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

Couldn't extremely bad weather ITTL have kept attack helicopters grounded?

Extremely bad weather? In San Diego?

Tanks? I think standard procedure with tanks is a baton charge. Either that or give it a parking ticket if it's stationary.

He wouldn't get a parking ticket. No problem with parking a tank, even if your space is occupied.

Regards

R
 
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.

Indeed, the problem here though is that it's just one guy. He isn't going to be firing the tanks weapons and driving at the same time. Heck it's doubtful he's going to get it out of the vehicle yard before someone notices (And even if he does, pretty sure the people living in the surrounding area are going to notice a tank) meaning he's never really going to have the element of surprise going for him. Worst-case scenario is that he doesn't get stuck on a highway divider like OTL and crushes some traffic before he's either killed by a Helicopter, or by the police. Still horrible, but no where near a death toll upwards of 700 and damages in the billions.
 
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.
1. No ammunition, and no way to both drive and fire.

2. The driving, yes, but the MG, see point 1.

3. The drop off the platform would wreck the tank even if it didn't kill him, plus this isn't a bulldozer, you're tear the tracks up running into a building.
 
1. No ammunition, and no way to both drive and fire.

2. The driving, yes, but the MG, see point 1.

3. The drop off the platform would wreck the tank even if it didn't kill him, plus this isn't a bulldozer, you're tear the tracks up running into a building.

Did you read my post?

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

Points 1&2 are answered by the bold words. What platform and when I said drive into a rail station, bus station, airport and/or harbor I didn't mean inside the buiding, just inside the petimeter.
If you hit 3 taxiing full passenger jets, fueled up using HE shells, what do you think will happen?
 
Extremely bad weather? In San Diego?
There are no heavy storms there? What a nice place to live
I said:
It's all ASB of course, since noone would ever get the chance to steal a fully armed tank, but I am just saying, that a fully armed and manned tank can cause mayhem in a dense populated city.
Let's be fair, we would be calling ASB to stealing a tank to begin with
 
I think to make this sitation plausible, pull the number of people dead back to only a few dozen at most. Have the madman firing from the top at the start with a rifle or something at on-looers (and there are going to be onlookers), then he ducks back in once police arrive and begins driving down the road trying to run people over instead of shooting. Economic Damage needs to be scaled back a lot, because he's not going to be able to use the cannon a few million at the most as he runs over people's cars and knocks down lamposts, power-poles etc. As others have pointed out, you actually can't drive a tank through buildings and stuff very easily, the rubble can very well fuck the treads ,
 
I think it would be interesting to take this the other direction and see what would've happened had the guy stolen the tank but simply taken it for a joyride, without the intention of getting revenge or anything. I wonder how hard his sentence would have been.

But yeah, I don't think that in a tank with only one person you could kill much more than a hundred people tops. Maybe he gets one or two HE rounds to destroy a packed bridge or residential building, that's about it. The police would be all over him after that.
 
At the very least, for something even remotely resembling the kind of death toll and destruction you mention, Shawn Nelson is going to have to somehow raise a small army of men who know how to work tanks, steal a bunch of tanks and load each one with all the shells they can take, and then go for it.
 
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.

The tank in question carries 63 rounds of 105 and a bit less than 6000 for the mgs. Note that these are not the howitzer rounds that are loaded with 5-6 lbs of TNT, but the tank rounds, with about 1 lb of TNT. It takes several hundred pounds of carefully placed explosive to bring down a high rise. 63 pounds lobbed in shell by shell by some yahoo who doesn't know what he's doing isn't likely to bring one down, much less flatten all of San Diego to the tune of the OP's $120 billion.

And even with a very generous hit ratio of 100 rounds per hit, 1 in 4 of which are kills (again generous), the casualty figure would likely be 10% of the OP's. And that's with the tank fully loaded, has a crew, and is going by wartime ratios, which assume training this guys does not have.

A realistic worst case scenario would be that he manages to plan this thing out better, gets an accomplice, acquires a few 105 HE and a few boxes of 7.63, parks the tank downtown and gets off a couple of shells and goes through the mg ammo. $10s of millions and 100 casualties, tops.
 
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