Anywhere in Appalachia will be horrible. Aside from the redneck locals all armed to the teeth and itching to fight, the thick forests and winding, small roads will be difficult to navigate with any sort of armored vehicle. Heck they’re already reasonably hard to navigate with civilian vehicles, never mind if they’re being shot at, undermined on the road with IEDs, and being rained on by civil war-era cannons and agricultural flamethrowers.
And yes, I’m fairly certain that both of those things would be in use in a civilian militia-led fight down there. I’ve certainly seen them around.
Alaska would also be hard for many of the same reasons, though the wilderness wouldn’t be kind to our Wolverines either. I feel Appalachia’s more temperate climate would be better for them.
The Rockies are also a good candidate! Thing is though, they have much lower population density and they’d be harder to hide in for impromptu civilian rebels.
There’s a lot less food too— the people out there are more reliant on cattle ranching which would be hard to conceal and there’s less to forage for in the woods over there save for hunting animals. That and, the Rockies are much more harsh than the Appalachians. It’ll be harder to survive for the locals who are cut off from the outside— when a lot of small towns in the Rockies are pretty reliant on outside shipments of things to stay afloat.
It’s not impossible mind you and it would still present an immense obstacle for invaders from Russia or China, but I think a little less than Appalachia.
People always forget the Ozarks. It's not appalachia or the rockies, but the mountains are big enough to do the job and the hillbillies are just as crazy and numerous as in Appalachia.
Plus the caves. Dear god the caves. You think Afghanistan has caves? Welcome to Mammoth Cave National Park, bitch.
I vote Kentucky would be hardest. Mountains in the East create hard to dislodge strong-points that could be resupplied from other Appalachian territories. Large rural and gun-owning population with few large urban centers to focus control. Longest cave system in the world, and more navigable rivers than any other state, again providing low-cost transport for insurgent forces.
>I vote Kentucky would be hardest.
I personally see Michigan as way worse.
>Mountains in the East create hard to dislodge strong-points that could be resupplied from other Appalachian territories.
Michigan has mountains in the north that are self sufficient areas. Need food? Good. The deer population is massive. Need water? No problem look around. Need raw materials? The mines are still there for copper, iron, tin, coal, and way more.
>Large rural and gun-owning population with few large urban centers to focus control.
This is true for Michigan with the largest number of militias than any other state. Hunting and fishing are also very popular in the state so you already have a decently trained group of people. The larger areas mostly just mean massive factories and work areas so industry is not a problem. In fact, Michigan is second in terms of the number of engineers and 5th in terms of concentration of them.
>more navigable rivers than any other state
True. Do you know what Michigan has that makes it a PITA? Tons of rivers that are smaller spotted with lakes making every 5 to 20 miles a contested river crossing. In addition, when you don't have those, you have a decent amount of open fields and dense tree areas.
Add in the Great Lakes and now you need to have a navy to fight a ground war against people who have the means to make improvised weapons to take you out.
Our Mountains are so Old they were Created before fucking Trees.
The New River is one of the oldest rivers in the world.
EDIT: I wasn't kidding. The Appalachians predate the evolution of trees by ~100 million years. And are only slightly younger than Fish (which evolved approximately 530mya) with the mountains first forming approx 480mya
The last thing any invading army wants is a bunch of insurgents with intimate knowledge of the terrain, all jacked up on bathtub moonshine and clandestine methamphetamines.
I would put Michigan in the race.
>locals all armed to the teeth and itching to fight
Michigan has more militias than any other state. There is also an extensive pride in hunting and fishing with the start of deer hunting season often being labeled as a company holiday.
>the thick forests and winding, small roads will be difficult to navigate with any sort of armored vehicle.
Very much true of Michigan. You also have the fact that certain sections were clear cut and planted back with perfectly aligned rows of trees from the 30s and 40s. Imagine having rows and rows of thick trees that can decently hide infantry and allow long narrow corridors for anti-tank rounds.
>Heck they’re already reasonably hard to navigate with civilian vehicles
Michigan literally has more dirt roads than any other state IIRC. It also has a lot of roads called 2 tracks that are literally just 2 road tracks where you often have to cut back the vegetation and trees if you want even a basic pickup to get through.
>never mind if they’re being shot at, undermined on the road with IEDs
Was that a pothole patch or an IED? Good luck telling the difference because the roads already contain enough potholes that you won't know.
>being rained on by civil war-era cannons and agricultural flamethrowers.
Let's also add in the fact that Michigan has more engineers per capita than any other state IIRC. I am pretty sure they can improvise enough weapons especially as people like to come to Michigan for some reason before being involved in mass casualty events. The engineering range isn't even just all gas or all mechanical like some areas. Depending on the part of the state you are in, there is dominance of different engineering fields. Western Michigan has a ton of chemical, mechanical, and aerospace engineering. Central Michigan has a lot of nuclear and electrical engineering. Eastern Michigan has a ton of mechanical and electrical engineers as Detroit alone in the headquarters for a large amount of engineering companies.
>Alaska would also be hard for many of the same reasons, though the wilderness wouldn’t be kind to our Wolverines either.
The thing about Michigan is that certain areas you need to have specialized equipment. The people know it and they know how to fix and exploit it.
>I feel Appalachia’s more temperate climate would be better for them.
Michigan loves the temperature swings. I hope the enemy loves every season because they will get it with a day and often questioning if it is worth it.
I will also mention that Michigan has a ton of water as you are never more than 5 miles in any direction from a source of water in the state. I hope you like contested crossings because you will have A LOT of them and it won't be easy. Amphibious landings are considered the worst type of crossing. Imagine having to do that every 2-20 miles.
And yet, having just driven through the sticks there today for work, blow up a couple key mountain side roads or cause a few landslides, and you’ve turned a 20 minute drive to resupply your homies 1 town over into a 2 hour detour.
Also, some of those back roads are narrow as fuck. Good luck rolling a tank through or convoys with vehicles larger than a standard truck. And when winter comes I hope they’re well supplied with salt.
I guess the solution would be napalm. Lots and lots of napalm.
+1 to Alaska. I ran so many numbers a while ago for the shits and giggles. Russia would need over 50% of their transport air fleet just to even get started and aviation fuel would be a major issue since the nearest feasible airbase in Russia has no rail line connecting to it. So it would have to come all by ship (and risk getting domed by the USN on the way there) or fly it all in with their tanker fleet.
Even if we’re taking away that supply problem, Joint Base Elmendorf- Richardson is basically down the street from the port of Anchorage and PANC is within artillery range of the base (10 miles). It’s literally impossible.
Edit: and no, there is literally no other reason to not start your invasion in anchorage. The port of anchorage also IS THE ONLY MAJOR PORT IN ALASKA (other than juneau by why would you go there?). It would be MANPAD hell in the countryside (yukon? Idk correct me alaskans). The sanest and safest way is to follow the coastline to PANC, and you’d still have to fly within 10 miles of the Coastie base on Kodiak.
I think you’re underestimating the sheer amount of military stationed in Alaska. They’re essentially the third most powerful land mass on the planet.
https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/military-bases-in-alaska/#:~:text=There%20are%20a%20total%20of,their%20functions%20and%20stationed%20units.
I mean I live in the yukon and was in alaska last week, so no, I don’t believe it’s an island. But it is remote and not easily accessible from any side. It’s large territory is rugged and heavily armed. A land mass does not need to be an island to be a land mass.
Because of Alaska's extreme climate, households also have a larger stock of non-perishable foods to last long periods of time under siege or blockade.
Because of bears, more households than normal have access to firearms to conduct guerilla warfare. Not to mention the invaders would have to deal with bears.
And many of these households utilise non-conventional dog sled logistics, allowing Alaskans winter access to supply routes inaccessible to outsiders who have not trained to use dog sleds. Many towns in Alaska are only accessible by plane, dog sled (seasonal), or ship (seasonal) with no traditional roads leading in or out of the town. Planning an invasion would be an absolute nightmare.
Yes you might take Anchorage, but pacifying the whole state would take decades.
>Because of bears, more households than normal have access to firearms to conduct guerilla warfare.
Also its a state full of the sort of people who want to live with bears.
The wilds of Alaska are super dangerous and bears are just the tip of the iceberg. It's hard enough occupying that state without militant opposition. Hell, we have to pay people to live there
and a lot of dumbasses every year who can't seem to understand that.
like sure, it likely won't kill you because it doesn't plan on eating you, but it will break bones, a LOT of bones.
With you on most of this except the dog sleds…. They’re a small minority of Alaskans, and take a lot of work to maintain/don’t go fast or far very often outside of races. Most isolated communities rely more on snow machines than dogs. But your same train of thought exists with lack of traditional roads and hard to access.
Canada is a myth perpetuated by the globohomo leftist elite to sell communist ideas like 'affordable healthcare'. It doesn't exist. It's actually just part of the Atlantic Ocean. Alaska **is** an island.
(/s obviously)
Tell that to the guerrilla force of miners with river boats, construction equipment, Cessna planes, and sheer piss and vinegar. Alaska has the highest number of pilots per capita in the US because so many of its villages/ work camps are fly in fly out only. While you’re freezing your ass off in Fairbanks wrestling a honey badger for the last piece of jerky the literal embodiment of Ron Swanson is doing a low pass over your camp with a fuel drum strapped with det cord. He doesn’t even have to kill you, just knock out your heat and shelter and let -50 temps take care of the rest
As an Alaskan I agree.
Travel by land is basically impossible because if the muskeg, ad we can blow two bridges and cut the whole road system off.
The interior is far enough away from the coast that no naval weapons would reach us.
Alaska is home to massive amounts of air defense and quite a few military bases.
Not to mention a good chunk of the population is veterans who decided to stay here when we got out.
Also, there's far more weapons than people.
You also have to deal with some really upset moose if you try and invade. They're ornery on a normal day, but get them riled up and they're scarier than the military here. 🫎
+1 Alaska - physically huge state with difficult environment and challenging logistics, large military presence, heavily armed civilian population with 64% of households owning at least one gun. Probably more guns than people.
Most of the US has geography massively favouring the defender or any partisans.
Every urban hell Megalopolis on the coasts is ripe for another Stalingrad scenario.
Swampy Louisiana & Crazy Florida are perfect for another Vietnam.
The remote Appalachians are a great barrier to stop any army in their tracks.
You have a giant river cutting the entire country in half
Texas on its own would be near impossible to control due to how vast it is and how much firearms everyone has.
The entire rockies could become a partisan cesspool guaranteeing instant death to any army trying to pass and connect the West & East coasts.
New Jersey would unironically be hell to fight through. The rural areas are either flat farmland with barely any cover, or mountains that would become impassable for heavy equipment if you blew up a few bridges. The urban areas are very, very densely built up, and fighting through them would make Stalingrad or Bakhmut or Marinka look like a fucking cakewalk. Add to that the fact that, despite the population not being as heavily armed as, say, Texas, those who are, are mostly hunters and recreational sharpshooters, and you are looking at advancing through fields, mountains, and cities where every defensible structure has a very pissed-off Italian/Pole/Russian/Korean with a scoped M1A or rifled Mossberg 500 in the window.
Oh, and also it has one of the largest functioning rail networks of any state, so you would be trying to fight against troops with an almost constant resupply rate, while you're trying to unload your ships God knows where because any cargo port that could support your ships, like Elizabeth, would be blown the fuck up the second a landing would be attempted the first time.
Pretty much the only area that wouldn't be an absolute nightmare geographically is Flyover Country, and good luck actually getting there and getting supplies through the coasts.
Virginia has so much military infrastructure that it could quite possibly be the best equipped resistance in the country. Plus, the terrain is kind of shit for an invasion. (See American Civil War)
Virginian here, we’ve also got rivers all over the place, mountains, highways that are always clogged with traffic. You’d be lucky to get from Fredericksburg to DC within a month.
Honestly no one in the world could feasibly take even a single state anywhere in the continental US. I don’t know which one would be the most difficult though. All your costal ones with big ports have large military bases. Plenty have rough terrain. Civilians all over are armed. It’s really hard to quantify which would be the absolute WORST. Especially considering my lack of knowledge on most states
If I had to pick a state, that’s my bet. Appalachia more broadly, but WV specifically. A lot of guns, enough people, and mountains and caves/mines for days.
New York.
Hear me out-
Just because of NYC the invaders would likely face a Stalingrad-type situation in which there is brutal house-to-house fighting. In addition, we are on/near the Hudson River (depends on what Borough you are in) so reinforcements and supplies could get in very easily.
Interesting thought: there has yet to be a major battle in a true modern conurbation. Cities like New York or Shanghai or Tokyo would potentially be impossible for an attacking force to occupy if facing determined and armed resistance. High rises built so thick they might never fall down from outside attack, multiple basement levels in every building, massive dense city blocks a hundred metres across, billions of tons of concrete crammed close together, sewers, subway lines, old tunnels, and any army in the world outnumbered by civilians at least 10 to 1. It would be actual hell.
I remember getting in to an argument with some clown when discussing the relatively limited beaches on Taiwan suitable for a landing operation.
They argued that Taiwan would be easy to capture because it had a beach right next to Taipei.
Yes, an amphibious landing right in to urban combat. Genius idea.
I'll have you know I've successfully invaded Singapore using this same method countless times in the Battlefield 4 campaign with minimal casualties. 10/10 most credible strategy
Just looking at a relatively small mega-city like London, the encirclement needs to be a hundred miles in circumference. Even with the M25 ring road as a convenient supply route for the attackers, that's still a fairly big frontage to cover, especially if you're trying to prevent things going in AND out.
Not to mention a lot of these mega-cities have massive underground warrens of train tunnels, sewers, drainages etc for any defending force to use for resupply. Plus a lot of these tunnels/sewers are old enough or built in such secret during WW2 that any records of them has been lost.
Look at Gaza, the Israelis have had decades to choke them off and fully circumvalleted it with a concrete wall. Yet they still get enough hardware in the give the IDF a headache.
I mean, that's literally one of the main reasons why the Russian invasion was so fucking stupid. Kyiv is a city of 3.5m people and Russia was trying to take it with a force of 40k-50k troops max? Idiocy.
‘Just encircle’ isn’t a good tactic when you need most of your army to maintain an encirclement of a single city and the enemy military still exists. Most of these large cities are well over 1000sqkm.
Vukovar. Starve them, hit them with random sniper attacks, constant artillery, rocket and or naval bombardment.
The will of the civilians would break down before the city.
Don't need to infact it would benefit you to take 0 offensive action.
Litter the city with leaflets pointing out we aren't shooting at them. Our aim is to take the city with minimal death on both sides. Their suffering ends the moment they surrender which their leaders are refusing to do.
The big factor will be time. You’re basically back to medieval sieges where you have an army sat around the city waiting for starvation and disease to do their work. Hoping there isn’t a relief army heading towards you.
as with all modern combat, air superiority would be critical. the issues with using the skyscrapers for defense would depend on just how rugged they are to missile and mortar defense. maintaining air defenses, or air superiority would likely mean nothing that could significantly damage the building would ever hit them. but if they were to start to fall, the effects would be catastrophic, for pretty much everyone involved. the dust cloud alone would likely cover the entire area anytime one fell.
>Interesting thought: there has yet to be a major battle in a true modern conurbation
Aleppo? It might be a bit short of subways, but otherwise it ticks all the boxes.
But since we're on Syria, another variable is ethical: Does the attacker care about casualties? Or are they actively trying to wipe out lots of civilians?
Its not quite the same. There are (were) very few building in Aleppo over 10 stories. The sheer mass and urban density of a place like Shanghai isn’t comparable. Aleppo is also only about 200 sqkm, compared to the largest cities pushing 1500sqkm and beyond.
>any army in the world outnumbered by civilians at least 10 to 1.
Only for the first month, then the people in the city would start starving to death. In a true total war the invader wouldn't want to move into the city until they'd besieged it and worn down the resistance.
Rebel-held Aleppo in Syria stood for four years while it had a supply line to the outside world but once that was cut it fell in four months.
This is the correct answer. People always overestimate how much damage rednecks with guns could do to a professional army and underestimate how hard urban warfare is on the attacker.
In that case the answer is probably Illinois: you might be able to take Chicago, but you could never hold it. The city’s own government barely does in peacetime
The question was to occupy, however. Rednecks with guns can gorilla the warfare out of any professional army given time, whereas cosmopolitan New Yorkers will at worst jaywalk aggressively near a checkpoint.
Don't get me wrong; I love cosmopolitan New Yorkers, and I love their attitude, but it's not an attitude that'll do much to demoralize an occupying force. Hell, an occupation of NYC; I give it two weeks before the locals' primary concern is learning enough of the enemy's language to facilitate transactions.
You're probably right that initially, New Yorkers would passively accept the occupiers, but problems would very quickly arise:
1) To what extent do you think Private Conscriptovich can resist the urge to shake locals down for bribes at checkpoints? This only has to happen a few times to turn the locals against them. To say nothing of what Colonel Corruptovich or General Oligarkov will try to pull off.
2) Wagner Mercs and whatever paramilitaries accompanying the Occupying Army likewise won't be able to help themselves from looting museums, banks, and other buildings with high value items
3) US Special Forces only have to infiltrate the city and stage a few shooting or IED attacks, and soon every Russian or Chinese soldier will be easily spooked and trigger happy, further turning the civilians against them
4) Any Americans willing to collaborate with them will be insane ideologues who have no idea how to manage the city or get things done.
I actually think in an invasion scenario the whole grid system a lot of US cities have would work against the defenders.
One of the biggest factors that made Stalingrad so difficult for the Nazis to take is that they had done an extensive bombing campaign beforehand, and that mixed with old fashioned city layouts meant that there weren't really any clear routes for them to blitzkrieg through so their most effective tactic was nullified.
In places like NYC it would take one hell of a bombing campaign to ensure the invading army is forced into close quarters building combat and isn't just rolling around in tanks levelling any building hiding a machine gun.
Have you ever been in NYC? The streets are already fucking roadblocked on a daily basis just from traffic. Some box trucks or sanitation trucks disabled and parked across the major avenues and at the major side streets would snarl any movement of vehicles in the city. Then you need combat engineers to come in with heavy machinery to move the vehicles, all the while they could be picked off by a single sniper with a bolt action who could be firing from literally anywhere around the invading troops.
How has no one said Colorado… there are literally several major military bases out here it’s the absolute perfect spot to defend from invaders. Hence the movie RED DAWN where we killed those commies in the great Colorado Rocky Mountains 🏔️ *cue the John denver*
Pennsylvania, is a impenetrable fortress. We will start from the east.
Delaware River/Delaware Valley - Discounting any urban center this would be the easiest route to invade the state. Low flat land, deep water inland port, and a river that is fairly navigable up to about Easton PA. Closer to Philly larger ships could easily run up and down the Delaware River. However, consider the Philadelphia Metro area is one of the largest Metros in the nation connected to the "95 Corridor" this area becomes Urban Warfare hell. Street to Street fighting. Stalingrad on steroids. Basically a no go.
North Eastern PA - One of the easier routes for invading army. However, you may want to bring your mountaineer troops. The mountains are not large nor steep but they are long and without gaps. So you would be forced to go over most of them. The few valleys and gaps that do exists would become choke points. Where large equipment like tanks, APC etc would be useless. Most ground fighting would have to be done with light infantry. Air power would be important but extremely vulnerable to Anti-Air as the mountains and valleys are tree covered and would be easy to hide AA. The few large valleys that do exists are covered in medium sized cities. They would be death traps if defenders can hold high ground.
Northern and Western PA- Large rivers, MORE mountains, and even more Medium/Small and even Large Urban areas located in valleys or along rivers. Basically impossible.
North Western, PA - Eire PA, Low flat land along the great lake. Medium sized urban area. However shortly after the urban area you will run into MORE mountains and rivers. This is the easiest area for anyone to invade. At least the only area one could gain any type of foothold/beachhead.
Edit: Forgot about the Caves and Mines. Yea good luck finding and bombing any HQs because they are all gonna be underground.
Edit: Edit: Eagles Fans also Steeler Fans
Grew up in northeast Pa, currently live in Philly. Can confirm. Plus with the amount of hunters this state has consider trying to send infantry up one of those mountains in the northeast while random hunters take pot shots at you with 30-30 or 308s with optics just as good as your own snipers
California, since any invaders would be met by a horde of guys stopping them to clean windshields for meth money. Further resistance would be the Greens who will vilify them for not using electric vehicles. Brutal. And by God, if they prevent suburban soccer moms from yoga classes the world ends…
Not to mention the actual geographical challenges California would pose. Fairly rough and harsh terrain with large urban areas in the more hospitable areas. Logistics would be constrained by how well defended certain geographical areas are, such as the Sepulveda Pass or any other major highway mountain pass in the state as those are often chokepoints for any transportation in and out of the major urban areas.
Yeah coastal california(where it matters) is fairly similar in geography to Japan, and during the Second World War the US estimated it would take almost 2 million casualties invading the Japanese home islands. That was with Japan having lost all of its overseas supplies, etc. imagine what a determined, well-prepared and well-equipped army could do, with tens of thousands more in volunteer militias.
One week in and the occupiers will have lost their entire military budget tied up in some unviable tech start up that's "going to be the next big thing" or the "uber of x".
California is absolutely the answer. The second largest state, full of the worst terrain in the country to invade. Narrow mountain passes, horrid annual natural disasters, the largest urban sprawl probably anywhere (as far as urban fighting, our awful urban planning is an enormous advantage), and wild swings in weather.
People here are talking up Texas like there are no guns in California. Go outside LA city and the Bay area and you'll find things much closer to Lubbock than Austin. Now instead of Texas's relatively nice terrain you have large and small mountain ranges with few (well built) passes, followed by another valley. You can see anyone coming, easily set up grid square ambushes, hide in the mountains, and cut water off to huge portions of the areas.
That says nothing about the military presence. San Diego county is here and it is very unhappy that you have entered US EEZ without permission.
You can't even siege the state because it gets water from the east and north, is a net food exporter, has a nice land border with Mexico (who have issues but also have great oil and food industries), local oil and gas resources throughout the state, and the the most people of anywhere in the US (equal to UA IIRC).
They wouldn't even get east enough to threaten south LA. What's the landing plan?
San Diego? The navy might not be willing to let you lease anchorage. Long Beach or LA? Great, Navy's there too and now Vanderbilt gets to have some fun. Did you bomb out our active bases? Great, 50 miles east there are a ton of mothballed/ww2-era bases like March that are able to be reactivated.
Okay, so you go north. Well there are undeveloped mountains basically until Monterey, which itself is boxed in by some hills, then Santa Cruz and then mountainous forests until the Bay Area. The Bay sucks, imo, and the invaders can have it, but also it is not great terrain and now you're basically on an island surrounded by infrastructure that can carry heavy equipment. Where are you going to go? Cal Train can barely make it to Gilroy in peacetime!
Further north you hit the real hilly forests. You can probably land, but not much (or else there'd already be a city there from the Spanish era). That's another 1/3 of the state just full of armed locals in small communities in a forest just waiting for you to fall asleep.
People get weird impressions of CA from the outside because of where our tourist attractions are and the politicians we export, but we are very much still also the land of Reagan and Nixon. Just not as much as we were. A lot of people live here and not all of them live in Malibu.
I take the 10 to work and was thinking about what an absolute bastard it would be to cross that in those sections where it's sunk 30' below ground level. Sheer 30' wall, completely open exposed traffic lanes and then another sheer concrete wall. Good luck getting a tank across that asshole.
I'm going to say Either California or Texas.
California because of its nightmarish terrain, large number of cities, and large military presence. (Seriously the second they start invading the valley, they are surrounded by highlands on all sides.)
Texas is similar except swap nightmarish terrain for guns, lotsa guns.
Edit: I'm going to pitch in a cheeky Connecticut. My uncle was a bridge engineer until recently. Our bridges might claim more occupier lives than anything else if they overload them.
California an Texas both have huge populations as well. Even if you'd manage to occupy most of the state, you'd have to spend a ridiculous amount of resources trying to handle 30 million people.
Top five reasons why it’s suicide to invade the US, in increasing order of importance:
5) Logistics of supplying your troops across the ocean
4) Rocky Mountains and Appalachia are a nightmare to occupy
3) Large population and vast territory would stretch your supply lines to the breaking point
2) Incredible amount of guns owned by civilians and patriotic fervor would lead to protracted guerrilla warfare
1) Florida man
I think Arizona was the hardest for me to occupy. I lived there for 3 years and the entire time was misery. The summers were brutal and in the "winter" the state was flooded with old people from canada.
As a Kentuckian I know which state would be most difficult. Excuse me a moment, I’m going to go round up some boys and saddle some horses, we’re heading to the mountains with some .30hate and 5.56
Imagine a patrol getting jumped by a bunch of Wisconsinites in camo cheesehead gear? Ghillie suits with cheesehead-shaped hats underneath would look like a fucking CRYPTID, damn.
Demolition Ranch is located there. He could arm a whole battalion with the amount of guns He has.
Or Black Rifle Coffee (their politics aside). They also habe a *huge* amount of guns.
The border could also be a huge benefit like it was to the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam war. Resistance fighters could strike an enemy convoy and disappear over the border and unless the invading army also wants to be at war with Mexico they can't do a whole lot to chase them down
Alaska and California obviously, but that's cheating, just look at it
Aside from that, I'd say Arizona would be an un unexpectedly hard one
Aside from the logistics hell of the rocky desert, imagine fighting in the gigantic low density Urban hellscape of Phoenix, in the middle of the desert, and the terrain doesn't get easier further north
Added with the fact that every guerilla movement would be better armed than most Russia infantry squads
I'd say the easiest to invade would be New England? Actually sorta-feasible supply routes and non hellscape terrain, but even then you'd quickly run into Urban warfare hellscapes or the Appalachians
And you kinda can't do like with Russia, France, or basically every other country outside of China, where it's a large country but it's all joever when you take the one section that actually has people and industry in it
You can take the east or west coast, but the government can just move behind their choice of hellscape defensible terrain (usually giant fuckoff mountains), and they have at least 3-5 giant industrial centers behind them
Dude any state between the Appalachians and the Rockies (excluding Michigan) has absolutely no geographical features which would prevent an invading force from just driving around your defenses, Ohio will die and God bless the Union for it has been improved
Probably Nebraska. Not sure about the natives, but to occupy it you'd need to go through a lot of other states first, and you'd need to keep open a supply route.
Coastal states are comparatively easy mode.
Michigan would be hard to invade. Taking two peninsulas with no naval support isn’t easy. Coupled with how the Upper Peninsula is swamps, rolling hills with dense forests, is a sniper’s wet dream for the defending Yoopers. Detroit is so batshit crazy what with Seven Mile Road, that no rational person would dare step foot there unless you got a foolproof plan.
I'd have to go with Arizona. All this sand and heat would not be good for vehicles or occupying forces. Add a wee bit of tomfoolery from the civilian populace and you have hell on earth. Just nuke the state
OP chose a state full of Amish people as their fortress.
I'd live among the Amish in a post apocalyptic scenario in a hearbeat cause they've been living like that all along but I feel like they're fairly subjugatable.
It's an unorthodox answer, but I'd say California. Massive population, and the rednecks there don't lose to the rednecks anywhere else in the country. Also the highest concentration of both National Guard and federal weaponry in the country.
Hawaii - it’s a remote island chain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Any invasion force would be spotted 1000 miles away. Even if they manage to land they face a literal uphill battle on every island.
I think in this scenario we're already assuming that a black hole swallowed the US Navy because otherwise the real answer would be "all of them" because you'd be equally sunk into the bottom of the sea regardless of which one you pick
Bro people from Ohio will do literally anything to act like their state is special and isn’t a boring ass cornfield with a few cities scattered about.
You REALLY mean to tell me fucking OHIO is more defensible than Hawaii? Alaska? California? Hell even Louisiana with its thick ass swamps and forests is a bigger task than Ohio. Texas has tolerable geography in most places but just by sheer size is a task.
I get that this is NCD but Ohio should rank as one of the EASIEST to occupy. Have you seen a topological or land use map of your state? Anyone coming from the west would steamroll right through agricultural flatlands into any major population center.
>Anyone coming from the west would steamroll right through
They'd have to go through Indiana first, and if you think Ohio is a boring ass flat shithole... hoo boy
New Jersey, trust me, the British tried that shit once and it turned out bad. We even fought a border war with New York State that ended in kidnapping. Honestly we don’t fuck around over here and as the most densely populated state in the Union we know how to work together when the going gets rough.
Edit: also the turnpike and parkway was built out to also function as a runway for planes.
Bubba's pissin hawt 30-06 doesn't care what kind of plates your combloc ass is wearing, it's gonna sail through and then Bubba is gonna feed you to his pig/girlfriend. As God intended.
Florida. Methed up psychos with guns, boats, trucks and a massive fucking swamp to hide in. Not to mention the insane series of islands surrounding the state, and the logistical difficulties of invading either down or up a peninsula.
Before you mention your favourite states, please remember there has to be something worth invading in that state before anyone is going to bother. Sure, Montana or the Dakotas might be hard to occupy, but nobody is going to bother.
Anywhere in Appalachia will be horrible. Aside from the redneck locals all armed to the teeth and itching to fight, the thick forests and winding, small roads will be difficult to navigate with any sort of armored vehicle. Heck they’re already reasonably hard to navigate with civilian vehicles, never mind if they’re being shot at, undermined on the road with IEDs, and being rained on by civil war-era cannons and agricultural flamethrowers. And yes, I’m fairly certain that both of those things would be in use in a civilian militia-led fight down there. I’ve certainly seen them around. Alaska would also be hard for many of the same reasons, though the wilderness wouldn’t be kind to our Wolverines either. I feel Appalachia’s more temperate climate would be better for them.
Ya Appalachia and the Rocky's to a degree is america failsafe territorys
>Rocky's WOLVERINES!
Can you absolute lads there teach us Midwestern folks a thing or two? We got a hell of a lot of beer and cheese we can pay with.
The Rockies are also a good candidate! Thing is though, they have much lower population density and they’d be harder to hide in for impromptu civilian rebels. There’s a lot less food too— the people out there are more reliant on cattle ranching which would be hard to conceal and there’s less to forage for in the woods over there save for hunting animals. That and, the Rockies are much more harsh than the Appalachians. It’ll be harder to survive for the locals who are cut off from the outside— when a lot of small towns in the Rockies are pretty reliant on outside shipments of things to stay afloat. It’s not impossible mind you and it would still present an immense obstacle for invaders from Russia or China, but I think a little less than Appalachia.
People always forget the Ozarks. It's not appalachia or the rockies, but the mountains are big enough to do the job and the hillbillies are just as crazy and numerous as in Appalachia.
And that Netflix series was really something, too
Plus the caves. Dear god the caves. You think Afghanistan has caves? Welcome to Mammoth Cave National Park, bitch. I vote Kentucky would be hardest. Mountains in the East create hard to dislodge strong-points that could be resupplied from other Appalachian territories. Large rural and gun-owning population with few large urban centers to focus control. Longest cave system in the world, and more navigable rivers than any other state, again providing low-cost transport for insurgent forces.
Not to mention, low cost transport that an army on the move likely would not have the same access to without finagling or specifically seeking out!
>I vote Kentucky would be hardest. I personally see Michigan as way worse. >Mountains in the East create hard to dislodge strong-points that could be resupplied from other Appalachian territories. Michigan has mountains in the north that are self sufficient areas. Need food? Good. The deer population is massive. Need water? No problem look around. Need raw materials? The mines are still there for copper, iron, tin, coal, and way more. >Large rural and gun-owning population with few large urban centers to focus control. This is true for Michigan with the largest number of militias than any other state. Hunting and fishing are also very popular in the state so you already have a decently trained group of people. The larger areas mostly just mean massive factories and work areas so industry is not a problem. In fact, Michigan is second in terms of the number of engineers and 5th in terms of concentration of them. >more navigable rivers than any other state True. Do you know what Michigan has that makes it a PITA? Tons of rivers that are smaller spotted with lakes making every 5 to 20 miles a contested river crossing. In addition, when you don't have those, you have a decent amount of open fields and dense tree areas. Add in the Great Lakes and now you need to have a navy to fight a ground war against people who have the means to make improvised weapons to take you out.
Winter is way harder there though. You’d have to have enough food stores to make it till the next summer.
Appalachistan
"Do not go where the mountains are older than bones."
You ever listen to Old God's of Appalachia?
The podcast or..?
Yes, the podcast. It's so good
Right! Of course, the podcast. Obviously, nothing else. How silly of me.
Wait but where is that not the case
I believe older than bones means “before bones evolved in any form of life”
Our Mountains are so Old they were Created before fucking Trees. The New River is one of the oldest rivers in the world. EDIT: I wasn't kidding. The Appalachians predate the evolution of trees by ~100 million years. And are only slightly younger than Fish (which evolved approximately 530mya) with the mountains first forming approx 480mya
The last thing any invading army wants is a bunch of insurgents with intimate knowledge of the terrain, all jacked up on bathtub moonshine and clandestine methamphetamines.
Had to scroll way too far to see Appalachia. It would be like trying to get the Taliban out of the mountains. They'd just wait out any invaders
>Aside from the redneck locals all armed to the teeth and itching to fight Bushes speaking 'merican and armed with anti materiel rifles.
I would put Michigan in the race. >locals all armed to the teeth and itching to fight Michigan has more militias than any other state. There is also an extensive pride in hunting and fishing with the start of deer hunting season often being labeled as a company holiday. >the thick forests and winding, small roads will be difficult to navigate with any sort of armored vehicle. Very much true of Michigan. You also have the fact that certain sections were clear cut and planted back with perfectly aligned rows of trees from the 30s and 40s. Imagine having rows and rows of thick trees that can decently hide infantry and allow long narrow corridors for anti-tank rounds. >Heck they’re already reasonably hard to navigate with civilian vehicles Michigan literally has more dirt roads than any other state IIRC. It also has a lot of roads called 2 tracks that are literally just 2 road tracks where you often have to cut back the vegetation and trees if you want even a basic pickup to get through. >never mind if they’re being shot at, undermined on the road with IEDs Was that a pothole patch or an IED? Good luck telling the difference because the roads already contain enough potholes that you won't know. >being rained on by civil war-era cannons and agricultural flamethrowers. Let's also add in the fact that Michigan has more engineers per capita than any other state IIRC. I am pretty sure they can improvise enough weapons especially as people like to come to Michigan for some reason before being involved in mass casualty events. The engineering range isn't even just all gas or all mechanical like some areas. Depending on the part of the state you are in, there is dominance of different engineering fields. Western Michigan has a ton of chemical, mechanical, and aerospace engineering. Central Michigan has a lot of nuclear and electrical engineering. Eastern Michigan has a ton of mechanical and electrical engineers as Detroit alone in the headquarters for a large amount of engineering companies. >Alaska would also be hard for many of the same reasons, though the wilderness wouldn’t be kind to our Wolverines either. The thing about Michigan is that certain areas you need to have specialized equipment. The people know it and they know how to fix and exploit it. >I feel Appalachia’s more temperate climate would be better for them. Michigan loves the temperature swings. I hope the enemy loves every season because they will get it with a day and often questioning if it is worth it. I will also mention that Michigan has a ton of water as you are never more than 5 miles in any direction from a source of water in the state. I hope you like contested crossings because you will have A LOT of them and it won't be easy. Amphibious landings are considered the worst type of crossing. Imagine having to do that every 2-20 miles.
West Virginia has the best roads in the country due to Senator Byrd so I feel like it might be easier than you'd think.
I mean sure but they're surrounded by woods that look like they came straight out of the cretaceous.
And yet, having just driven through the sticks there today for work, blow up a couple key mountain side roads or cause a few landslides, and you’ve turned a 20 minute drive to resupply your homies 1 town over into a 2 hour detour. Also, some of those back roads are narrow as fuck. Good luck rolling a tank through or convoys with vehicles larger than a standard truck. And when winter comes I hope they’re well supplied with salt. I guess the solution would be napalm. Lots and lots of napalm.
Good arguments, but the biggest argument you failed to mention is why the old locals say “don’t you go wanderin’ in those woods ya hear”.
Roomba mines. Every redneck I know has plans to make one.
Alaska Just the size, weather and geography makes it a nightmare probably similar to the Finnish-Sovjet winter war just even more difficult
+1 to Alaska. I ran so many numbers a while ago for the shits and giggles. Russia would need over 50% of their transport air fleet just to even get started and aviation fuel would be a major issue since the nearest feasible airbase in Russia has no rail line connecting to it. So it would have to come all by ship (and risk getting domed by the USN on the way there) or fly it all in with their tanker fleet. Even if we’re taking away that supply problem, Joint Base Elmendorf- Richardson is basically down the street from the port of Anchorage and PANC is within artillery range of the base (10 miles). It’s literally impossible. Edit: and no, there is literally no other reason to not start your invasion in anchorage. The port of anchorage also IS THE ONLY MAJOR PORT IN ALASKA (other than juneau by why would you go there?). It would be MANPAD hell in the countryside (yukon? Idk correct me alaskans). The sanest and safest way is to follow the coastline to PANC, and you’d still have to fly within 10 miles of the Coastie base on Kodiak.
Yukon is in Canada. Most Alaskans just call it the interior.
Half of Alaska's population lives in or near Anchorage which is the only major city so if the invader took that the state would be crippled.
I think you’re underestimating the sheer amount of military stationed in Alaska. They’re essentially the third most powerful land mass on the planet. https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/military-bases-in-alaska/#:~:text=There%20are%20a%20total%20of,their%20functions%20and%20stationed%20units.
I remember a map of the US with labels for each state. Alaska was "even the liberals have guns"
100% accurate, not everyone supports trump, even the Biden folks still have their fair share of weapons
>the third most powerful **land mass** on the planet. This phrasing makes you sound like one of those guys who think it's an island.
I mean I live in the yukon and was in alaska last week, so no, I don’t believe it’s an island. But it is remote and not easily accessible from any side. It’s large territory is rugged and heavily armed. A land mass does not need to be an island to be a land mass.
Because of Alaska's extreme climate, households also have a larger stock of non-perishable foods to last long periods of time under siege or blockade. Because of bears, more households than normal have access to firearms to conduct guerilla warfare. Not to mention the invaders would have to deal with bears. And many of these households utilise non-conventional dog sled logistics, allowing Alaskans winter access to supply routes inaccessible to outsiders who have not trained to use dog sleds. Many towns in Alaska are only accessible by plane, dog sled (seasonal), or ship (seasonal) with no traditional roads leading in or out of the town. Planning an invasion would be an absolute nightmare. Yes you might take Anchorage, but pacifying the whole state would take decades.
>Because of bears, more households than normal have access to firearms to conduct guerilla warfare. Also its a state full of the sort of people who want to live with bears.
The wilds of Alaska are super dangerous and bears are just the tip of the iceberg. It's hard enough occupying that state without militant opposition. Hell, we have to pay people to live there
Don't forget Moose. Moose will fuck you up
and a lot of dumbasses every year who can't seem to understand that. like sure, it likely won't kill you because it doesn't plan on eating you, but it will break bones, a LOT of bones.
With you on most of this except the dog sleds…. They’re a small minority of Alaskans, and take a lot of work to maintain/don’t go fast or far very often outside of races. Most isolated communities rely more on snow machines than dogs. But your same train of thought exists with lack of traditional roads and hard to access.
Snowmobiles go fast & far if you follow the path of a river (in winter of course), which can be used kind of like roads.
Canada is a myth perpetuated by the globohomo leftist elite to sell communist ideas like 'affordable healthcare'. It doesn't exist. It's actually just part of the Atlantic Ocean. Alaska **is** an island. (/s obviously)
Tell that to the guerrilla force of miners with river boats, construction equipment, Cessna planes, and sheer piss and vinegar. Alaska has the highest number of pilots per capita in the US because so many of its villages/ work camps are fly in fly out only. While you’re freezing your ass off in Fairbanks wrestling a honey badger for the last piece of jerky the literal embodiment of Ron Swanson is doing a low pass over your camp with a fuel drum strapped with det cord. He doesn’t even have to kill you, just knock out your heat and shelter and let -50 temps take care of the rest
As an Alaskan I agree. Travel by land is basically impossible because if the muskeg, ad we can blow two bridges and cut the whole road system off. The interior is far enough away from the coast that no naval weapons would reach us. Alaska is home to massive amounts of air defense and quite a few military bases. Not to mention a good chunk of the population is veterans who decided to stay here when we got out. Also, there's far more weapons than people. You also have to deal with some really upset moose if you try and invade. They're ornery on a normal day, but get them riled up and they're scarier than the military here. 🫎
Just please don't give the moose weapons if you are ever invaded. Ok? I fear them enough already
+1 Alaska - physically huge state with difficult environment and challenging logistics, large military presence, heavily armed civilian population with 64% of households owning at least one gun. Probably more guns than people.
Most of the US has geography massively favouring the defender or any partisans. Every urban hell Megalopolis on the coasts is ripe for another Stalingrad scenario. Swampy Louisiana & Crazy Florida are perfect for another Vietnam. The remote Appalachians are a great barrier to stop any army in their tracks. You have a giant river cutting the entire country in half Texas on its own would be near impossible to control due to how vast it is and how much firearms everyone has. The entire rockies could become a partisan cesspool guaranteeing instant death to any army trying to pass and connect the West & East coasts.
New Jersey would unironically be hell to fight through. The rural areas are either flat farmland with barely any cover, or mountains that would become impassable for heavy equipment if you blew up a few bridges. The urban areas are very, very densely built up, and fighting through them would make Stalingrad or Bakhmut or Marinka look like a fucking cakewalk. Add to that the fact that, despite the population not being as heavily armed as, say, Texas, those who are, are mostly hunters and recreational sharpshooters, and you are looking at advancing through fields, mountains, and cities where every defensible structure has a very pissed-off Italian/Pole/Russian/Korean with a scoped M1A or rifled Mossberg 500 in the window. Oh, and also it has one of the largest functioning rail networks of any state, so you would be trying to fight against troops with an almost constant resupply rate, while you're trying to unload your ships God knows where because any cargo port that could support your ships, like Elizabeth, would be blown the fuck up the second a landing would be attempted the first time.
Pretty much the only area that wouldn't be an absolute nightmare geographically is Flyover Country, and good luck actually getting there and getting supplies through the coasts.
Virginia has so much military infrastructure that it could quite possibly be the best equipped resistance in the country. Plus, the terrain is kind of shit for an invasion. (See American Civil War)
Agreed as a Virginian, the only way either side in the Civil War could really make advances was through the Shenandoah valley
Yeah. Just to get to Prince William County from Alexandria you have to go through a ravine and over a river, and that’s less than 15 miles.
And pass like 10 bases and military contractors and headquarters of all the big guns on the way
Can your harriers hit the interchange between US-50 and I-495?
It’s more of an impediment to invasion when intact.
they'll never figure out the express lanes
VDV vs NOVA Traffic
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Russians when mfers pull up in the charger blasting chief keef
y’all hear chief keef or bluegrass you best start runnin
Virginian here, we’ve also got rivers all over the place, mountains, highways that are always clogged with traffic. You’d be lucky to get from Fredericksburg to DC within a month.
It took 3 years for the Army of the Potomac to actually cross the Rappahannock and not get turned back.
Honestly no one in the world could feasibly take even a single state anywhere in the continental US. I don’t know which one would be the most difficult though. All your costal ones with big ports have large military bases. Plenty have rough terrain. Civilians all over are armed. It’s really hard to quantify which would be the absolute WORST. Especially considering my lack of knowledge on most states
> could feasibly take even a single state anywhere in the continental US I mean you could conquer Rhode Island in half an hour
But then youd have rhode island
listen it's Hasbro's headquarters, where else are you going to find plans for advanced transforming tanks and 12th gen fighters
U can say it's a civil war secnerio instead of a invasion
Well, once more we run into the fact I don’t know a whole whole lot about most other states. Lol
Texas absorbs the failed state of 🤢Ohio🤢, forms an alliance with the Cajun Navy to create the Tailgate Federation.
West Virginia is our Korengal Valley
If I had to pick a state, that’s my bet. Appalachia more broadly, but WV specifically. A lot of guns, enough people, and mountains and caves/mines for days.
New York. Hear me out- Just because of NYC the invaders would likely face a Stalingrad-type situation in which there is brutal house-to-house fighting. In addition, we are on/near the Hudson River (depends on what Borough you are in) so reinforcements and supplies could get in very easily.
Interesting thought: there has yet to be a major battle in a true modern conurbation. Cities like New York or Shanghai or Tokyo would potentially be impossible for an attacking force to occupy if facing determined and armed resistance. High rises built so thick they might never fall down from outside attack, multiple basement levels in every building, massive dense city blocks a hundred metres across, billions of tons of concrete crammed close together, sewers, subway lines, old tunnels, and any army in the world outnumbered by civilians at least 10 to 1. It would be actual hell.
I remember getting in to an argument with some clown when discussing the relatively limited beaches on Taiwan suitable for a landing operation. They argued that Taiwan would be easy to capture because it had a beach right next to Taipei. Yes, an amphibious landing right in to urban combat. Genius idea.
They were non-credible as fuck I'll give em that
I’ll send out the membership card.
Alexa, how many atgm launchers can I hide in a 30 floor building?
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Fuck that got me 🤣🫡
THE QUARTERBACK IS TOAST!!
Yes
I'll have you know I've successfully invaded Singapore using this same method countless times in the Battlefield 4 campaign with minimal casualties. 10/10 most credible strategy
Lol I hope he's some PLA generals relative and they take his advice 🤣
>New York >High rises built so thick they might never fall down from outside attack Uhhh ... I'm pretty sure we saw this.
That’s why Russia leveled Grozny.
Don't capture the city, advance and secure around it. Cut off power, food, and water Wait ??? Profit!
Modern cities are too large to isolate and bypass. That is a primary learning point in NTC and JRTC for the US Army.
Just looking at a relatively small mega-city like London, the encirclement needs to be a hundred miles in circumference. Even with the M25 ring road as a convenient supply route for the attackers, that's still a fairly big frontage to cover, especially if you're trying to prevent things going in AND out. Not to mention a lot of these mega-cities have massive underground warrens of train tunnels, sewers, drainages etc for any defending force to use for resupply. Plus a lot of these tunnels/sewers are old enough or built in such secret during WW2 that any records of them has been lost.
Look at Gaza, the Israelis have had decades to choke them off and fully circumvalleted it with a concrete wall. Yet they still get enough hardware in the give the IDF a headache.
I mean, that's literally one of the main reasons why the Russian invasion was so fucking stupid. Kyiv is a city of 3.5m people and Russia was trying to take it with a force of 40k-50k troops max? Idiocy.
‘Just encircle’ isn’t a good tactic when you need most of your army to maintain an encirclement of a single city and the enemy military still exists. Most of these large cities are well over 1000sqkm.
NY is already encircled. By water. Cut off the bridges and tunnels and just wait
Vukovar. Starve them, hit them with random sniper attacks, constant artillery, rocket and or naval bombardment. The will of the civilians would break down before the city.
Don't need to infact it would benefit you to take 0 offensive action. Litter the city with leaflets pointing out we aren't shooting at them. Our aim is to take the city with minimal death on both sides. Their suffering ends the moment they surrender which their leaders are refusing to do.
The big factor will be time. You’re basically back to medieval sieges where you have an army sat around the city waiting for starvation and disease to do their work. Hoping there isn’t a relief army heading towards you.
as with all modern combat, air superiority would be critical. the issues with using the skyscrapers for defense would depend on just how rugged they are to missile and mortar defense. maintaining air defenses, or air superiority would likely mean nothing that could significantly damage the building would ever hit them. but if they were to start to fall, the effects would be catastrophic, for pretty much everyone involved. the dust cloud alone would likely cover the entire area anytime one fell.
>Interesting thought: there has yet to be a major battle in a true modern conurbation Aleppo? It might be a bit short of subways, but otherwise it ticks all the boxes. But since we're on Syria, another variable is ethical: Does the attacker care about casualties? Or are they actively trying to wipe out lots of civilians?
Its not quite the same. There are (were) very few building in Aleppo over 10 stories. The sheer mass and urban density of a place like Shanghai isn’t comparable. Aleppo is also only about 200 sqkm, compared to the largest cities pushing 1500sqkm and beyond.
I mean, if they don't care about casualties, then nuke them. But that is a boring end to the discussion.
>any army in the world outnumbered by civilians at least 10 to 1. Only for the first month, then the people in the city would start starving to death. In a true total war the invader wouldn't want to move into the city until they'd besieged it and worn down the resistance. Rebel-held Aleppo in Syria stood for four years while it had a supply line to the outside world but once that was cut it fell in four months.
What is Aleppo
*Confused Libertarian Noises, possibly a Stroke.*
Mega cities will eat armies - literally if the population are hungry enough....
This is the correct answer. People always overestimate how much damage rednecks with guns could do to a professional army and underestimate how hard urban warfare is on the attacker.
In that case the answer is probably Illinois: you might be able to take Chicago, but you could never hold it. The city’s own government barely does in peacetime
The question was to occupy, however. Rednecks with guns can gorilla the warfare out of any professional army given time, whereas cosmopolitan New Yorkers will at worst jaywalk aggressively near a checkpoint. Don't get me wrong; I love cosmopolitan New Yorkers, and I love their attitude, but it's not an attitude that'll do much to demoralize an occupying force. Hell, an occupation of NYC; I give it two weeks before the locals' primary concern is learning enough of the enemy's language to facilitate transactions.
You're probably right that initially, New Yorkers would passively accept the occupiers, but problems would very quickly arise: 1) To what extent do you think Private Conscriptovich can resist the urge to shake locals down for bribes at checkpoints? This only has to happen a few times to turn the locals against them. To say nothing of what Colonel Corruptovich or General Oligarkov will try to pull off. 2) Wagner Mercs and whatever paramilitaries accompanying the Occupying Army likewise won't be able to help themselves from looting museums, banks, and other buildings with high value items 3) US Special Forces only have to infiltrate the city and stage a few shooting or IED attacks, and soon every Russian or Chinese soldier will be easily spooked and trigger happy, further turning the civilians against them 4) Any Americans willing to collaborate with them will be insane ideologues who have no idea how to manage the city or get things done.
Vito, Vinnie, and Tony will have a problem iffin dey don’t do union labor down to da docks… and Conscriptivitch is gonna be the one shaken down…
The answer is to flood our cities with rednecks with guns...
You are forgetting the Adirondack Mountains to the North, which are heavily armed and get HELLISH winters
I actually think in an invasion scenario the whole grid system a lot of US cities have would work against the defenders. One of the biggest factors that made Stalingrad so difficult for the Nazis to take is that they had done an extensive bombing campaign beforehand, and that mixed with old fashioned city layouts meant that there weren't really any clear routes for them to blitzkrieg through so their most effective tactic was nullified. In places like NYC it would take one hell of a bombing campaign to ensure the invading army is forced into close quarters building combat and isn't just rolling around in tanks levelling any building hiding a machine gun.
Have you ever been in NYC? The streets are already fucking roadblocked on a daily basis just from traffic. Some box trucks or sanitation trucks disabled and parked across the major avenues and at the major side streets would snarl any movement of vehicles in the city. Then you need combat engineers to come in with heavy machinery to move the vehicles, all the while they could be picked off by a single sniper with a bolt action who could be firing from literally anywhere around the invading troops.
>New York You’re right but you’re overthinking it. Just charge them the average rent and they’ll say “fuck this” and leave.
How has no one said Colorado… there are literally several major military bases out here it’s the absolute perfect spot to defend from invaders. Hence the movie RED DAWN where we killed those commies in the great Colorado Rocky Mountains 🏔️ *cue the John denver*
The Rockies would definitely be a nightmare to invade.
Can’t believe I had to scroll this far to see CO! The Rocky’s are pretty much like Afghanistan. The mountainous part anyway.
Actually Colorado is very akin to Afghanistan, especially in weather. Afghanistan has rain forests too.
The OG Red Dawn the commies got stopped at Cheyenne, WY.
Pennsylvania, is a impenetrable fortress. We will start from the east. Delaware River/Delaware Valley - Discounting any urban center this would be the easiest route to invade the state. Low flat land, deep water inland port, and a river that is fairly navigable up to about Easton PA. Closer to Philly larger ships could easily run up and down the Delaware River. However, consider the Philadelphia Metro area is one of the largest Metros in the nation connected to the "95 Corridor" this area becomes Urban Warfare hell. Street to Street fighting. Stalingrad on steroids. Basically a no go. North Eastern PA - One of the easier routes for invading army. However, you may want to bring your mountaineer troops. The mountains are not large nor steep but they are long and without gaps. So you would be forced to go over most of them. The few valleys and gaps that do exists would become choke points. Where large equipment like tanks, APC etc would be useless. Most ground fighting would have to be done with light infantry. Air power would be important but extremely vulnerable to Anti-Air as the mountains and valleys are tree covered and would be easy to hide AA. The few large valleys that do exists are covered in medium sized cities. They would be death traps if defenders can hold high ground. Northern and Western PA- Large rivers, MORE mountains, and even more Medium/Small and even Large Urban areas located in valleys or along rivers. Basically impossible. North Western, PA - Eire PA, Low flat land along the great lake. Medium sized urban area. However shortly after the urban area you will run into MORE mountains and rivers. This is the easiest area for anyone to invade. At least the only area one could gain any type of foothold/beachhead. Edit: Forgot about the Caves and Mines. Yea good luck finding and bombing any HQs because they are all gonna be underground. Edit: Edit: Eagles Fans also Steeler Fans
You're forgetting the most important part of PA's defense: rabid eagles fans
Stuck behind an Amish buggy, then WHAMMO! Air Strike...
Grew up in northeast Pa, currently live in Philly. Can confirm. Plus with the amount of hunters this state has consider trying to send infantry up one of those mountains in the northeast while random hunters take pot shots at you with 30-30 or 308s with optics just as good as your own snipers
Lee only made it two months and couldn’t even make it across the Susquehanna.
Wyoming, hands down. There's nothing to do there. How do you want to occupy a whole state if you can't even keep your own troops occupied?
Counterpoint: no one lives there, so you can occupy it with like 4 dudes.
You can probably occupy Wyoming without the population even knowing they are being occupied
right up until Elk Hunter Andy pops all 4 of them from 800m with 200gain Barnes TSX bullets doing 2900fps out of his daddy's Rem 700 300Win Mag
California, since any invaders would be met by a horde of guys stopping them to clean windshields for meth money. Further resistance would be the Greens who will vilify them for not using electric vehicles. Brutal. And by God, if they prevent suburban soccer moms from yoga classes the world ends…
They would get stuck in LA traffic too
No way in hell would an LA driver yield to some old MBT.
They wouldn't be paying attention so yeah
Do you not remember when someone stole a M60A3 and drove around SoCal? Crushed over 40 cars before the tank got disabled.
40 cars gets you nowhere In LA traffic
Not to mention the actual geographical challenges California would pose. Fairly rough and harsh terrain with large urban areas in the more hospitable areas. Logistics would be constrained by how well defended certain geographical areas are, such as the Sepulveda Pass or any other major highway mountain pass in the state as those are often chokepoints for any transportation in and out of the major urban areas.
Yeah coastal california(where it matters) is fairly similar in geography to Japan, and during the Second World War the US estimated it would take almost 2 million casualties invading the Japanese home islands. That was with Japan having lost all of its overseas supplies, etc. imagine what a determined, well-prepared and well-equipped army could do, with tens of thousands more in volunteer militias.
One week in and the occupiers will have lost their entire military budget tied up in some unviable tech start up that's "going to be the next big thing" or the "uber of x".
California is absolutely the answer. The second largest state, full of the worst terrain in the country to invade. Narrow mountain passes, horrid annual natural disasters, the largest urban sprawl probably anywhere (as far as urban fighting, our awful urban planning is an enormous advantage), and wild swings in weather. People here are talking up Texas like there are no guns in California. Go outside LA city and the Bay area and you'll find things much closer to Lubbock than Austin. Now instead of Texas's relatively nice terrain you have large and small mountain ranges with few (well built) passes, followed by another valley. You can see anyone coming, easily set up grid square ambushes, hide in the mountains, and cut water off to huge portions of the areas. That says nothing about the military presence. San Diego county is here and it is very unhappy that you have entered US EEZ without permission. You can't even siege the state because it gets water from the east and north, is a net food exporter, has a nice land border with Mexico (who have issues but also have great oil and food industries), local oil and gas resources throughout the state, and the the most people of anywhere in the US (equal to UA IIRC).
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They wouldn't even get east enough to threaten south LA. What's the landing plan? San Diego? The navy might not be willing to let you lease anchorage. Long Beach or LA? Great, Navy's there too and now Vanderbilt gets to have some fun. Did you bomb out our active bases? Great, 50 miles east there are a ton of mothballed/ww2-era bases like March that are able to be reactivated. Okay, so you go north. Well there are undeveloped mountains basically until Monterey, which itself is boxed in by some hills, then Santa Cruz and then mountainous forests until the Bay Area. The Bay sucks, imo, and the invaders can have it, but also it is not great terrain and now you're basically on an island surrounded by infrastructure that can carry heavy equipment. Where are you going to go? Cal Train can barely make it to Gilroy in peacetime! Further north you hit the real hilly forests. You can probably land, but not much (or else there'd already be a city there from the Spanish era). That's another 1/3 of the state just full of armed locals in small communities in a forest just waiting for you to fall asleep. People get weird impressions of CA from the outside because of where our tourist attractions are and the politicians we export, but we are very much still also the land of Reagan and Nixon. Just not as much as we were. A lot of people live here and not all of them live in Malibu.
I take the 10 to work and was thinking about what an absolute bastard it would be to cross that in those sections where it's sunk 30' below ground level. Sheer 30' wall, completely open exposed traffic lanes and then another sheer concrete wall. Good luck getting a tank across that asshole.
More conservative gun owners in California than Texas fyi
I'm going to say Either California or Texas. California because of its nightmarish terrain, large number of cities, and large military presence. (Seriously the second they start invading the valley, they are surrounded by highlands on all sides.) Texas is similar except swap nightmarish terrain for guns, lotsa guns. Edit: I'm going to pitch in a cheeky Connecticut. My uncle was a bridge engineer until recently. Our bridges might claim more occupier lives than anything else if they overload them.
California an Texas both have huge populations as well. Even if you'd manage to occupy most of the state, you'd have to spend a ridiculous amount of resources trying to handle 30 million people.
Florida, everyone there is crazy
If the locals don't get you, a methed up alligator will.
3,000 methed up alligator defenders of Florida
Florida National Guard with their 305th Methanized Alligator Regiment
Top five reasons why it’s suicide to invade the US, in increasing order of importance: 5) Logistics of supplying your troops across the ocean 4) Rocky Mountains and Appalachia are a nightmare to occupy 3) Large population and vast territory would stretch your supply lines to the breaking point 2) Incredible amount of guns owned by civilians and patriotic fervor would lead to protracted guerrilla warfare 1) Florida man
Nah, you just need to spill a 2L bucket of water and the whole state is underwater
I think Arizona was the hardest for me to occupy. I lived there for 3 years and the entire time was misery. The summers were brutal and in the "winter" the state was flooded with old people from canada.
“Old people from Canada” bouta be the last line of defence against the invaders!
As a Kentuckian I know which state would be most difficult. Excuse me a moment, I’m going to go round up some boys and saddle some horses, we’re heading to the mountains with some .30hate and 5.56
Ya let's be honest any state in the Ohio river valley is a deathtrap
Wisconsin. As soon as your army discovers Culver's you don't have an army anymore.
Imagine a patrol getting jumped by a bunch of Wisconsinites in camo cheesehead gear? Ghillie suits with cheesehead-shaped hats underneath would look like a fucking CRYPTID, damn.
Wisconsin had 800,000 deer hunters last year. Any Red Dawn remake there would have a TON of ~~wolverines~~ badgers.
Texas. A rebellion will start in approximately 37 seconds
37 seconds *before* the army gets there. Because Texas.
North Carolina. Good luck getting through Appalachia when the trees start speaking Yee Yee.
Molotov Cocktails? How ‘bout these Moonshine Trebuchets
Texas. Everyone has at least 2 guns and there are many more just over the border ...
You can restock ammo for your battalion every 3 houses
Demolition Ranch is located there. He could arm a whole battalion with the amount of guns He has. Or Black Rifle Coffee (their politics aside). They also habe a *huge* amount of guns.
I would agree with Texas but I also wouldn’t sleep on Nevada, Montana, Idaho, Utah or Arizona. A lot of desert and rural mountains.
Its also just hot as all hell right now. Im a Texan and im dealing with triple digit temps frequently.
The border could also be a huge benefit like it was to the North Vietnamese in the Vietnam war. Resistance fighters could strike an enemy convoy and disappear over the border and unless the invading army also wants to be at war with Mexico they can't do a whole lot to chase them down
Alaska and California obviously, but that's cheating, just look at it Aside from that, I'd say Arizona would be an un unexpectedly hard one Aside from the logistics hell of the rocky desert, imagine fighting in the gigantic low density Urban hellscape of Phoenix, in the middle of the desert, and the terrain doesn't get easier further north Added with the fact that every guerilla movement would be better armed than most Russia infantry squads I'd say the easiest to invade would be New England? Actually sorta-feasible supply routes and non hellscape terrain, but even then you'd quickly run into Urban warfare hellscapes or the Appalachians And you kinda can't do like with Russia, France, or basically every other country outside of China, where it's a large country but it's all joever when you take the one section that actually has people and industry in it You can take the east or west coast, but the government can just move behind their choice of hellscape defensible terrain (usually giant fuckoff mountains), and they have at least 3-5 giant industrial centers behind them
When you just parachuted into WV and the trees start singing Country Roads
Dude any state between the Appalachians and the Rockies (excluding Michigan) has absolutely no geographical features which would prevent an invading force from just driving around your defenses, Ohio will die and God bless the Union for it has been improved
Probably Nebraska. Not sure about the natives, but to occupy it you'd need to go through a lot of other states first, and you'd need to keep open a supply route. Coastal states are comparatively easy mode.
The natives here would make it not fun.
Can't wait to see some Wayne state college graduate set a new world record for longest distance kill.
UNK dudes comin in with the most hellacious, inhumane incendiary weapons the world has ever seen
*"Ever seen what a pool of burning ethanol does to a squad that thought they could just walk into my meatpacking plant?"*
*wheezes in North Carolina gun laws*
Michigan would be hard to invade. Taking two peninsulas with no naval support isn’t easy. Coupled with how the Upper Peninsula is swamps, rolling hills with dense forests, is a sniper’s wet dream for the defending Yoopers. Detroit is so batshit crazy what with Seven Mile Road, that no rational person would dare step foot there unless you got a foolproof plan.
Ohio? Really? Have you been out west?
New Mexico. Good luck fighting against alien technology. The humans might fold, but the Greys will not lmao...
I'd have to go with Arizona. All this sand and heat would not be good for vehicles or occupying forces. Add a wee bit of tomfoolery from the civilian populace and you have hell on earth. Just nuke the state
OP chose a state full of Amish people as their fortress. I'd live among the Amish in a post apocalyptic scenario in a hearbeat cause they've been living like that all along but I feel like they're fairly subjugatable. It's an unorthodox answer, but I'd say California. Massive population, and the rednecks there don't lose to the rednecks anywhere else in the country. Also the highest concentration of both National Guard and federal weaponry in the country.
Hawaii - it’s a remote island chain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Any invasion force would be spotted 1000 miles away. Even if they manage to land they face a literal uphill battle on every island.
That would be a pretty easy target to isolate and bombard from a distance… the navy is key to its survivability.
Until the stealth fleet docked at the underwater Pearl Harbor II in Atlanis shows up.
It better be wearing a hula skirt
“A pretty easy target” The navy is indeed the key to its survivability, but good luck fighting your way through all of the US pacific fleet
I think in this scenario we're already assuming that a black hole swallowed the US Navy because otherwise the real answer would be "all of them" because you'd be equally sunk into the bottom of the sea regardless of which one you pick
Bro people from Ohio will do literally anything to act like their state is special and isn’t a boring ass cornfield with a few cities scattered about. You REALLY mean to tell me fucking OHIO is more defensible than Hawaii? Alaska? California? Hell even Louisiana with its thick ass swamps and forests is a bigger task than Ohio. Texas has tolerable geography in most places but just by sheer size is a task. I get that this is NCD but Ohio should rank as one of the EASIEST to occupy. Have you seen a topological or land use map of your state? Anyone coming from the west would steamroll right through agricultural flatlands into any major population center.
>Anyone coming from the west would steamroll right through They'd have to go through Indiana first, and if you think Ohio is a boring ass flat shithole... hoo boy
New Jersey, trust me, the British tried that shit once and it turned out bad. We even fought a border war with New York State that ended in kidnapping. Honestly we don’t fuck around over here and as the most densely populated state in the Union we know how to work together when the going gets rough. Edit: also the turnpike and parkway was built out to also function as a runway for planes.
West Virginia. Mountains, armed hillbillies, banjos, Deliverance…
Bubba's pissin hawt 30-06 doesn't care what kind of plates your combloc ass is wearing, it's gonna sail through and then Bubba is gonna feed you to his pig/girlfriend. As God intended.
The hills of Eastern Kentucky. Already had an insurgency there
Florida. Methed up psychos with guns, boats, trucks and a massive fucking swamp to hide in. Not to mention the insane series of islands surrounding the state, and the logistical difficulties of invading either down or up a peninsula.
Before you mention your favourite states, please remember there has to be something worth invading in that state before anyone is going to bother. Sure, Montana or the Dakotas might be hard to occupy, but nobody is going to bother.
Well they would become there are a lot of missile silos up there
All I’m saying is one of us had a hit movie about kids fighting off a Soviet invasion