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I went back and read through this some more, it makes more sense each time I read it( I have poor reading comprehension skills it seems) and I think I realy understand now. I swear I'm not as stupid as I make myself out to be, even though I have to be that stupid to sound like I'm that stupid...ha-ha. Or like a good friend of mine told his then girlfriend one time: "If you go around acting stupid people will think you're stupid" As it turns out I was misinformed, we are not under the 08"NEC yet, but will be very soon, so I'm still OK with the 3 wire feed. Anyway, it goes like this, right? The current wants to return to source(transformer), it does this via the neutral. The grounding conductor is there to provide a way for fault currents to get back to source, which still would be the neutral bar in the main panel where the grounding conductors bond with the neutrals.
In my case with the 3 wire feed I have only one path back to source from the sub panel and that is the neutral. Therefore any fault currents in this outbuilding will have to go to the neutral bar so they can follow this path, if not they just energize anything and everything metal that they can. Now if the neutral is compromised I essentially have the same problem, no path back to source, so the current will follow the ground rod and seek a way back to source, but the resistance between the ground rod and earth, as well as the overall resistance of the earth itself, may very well prevent the breaker from tripping. Hopefully this is right.
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