No, the rounds work in a completely different manner, it wouldn’t be at all practical to use them as rounds for the Abrams.
However, the tank might have a full combat load in its weapon stores.
It would have somewhat limited usefulness - Abrams operationally are used more like tank destroyers than main battle tanks. They never even had a high explosive round designed for them, which is extremely unusual. They do carry HEAT rounds, which are used to destroy APCs/IFVs where AP rounds wouldn’t reliably kill the passengers. Those can be used to good effect against buildings, but are not generally as useful in an anti-personel role as HE rounds. I’m taking a guess at the standard HEAT loadout for an Abrams being roughly 10 rounds, with 30 AP, which wouldn’t be very useful as anything except intimidation.
However, the tank does carry 3 machine guns, and so it would be extremely useful in a fight against personel. Obviously there’s a huge psychological factor, too.
Gas might be a problem - who knows how much it had, and how old the gas is in the tank. They’re gas hogs and don’t have much range - and I’m not sure you could just use regular gasoline, although I’ve read that you could throw just about anything flammable in there (jet fuel, kerosene, whatever) and it’ll mostly work.
Well he knew where he was going to be, if the bombs went off, since he’d planned it. He seems like a guy who’d be prepared to outfit an army if necesary, and he probably has contacts to acquire an arsenal like that, so I didn’t see that as being particularly jarring.
Actually, did we see this arsenal of his early on, when he was moving the bomb from the storage room to his basement?
Anyway, I haven’t participated in any threads lately because I’d mostly given up to the show. I didn’t decide to stop watching it… I just never got around to watching it. Until I decided to catch up. And it has gotten hugely better over the last 4 episodes. Not great, but it’s getting to the point where it’s interesting enough to want to watch seriously, rather than as a train wreck.
They’ve majorly cut down on all of the melodramatic soap opera BS that I can’t see anyone caring about. People don’t find interesting in post-apocalyptic fiction for romantic or family drama. The genre is so interesting because it takes us so far out of what we’re used to. People have to deal with the collapse of civilization, everything they knew, scarcity, starvation, lawlessness. There’s so much conflict to explore with opportunistic people taking advantage of others, the conflict that scarcity can bring, attempts to set up government and other parts of civilization. There are a thousand things that can be interesting in a post-apocalyptic fiction, but “OMG HE’S CHEATING ON HIS WIFE!” is not one of them.
They’ve done a much better job of getting rid of that stuff, and focusing on the stuff that’s more interesting.
It’s not the best written show ever, but at least now they’re focusing on the right things, trying to use the premise for something good. I’m actually starting to like it.
The fight scenes, by the way, are pretty well choregraphed for TV. Not mind blowing, or anything - but with the “MORE CUTS AND SHAKINESS = MORE ACTIONY!” style of direction of action being all the rage lately, it’s refreshing. You can clearly get a picture for what’s going on. Nothing behaves absurdly unrealistically. Overall, actually, they’re some of the better fight scenes that I’ve seen on TV.
