All I can say is I've known people in both situations. Military employees will eventually get paid, which they should. They earn what they make. I've seen more than one civilian company go bankrupt where the employees were never paid. They told their employees to go home & look for a job. At least with a government job, the money will eventually be there. Hopefully, the US government will never file bankruptcy & shut down completely. If that happens, we're all in trouble. I have seen that happen to more than one company in the civilian world. I hate that this is happening to military & government employees, but it would be much worse in the civilian world. If you've never seen a company go under, you're very fortunate. Hopefully, this will be resolved quickly, as it has been in the past, & business will continues as usual.