In the last episode, I gave a more detailed breakdown of Scenario-X. I also touched on the idea of defensive conditions (DEFCONs) used by the US Government. In this episode, I want to build on that by talking through the importance of posture as both a tool of defense and diplomacy. A lot of people in the 2A world are too quick to talk about employing small unit tactics, rocking full battle rattle, and otherwise being on constant war footing. The truth, however, is that you are simply unlikely to go from zero to battle rattle in a disaster scenario like ours. Most of your time will be spent on the more mundane tasks of just staying alive and dealing with the suck. Things like taking care of your family and community with food, maintenance, education, health, and medical all still need to happen. The run up to war footing happens gradually, and often with some warning that things are about to go badly. So let's dig in. Posture and Diplomacy It's not a secret that I spent my military career not as a door kicker, but as a nuclear weapons officer. My primary career field was about launching nuclear weapons, should I ever have been directed to by the President of the United States. As part of my experience, I spent a lot of time learning about the history of nuclear policy, and saw real-time how posture was used both as a way to prepare for conflict, but also influence the decisions of other world powers. While ICBMs themselves are relatively poor instruments of posture, as the sit quietly in their underground silos, there's something else to be said about parking nuclear-capable bombers on runways within range of adversaries and running exercises on over international waters nearby. The purpose of presenting yourself as a formidable foe is causing your opponent to hesitate and evaluate their chances of winning against you. They may still win in the end, should they still go forward with an attack, but they must do a calculation about what they will lose in the process. If they decide that the chance of being destroyed is high, and the cost of winning against you isn't worth what they gain, they will probably not engage. This is called deterrence, and it is among the most important political tools with governments. It also has a lot of implications for you. The Cost-Benefit Analysis Backfire One of the Colonels I used to work for back in the day was a loud and rambunctious man who used to brag about being the only Catholic Pakistani with a Texas accent you'd ever meet. We loved him for his attitude and how he took care of people. Among the many rants he went on during our briefings, he used to opine that deterrence was fundamentally a calculation of skill multiplied by will. At its heart, your enemy must gauge whether you actually have the capability to do what you say, and if you have the fortitude to follow through with it. This is a tricky calculation, though. One of the purposes of deterrence is to respond to perceived threats and prevent them from escalating. On the other end of the spectrum is a risk that raising your posture too far beyond what the situation calls for. This might cause you to seem like the aggressor, and your adversary raises their posture as well. This is a spiral of escalation, and we nearly saw it come to a terrible end during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So the game must be played with nuance.  Scenario-X, Posture, and Deterrence So why am I going down this rabbit hole of international politics and deterrence? Well, in short, it's because all of the same rules apply at a local level as they do at the international level. True, you and I don't have nuclear weapons, bombers,