If the US government decided they wanted to eliminate me this instant and they knew my location how long would it take?

r/

Let’s suppose some very high-ranking official in the US decided I needed to be eliminated as soon as possible at any cost. Meaning they don’t care if civilian lives are lost or any surrounding steuctures damaged. They would put all available resources into eliminating me no matter the cost. What would be the logistics of them carrying it out? How long would it take?

Edit: for context I live in an average-sized eastern European city

Comments

  1. Champagne-Of-Beers Avatar

    Probably like 45 minutes.

    Or however long it takes a missile to fly over there, granted it doesn’t get shot down.

  2. soviman1 Avatar

    Considering you live in Eastern Europe, I would venture to guess within 24 hours, if it was considered that important.

    If they didnt care about collateral damage, probably the moment they locate your exact position, you would have a missile headed your way, so if you were not trying to hide, probably less than an hour.
    (due to the number of aircraft we currently have there already due to Russia’s proximity).

    I am mostly pulling these numbers out of my ass, but the US has quite an extensive intelligence network in Eastern Europe (mostly due to the Cold War) so if I am off it cant be by much.

  3. sneezhousing Avatar

    I assume under an hour. If there didn’t care about political blowback, civilians, or structures. Maybe two at most. US has bases in Europe they can easily get someone in the air and bombing a place in Eastern Europe.

  4. WittyUnwittingly Avatar

    Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles can strike their intended targets anywhere in the world within 30 minutes.

    Unless you want to discount any prep work that would be required to organize an operation to eliminate you (which could probably be executed in less than 30 minutes, but would take significantly more time to actually prep), I really don’t think you’re getting anyone is getting it done much faster than that.

    Mind you, this is assuming that the only technology that will be used against you is tech that we know about, which could be false, but I suppose it provides a good “upper limit” on the time it would take.

  5. rhomboidus Avatar

    Maybe 5-10 minutes to make the calls, 30 minutes flight time on the ICBM, and then kaboom.

  6. Thin-Rip-3686 Avatar

    They wouldn’t use a missile, guys.

    45 minutes and a blacked out van with plainclothes officers/agents and off you go.

  7. HairyDadBear Avatar

    If you actually been on their radar, I’m assuming you’re gone in an hour. Would probably try to capture first. Unless you managed to sneak into Russia or something

  8. Nickppapagiorgio Avatar

    ICBM’s and SLBM’s have a delivery time of about 30 minutes from launch(they go into space then come back down at speeds as high as mach 25). The problem being they carry the reality that they’ll bring a nuclear response back on the US. Cruise missiles can carry out this mission without that risk, but they’re not quite as fast, and dependent on a destroyer or submarine being within 2,500 kilometers of your location. If they are in range, they’re accurate enough to go through a specific bedroom window in your house while carrying a 900 kilogram warhead which would obliterate everything within a football field in any direction.

    How fast that would get to you would depend how far you were away from the launch point. Could be anywhere from minutes to about 3 hours.

  9. Problematic_Daily Avatar

    Google, how long does it take to warm up Jewish space laser?

  10. Uhmattbravo Avatar

    Google “ninja bomb” and try to enjoy a good night’s sleep.

  11. NurseDave8 Avatar

    Everyone is forgetting the little chip they would explode behind your left ear. Or is it right? I forget.

  12. Potential-Ganache819 Avatar

    For a US citizen it is actually insanely fast, under an hour:

    The US has a 60 second killchain so it’s really just a matter of how fast an asset can be in station. F15s can be up from their posts in PDX and booking at mach 2.5 within minutes if it’s that big of a priority and odds are, if you’re in the continental US you’re not more than a few hundred miles from your nearest fighter wing. Even if you got lucky and had an F/A-18 sent, the slowest stand off attack platform we have in service, you’re probably not more than 20-30 minutes from having something on station at your location if the US government reeeeaaaaally wanted it there. Part of this is because of our post 9/11 intercept readiness.

    If it was a ground asset thing and we were talking a more real world scenario like they thought you had a nuke in your basement, POTUS picks up a phone and informs FBI, call it a 1 minute phone call, and white house staff fax over the damning picture immediately… FBI calls a field office in your state, call it another 2 minute call, they send the evidence over same way… Field office can have the info and evidence in a few minutes. The longest part of the whole ordeal will be filling out some paperwork, but given the exigent circumstances your local PD or Sheriff will be informed verbally by another pretty brief few minutes phone call and they will probably wait to write up the papers until after you’re snatched. Once local PD has it, they get discretion on how to proceed but from there a warrant can be obtained in 10 minutes during business hours with sufficient evidence and exigent circumstances warranting expedited service. Once they have decided they’re ready to move, LA SWAT keeps a 5 minute readiness alert these days. The final order to get moving can get from POTUS to arresting officer within an hour. From there it’s a matter of physically driving to your location.

    Things never happen this fast because it would take a pretty crazy motivator to make the paperwork take a backseat, but if you pull a Timothy McVeigh and they get your name… Rest assured you will have a brand new pair of silver bracelets in literal minutes once they have a name and location.

    Now let’s add your eastern European address to the mix:

    Again, US killchain is 60 seconds. A plane can spot you, ask permission, and POTUS can give permission in real time minus a few seconds lag because of telecommunications relaying. If no asset is in the air, we have bases through Germany and Italy that specifically holds forward deployed assets that are meant to be the first line in the event Russia hit a breaking point and moved on Europe. Those assets have been reduced since the cold war resolved, but they were never removed and they have undergone continued upgrades to stay ready. So again… The slowest part of targeting you is simply the flight over. F-16s can leave Aviano in Italy in minutes, and they can carry nukes that Aviano has. It’s one of 5 European bases that carry American B61-12 guided nuclear devices, which the F-16C block 40 is capable of deploying. So you have been saved by a flight time of up to 1.5 hours (1,300mph and 1,700ish miles ferry range if I’m not mistaken)

  13. glittervector Avatar

    About two hours to carry out a reasonably accurate airstrike if using ground-based assets.

    Considering you live in a place where we might have armed aircraft already aloft, maybe more like 45 minutes if the right weapons are already in the air.

  14. XenoBiSwitch Avatar

    Fastest way and care about nothing else And how many lives are lost?

    Retarget a few ICBMs and bomb the whole area.

    Figure about 20 minutes to get authorizations, 10 minutes to retarget, about 30 minutes for nukes to arrive. So about an hour.

  15. Wild-Spare4672 Avatar

    It would probably be a bomb dropped from an airplane and would take maybe 30-60 minutes.

  16. blue13rain Avatar

    Do you have airplanes overhead being flown with computer assisted piloting? If yes then that company making the airplanes probably gets tax breaks for backdoor access to the software. If they really didn’t care about collateral, less than a minute if the wings don’t tear off. Then again that’s to try.

  17. Embarrassed_Flan_869 Avatar

    They’re not shooting a missle at you.

    A van will show up and you will disappear. Odds are, it will be a coordination between the US Gov’t and your country’s special police. Your neighbors may see some folks in military/police raid clothing.

  18. 547217 Avatar

    CIA will do what they call a “wet works” and make it look like an accident, for the most part and then classify it as sensitive information in the name of national security so that the local police won’t be able to pursue the investigation any further.

  19. CapitanianExtinction Avatar

    An ICBM takes maybe 20 mins.  Less if there’s a boomer cruising somewhere in the North Sea.

  20. SandsnakePrime Avatar

    If your caveats are used, literally hours if not tens of minutes. Zero collateral damage calculation required, zero authorization or read in required.

    The only differentiator here is authority level, i.e. who is giving the order.

    If top level authority, you could maybe still finish the Lord’s prayer.

    Target has a Must-Be-Elimanted marker, zero side risk tags. Flag nearest loaded up kill jockey to drop a bomb.

  21. Whatwasthatnameagain Avatar

    Probably about 20 minutes ago.

    Take care.

  22. SaikyouMegane Avatar

    adding to the question, say for example if the target is in Nepal which is between India and China can the US still send a missile there without violating/pissing those two countries airspace?

  23. bde959 Avatar

    Not long at all. Less than an hour, I’m sure.

  24. JoeBuyer Avatar

    I’d think they’d use one of those blade missles that can pinpoint hit you and leave everyone else untouched. And my completely wild guess is they could do it in a short period of time, I’d think an hour once decided/approved.

  25. 66quatloos Avatar

    You got the pee pee tapes?

  26. lilacs_and_marigolds Avatar

    If they knew your general location they could send a drone strike which would probably only take minutes.

  27. Mopper300 Avatar

    Half hour tops

  28. northbyPHX Avatar

    It won’t take long. An hour at most.

  29. CrimsonDemon0 Avatar

    I’d say a few hours at max considering US has army bases pretty much everywhere

  30. lostinhh Avatar

    Alright, what did you do.

  31. BeautifulJicama6318 Avatar

    About 15 minutes? Call to local FBI or law enforcement to pick you up.

  32. Diffballs Avatar

    It would likely be 1-4 hours, depending on where exactly you are and how far the closest US base is. The US usually uses drones for these types of missions that can evade many types of radar so the main factor would be how long it would take to fly a drone to where you are at and get a visual confirmation. Based on you being in Eastern Europe is where I get the 1-4 hours from as the US has quite a lot of troops in that general area due to current tensions with Russia.

  33. SuNNY__AheR Avatar

    Depends if you are talking about the whole process like intel gathering and all.. it’ll take time to approve. But if you’re saying the government already gave a green flag. Then as you say you’re important target they’ll already have overwatch on your location (drone) and it’ll send missile In minutes

  34. Global_Werewolf6548 Avatar

    Look out your window facing east.

  35. AUGA3 Avatar

    A nuke could be there within minutes.

  36. rosshole00 Avatar

    We took out the Chinese embassy during the Kosovo campaign and they weren’t even a target. Most governments and countries have people who feed the US information and the US had huge amounts of people that look for information on people and targets 24 hours a day. If they wanted to hit you and with this administration taking away civilian safeguards and accountability, yeah that’d be it.

  37. netpres Avatar

    If it’s the military or an intelligence agency, very very quickly (the organisation will determine how much collateral damage).

    The Executive, 6-12 months, but they’ll complain that you moved.

    DOGE, 2 years after Felon steps foot on Mars, or 2060 whichever comes first.

  38. No_Strawberry_1576 Avatar
  39. Mjhandy Avatar

    Good By…….

  40. troycalm Avatar

    I’m assuming that any human with a cell phone can be found in a few hours.

  41. DocEastTV Avatar

    15 min if they don’t care about collateral. Less than 18 hours if it’s just you.

  42. AfraidEnvironment711 Avatar

    I wonder if Jeffrey Epstein asked himself his question too

  43. bhuffmansr Avatar

    Seconds. They could laser your ass from space. No collateral damage, but a mess to clean up.

  44. MaybeTheDoctor Avatar

    45min

    You would be in El Salvador by the end of the day

  45. chubby_behemoth0615 Avatar

    They would’ve gotten you before you ever even wondered if they were looking lol. Our govt. is wild.

  46. EntertainerNo4509 Avatar

    A drone strike wouldn’t take very long.

  47. texaseclectus Avatar

    I like where I think this is coming from.

  48. ThinkBlock Avatar

    Global Prompt Strike

  49. RemarkableGround174 Avatar

    Lol they don’t need to destroy structures or kill collateral, they just send some suits to your home and have you disappeared. 30min if you’re actually that important.

    Most of us will go along with the armed men if it means they don’t kill the nice family next door. This is why fascism and its analogues work so well: even if you have no possessions and no family, you still have a conscience.

  50. Rindal_Cerelli Avatar

    <5 minutes to find out exactly where you are.

    10~ 60 mins to send an assassin.

    Europe is full of US military/secret service and other assets.

    Depending on where exactly where you live they might not even have to do it themselves and will simply pay a black market hitman to take you out and then it can happen in minutes of the decision being made.

  51. wonderbreadlofts Avatar

    Is this for a screenplay?

  52. liamrosse Avatar

    Before I answer, let me ask this: Did you donate $1 million or more to a Trump campaign fund?…

  53. hangman593 Avatar

    Start packing.

  54. Canttunapiano Avatar

    If there’s no concern about blowback, they could just put your picture on TV and offer a $10 million reward for your head on a platter

  55. kittenofd00m Avatar

    If they used “all available resources”, they’d have someone local to you do it. Less damage means fewer people caring that you died and fewer questions to ignore.

  56. LilMissBarbie Avatar

    Warhog goes

    BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

  57. CollectionStriking Avatar

    Us? At this present moment it could take 18 minutes 23 seconds

  58. T_rosini Avatar

    The isreals will take care of this because you r Hamas

  59. Cost_Additional Avatar

    Someone call Obama and get an answer

  60. nokillswitch4awesome Avatar

    Without care of fallout, less time than it took you to type this. That’s what nukes are for.

    Barring that, assuming you’re unaware of the plans, you’d be dead inside of a day.

  61. malformed-packet Avatar

    Last administration? A few days tops. This one fired all the people who could. So unless you come here and look brown, be more worried that one of their proxies will for them.

  62. Some_Troll_Shaman Avatar

    Depends on how far you live from the nearest US Consulate.
    That amount of time for a CIA agent to come put a bullet in your head.
    Eastern Europe… so less than 2 hours?

    Maybe 4 hours if they have to mobilize SOCOM because you have friends.

    If they are able to fly drones over the city while they zero in on your location.
    Less than 5 minutes from location to warhead on forehead.

  63. MaiKulou Avatar

    It’d take them 3 hours. 1 hour to bomb the wedding next to you, 1 hour to bomb a previous address of yours, and 1 hour for your country to push you out a window before we put boots on the ground for a short operation that turns into 2+ decades of occupation

  64. dragonard Avatar

    Only as long as it takes the ICE boys to don their fancy ski masks and caravan to your location. No warrants. No due process.

  65. BoomerSooner-SEC Avatar

    Depends where you live. It would be a drone strike but likely less than a few hours.

  66. 420Middle Avatar

    Maybe a couple of hours

  67. bekahboohoo Avatar

    What about the space laser?

  68. Khai-Tri Avatar

    The question is nonsense. The US will not waste money to destroy an average Joe for no reason.

  69. rival_22 Avatar

    If they know exactly where you are in a decent sized city, probably 30 minutes max.

  70. Smart-Difficulty-454 Avatar

    Most places the US has people embedded in the general population. You’d get a .223 bullet in the forehead when it was convenient. Might be a minute, might be a day.

  71. Immediate_Gain_9480 Avatar

    At the latest 24 hours. US stealth bombers can hit any place in the world within that time.

  72. Johnjarlaxle Avatar

    This is honestly such an amazing question lol. I’ve spent like 10 minutes reading different responses

  73. PixiePower65 Avatar

    Drone. They would just drone you. They can read the paper in your hand from space.

  74. Liveitup1999 Avatar

    I’d say maybe 5 minutes.  They would send a signal to your cellphone and it would explode and kill you.  Just think, not too long ago everyone would have said that no way is that possible. Maybe every phone has a bomb in it just waiting for the right command to be sent to it.

  75. fast_as_fuck_boii Avatar

    If they care about any consequences arising from my death, then they’ll wait until I’m at work in a place where I’m alone and working with dangerous stuff. Sabotage it and make it look like an innocent accident. Not hard to do when working with trains and dangerous tools. Only volunteer once or twice a week, so unless they’ve got time to kill, then they’ll go for another option.

    If they don’t care as much about consequences and hate loose ends, then they’ll come for me at home. They’d also probably kill my family if they hate loose ends. They’d probably brand it as a burglary gone bad. This would probably take an hour or two to organise – they might just get local talent to do it instead.

    If they don’t care about consequences on a local scale, a small-scale bomb planted under the house would do the trick. Takes out our neighbour’s house too, but who cares since he’s a bit of a dick. They’d laugh it off as a gas leak. Same amount of time to do this as just shooting us, minus getting the materials.

    If they don’t care about consequences on a national scale, maybe an airstrike disguised as a training exercise gone wrong, due to live bombs being loaded instead of dummy bombs. These would probably take out (half of) the neighbourhood. Diplomatic relations would probably be slightly unstable afterwards.
    They could also have a training exercise somewhere else, then have 1 or 2 jets deviate from the flight plan and fly towards me. Cover story could be rogue pilots that bomb my house and then get shot down by QRF forces. Diplomatic relations would probably be less unstable than in the other scenario, but still somewhat unstable.
    This would probably take an hour or two. Scrambled forces from Lakenheath or Mildenhall under the guise of a surprise training exercise, that’d take around 1 hour to fly up here.

    If they don’t care about consequences on an international scale, missiles. Conventional or nuclear, it doesn’t matter. Cover could be a missile test gone wrong, or hacked missiles. ICBMs might not have a plausible cover story since there are numerous safety systems to prevent the launch of nukes.
    This would take longer. If going through traditional launch procedures for a nuclear ICBM, might take a few hours to change target locations, then getting the launch control officers to agree to launch the missile.
    If going through unofficial channels, wouldn’t take long for the launch control officers to get threatened to comply or they’d become one of the “disappeared”. Launch would probably take a minute or two, then the missiles would take about 25 minutes to reach us.

  76. SouthernAd2853 Avatar

    If they literally don’t care about any degree of collateral damage, nuke to the face. 10-30 minutes.

    If they have more limited latitude for collateral damage, they probably tell the local government you’re a terrorist and your location and a SWAT team busts in within maybe a couple hours and you are “shot resisting arrest”. If they can’t pull that off, things get more elaborate and time-consuming. Theoretically they could launch a Predator drone from a European base and hit you with a Hellfire missile in relatively short order, but doing that in a NATO member would have drastic consequences. They’d want plausible deniability.

  77. UnitedStatesofAlbion Avatar

    Do they want to cover it up as an accident or terroristic threat?

    Or doesn’t matter just killem?

  78. OwaRush Avatar

    Just ask in the signal chat

  79. racks1700 Avatar

    You need to hide in an embassy building

  80. WarmMarketing9339 Avatar

    Six hours with a reaper drone

  81. Blanpneu Avatar

    People here are really misunderstanding the question… They want him dead ASAP, doesn’t matter how, he needs to die and the less seconds he lives the better

    It is very innocent of us to think that the US doesn’t already have bombs in all major cities around the world in strategic places.

    If it is at any cost, minutes if you’re in the blast area of an already placed bomb, just enough time to get the message passed along, if not, a missile from a nearby base would obliterate you.

    You have probably less than 30 minutes, closer to 10, but a lot of civilian lives could be lost and possibly the toppest secret of all would stop being a secret. The US has bombs on everyone already.

  82. browncoat47 Avatar

    Ask ICE, they’re doing this shit in the US as we speak.

  83. PointEither2673 Avatar

    You seen that scene at the end of John wick 2 when the contract goes out and everyone’s phone starts ringing? Yea that would be how your town looks like. No matter where you are, the US has someone not too far. Even if you live in butt fuck nowhere Siberia or something, if the US wants you dead, and there are no repercussions for your desth, there’s almost no escaping it

  84. quiddity3141 Avatar

    In that scenario you wouldn’t have finished your questi…

  85. matthewmspace Avatar

    Since you live in Eastern Europe and if they didn’t care about collateral damage, they could likely have you dead within the hour. Remember, there are US/NATO bases all over Europe, especially in Germany. A simple cruise missile or CIA spy could end you fast.

  86. AdLower9379 Avatar

    It’s called contractors. Make u go bye bye like a ghost.

  87. GrtWhite77 Avatar

    To do it quietly 4 hours calling in specialists from CIA or Delta. Loud and public less than an hour.

  88. neophanweb Avatar

    If you’re a nobody, they’d just have you commit suicide in your home within 24 hours. If you’re a high profile target, it has to be a very public “accident” so it may take a few weeks or even a few months to setup the perfect accident. Maybe you lose control of your car in a rain storm and drive off a cliff.

  89. zoidbergin Avatar

    Ballistic missiles can hit anywhere on the planet in 30 minutes or less. No guarantee that’s the fastest option but it won’t be longer than that

  90. sardoodledom_autism Avatar

    27 minutes… and most people in a 10 mile radius would be gone too