So, for my script a fairly large group of rebels need to overthrow the government, but I'm not quite sure how they'd go about it. I don't want them all to get shot down as soon as they get close, but I don't want it to be a country-wide affair like a civil war either.

Maybe it needs to be a war. I don't know.

Help, please?

In a small country, it'd be possible, but not in the US. You'd have to deal with a massive military defensive force... unless, of course, the military is not there to defend it somehow.

So you need a way to eliminate the largest roadblock and keep it permanently eliminated. Depending on your approach, you might bear in mind that during Hurricane Katrina, the Lousiana National Guard was of no use because it'd been called to service in the Middle East. Perhaps your scenario implies that we've further over-extended our military so much that no one's left to protect the government? A stretch, I know, but vaguely sorta/kinda possible.

You could use cyberterrorism. Hijacking computers and whatnot. That might go a long way to taking down the government in question.

That's plausible for the story, actually. I'm thinking it's a relatively new country as far as a fixed government goes, so they probably wouldn't have a large military force yet. And then if the country needed defending against older countries, there'd be that too. Sounds like a plan to me.

Thank you!

Edit: Computer hijacking could work well too. I just saw that comment. I haven't really planned out the setting, how much technology they have and how much they use it for, but if they rely on computers enough that it's worthwhile to hack them, I'll definitely keep that in mind.

i always think of the super-secret ones; the rebellions that come out of nowhere, almost like a secret society.

i hope that helps (i doubt it does though). just what i think would be interesting.

I was thinking they'd be underground. Surprise is the way to go with rebellions!

You mean like creating a computer worm that shuts down firewalls, disables Microsoft Update and blocks antivirus software, infects 9 million computers including the British Defense network, lashes them together into a massive botnet, and programs all of them to retrieve instructions from the as-yet-enigmatic cyberterrorist on April 1 so they can act in unison to bring down the internet itself?

Nonsense. Rubbish. Completely unbelievable.

Wow. That sucks.

And yet, for some odd reason, I find it intriguing.

I am so ridiculously inspired by that. Thank you, Aletheion.

Manchurian Candidate?

They could take over the central bank and set interest rates artificially low for a few years until the economy collapses.

Let them take down electrical power plants (or, easier done, transformer stations) and other parts of the public infrastracture.

What will decide about their success, though, is only, if they are backed up by the majority of the population. No government in the world, totalitarian or not, can truly survive if the majority of people does not support it. If you can organzie a general strike which lasts for only a few weeks, a country is dead. No military in the world can counter that.

A state is an organisation that holds a relative monopoly on the use of violence and taxes in a certain area.
You take it down by breaking that monopoly, by making it incapable of fullfilling those functions to such a degree that it is no longer more powerfull than it's competitors (organised crime, rebels, microsoft....). Having active (determined) popular support is the most important weapon in an uprising. Taking down powerplants+lines and sabotaging government buildings'generators, attacking such buildings quickly and effectively, getting the military on your side or at least to fragment to a dangerous degree (or to a degree it thinks is dangerous) or crippling it (destroying supplies, forcing them to spread out and search for food instead of fighting rebels, spreading diseases among the leadership and possibly the ranks as well, stealing their weapons and arming a competing army), things like that should work :P

Alternatively: if a government loses enough credibility, it cannot stand - i.e. East Germany just before the wall fell.

What about if they broke into the capitol and took one or more of the leaders hostage (or, even better, a leader's family) to force the leader to step down. Then, if they had popular support or had taken over enough of the government that way they could stay in power.