Publisher's Note: Here is Part I and Part II of John's series. Many thanks for his practical tactical advice for realistic training and accouterments in the coming Endarkenment.

He and I have both considered the implications of the prepper/threeper obsession with showing up to the end of the world with thousands of dollars of kit and little practice to match the dance card we draw. There will be no mass armies fighting one another. This will be a fight that draws on Michael Collins, Paul Lettow-Vorbeck and TE Lawrence. Your cultural IQ for your AO will be just as valuable as the fire stick in your hand. And most likely it won't be a rifle.

 In the fight ahead the pistol, the camera, the radio and the burner phone will be the weapons of war. The single man will have to channel the wasp in Eric Frank Russell's classic tome.

Grunt math in the guerrilla fight will always prevail when the insurgent leverages the apparent strength of the better equipped foe against them. America has been defeated in the Middle East no matter how you service the pig.