Oh I'm not saying it's entirely futile.
What I am saying is that it would be almost 90% guaranteed to result in the deaths of anyone participating.
Many people would rather die fighting an oppressive regime than live under the imprisonment, humiliation, dehumanization, and the final death while in chains.
When the Chinese Communist Resistance enganged the technologically superior and ruthless Japanese, the 8th Route Army of the First Northeast Front developed many strategies for waging a "People's War", where everyone is united, by heart and by spirit to defeat a heartless and murderous enemy. Even the little shoe-shiner boy down the alley in a Hangzhou street participated, by spying on the enemy and sending information to the Communist network elsewhere.
In May, 1943, the Japanese bombed a strategic Communist held crossroads in Manchuria with over 200 planes. This was the middle of the Hundred Regiments Offensive launched by Field Marshal Zhu De, and the bombings wrecked havoc on the 8th Route Army's supply lines. The CCP had no aircraft, and only a limited number of heavy guns used for anti aircraft use. However, in another sector of the province, another 8th Route Army detachment sent back word to Shenyang that the Japanese planes were being launched from a secret base just outside the city. My Grand Uncle was one of the several field commanders who led the ambush later that night. Two entire 8th Route Army divisions surrounded the blacked-out airfield in pincer columns. While snipers in the forest beyond the airfield blasted away the guards in the towers, hundreds of gray coated Communist soldiers went into the camp and attached bundles of stick grenades to every single door of the airmens' barracks, attached to tripwires. Grenades were also attached to the planes. When a flare was shot into the sky several minutes later, the 8th Route Army opened fire with hundreds of mortars and light artillery pieces.
When the terrified Japanese were wakened from their sleep by the sudden attack and stumbled out of their barracks, the explosions from the mines blew them all to bits. These explosions, all connected by tripwires, triggered the other mines to explode, effectively destroying every single plane on that particulart airfield. One brigade of Japanese Imperial Army and the IMPERIAL GUARD DIVISION (WEI JUN), an army composed of Chinese traitors managed to escape the carnage in the airfield, but little to their knowledge, another division of the 8th Route Army lay in wait just outside, stationed all over the main road. When the enemy appeared, hundreds of grenades were hurled from all directions, showering the road with explosions and clouds of rocks, gravel, blood and dismembered bodies. From the darkness came thousands of rounds of deadly accurate rifle fire, zipping through the air like lightning.
Over all, the 8th Route Army destroyed 160 Japanese planes, captured over 40 tanks, and destroyed 80 more, over 6000 enemy soldiers, plus 2000 Imperial Guards, were killed. The 8th Route Army only suffered 200 casualties.
Field Marshal Zhu De said that this operation was perhaps the most devastating and effective of the entire Hundred Regiments Offensive, and also stated that without the help of hundreds of thousands of the local peasants and common people, all united against the Imperialist Japanese, this attack would not have been possible.
This is the example of a "people's war". When every single civilian participates. Every single 8th Route Army soldier that marches into combat on the battlefield is supported by many men, women, and children behind the lines who are not combatants, but help the 8th Route Army in many ways, such as providing medical care to wounded soldiers, cooking rice, mending and stitching new uniforms, building mines and grenades, and most importantly, reporting all enemy actions to the Communist high command whenever they appear. The civilians are the eyes and ears of the 8th Route Army. And when the War ended in 1945, and the newly incorporated People's Liberation Army were beginning to fight the Nationalists again, these millions of citizens were also the eyes and ears of the new Republic.