9 ms·
Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944)
- notjustanymike 11y agoI'm beginning to suspect CIA influence at the DMV.
- caseysoftware 11y agoAdd one to C and you get D. Flip the A upside down and it looks like a V. I'll leave you to discover the rest on your own.
- curiousGambler 11y agoBend the I and you can make an M! (a small one tho)
- lifeformed 11y agoIf the I has serifs, then it's doable.
- protonfish 11y ago> When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large and bureaucratic as possible. Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done. I assumed that every place I ever worked was just managed by morons. I never considered that they could be infiltrated by saboteurs!
- mikeash 11y agoWhere do you think the CIA got all their ideas from?
- giardini 11y agoAre you kidding!? They got the ideas from people who work in these areas! Reading part of the text drives me nuts because I've seen people essentially do many similar things inadvertently and had to enlighten them to the potential hazard/damage that could result. Ever had a mechanic with filthy grit-covered hands start to grease your front wheel bearings? Ever seen someone start to clean a paintbrush with gasoline? The book simply compiles these errors in one place and presents them as "sabotage". Most of the time when they occur in the real world they're chalked up to Hanlon and human ignorance: "Hanlon's Razor: Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
- RodericDay 11y agoThis is somewhat unrelated, but it's funny that today a favourite short story of mine happens to have hit the front-page ("The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10490198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10490198) and it contains the following: > Time passed, and they resented the defects no longer. The defects had not been remedied, but the human tissues in that latter day had become so subservient, that they readily adapted themselves to every caprice of the Machine. The sigh at the crises of the Brisbane symphony no longer irritated Vashti; she accepted it as part of the melody. The jarring noise, whether in the head or in the wall, was no longer resented by her friend. And so with the mouldy artificial fruit, so with the bath water that began to stink, so with the defective rhymes that the poetry machine had taken to emit. all were bitterly complained of at first, and then acquiesced in and forgotten. Things went from bad to worse unchallenged. > It was otherwise with the failure of the sleeping apparatus. That was a more serious stoppage. There came a day when over the whole world - in Sumatra, in Wessex, in the innumerable cities of Courland and Brazil - the beds, when summoned by their tired owners, failed to appear. It may seem a ludicrous matter, but from it we may date the collapse of humanity. The Committee responsible for the failure was assailed by complainants, whom it referred, as usual, to the Committee of the Mending Apparatus, who in its turn assured them that their complaints would be forwarded to the Central Committee. But the discontent grew, for mankind was not yet sufficiently adaptable to do without sleeping.
- guiomie 11y agoI always knew all those Agile conferences were just competition trying to sabotage our work.
- hansjorg 11y agoIn a similar vein, if one were so inclined, how hard would it be to make a modern city come to a grinding halt? Seems to me that this kind of "economic terrorism" would be very low hanging fruit, achievable with even modest means and at a low risk of exposure. If the "clash of civilizations" is real and the western world is really under such a severe existential threat as so many seem to believe, why aren't we seeing more of this?
- gamegoblin 11y agoI live in Seattle, and traffic during rush hour here is a nightmare. There are perhaps 5 key routes of getting in and out of downtown. Last summer, one of these was blocked by an accident [1], leading to a complete gridlock on the highway for five hours, and downtown traffic was taking roughly ~30 minutes to travel a block. It would be relatively easy to cause five significant wrecks on each of these corridors. Rent a moving truck and crash it into several vehicles at high speed. Traffic would be so congested, it would take hours for emergency crews to get to the scene. If you did this during morning rush hour, I imagine you could shut down a lot of the city for the day. [1] http://westseattleblog.com/2014/06/4-miles-of-highway-closure-5-hours-of-gridlock-this-cant-happen-again/ http://westseattleblog.com/2014/06/4-miles-of-highway-closur...
- Theodores 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests During the 1999 Battle for Seattle the city was brought to a halt. One key tactic was to persuade the taxi drivers to go on strike that day. Large crowds blocking the roads 'helped' too.
- briandear 11y agoAnd what did that accomplish? Plenty of people who needed to get to work couldn't. It isn't like the 'rich people' were harmed by that childishness. Those protests had the intellectual capacity of a Soviet 5 year old child.
- aluhut 11y ago.cC(better turn on TOR before I get it)
- dang 11y agoA discussion from 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363
- peterwwillis 11y agoClicking the "past" button above shows six other discussion threads
- mturmon 11y agoThanks for pointing this out. It's the first time I'd noticed this small but very information-rich button in the wild. I notice that "past" is also present in another evergreen posted today, the one on crowd dynamics (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10488996).
- hga 11y agoAnd one today, starting from a newspaper article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10490804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10490804
- hansjorg 11y agoReading those comments, it strikes me that this could be read more as well crafted general anti-bureaucracy propaganda aimed at your own populace rather than actual agitation for sabotage. Or maybe it's a twofer.
- uxp100 11y agoThere was later a cartoon sabotage manual that isn't so wordy. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/19/world/cia-linked-to-comic-book-for-nicaraguans.html http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/19/world/cia-linked-to-comic-...
- byron_fast 11y agoI now suspect my wife may work in a workplace full of spies.
- Mz 11y agoNever attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
- crpatino 11y agojust your wife? you must be a very lucky man!
- rconti 11y agoPolygamous marriages are typically frowned upon; at least in the US.
- megaman22 11y agoThis sounds like the handbook of every industrial contractor I've ever worked with. Particularly the bit about leaving scrap iron in the turbine (I worked in a power plant for a couple years...)
- dx211 11y agoHuh. I always assumed Stalin was being overly paranoid when he exiled all of those folks to Siberia for breaking farm equipment, etc. Still a terrible, awful way to address the problem, but it makes a bit more sense if that's exactly the sort of thing the subversives are being told to do.
- ibarrajo 11y agoI thought the sugar in the car's fuel tank was a myth. Yet it's there on page 13-14 (PDF pg. 10-11) And I never ever heard of using sugar to compress a sponge in order to clog the drain.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoIt is a myth, mythbusters tested it. You can put a lot of sugar in a fuel tank, it won't make the car not run.
- csn 11y agopolystyrene foam on the other hand might do the trick
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoAbsolutely. Gasoline gells.
- AlexEatsKittens 11y agoReading this made me consider the possibility that people with anti-government sensibilities have intentionally gotten themselves into critical government roles and employed these, or similar, techniques. The procedural productivity killers seem like they would be extremely effective, and easily passed off as incompetence or a simple proclivity for bureaucracy. Wouldn't it be interesting if the slow moving, budget draining, enthusiasm killing bureaucrat were really a subtle and effective anarchist?
- ddingus 11y agoHonestly, I think that sort of thing is happening. Look at the changes to the Post Office. Two seemingly small things combine to put real pressure on what is otherwise able to operate just fine. One was a change in rates, which basically favored large publishers. Small distribution and citizen mail subsidize big publishing, who then can ramp up on their volume. The other was a pre-pay requirement for benefits that is just nuts! Something like 25 years. Now, the Post shows a loss and there is a lot of discussion about how to "improve" it, privatize it, etc... I'll bet there is a fair amount of this type of thing going on. Some analysis to identify critical targets, planning to impact them, then messaging to maximize the leverage / profit / change from those impacts. Anyway, back to the Post. Either one of those things would have been both manageable and to a degree justifiable. Both combined are a real mess.
- scentoni 11y agoHell, they've campaigned on that issue http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/will-republicans-shut-down-the-government-again/379235/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/will-rep...
- elif 11y agoThis reminds me of the John Shirley proto-cyberpunk novel "Transmaniacon," where the pro(an?)tagonist's role was to incite anger/riots in a group of people by doing a bunch of little things that, on the surface, seem perfectly reasonable, but when combined in the right way created absolute chaos.
- hackaflocka 11y agoRemember people, when the CIA does it, it's "sabotage." Don't be using the "t" word now.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago"T" as in "teambuilding"?
- eefing 11y agoIt's interesting to think about this sort of thing in regards to corporate influence on government processes.
- csense 11y ago> Forget to provide paper in toilets War is hell.