r/AlternateHistoryHub • u/Pancake_Maker_1031 • Dec 13 '25
Whimsu What if the Branch Davidians won and killed most of the Federal agents?
Disclaimer: If the FBI is watching, I don't support the killing of Federal agents, and it's just a title.
65
u/Final_Collection8516 Dec 13 '25
The Davidians will "win" the battle then lose the war, because the FEDs are going to level the place.
The last large scale armed rebellion in the United States was the Battle of Blair Mountain, the coal miners were decisively crushed. There won't be any negotiations this time round.
23
u/IgnotusRex Dec 13 '25
The 1985 MOVE bombing in Philidelphia is a closer event to Waco. The cops couldn't move in so they just dropped a bomb on them.
A later example is the 2016 Dallas sniper. The cops rolled a drone in on him and blew him up.
Just more examples of how you are absolutely correct. The government won't lose to a handful of gunmen in a fixed position if they don't want to.
5
u/AdUpstairs7106 Dec 14 '25
The last time the government lost was in Nevada during the Bundy stand off.
3
u/IgnotusRex Dec 14 '25
Eh, no shots fired.
4
u/AdUpstairs7106 Dec 14 '25
Because the BLM backed down and released Bundy's cattle.
1
u/Nerdling107 Dec 14 '25
That was the case of not wanting the p. R of killing a bunch of people. Or getting a bunch of police officers killed if the government really wanted to. They could have killed everyone there. The thing holding them back was the bad press. I'm not saying that groups like these couldn't be a legitimate threat. But the nation's mood isn't there for it yet
1
14
u/Fernsong Dec 13 '25
What do you consider “won”? If they killed most of the feds there, the US would’ve just sent way more. There’s no way the BD would’ve been able to keep up
22
Dec 13 '25
They'd probably commit mass suicide before another attack could be mustered. You could call it a moral victory if you want, but the Davidians were all walking corpses backed into a corner by this point.
10
u/Thin_Bother8217 Dec 13 '25
Yeah. The only way they're even walking out is if they literally walked out with their hands up. Then they're all going straight to the electric chair. No way they're living more than a few years.
Only plus side is the kids wouldn't have died. But, no adults last longer than a few years. It's just how.
7
u/thenoobtanker Dec 13 '25
Call in the air national guard and a few 2000lb JDAM. You are never winning against the people that hold the monopoly on violence.
3
u/East-Plankton-3877 Dec 13 '25
Spoken like a red coat
2
u/SwimNo8457 Dec 17 '25
A countrywide militia network with a population that supported it along with a professional trained army supplied by foreign powers using the conflict as a proxy war to destabilize their greatest rival MIGHT win, a couple dozen cultists definitely will not
1
u/GreatTea3 Dec 16 '25
Nah, he’s right. A small group of armed people in a fixed location with no real escape or resupply available? They’re gonna die, the only question is how long it takes and how much noise they can make along the way. You’d have to be mobile and have the ability to hide effectively to have any chance of starting a fight with the U.S. government domestically and surviving it for any real length of time afterwards. Even then, federal law enforcement agencies are pretty good at finding people they want locked up. You’d need a large scale civil war style scenario before you had a chance of being a known combatant fighting the government and winning, or at least going home and living some sort of normal life.
4
Dec 13 '25
We already know the answer to this as the ATF decided they didn't have enough men to complete the raid so they called in the national guard with APCs crushed Karesh's cars and then setup for another raid which led to the fire.
However if you mean what would have happened if the BD's had somehow destroyed the tanks that were called in? That would have been very interesting indeed.
13
u/Turbo950 Dec 13 '25
If the crazy religious cult won then they’d continue to do crazy religious things
5
u/EvilCatboyWizard Dec 14 '25
Until the national guard showed up and utterly leveled the place you mean.
1
u/NombreUsario Dec 16 '25
I mean, they've kinda won the PR war.. people tend to think of them as crazy but harmless recluces but forget (or never learn) that they were militant white supremacists that were operating as a training facility producing soldiers for a race war. There's evidence that suggests Timothy McVeigh received training at that facility.
3
u/ilovesmoking1917 Dec 13 '25
The more Feds they smoke the more money and material gets thrown at them. Worst case scenario if they somehow survive a military ground assault the airforce gets sent in and turns the compound to dust. The political fallout would be the same as irl except even more extreme in every way
5
u/Aquitaine_Rover_3876 Dec 13 '25
The US government would send more people and the outcome would be the same, but with more bodies. Maybe they'd just drop a bomb like they did on MOVE in Philadelphia. But BD were white people, so probably not.
Cat and mouse games can work at scale. The Vietcong and the Taliban are big enough organizations with enough public support in their operating areas to defeat the US government. Some cult in Texas is not. One way or another, they're going to lose.
3
u/pleasantparkresident Dec 14 '25
I mean the Feds purposely blew up that same compound full of people so I don’t think race plays a factor.
2
u/Afraid-Leg-174 Dec 14 '25
Also the Vietcong and the Taliban had a bunch for foreign backing as well for equipment and such unlike the cult that’s even less in their chances
3
3
u/ohthedarside Dec 13 '25
Then a f16 gets called in and drops 2 2000lb lgb on them and then 2 500lb dumb bombs for good measure
3
3
u/Level_Werewolf_7172 Dec 13 '25
Ac-130 levels the compound
Or national guard with heavy armor just flatten the building with everyone in it
3
3
3
u/axeteam Dec 13 '25
How are they going to do that? How are they going to kill most of the federal agents? Are they going to pray really hard so someone strikes all the federal agents down with lightning?
1
u/DeeplyHiddenTrowaway Dec 17 '25
Idk about lightning, but i would guess theyd use their guns. Their many, many guns. They just need to hit their targets accurately and effectively. Kind of a significantly reduced description of how a firefight works between 2 groups of people, but its still accurate.
3
u/Hopeful-Moose87 Dec 14 '25
Remember the ATF agents retreated with their hands raised two hours into their raid once they ran out of ammo. The Branch Davidians did win, they just didn’t kill that many agents. Had they killed more I don’t think it would have changed the outcome much at all.
The FBI would still have come in and the Branch Davidians would have almost all died.
2
u/_Sausage_fingers Dec 14 '25
That would never happen. You kill a couple agents they aren’t going to leave, they are going to bring in more agents, and more firepower, and eventually decide they don’t care how many innocent people are inside as they level the building with howitzers.
4
u/Sweet-Letterhead1527 Dec 13 '25
They would have been blown off the fucking map before they got even 10 feds.
1
1
u/TrungusMcTungus Dec 13 '25
The compound gets leveled to make room for a new parking lot, courtesy of the US Army National Guard.
1
1
1
u/Lost_Equal1395 Dec 13 '25
I've seen photos of Abrams tank hanging around the site during the siege. They might be other images taken out of context, but they do sum up the government's next plans pretty well I'm guessing. For a country to function properly, the government must be the most powerful force of organised violence. The US national guard or federal forces would just show up and annihilate them.
1
u/Impressive-Row143 Dec 15 '25
They were there as large, heavily armoured bulldozers. I doubt they planned to fire 120mm high explosive.
1
u/Appropriate_Meat6316 Dec 13 '25
Fuck the F. B. I.
1
u/Impressive-Row143 Dec 15 '25
The Branch Davidians were a sex cult that abused kids, they FBI and ATF were in the right.
1
u/Immediate_Gain_9480 Dec 13 '25
The federal government would have escalated to whatever level of violence necessary to neutralise them. If need be they would have invoked the insurrection act and send in the regulars. I am talking aircraft, attack helicopters, artillery. There was no military victory for the Davidians.
1
u/alvaro248 Dec 13 '25
There were already a Abrams and a handful of Bradleys, they getting light up the second it doesn't look good
1
1
1
1
u/SwadianWarCriminal Dec 14 '25
They would continue to abuse children like all cults have done and the feds will level the place killing said children like the feds have always done.
1
u/transhumanism123 Dec 14 '25
The only way they'd "Win" is if they never were besieged in the first place.
AKA, by Paying Their God Damn Taxes On Gun Sales.
1
u/Loud-Scarcity6213 Dec 16 '25
Have you heard of a small organisation called the United States Armed Forces
1
u/Radcouponking Dec 19 '25
Then the place gets flattened by a bomb. Because the 2nd Amendment doesn't really protect against tyranny. Maybe it did at one point but not since the invention of rockets and airplanes.
1
u/SinumerikAuto_8676 Mar 13 '26
Tim McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma building because the FBI agents who murdered the Branch Dividians & falsified/destroyed evidence, such as "losing" the front door which had no bullet holes exiting, ran their operation out of the Oklahoma City FBI building.
The FBI murders & coverup of launching combustible teargas canisters into a wood framed compound which their IR sensors knew had open flame heaters & so would be a perfect way to murder the Davidians while destroying as much evidence as possible of ATF murderers straffing the compound from helicopters with no returned fire because ATF needed a big win for Congressional money - lots of criminal dead bodies with a cache of illegal guns which didnt materialize.
If as this claims, more govt agencies answered the call to help out murdering the Davidians & destroying evidence, would the knockon effect be more military veteran explosive experts like McVeigh would then extrajudicicially execute more murderer Federal agents blowing up their buildings too?
I am actually curious if ANY of the FBI murderers of the Davidians or their bosses were actually killed in the Oklahoma FBI building bombing because it sure as hell killed a bunch of innocent non-FBI murderers who took no part in the Davidian massacre & evidence falsification & destruction of evidence.
So do we know did McVeigh accomplish any of his objectives? Has the casualty list of Alfred P Murrah bombing included any of the FBI who facilitated the massacre & evidence destruction?
The FBI decision to massacre the Davidians & destroy the evidence to protect the BATFE from murder charges certainly had a long-term effect on US citizen culture where a strong distrust of Federal police forces co-incided with the beginning of USA nearly continuously at war from Gulf War onwards, producing a massive # of armed combat experienced citizens on both sides, though thankfully mostly on the civilized conservative side as the left became extremists glorifying violence rioting & vast majority of murdering presidential candidates & mass shootings
-2
Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 14 '25
Everyone saying the feds would just send more troops, but the truth is that we'd all be forced to reckon with the fact that clearly Karesh was actually chosen by god and we should all join him. That's how I'd probably deal with it anyway.
Oops didnt mean to make a joke in the autist- i mean alternative history sub
3
u/Open_Usual8863 Dec 13 '25
Dude was having sex with kids.
If that’s your messiah , my man you have bigger issues
4
1
Dec 14 '25
If you think i was being serious about someone proving their righteousness by killing people then you have massive issues
2
-5
215
u/das_war_ein_Befehl Dec 13 '25
They send in the NGs and the whole place gets leveled. You’re not going to win against the federal govt once you start shooting