Don Shift Sends: Surviving Artillery, Drone, and Mortar Attacks

As I write this article, major cities like Kyiv in Ukraine are coming under siege. In a civil war, Americans may be faced with aerial bombardment from aircraft, artillery barrages, or mortar attacks. While a foreign invasion is highly unlikely, America has seen it happen here in the 1860s and historical examples cannot rule out civilians facing the same risks.

In the major modern conflicts of the last thirty years, lots of homes and residential areas have been reduced to rubble. Sarajevo was randomly shelled. Syria was shelled and bombed by forces on all sides. Villages in Afghanistan were turned into heaps of dried mud walls. Urban warfare affects the very homes that people live in.

To be fair, much of the residential areas that have been turned into ruins were in large cities. Many Americans do not live in the kind of cities that are found in Europe and the Middle East. Whereas centralized high rise apartment complexes are common elsewhere, they are not in the US. Dense urban cores of multistorey housing are mainly a northeastern thing. Most defenders reading this book will live in housing tracts.

The benefit to American housing patterns is more spacing between homes, apartment buildings, and complexes. This makes artillery and bombs less effective. A lot of modern housing is made of wood frame construction which has more “give” to it but is susceptible to burning and penetration of high velocity projectiles.

The thing about any kind of warfare in a city is that civilians will be at risk. General lawlessness that a collapse will bring is one thing. Random gunfire is the main threat. But what if that lawlessness turns into more traditional warfare or a civil war follows the patterns of 20^th century wars? A drive-by shooting poses a much smaller risk to people in a house than does an artillery bombardment.

As horrible as the idea of this kind of warfare happening in a modern American (or Western) suburb is, life goes on. The people of Sarajevo during the siege went about their normal lives, as much as they could, while the shells boomed across the city.

Artillery are guns that fire large shells, usually between four and six inches, over distances of 20 miles. Mortars are shorter range bombs fired usually at the infantry level in support of smaller units typically at 5 miles maximum. Grenade launchers fire a small explosive warhead from something like an oversized bullet.

If insurgents capture military weapons, they will likely have access to mortars for indirect fire, bazooka-like rocket launchers, and grenade launchers. Artillery will be least likely in a conflict that does not feature direct military involvement due to the large logistical tail required to fuel the transportation vehicles, supply the ammunition, and feed the artillerymen. A proper artillery barrage can devastate a city block easily.

Mortars require a small, trained team to operate them with reasonable effect. Without foreign or domestic military training, or operation by ex-servicemen, the usage of mortars becomes less likely, but not absent. With minimal knowledge they can be lobbed into a general area for harassment or lucky shots. The lethal radius is about 100 yards and they are capable of causing serious damage to small structures or vehicles.

Rocket launchers (AT-4, SMAW, Javelin, Carl Gustav, RPG) tend to be more accurate and more powerful than grenade launchers and in the third world, Russian RPGs are ubiquitous. Anti-tank rocket launchers like the TOW missile have proved devastating to tanks in Syria and are potent targets against structures or dug-in positions. These are very effective against small structures or fortified positions; however, they cannot engage in indirect fire.

Grenades fired from launchers can be used for indirect fire in an arcing trajectory. Their range is around 400 yards and have a kill radius of a few yards, although injuries can occur further away. These can be fired from grenade machine guns or single launchers. They can be fired through point targets like windows.

Mortars and artillery shells can easily penetrate homes and most American commercial construction before exploding. Buildings can be reduced to rubble effortlessly depending on the type of shell and construction in cases of direct hits. Very strong, well built blast shelters will be required to survive a direct him. Near-hits can cause massive damage, including building collapse, or cause serious problems via shrapnel.

Without access to military hardware, any explosive attack in a future domestic conflict will be limited to homemade and demolition/construction sourced explosives. Usage will be most commonly in the form of Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs. These can be hidden in places to attack crowds, inside buildings, or in the form of car bombs. The most notable attack in the US is the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. I feel America will resemble Northern Ireland in many respects with random car and business bombings.

Note that IEDs can be remotely detonated to kill a specific person or at an optimal time. They can also be delivered by drones (which is covered in the previous chapter).

Injuries and death from explosives

Explosives kill and injure in three ways: overpressure, fragmentation, and collapse. Explosions are the conversion of solid material into gas—really rapidly and with a lot of heat in a violent reaction. This release of energy creates a pressure wave that forces highly compressed air outward until the energy dissipates; a shockwave. The shockwave’s strength depends on distance from the explosive and obviously the size of the explosion itself. Close enough in, hundreds to thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure can hit you.

The shockwave compresses the organs and tissues inside your body as they pass right through your body at supersonic speeds. Gas filled organs suffer the most due to the incredible pressure differentials, including the ears, lungs, brain, and bowels. Deafness and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs) are common injuries in survivors.

Besides internal organ damage and external tissue damage, the next major cause of death and injury from bombs is from fragmentation. Fragments include shrapnel and debris. Up to half the weight of a typical aerial bomb is in its metal case that is intended to fragment to destroy structures, equipment, and people. Pipe bombs generate shrapnel from the pipe itself. Pressure cooker bombs and other IEDs usually need to have metal added, like ball bearings, nuts and bolts, or other hard metal bits. These act like bullets when launched by an explosion. Debris can also act as unintentional fragments.

Finally, the effects of the explosion can cause collapse of a structure or debris to hit and kill people. In urban combat, structural collapse will be a real danger from the use of any kind of bomb or explosive. A collapse may not be total, but a beam falling at the wrong moment in the wrong place may kill someone. Flying debris, like wood splinters or glass, can also be lethal or highly injurious.

Fire and heat are less common causes of death and usually only very close in. Close enough to be killed by the heat generated by the explosive means your body is probably being blown apart before you know what happened. Secondary fires ignited in the damage the explosion causes are another source of injury or death. Firestorms have ignited from bombing raids.

Sandbags

An ideal shelter is taking a small room and placing sandbags to create a “redoubt” of sandbags in the middle of the room or against an interior wall. This will be a small bullet and shrapnel resistant hideout that utilizes the outer shell of the house to help redirect and slow down any shots that might injure or kill someone. Your family won’t live here, but will take cover during any gun battles, aerial attacks, or drive-by shootings.

Standard 14″ x 26″ sandbags can be bought in bulk and used to construct a home interior redoubt. You may also want some for an outside fighting position. Their advantage is that they can be easily stored empty and filled when a crisis arises from local material. Keep in mind that large quantities of sand or earth is required and if you fill them from your yard, you will have giant holes outside your home. A cubic yard of earth is typically required for 100 standard sandbags.

If aerial attacks are a concern (artillery, mortars, drone bombers) indoor shelters should be beneath a stout table or purpose-built reinforced structure nearest the center of the structure on a ground floor. Where possible construct this in the strongest part of the structure. The shelter table/frame should have a single layer of sandbags on top to stop any shrapnel. This should be strong enough to support a portion of the structure’s weight in case of a collapse.

For better overhead protection, 18” of sandbags are recommended. This weight will need to be well supported against collapse. Sandbag walls that could fail after an impact won’t do it. In any case, remember that for small arms fire, artillery fragments, and small IEDs the house itself is providing some protection. The material the house is made of will slow down any projectiles as they penetrate. Direct hits from aircraft bombs, missiles, mortars, or artillery shells will not be stopped by anything short of luck.

Alternatives to sandbags are containers filled with earth, sand, and rocks. These are known as gabions. Gabions can be constructed out of anything that can make a box which is then filled in. Pre-modern militaries used large woven baskets. Today we use HESCO barriers which are large wire frame cages with a durable fabric liner.

Random repurposed containers will be more difficult to stack and overlap than sandbags. Cardboard boxes will have the least strength and not be able to be filled too high (if tall) or stacked. They may be reinforced somewhat. Wet materials will weaken the cardboard. Garbage cans or large barrels will be heavy and difficult to move.

Containers may split if shot or hit with fragments based on construction. Plastic cans have the potential to crack full length, depending on the state and quality of the material itself. Round woven baskets are ideal and are what was used in past times. Their construction makes them somewhat bullet resistant as damage in one area usually doesn’t affect the whole basket.

But what if the container breaks when hit? Odds are in your favor. Unless someone is deliberately firing to penetrate, their bullets will likely be scattered in a random pattern. You may only have to deal with a stray shot or burst. One or two bullets fired at the same container in rapid succession will probably face the same odds of deflection even if the container fails. After the danger has passed, you can replace the container.

Being in the center of a structure, surrounded by as many walls as possible, is crucial. The more walls a bullet has to pass through, the greater the likelihood it will be deflected before it reaches you or your shelter.

Note: this an adaptation from my non-fiction book Suburban Warfare: A cop’s guide to surviving a civil war, SHTF, or modern urban combat, available on Amazon.

About the author: Don Shift is a veteran of the Ventura County (CA) Sheriff’s Office and is a student of emergency response, disasters, and history. He is the author of several post-apocalyptic survival novels about nuclear war, EMP (Hard Favored Rage and Blood Dimmed Tide), and the non-fiction Suburban Defense guide.