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Are you kidding?! My wife wasn't home when that photo was taken! :-) ...although...believe it or not, one of those rifles was HERS! :-) ...and she NOTICED that it had been moved and asked "who-done-it" and then glared at me when I told her....scary! :-) You've hit on something big here. It's a broad concept so I won't speak in detailed terms. But too many people depend on too much which is itself dependent on fragility and complexity. Fragility and complexity follow the same paradigm as (in my professional world) security and usability. Generally, they're on opposite ends of the spectrum. But I digress.

You've mentioned an EMP, so I'll use commercially provided electrical power as an example. Everybody simply takes it for granted, and it has proven "historically" to be fairly stable. This was the situation in Argentina as well...until 2001 when their currency collapsed and too many linemen decided it wasn't worth working for nothing and they just "disappeared"... just went to live with relatives who lived in the mountains.... or just quit and didn't say anything about it. The net result was that first world living conditions changed "almost" over night to third world living conditions. Electrical power within a month was "spotty"...something people simply weren't used to.

In my case, I do network engineering for the IT shop of a state Justice System. They're almost totally dependent on the network which we maintain. People think that it "just works", and a lot of times it does. But mostly it doesn't. If we suffer a currency collapse and manning is reduced with our commercial local providers because of this and we can't get people on the ground for that "last mile" to a site, then we're looking at a degradation of operations within an entire state's Justice System. Remember! Outsourcing is the rule of the day and something such as a state Justice System simply isn't staffed to actually MAINTAIN all the endpoints! As long as everything stays stable it's all good. But nobody seems to have a good answer to me about what if it's NOT. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm the reason our management had a certain batch of us categorized as first responders so that IF the Governor declares an emergency, we can't legally leave our jobs. We'll see how that works out IF if it actually happens. Those of us in my situation are VERY loyal, and I think they pretty much made the right choice by bonding those whom they did. I also think it will be a fairly moot point if the dozens of local providers around the state lose their ability to maintain the network services we have with them. But that's just conjecture and largely my opinion...which is often WRONG.

Forget a currency collapse for the moment. Consider a "mere" 20kt low yield nuclear detonation at 90 thousand feet...launched from a boat out in international waters off the east coast. Imagine solid state devices being damaged over an area 400 by 250 miles. The Koreans showcased such a platform recently...perfectly capable of what I just suggested. Everybody thinks they'll nuke CA, or HI. I say they won't. That would be suicidal. But they would sell it to somebody else who WOULD nuke us...or EMP us and just watch the masses die slowly....because Americans can't fathom doing without electricity and other niceties as a result. American's have a strange outlook. My family came to realize this as a result of being stationed over seas courtesy of the USAF for many years. Americans should turn on the hot water, put their hands under it, look up to God and then thank Him for the blessing of this creature comfort...much less the fact that we have such GOOD water to our homes. Instead though, they curse impatiently when it doesn't get hot enough quick enough.

Simplicity is good. Things that function when nothing else DOES are good. This is the main reason we have a baseline criteria for PDWs here at my house. The rules we have essentially enforce the "thou shalt function" rule. For example, with PDWs the rules are -

1. Nothing may be done to a weapon which detracts from it's intended functionality, or the ability to maintain it under normal conditions. For example, this would be things which impede the operator's ability to maintain it (field strip), or things preventing the operator from using the stock, or intended open sights.

2. Every primary weapon must have a proper weapons light. ...not a modified penlight, or flashlight. It will be something that causes somebody to have a grievous headache if shined with....and it MUST have a remote line that doesn't detract from the overall usability of the weapon.

3. Every weapon will must have sights that function in low/no light, and simultaneously permit use of open iron sights (co-witnessing).

4. Every weapon will have a sling, and the operator WILL use it. It's just a little more trouble to take a weapon from somebody if it's slung properly.

For example...I've got a buddy with a tricked out SKS. He's got a sight mount which replaces the receiver cover. This causes the receiver cover to require a screwdriver to REMOVE if it were damaged... or for simple field stripping to access the bolt carrier and bolt. I asked him what he would do if he were using the weapon because he NEEDED it and he dropped it and jammed dirt in the bore and had to clean it out ....because at this point, he's fairly limited to pushing the dirt down the full length of the bore from the muzzle!...and then INTO the action! Now I know that SKSs are known to operate with a lot of crud in the action, but give me a break! I pointed this out to him and he didn't seem very bothered by it. He also had a low powered scope on top of the weapon... no problem there, except that it would have also required a screwdriver to remove as well! The mount should have had big thumb screws, as well as the scope! But in his case, even if you had removed the scope, you still couldn't really see the sights with the replacement receiver cover on the weapon. So in effect, he created TWO additional requirements to maintain a high degree of functionality of the weapon...

1. Carry a screwdriver.
2. Keep the original receiver cover with the weapon.

He created complexity for something IMPORTANT, and he simply didn't view it that way. I explained it to him and I "think" he got it. I'm still not certain to be honest, but I think he did.

My point here is that if people thought in terms of what works when nothing else does, they wouldn't put so much stock in what they have now...such as gadgets...although gadgets are cool. :-) My point with PDWs is that the criteria we set was to ENSURE the usability of the weapon, thus ensuring it's intended purpose.

If you turn off the power to most houses in America, they become no more than cardboard boxes... soon to become either too hot or cold to live in. Now take the septic system away and the situation becomes a lot more "uncomfortable. Take the clean water supply away and the house becomes totally unlivable. There's just no reason to stay there at that point....and he unfortunate truth is that in the vast majority of cases around America, these critical systems are dependent on commercial power... fragile and complex. Another good illustration of this concept is that recent (a couple of months ago) intentional fiber cut out in CA. It disabled critical services...LMR relay for law enforcement communications...internet services....911 service... ...and nobody seems to have remembered. But this is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. If it's "declared" that a 911 service is ESSENTIAL and CRITICAL, then why can somebody such as myself (with a very small bit of research), simply go to the above the ground fiber cross connect and cut it off a few feet back from the terminal?.... thus very simply disabling the critical service? It's a perfect example of something critical being dependent on something complex and fragile.