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Comment by mstipetic | Hacker News Reader

I live in a fairly small country, where most population is in the capitol. I was just thinking the other day how you could probably take over the whole place with 1-2 million drones that probably cost <1B total. I don't think we're in any way prepared to handle that

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Issue the people with nets, balloons, and shotguns. Declare a national drone hunting holiday.

What if the drones have explosives? They could take out 100k people before we know what's happening

Why go through the trouble of using drone, just use a barrage conventional missiles, hypothetical country is unlikely to have anti-rocket system like iron dome

I'd assume systems like that require something like an army are regulated and in control of nation states. My point was something like a few hundred thousand drones could probably stealthily be acquired by a wealthy individual. If it's autonomous and remotely controlled you might not even know who's behind it

OK, but in this scenario, the wealthy individual is trying to do what? Take over the country?

Fine. Let him. When he does so, he quits being anonymous. Then assassinate him and restore the previous government. Bonus style points if you assassinate him with a drone.

> When he does so, he quits being anonymous.

Does he? Nothing stopping him from staying anonymous.

Missiles are just simple suicide drones, really

IF that's the goal, a Neutron Bomb[1] would be far more efficient. From Wikipedia: "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory director Harold Brown and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev both described neutron bombs as a "capitalist bomb", because it was designed to destroy people while preserving property."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb

The vast majority of global civilian population doesn't have access to firearms.

True, but you can't fight a massively distributed attack using a very small concentrated force of professional soldiers; hence the population needs to be issued with weapons and training in an emergency for civil defense. Conventional weapons like tanks and fixed emplacements just become easy targets.

Well then maybe that, too, is a problem that needs solved?

Regardless, a slamfire shotgun only requires two pipes and a nail. Ammo is still an issue, but it's a start.

Drone-whacking day?

> most population is in the capitol

Half of the US population wished it was in the capitol, too. /s

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