run over someone.
 
Tanks can cause a lot of damage. But one tank isn't going to kill over 700 people with one man operating it, and a questionable amount of ammunition. Even Pierce Bronsan Couldn't pull that one off.

1. Demolish some high-rise building with the tank, firing HE rounds into the ground floors, hitting the pillars supporting the building.

2. Drive over cars on some cramped expressway, firing the machine guns while doing that.

3. Drive into a nearby rail station, bus station, airport and/or harbor, hitting passenger passenger trains, buses, planes or ships.

All these scenarios can kill hundreds of people, if the attack is carried out without warning and evacuation has not taken place yet.

It's all ASB of course, since noone would ever get the chance to still a fully armed tank, but I am just saying, that a fully armed and manned tank can cause mayhem in a dense populated city.
 
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