To die fighting

[Trausti]

What do you do when you know your captor, or likely captor, intends to kill you? Not maybe, but for sure you know intends to kill you?

This scenario is ongoing in Syria, Iraq, and Libya right now. Though this question has undoubtedly occurred many times before. Take this Holocaust video from Latvia:

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ParxL_mmi-Y[/YOUTUBE]

The victims can hold no ambiguity about their impending fate - yet they comply, almost obsequiously. They pass guards with guns; guns they could attempt to grab to kill or harm before being killed. But they don't.

More recently is this: WARNING - GRAPHIC / NSFW

Show

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=44e_1406655216

Again, there is no question they are to be massacred. However, in this instance, the captives greatly outnumber their would-be murderers. Why not use the greater numbers to overwhelm on the chance that some might survive?

I appreciate my relative privilege in not actually having been in this situation. Still, I wonder what prevents people from crossing that internal barrier to fight back. If you're going to die, you're going to die. At least die fighting.

 

[untermensche]

The people putting up a fight have been killed in place before it gets to this.

 

[Bronzeage]

There's always the possibility of a slow painful death, as opposed to a quick death. If death is inevitable, that means taking a beating for nothing.

On the other hand, if it were possible to kill one or more of your enemy in the process, there might be some satisfaction in that.

It takes a lot of training and conditioning before a soldier can face enemy gunfire and have confidence he will survive if he keeps his wits and acts on his training. Expecting a demoralized civilian population to spontaneously act as if they were elite troops is a cinematic Chuck Norris grade fantasy.

A historian friend of mine(RIP) once told me the saloon shootout in the Clint Eastwood movie, "The Unforgiven," was probably as realistic as possible. When Clint started shooting, everyone fled for cover. Nobody was thinking about rushing the shooter.

 

[bilby]

People committing genocide are usually very careful not to eliminate all traces of hope, while there remains a chance to fight back. People are very keen not to believe that they are about to die, and will cling to that hope for far longer than seems reasonable to a dispassionate observer.

Why do you think the Nazi death camp gas chambers were made to look like shower rooms?

Everyone is the hero of his own narrative; so even when we see others killed, we are always prepared to believe that we are somehow special, and will not be subjected to the same fate as the others, who are mere extras. Extras die in droves, but the hero can survive anything.

 

[DBT]

Your captors may offer you the option that you that if you cooperate and go quietly to your execution, it will be relatively quick an painless, but if you offer any form of resistance you will be tortured and killed slowly. So, what would you choose if the odds of managing to escape, or to kill a guard, was negligible?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

So long as you're alive, there's a chance that something will happen to change the situation. Once you're dead, that chance goes away. Even if the odds of that something are essentially zero, the mere possibility of it can keep someone from making a decision and just complying in the hopes of a bit longer alive to see a change.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

There's always the possibility of a slow painful death, as opposed to a quick death. If death is inevitable, that means taking a beating for nothing.

On the other hand, if it were possible to kill one or more of your enemy in the process, there might be some satisfaction in that.

The problem here is reprisals. If you kill a German soldier, you will die and the Germans will kill 100 of your neighbors picked at random. In Greece and Yugoslavia, the Germans would fly observer aircraft over an area and if anybody shot at them, they would destroy all the inhabitants of the nearest village.

Making direct action less than satisfying.
Remember how Saddam dealt with the Kurds? It all depends on who you are fighting.

 

[fromderinside]

What do you do when you know your captor, or likely captor, intends to kill you? Not maybe, but for sure you know intends to kill you?

This scenario is ongoing in Syria, Iraq, and Libya right now.

Few people are willing to kiss their sweet asses good bye. Most who are dying of cancer, even those in great pain, never make that choice. Being a captive is no different. The fact that the peril is human rather than disease makes no practical difference because the likely outcomes are generally the same. One needn't get into the motives of captors beyond that they captured you and your life is hell.

All research I've read suggest living things resist not being living more than anything else. That we humans go through rationalizations and scenarios as captives and captive holders is only testimony to this simple observation. Hell we even invent things controlling what we are finding as uncontrolled. We endure and submit rather than act as sacrificial parties for the greater good almost always giving proof to our selfish nature even as social beings. So the answer is we don't sacrifice ourselves because we are selfish.

 

[Kusa]

I would bum rush one of the guards and if I got a gun there would be hot empty brass around me before I died.

 

[DBT]

I would bum rush one of the guards.....

Being experienced guards, wouldn't they be watching for that?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

I would use my Kung Fu skills and Matrix reflexes to take them down.

 

[Kusa]

I would bum rush one of the guards.....

Being experienced guards, wouldn't they be watching for that?

Im sure they would. If I died trying to get their gun it would be better than dying submissively.

 

[fromderinside]

Considering the fact than in both cases you'd be dead, better, for you at that point, is meaningless.

 

[Kusa]

Considering the fact than in both cases you'd be dead, better, for you at that point, is meaningless.

But if I can kill one or more of the bad guys it might be meaningful to someone else.

In this case, doing something is always better than doing nothing.

 

[Bronzeage]

Considering the fact than in both cases you'd be dead, better, for you at that point, is meaningless.

But if I can kill one or more of the bad guys it might be meaningful to someone else.

In this case, doing something is always better than doing nothing.

If this fantasy comforts you, then it has served it's purpose. It makes a better ending for the movie, too.

 

[Kusa]

But if I can kill one or more of the bad guys it might be meaningful to someone else.

In this case, doing something is always better than doing nothing.

If this fantasy comforts you, then it has served it's purpose. It makes a better ending for the movie, too.

I see. You are one that would simply comply.

 

[Bronzeage]

If this fantasy comforts you, then it has served it's purpose. It makes a better ending for the movie, too.

I see. You are one that would simply comply.

On the contrary. In my fantasy, I lead a band of partisans which attacks the camp and liberates you and the rest of the prisoners. I confront the evil commandant of the camp, who is trying to escape by wearing a prisoner's uniform. This leads to a running gun battle across the roof tops of the barracks, which ends when I push him down the chimney of the crematorium.

 

[Kusa]

I see. You are one that would simply comply.

On the contrary. In my fantasy, I lead a band of partisans which attacks the camp and liberates you and the rest of the prisoners. I confront the evil commandant of the camp, who is trying to escape by wearing a prisoner's uniform. This leads to a running gun battle across the roof tops of the barracks, which ends when I push him down the chimney of the crematorium.

In reality you would be one of the guys that pees in their pants and cries for mommy.

 

[Bronzeage]

On the contrary. In my fantasy, I lead a band of partisans which attacks the camp and liberates you and the rest of the prisoners. I confront the evil commandant of the camp, who is trying to escape by wearing a prisoner's uniform. This leads to a running gun battle across the roof tops of the barracks, which ends when I push him down the chimney of the crematorium.

In reality you would be one of the guys that pees in their pants and cries for mommy.

Don't talk about things like that, unless you've actually seen a man pee in his pants and cry for his mommy. What we think we will do and what we do, are very seldom even close.

Comments such as this post demonstrate you don't know of what you speak.

 

[DBT]

If this fantasy comforts you, then it has served it's purpose. It makes a better ending for the movie, too.

I see. You are one that would simply comply.

But the hypothetical is, would you resist if the chance of succeeding was virtually nil, and you were told that if you do resist you would be tortured horribly for days, flayed alive, boiled in oil or something worse. What would you do?