How do you defend a retreat....Good question?

[Beo]

Fort Hopeak: Notice the fort sits on a hill by a river. Old style fort that works well trees cut back 200 yards, wall is made of stone, houses 50 people and has warehouses for goods storage.
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[trax]

Remy's point is a good one, if you want to look at how to defend your position, study all the ways to attack a position. (Hey is that Sun Tzu sitting in the corner?)

WarEagle...you have tunnels? Because if you don't..I spent 12 years mining, I know how to make really good ones if I have the right materials.

[Beo]

I still say it all depends on what type of dwelling your defending, and tunnels can be breached from more tunnels.

[trax]

Tunnels through bedrock aren't going to get breached anytime soon

[Beo]

And you arn't gonna dig it all that fast, if you can dig it it can be breeched, breaching is easier than digging the tunnel.

[nell67]

If no one knows they exist other than those who live there,then pretty much no need to worry about if they will be breached.

[Beo]

Finding out is the scouts part, a good scout would do just that, scout the area and find them, now breaching them would be the biggest problem and like Trax said in bedrock you are gonna waste a lot of time and energy trying to do this, but it could be done although the risks do not out weigh the gain if it means losing your people. That and you need someone like Trax to do it. So in the end knowing they have tunnels doesn't mean you can breach them or its workable.

[Rick]

I think WE hired a bunch of Vietnamese to dig his tunnels. He wanted only the best. Sorry, Trax.

[Beo]

Or Pygmies

[trax]

Beo..Twink...pay attention. I'm only going to run you through this one time...I asked if he already had the tunnels, because if he doesn't, I can put them in. You don't dig tunnels through bedrock, for one the Flintstones and the Rubbles will want to see your digging permit, for two, shovels will bounce of bedrock for years and years and years. Earth tunnels collapse, bedrock tunnels are about the safest place you can be once they're done. It would take probably several weeks to put them in. Drill (how many holes depends on how big you want the tunnel), blast (there's the fun part!), clean out, scale loose rock,(that's prying down rock that's going to fall because it cracked before it falls on its own) bolt back(bolts from 7 to 12 feet long, support the rock overhead). Repeat. Occasionally timber up for added security as you move along. Once your tunnels there, it's pretty much there forever. Someone going to go to the work to run another tunnel to breach that? You can pick 'em off while you're getting started. I'm just not sure how far it is to bedrock where WE lives, that and getting the materials are the only real considerations.

[Beo]

The pygmies can breech anything.

[trax]

The pygmies can breech anything.

Ah yes. But the pygmies are loyal to Free Traxistan, God bless 'em.

[Rick]

I don't know much 'bout that there tunnelin' and such but if'n it were me I'd prob'ly go with a glue bolt and bearing plate using the traditional dead weight loading design. To determine the proper bolt length, I'd use Lb = (Is/13) (log10 H) ((100-CMRR)/100)1.5 where Is is the tunnel span.

I actually carried a minor in mining.

[trax]

I don't know much 'bout that there tunnelin' and such but if'n it were me I'd prob'ly go with a glue bolt and bearing plate using the traditional dead weight loading design. To determine the proper bolt length, I'd use Lb = (Is/13) (log10 H) ((100-CMRR)/100)1.5 where Is is the tunnel span.

I actually carried a minor in mining.

I'd just contact a mining supply company and get what I needed from them. I never did any of my mining in college, but us Canuckistanians do have a reputation for being the best in the world at it.

[Rick]

Never spent any time in Viet Nam or on Iwo Jima did ya?

[Beo]

Those were dirt tunnels lined with timber Rick, easily sabatoured, ya just had to have the guts to go down there.

[trax]

Never spent any time in Viet Nam or on Iwo Jima did ya?

Nope, never did, but I know about the tunnels. Mine are better.

[Beo]

The tunnel system, built over 25 years starting in the 1940s, let the Viet Minh and, later, the Viet Cong, control a huge rural area. It was an underground city with living areas, kitchens, storage, weapons factories, field hospitals, command centres. In places, it was several stories deep and housed up to 10,000 people who virtually lived underground for years.... getting married, giving birth, going to school. They only came out at night to furtively tend their crops.

The ground here is hard clay, which made this whole thing possible. But even so, the planning and construction was incredible. People dug all this with hand tools, filling reed baskets and dumping the dirt into bomb craters. They installed large vents so they could hear approaching helicopters, smaller vents for air and baffled vents to dissipate cooking smoke. There were also hidden trap doors and gruesomely effective bamboo-stake booby traps.

Of course, the U.S. military knew about the tunnels. The tunnels not only allowed guerrilla communication, they allowed surprise attacks, even within the perimeters of U.S. military bases. The U.S. retaliated with bombs, eventually turning the region into what writers Tom Mangold and John Penycate called "the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and generally devastated area in the history of warfare."
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One well placed satchel charge could collapse the thing.

[Rick]

Well, not that last sentence. The tunnels were never defeated by the French or Americans. Small sections were destroyed but very small in comparison to the overall network.

[Beo]

The satchel charges we used in Desert Storm were nothing more than a brick of C-4 in a satchel and pulled the cap and threw it in the tunnel, these were deep dug heavy tunnels and the bast was enough with the concussion to drop concrete walls and earthnen walls for at least a quarter mile, I don't know what the Vietnam soldier used, really don't but I think these would've worked as well there as in Desert Storm.
Of course we now have bunker busters too.