Blowback designs: Back of envelope calcs

Picture in your head that you are sitting on a motionless platform in the middle of a perfectly flat, level floor. The platform is resting on ball-bearings. You hold a spud-gun in your arms.

For the sake of simplicity, let us suppose that you, the spud-gun and the platform weigh 222.2 pounds and further, let us suppose that the potato in the spud-gun weighs 2.2 pounds.

For the sake of convenience, we will define the center-of-mass for your universe (everything above the floor) as the "zero" of our coordinate system. No matter how you wiggle-and-jiggle atop the platform, the center-of-mass of that universe does not move from the zero which was the creator (me) painted on the floor.

Getting bored, you raise the spud-gun to your shoulder and launch the 2.2 pound spud horizontally at 100 inches per second. The seconds tick off the clock. The center-of-mass of the system remains stationary while the spud moves off at 100 feet per second and you+platform+empty spud-gun move in the opposite direction at 1.0 feet per second.

Counter-intuitive? There were no external forces exerted on your universe so the center-of-mass which was stationary remains stationary even though the individual pieces are moving through space.

Hold that thought...

The CCArms LGB series PCCs

Rounding up, it might be capable of launching a 147 grain bullet and the gasses produced by 7 grains of powder at 1100 feet per second.

The residual pressure in the barrel just before the bullet clears the muzzle will be on the order of 7000psi-to-10000psi so there is still the potential of the brass case rupturing if it is unsupported by the cylinder. The tricky part is that it can be partially unsupported and the thin brass wall will bulge and carry the pressure load in membrane mode but it will rupture if the distance is too much.

It is assumed that the pressure of the hot gas in the barrel will evacuate very quickly after the bullet's base clears the muzzle.

Skipping a bunch of math, if the head of the case can only move backwards 1 millimeter (0.40") then the bolt must weigh about three pounds. If it can move backwards 2 millimeters then the bolt must weigh about 1.5 pounds. If it can move back 3 millimeters then the bolt can weigh about 1 pound.

Increasing the barrel length to squeeze out a few more fps forces the designer to use a heavier bolt to meet the (admittedly arbitrary) 3mm extraction criteria. The heavier bolt requires a longer receiver and increases the likelihood of the plastic parts being damaged when the weapon is dropped.

In a similar vein, making the barrel shorter would allow the designer to use a lighter bolt, making a lighter and shorter firearm but at a loss of velocity/energy of the bullet.

Secondary factors:

There will be friction between the case and the walls of the chamber. That might reduce the thrust by 15%...or it might reduce it by 0% or by 50%. Friction is goofy and the wise designer doesn't hang his hat on it being reproduceable.

The 147 grain load is not very common. The most common is 115 grains but many shooters like 124 grains. The lighter projectiles will result in less movement of the bolt as the projectile clears the muzzle.

Back to calcs

You will notice that there has been no mention of springs. That is because of the very small distances traveled.

The energy stored in a spring is 0.5*K*d*d where "K" is the stiffness or spring-rate and "d" is the amount of compression from the free-state.

In theory, you could design a mechanism with the spring at its fully extended, free-length when the bolt has the head of the case fully inserted into the chamber BUT nobody ever does that for various reasons.

So you are looking at an energy formula of  0.5 * K * (d2*d2 - d1*d1) where d1 is the less compressed distance and d2 is the more compressed (bolt back) state.

That energy will equal the kinetic energy of the bolt as the bullet clears the muzzle. In our example that would be 1/2 * mass * velocity * velocity. In metric, that would be 1/2 * 0.5kg * 6.8m/s * 6.8m/s or 11.5 Joules. In our example, the backward speed of the bolt is 1/50th the speed of the projectile by virtue of their relative masses and conservation of momentum. You can pencil it out or you can play around with parts and spacers (to adjust pre-compression of the spring) to make it work.

One of the beauties of a carbine is that you can absorb all (or nearly all) of the recoil in your spring. The packaging and handling constraints make that impossible in a handgun. If you made the spring stiff enough to absorb all of the energy in the limited length of travel, it would be impossible to rack. Consequently, much of the energy is dumped into the frame when the slide hits the stops at the end-of-rearward travel. That impact plays hell on the frame due to the stresses it creates.

...it is their right, it is their duty...

The lovely Mrs ERJ and I were listening to some music from 1970.

My beautiful wife suggested this piece

Good stuff.

And isn't it odd that quoting historical documents that were key to the formation of our nation are now likely to get one added to a terrorist watch-list?

Worrisome.

Potatoes are in the ground

Potatoes are in the ground.

90 feet of Kennebec. 45 feet of Red Pontiac. 135 feet of potatoes pulled from storage that had not sprouted very much and were sound. Varieties not known but some were probably Russet Burbank.

I was aiming for 200 feet of row and ended up with 270, which is half as much as last year. They are in a very good spot and if I do my part with fertilizer, weed control, Colorado Potato Beetle control and irrigation when needed, they should do well.

AND....the tulips are blooming.

Liberty apple trees are in full bloom. 187 Growing Degree Days base-50. By comparison, 2023 was 149, 2022 was 118, 2021 was 205 and 2020 was 72 GDDb50 on this date.

3-D printed 9mm video

A guy "running" one at a Falling Steel Match. 2.5 minutes long. No dead-time.

PLA resin is one of the industry work-horses and is not the most expensive resin.

PCC (Cumberland Saga)

Amira's challenge was outside of Samson's expertise. His specialty was LONG distance, precision shooting, not bar-room brawl distance shooting. He needed to consult with some experts. He wasn't going to deliver something that didn't address the issues Amira had pointed out.

The next morning Samson walked to the eastern edge of the Cumberland Plateau and found a position on the cusp of the Tennessee River Valley where he could visually see the eastern suburbs of Chatt. He was a quarter mile east of the official boundary of Copperhead Cove.

He moved around a bit until he had three bars of signal on his cellphone and then started typing...

Launch App: Rypt_Cord Server

A spinning clock icon appeared on the display of his phone. Then...

....Encryption achieved.....

Login:Not_Marinept25MOA

PW:*********

Ring:SemperfiAtl

Subgroup:PrcnShttrs 

Samson tapped on the icon for "Start new Thread" and then tapped out

Subject: Advice needed re weapons for indig personnel

Background: Twenty small-stature to very-small-stature potential combatants need weapons with following characteristics

• Accurate enough to hit paper-plate at 50 meters with minimum training
  
• Very low recoil and muzzleblast
• Detachable magazine
• Enough projectile mass to disrupt central nervous system from frontal center-of-mass hit at 50 meters
• Compact, lightweight (six pound max)
• Low cost platform and ammo. Many potential combatants, low funds.

Need recommendations.

Over.

Trip1805 wrote: Hello NotMarine

Have you considered M1 Carbine. Designed to replace M1911 .45 ACP handgun for use by cooks, truckdrivers and REMFs.

Sounds exactly like what you are looking for.

Over.

NotMarine wrote: Cost and availability?

Over

Trip1805 wrote: $1500 for used, not matching serial numbers. $2000 for new with +6 month waiting list.

Over

Not_Marine wrote: That is not going to work for me. I need 20 copies in less than a month.

Over

WndwLiqr wrote: Have you considered .22LR semi-auto like 10/22? Can be had for $400.

Over

Not_Marine wrote: Great weapon. Not sure it can punch through chest or beer-gut, hit spine and disrupt CSN.  Also, twenty copies at $400 way above budget. Can you suggest something between M1 Carbine and 10/22?

Over

Time passed and much internal discussion within thread. The various plusses and minuses of several semi-auto platforms were discussed. Then...

DieTrd wrote: How about Pistol Cartridge Carbine? 9mm PCC approximately 3X .22LR mass and performance. Simple blow-back. Price about $400 per copy for cheapest option.

Over

Not_Marine wrote: Price still too high.

Looked at M1 Carbine. Magazines are junk. Need robust magazines.

Over

Even more time passed

Md_scntst wrote: If I remember correctly, you have access to 3D printing. Many designs for PCC available on the graynet. Some use Glock magazines. PM me for details.

Over

Please advise regarding projected cost.

Over

Looking at a bulk buy for CHMSL barrels, roughly a C-note per copy.

Over

PM sent.

Over

End Session:

The prototype showed up in six days and was tinker-toyed from many AR parts because they are abundant and ergonomically excellent. For example, the fire-control groups were scrounged from the builder's parts drawer. Triggers are one of the items most frequently upgraded from "stock" ARs and "stock" was plenty good-enough for Amira's specification. Ditto for the buffer-spring that powered the bolt which the builder had fabricated from laminated steel, similar to the core of a low-voltage transformer.

Samson was delighted with the additional AR parts. He saw them as inventory-on-the-hoof. They were fair-game to cannibalize should the high-end weapons need those parts.

The 6" 9mm Luger barrel was pressed into a 16-1/2" long tube to make it legally a long-arm. The receiver was 3-D printed and it even had a serial number on it (CCArms, LGB-A001) to make it legal. The mag-well accepted Glock magazines and the forearm had a dovetail for a light and posts for a sling. The sights were on the barrel-tube, a tall ghost-ring rear and a simple, hooded post in the front.

Samson took the weapon out for first firing and he encountered some short-stroking. He determined that the bolt had some burs on it that were scraping the molded-in metal guides that trapped the bolt. He stoned the bolt to slightly chamfer the rough edges and reran the test with only two failures of the bolt to travel far enough back to pick up a new round. 

Samson reread the notes the builder sent with the "build" and learned that there were spacers in the buffer-tube to increase the preload on the spring. He started playing around by removing spacers and deliberately "limp-wristing" the wimpy, generic, white-box 9mm ammo in an attempt to make it not-cycle. He stopped removing spacers when it ran ten-in-a-row even in limp-wrist mode.

Once he was happy with how the rifle was tuned in, he filed the front sight to raise the point of aim to a 75 meter zero and then invited Amira, Sarah and Sig to shoot it.

Bracing the weapon against a tree trunk, simulating shooting from a doorway, Amira was able to keep ten shots at fifty meters in a group no larger than a softball.

Sig suggested that the front post should be thicker for better low-light visibility. He also suggested that wooden butt-stocks could be fabricated in Copperhead Cove to reduce cost at a penalty in weight.

"How soon can we have all 20?" Amira asked.

Samson frowned. "There are always bugs that don't show up until the lead units get enough exposure to several different shooters and different types of ammo. I want to make five and get them out to shooters of different heights and get some rounds through them."

"After we bubble-up and solve the issues on those, I want to make another batch of five" Samson replied. He had anticipated the question. "Point being, if we have the parts in-hand, they are much easier to modify as loose-parts. If I build them into working rifles then we risk damaging the receivers if we have to do a full disassembly. The receiver is just plastic, after all."

"I want one of the first ones" Amira said.

"If it is alright with Sarah and Sig, you can have the one you are holding" Samson said.

That brought a BIG smile to Amira's face.

"The next question is, where are we going to get $2000 for the parts and another $1000 for ammo, extra magazines and other odds-and-ends?" Samson asked.

---Note to my readers---

 Thank-you for all of your comments on the previous Cumberland Saga post!

This is a work of fiction and undoubtedly many of my more sophisticated readers are already thinking..."but it doesn't work that way...". My challenge as a writer is to produce vaguely technical sounding text that seems plausible and paints pictures in the reader's heads while not strangling the story with excessive detail.

I will be disappointed if some commenters don't take me to task, though.

9mm seemed like the only choice. It is the cheapest centerfire ammo and really does replicate .22LR ballistics with three times the mass out of a 6" barrel. Longer barrels only gain about 100fps compared to a 6" barrel according to Ballistics By The Inch.

Ballistics: 2" high at 50 meters with a 75 meter zero and 3" below the line-of-sight at 100 meters. With a muzzle velocity of 1100fps, velocities of 1020fps at 50 meters and 960fps at 100 meters. Getting plunked in the noggin or heart/lungs by 124 grains at 960fps will quickly end the party for you, even if the bullet is going too slowly to expand.

The final nail in the coffin of 9mm vs .22LR is that most centerfire arms are less likely to be damaged by dry-firing than most rimfire arms. When ammo is dear and noise is to be avoided, dry-firing is your friend. It makes flinches disappear.

To the Marines out there: Samson was not a Marine but is allowed to be on the ring by virtue of being able to shoot as well as a Marine.

---End notes---

"Shingled" time-horizons for inherent resilience

One of the recent sub-themes in the Cumberland Saga is the use of "shingling" or overlapping time-horizons to create resilience.

Amira observed something like "There will always be another crisis coming along. It is just a matter of time."

The idea comes from the strategy of having a "ladder" of Certificates of Deposit of varying maturities to supply a steady flow of income. If the income is not needed, then they can be reinvested like a link in a caterpillar track.

The people in Copperhead Cove expanded their short maturity food crops and applied fertilizer to maximize yields. They also invested in cows which have a much longer time-horizon than annual crops. A cow can live five-to-fifteen years depending on care and upon the owner's willingness to tolerate lower milk production in later years.

The small-fruiting bushes are even longer-horizon than the cows. They will start fruiting in their second year in the ground and some of them will spread on their own. A thirty-year life span in a home garden is not unreasonable. Small fruits are also very resilient with respect to the weather. Given a little bit of snow-cover, most of them can sustain -30F.

Reportedly a 700 year-old Sweet Chestnut tree

The chestnut orchard is the investment with the longest time-horizon and it occupies the least desirable land. They might start producing nuts in four or five years (if fertilized and weeds are controlled). Some will die of blight but others will have resistance. On a favorable site, a single chestnut tree can live and produce human-quality food for hundreds of years. Nut pines, Black Walnut trees, oak with sweet acorns, persimmon, olives and pear trees can last just as long. Apples are a 30-to-50 year enterprise. Most stone-fruits are 5-to-20 year enterprises.

Small projects

The rabbits are already hitting the apple root-stock I planted. I am surprised that they are eating the MM-106 but left the G.214 alone. That might change.

I tooled up with a length of pipe, a stack of copy paper, glue stick and "white glue" to make temporary shelter for the vulnerable root-stock. Putting a fence around the enterprise is on my list of things-to-do. I got my cycle time down to around 15 seconds per copy by the time I was done. I could probably squeeze another five seconds out if I had to make another thousand.

I purchased some steel T posts at a salvage yard. They were charging $3 each which was not a great price but it was a fair price. I only had $60 cash in my wallet so I bought 20.

Ichthys

Approximately 1/6th scale

The church that I attend has a food pantry that supplies supplemental food to people who ran out of pay-check before they ran out of food.

The distribution point is WAY back in the extreme opposite corner of the parking lot from the entry way and it is masked by other buildings.

I committed to making a stencil to be used on the pavement to indicate the directions to the distribution point.

The Ichthys symbol seemed appropriate. My current plan is to make the "fish" thirty-six inches long from nose-to-end-of-tail with the lines 1-1/4" wide and painted with white pavement marking paint. The fish will be supplemented with an arrow indicating actual direction the vehicle should travel.

The Ichthys symbol not only represents a fish (food) but was an early symbol for Christ and evangelization (John 21:11). The 153 fish may have represented the entire, known world since it was believed at the time that there were only 153 species of fish in the world.

"...the requirements" (Cumberland Saga)

Samson and Heddy almost missed the drive into Copperhead Cove. It looked different with the dead brush stacked up around it, almost hiding its existence.

Putting the pickup into reverse, Samson backed the truck and trailer 25 feet and then swung into the drive. It never paid to lock-up the brakes when pulling a trailer. Samson’s truck had been built in 2017 and had most of the bells-and-whistles (no turbo, though) but Samson still drove as if he didn’t have technology for a safety-net.

Pulling into the drive, Samson saw Lliam urgently flagging them down. He clearly did not want them to continue up the drive.

Shutting down the rig, the two adults got out of the truck to see what was going down.

“Mom just had her new cows delivered” Lliam told them. “She is walking them up the drive and they are as skittish as all get-out.”

Heddy gave it some consideration. “How long you think it is gonna take?”

“Hard to tell” Lliam said with a sigh of resignation. “None of them is halter-broke so Mom brought along Bossie who IS halter-broke. She is leading Bossie and the three new cows are following Bossie and Blain is up ahead and shaking a bucket with a little bit of corn in it.”

“You could always walk up the foot-path” Lliam offered.

Samson’s vision of a triumphant return died with a whimper. The gifts and gee-gaws in the trailer would just have to wait.

The new cows didn’t settle down until sunset. They had never been outside before. In their feeble minds, it was as if they had teleported to an alien universe filled with weird noises and smells and food.

Sarah had staked out four picket lines with Bossie’s in the middle. Bossie was the rock, the anchor. Bossie was the key to making it all work.

Heddy got Agnes, their two-year-old, settled into Roger and Alice’s house. It was the house Heddy had grown up in. Alice fussed like an old hen as she pulled linens out of wooden chests and dusted and made beds and filled vases and… Samson twiddled his thumbs. Just like the military; hurry up and wait.

Samson accepted Roger’s invitation to the nightly “planning meeting” that took place on Sig’s patio.

Samson was a firm believer in the axiom that one should gather intelligence before taking action, so he was content to watch the interplay between Sig and Amira.

He remembered Sig from previous visits to Copperhead Cove. In fact, one of the hurdles to proposing to Heddy was to pass inspection from both Heddy’s father (Roger) and by Sig.

Samson was properly nervous, a fact which spoke well of him in Sig’s mind as did the fact that Samson was not intimidated by complicated familial relationships or idiosyncratic religious practices.

Samson came from western Virginia. He played ball with kids whose parents handled snakes, drank muddy river water or walked across burning coals (which Samson had seen with his very own eyes). Summer tent revivals where people stayed awake for days were a yearly feature. Catholic Mass sung in Latin still happened. Yeah, Copperhead Cove just barely made the needle twitch into the "Quaint" region of the dial although he was not fond of outdoor toilets.

It was an article of faith among the matrons of Copperhead Cove that the young women who left CC repelled men who were not Godly. God cast a veil over them and their beauty was apparent only to those men who had been called to enter through the narrow gate.

The fact that Heddy brought him home for “inspection” meant that her hand was his to lose.

He did not fail. When he was unsure of the relationship, he defaulted to addressing the speaker as Aunt or Uncle until he was told “Just call me Sarah” or the equivalent.

Samson recognized “Amira” as a traditional, Muslim name, something he had picked up during his deployments. He could hardly wait to hear THAT story.

Amira, who he had never met or even heard of, was asking Sig where she could plant some chestnut trees.

“I think they should be at the edge of the new pasture where it is just starting to get too steep for pasture” Amira proposed.

Sig rolled his eyes. Samson could tell that Sig found Amira to be vexing. Never the less, Sig had enough respect for her to give her a full hearing.

“I don’t know why you insist on planting nut trees” Sig grumbled. “It will be twenty years before they produce a single nut. Besides, we are leaving lots of MATURE nut trees in the pastures.”

“It might be true that it takes twenty years for walnut trees to start bearing, but these are chestnut trees. They can have nuts in five years if they are cared for” Amira replied.

“And you and everybody else will be gone in five years” Sig shot back. “So what is the point?”

“I hesitate to bring this up” Amira countered “because I know how everybody reacts when they hear “Well, we did it this way in California” or “We never did that in New York City”, but when my mother and I moved in with my aunt back in Bosnia, the chestnuts that grew up in the hills are what fed us through the winter.”

“Some of the chestnut trees in those old orchards were over two-hundred years old.”

“Sarah told me that there is a crisis every ten years: 1987, 2000, 2009 and now. And they keep getting worse” Amira continued.

“So what is the downside? If this is another false-alarm, there will be a ten-year-old chestnut orchard churning out thousands of pounds of nuts the next time there is a crisis. The worst that can happen is that you will fatten the hogs on them.”

“We don’t have the manpower to plant them” Sig said, his objections weakening.

“I didn’t ask for help. I asked you where I could plant them. Walter said he would help” Amira pressed. "It is something he can do, planting seed nuts."

“How far apart do they have to be planted and how many seed nuts do you have” Sig wanted to know.

“My plan is to plant them in a grid with seven paces between each tree in both directions and then thin them out based on nut quality so they are roughly fifteen paces apart” Amira said. “ and I have three-hundred seed nuts.”

“Center your planting down-slope from your house and plant in both directions. You can use the sixty feet closest to the tree-line for your trees” Sig said.

And that was the end of THAT discussion.

It was a demonstration in relentless, but respectful, grinding down of objection-after-objection. Relentless.

Sig looked over at Samson and said “Welcome.”

Samson nodded in acknowledgement of the greeting.

“I had been communicating with Gregor. He told me that you need upgrades in your weapons. I brought some gifts that I want to give you.”

Everybody’s ears perked up at the word “gifts”.

“I brought 4 AR and ample magazines and ammunition” Samson said.

Then, looking over at Sig “And I brought you a bolt action rifle that uses the same ammunition as the AR rifles.”

Samson had indelible memories of Sig’s reaction to the AR platform. “Too many tiny springs and itty-bitty parts. Thin, wire springs rust and break. I prefer Mausers.”

To Samson’s amazement, Sig shook his head in the negative. “I am a shotgun man. Give the bolt action rifle to Blain. He has nothing.”

Samson would learn later that Sig’s eyesight was failing. That, and the fact that Sig could run his shotgun without thinking and didn’t want the complication of another firearm to confuse things.

Amira piped up without being asked “What did you bring for the women?”

“Oh, Heddy brought all kinds of clothing” Samson misunderstanding her question.

“No. What kinds of weapons did you bring for the women?” Amira asked.

Samson shrugged. He hadn’t given it any thought. “I didn’t bring them anything. They can use what the men don’t need any more after they trade-up to the AR rifles.”

“That’s not good enough” Amira said, catching Samson off-guard.

“What do you mean?” Samson asked.

“Cast-offs don’t meet the requirements” Amira said.

Samson’s eyebrows furrowed in consternation. “Don’t meet the requirements?” He was uncertain. He had never heard of “...the requirements”. “What are the requirements?” he asked.

“Every woman in Copperhead Cove needs to have her own, personal weapon” Amira started out, ticking off the requirements on her fingers.

“For the record, every girl who has seen her eleventh birthday is a woman.”

“The weapon must be accurate enough so that she can shoot the man raping her mother from a distance of fifty paces.”

“It must have enough firepower so that it can stop the rapist’s two wing-men when they attack her from that same distance.”

“It must have low recoil. Not all eleven-year-old girls can take a lot of recoil.”

“Ammunition must be cheap so that we can practice” Amira concluded.

Samson pondered the VERY specific nature of the requirements. He had been in the sandbox. He could easily imagine why Amira saw a need for that kind of weapon. If not her...then somebody very close to her had needed that weapon.

Samson did not argue about the impossibility of finding such a weapon, much less finding fifteen or twenty of them. All he did was respond “I will work on it.”

Paging Mike Mulligan! Paging Mike Mulligan! Clean-up in Aisle Three

Old steam-shovel found in bottom of Michigan lake after dam burst. Two minute run-time

 

Hat-tip to MTV. 

 

Bonus video of a steam shovel in action

"But they will cancel Sesame Street!!!"

The Progressives are (predictably) running around with their hair on fire. Conservatives want to cancel funding that subsidizes "public broadcasting". Public funding of leftist, "public" broadcasting is one of the Left's sacred cows.

Their go-to is to scream "But they will cancel Sesame Street!!!" the beloved child-oriented show that airs on PBS.

So what?

Looking at it rationally, there are 5435 Sesame Street episodes "in the can". Have any more letters been invented or are we still sitting at 26 letters, just like when Sesame Street debuted.

Have the phonemes associated with those letters changed in the last 100 years?

Have any more integers been inserted between Zero and Twenty? Does 2 + 2 still yield 4?

Are Red, Yellow and Blue still considered "primary colors" and Orange, Green and Purple still considered "secondary colors" that can be produced by mixing Red+Yellow, Yellow+Blue and Blue+Red respectively?

Has the advice on washing hands changed in the last five decades?

So, being totally rational here, if Sesame Street has not been able to create footage that effectively presented these concepts in the first 5435 attempts, we should pull the plug because we are throwing money away. They are not going to suddenly become effective in attempts 5436-through-6000. If they didn't get it done in the first 5435 swings at the pinata, why should we pay the circus barker for any more swings?

If they HAVE created ample amounts of footage presenting those concepts, then there is no need to continue recreating the wheel and we should pull the plug because we are throwing our money away.

The Good Shepherd

Abel, brother of Cain, is the first reference to a shepherd in the Bible. He is an innocent who is slain by his brother who was motivated by envy. He is one of the first precursor of Christ*.

A ram is substituted by Abram at the last moment (as directed by God's angel) and sacrificed in Isaac's place (Genesis Chapter 22)

David was a shepherd out with the flock when Samuel came to anoint the future king of Israel. At that time, lions, leopards, wolves, bears and human thieves roamed the Holy Lands and considered unattended sheep to be fine table-fare. David had a sling, a few rocks and a six-foot long stick with a sharpened bit of iron or bronze on the end of it to defend the flock. Contrary to Hallmark Card images, shepherds were certifiable bad-azzes you did NOT want to mess with. (1 Samuel Chapter 16)

David wrote the 23 Psalm, one of the most iconic bits of prose in the Bible. "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want..."

Jesus in John, Chapter 10 says "I am the good shepherd..." and he uses the image of the shepherd laying down his life to protect His sheep while the hired man (who only cares about his daily wage) runs away. His immediate audience were all devout Jews who would instantly thread-all-the-beads listed above.

Morality

I think Marx had it exactly backwards.

Ownership of property is fundamental to morality as we know it in the modern world.

The Japanese are horrified by "waste". It is inculcated within them from a very young age. Their culture evolved on a rock with very, very little arable land and few mineral resources. Within that hot-house environment, there was a very short line of evidence connecting waste or misuse of a resource and a family member's baby starving or freezing to death.

A hired man breaks a tool-handle because he sees that he will get to sit down for thirty minute. A small-holder gently uses the tool because he sees that he will lose a half-day of productivity as his efforts are diverted into fixing the tool. He will lose a half-day during prime planting season or a half-day during harvest.

Some crops are exquisitely sensitive to harvest timing. Soft fruits like ripe grapes split and rot if not harvested at their prime or if the picker does not beat a rain storm. Small grains like barley, wheat and rye are very sensitive to wind-gusts and hail.

Other crops are sensitive to planting time. The ground must be warm and dry so it can be worked and walked upon, but it must still be moist enough that seed that is scattered will germinate and grow quickly enough such that the birds don't eat it all.

In both cases, the farmer is in a fast-tempo dance (tango?) with the weather.

Wanton waste and destruction entertains the evil men because they feel joy in the misfortunes of those who have more than they do.

And these are the same evil men and women who tell us that we will have nothing and we will like it. Misery takes comfort in having company, I guess.

But mark these words: Destruction of ownership removes a foundation to moral behaviors and loss of infrastructure (both cultural and material) will have long-lasting and devastating consequences.

*Jesus has been called "the new Adam" by some theologians. Adam lost it. Jesus yanked off the grating and jumped down into the storm sewer to get it back. But that has nothing to do with the "shepherd" metaphor.

Jury Duty and a random thought

It is my perception that crime is relatively low in Eaton County. I base that on the fact that I received my first notice that I have been selected for potential jury duty.

When I lived in Ingham County (home of Lansing, Michigan) I got selected about once every five years.

According to the internet, only 2% or 3% of criminal charges go to trial. The rest are settled via plea-bargains. It is almost always in both party's best interests to "settle". The presumed perpetrator benefits by the reduction in uncertainty and the possibility of potentially copping a plea to a misdemeanor rather than being convicted of a felony. The court benefits by avoiding expense and the potential of failing-to-convict which would dilute the deterrent to those contemplating committing crimes in the future.

If you follow that line of reasoning, then one naturally segues to a prominent political figure that seems to be lurching from one jury trial to the next.

With that particular political figure all tangled up, there is much less pressure on "the other guy" to campaign in public. And maybe that was the strategic goal of the (clearly) politically motivated legal warfare being waged: To legitimize a repeat of "the other guy" campaigning from his basement.

And then there is the spoiler, RFK. He might be the unicorn-horn that sucks the energy out of that strategy. "The other guy" might still have to campaign and speak extemporaneously because of him. Interesting times.

And in other news...

An advanced degree from Michigan State University qualifies woman for a job picking lemons in Florida!

Let's Go Spartans!!!

Fine Art Tuesday

 

Gary Drostle born in Britain in 1961 and still alive.

Famous for mosaics.

"River of Life" mosaic under construction

Close-up from "River of Life" in Iowa showing level of detail.

 

Hat tip to Lucas Machias for suggesting this artist.

Shuffling forward

I once used to work with a Tire Engineer named Hugh Scott. He was a Black man from Virginia and very, very low-key.

I bumped into him at a discount tire store where I was having new tires put on my Firenza. Uniroyals, if memory serves.

While killing time in the waiting room, we made idle conversation.

Hugh observed that anybody can move forward when everything is going well. The key to long-term success, in his opinion, was to make progress, any kind of progress however microscopic, when the universe was resisting your every effort.

Not a flashy guy. But he was profound.

A robin built a nest on the mini-platform I built in hopes of attracting barn swallows. The horizontal ledge is 5.5" below the ceiling and the flats are 5.5" square.

Unknown bird species building this nest. The bird is smaller than a robin but it is very early for swallows.

This is one that has no tenants yet.

Our birds are not fussy. This is a mourning dove sitting on her nest

This is a robin nest about 10' away from the mourning dove's nest.

Another robin's nest about 75' away from the one shown immediately above.

A fallen-apple that is in recovery

The fallen apple's sister tree. Toppled by wind-gusts.

Oregano

Catnip

"Sarah's Violet"

Sarah is my niece. We lost her when she was 22. She liked pink.

We are still fighting off colds. Quicksilver was a stinker today.

While she was napping I grafted twenty Liberty scion to some 6" long pieces of MM-106 apple root-stock. It is theoretically possible to root hardwood cuttings of some of the dwarfing root-stocks like quince and (maybe...fingers crossed) MM-106.

When a fruit grower purchases root-stock, they typically ship rooted, dormant plants that are between 18" and 24" tall. It was not a big deal to trim a few of them back since I plan to bud or graft about 4" above ground level.

Root initiation is facilitated by total darkness, 80 degree F temperatures and humidity. The experiment is double-bagged in bread wrappers and totally wrapped in aluminum foil to exclude light. It currently is sitting on my germinating, heat-mat. I might peak at it in a week to see how it is doing.

It cost me nothing more than my time.

Search-and-destroy missions

I was working on Box Elder and Oriental Honeysuckle today.

Inch-by-inch. Row-by-row. We are going to make that garden grow.

Eclectic Skill-sets (Cumberland Saga)

“I got some bad news” Samson Davis told his heavily pregnant wife, Heddy.

She was cleaning up a puddle of vomit left by their Jack Russel puppy. In retrospect, getting a puppy while Heddy was still caring for their two-year-old and had another on the way had not been their best move.

Heddy put down what she was doing, with a sigh. She turned to face him and asked “Tell me what is going on.”

“A mob of "protesters" broke into the Armory” Samson told her. She didn’t need to ask if he meant “his” room in the basement or at the National Guard.

“When did it happen?” Heddy asked.

“Last night. The guards were directed to stand-down and just let the mob take everything they could carry” Samson told her, bitterly. “It was not reported to the press. The police have their hands full and flat-out told us that there would be no effort to retrieve the weapons.”

Samson was one of the Armorers for the North Carolina National Guard*.

Samson left the military after his second deployment. He had planned to make the military his career but "politics" tripped him up.

When deployed forward, he was required to get permission from “upper” every time he pulled his trigger in his role as a designated marksman if the target deviated the slightest bit from the Rule-of-Engagement profiles. During one firefight, Samson dumped every “skinny” who was lugging anything that looked even remotely like it might be supporting the drones overhead. That put the first letter into his file.

Samson was glad that “upper” had never found out about the 2.4GHz radio-activated Claymore mines he and his spotter had used to salt the promontory that was most favored by the drone jockeys. The buzzards ate well that week. Prior preparation and all that.

The second letter occurred when he was back in the Green-Zone and was told to report for the 8-hour, mandatory, weekly, sensitivity-training.

Samson pushed back. He had just received five, beaten up, belt-fed heavy machine-guns that needed rebuild. The only things that kept the Forward Operating Bases from being overrun were area denial fire from M-2s and aggressive sniping by teams that had infiltrated into areas where local troublemakers were known to congregate.

 

Arty was under-resourced and over-subscribed and slow in coming. The Airedales were even slower. The FOBs were reduced to dancing with the ones-they-brung.

The M-2s were rode hard and put away wet. Without spares, his FOBs would be left without interlocking fields of fire if they lost another M-2s. The bad-guys would figure that out soon enough.

While Samson’s commander fully agreed with him, the person walking past the open door did not and she reported it to HR.

BAM! A second letter in the file.

Samson did not re-up.

Dumped into civilian life at 27, he grabbed the first high-paying job that wanted him. It was in construction.

The unit he was in hit a month-long lull in jobs and he was going to get laid off. The site-manager knew Samson would have some time off and also knew, via the grapevine, that Samson could not afford the air-bubble in income due to family responsibilities.

Over coffee, the manager voluntold Samson that there was a place for him in the local National Guard in an Engineering Unit that he, the site-manager, just happened to be responsible for. He needed somebody who could rebuild equipment without just throwing money at it. Oh, yeah, and by-the-way, his skills would be appreciated on the shooting team. Maybe this year they could beat South Carolina. 

 

It was well within the Commander's authority to expedite Samson's application and to coordinate his "stints" with the National Guard and the lay-offs from construction.

Samson was in heaven. The unit’s efficiency rating was in the toilet because they were over-budget and under-equipt. The Pentagon clearly had a bone-up-its-azz with regard to North Carolina and sent them shot-up, end-of-useful-life, obsolete equipment. Spare parts, if they were available, were salvaged from the bone-yard and were only slightly more usable than the ones that were removed.

The officer who recruited him got him into 3-D printing and pointed out several custom foundries who could turn a plastic model into the cast-steel equivalent via investment casting. To a man, the owners of the foundries were patriots who had served their country in the military. They charged the NCNG time-and-materials and billed it as Miscellaneous Training.

Of course, the business owners were not stupid. They pressured their congressmen to have the replacement parts approved as “secondary sources” for the parts. A single trunnion-knuckle for a bogey-wheel on a Electro-Magnetic-warfare carrier could generate $5k in profit and every EM-warfare carrier had 14 bogey-wheels.

The tempo of deployment was hard on the equipment and worn trunnions resulted in thrown tracks. Not only was the EM-warfare package incredibly expensive, but the technology was proprietary and supreme effort was invested in recovering them...or they were demo-ed in-place to prevent the technology from being stolen by the skinnies and traded to Iran, Russian or China.

So when the diligent, intensely focused young man called from the front gate of the foundry, he was given first-class treatment and NCNG projects got high priority.

 

Samson's unit went from RED to BLACK for Readiness, the Maintenance budget went BLACK and the Training budget was fully-utilized.

 

Everybody was happy.

***

“I am not sure why you think that is bad news” Heddy replied.

Samson looked around the house they were leasing. A typical doctor or lawyer would have considered it a “dump” but it was the nicest house Samson and Heddy had ever lived in.

“Mostly because you won’t be delivering in a hospital” Samson said. He had grown up in rural, western Virginia and knew of some home deliveries that had not ended well.

“The second one is easy and the ones after that fall out like a string of sausages” Heddy laughed. “At least that is what Mom always said.”

What Samson could not know was that Alice had been referring to puppies.

Samson left a voice mail with his firm and informed them that he would be taking an indefinite leave-of-absence, No-Reason-Given.

The NCNG didn’t have voice mail. It had a push-button-one-for-menu-in-English system.

Then Samson called his commander on his personal phone and explained that he was resigning from the NCNG in protest of “upper” not committing the resources needed to secure the Arms Locker.

His commander understood.

There was nothing left to do but to pack and to leave.

 

***

 

Hat-tip to Old-NFO and Will C. for suggesting some possibilities. All errors are mine.

 

*My apologies to the North Carolina National Guards for any technical or organizational mistakes I made. It is not my intention to impugn the reputation of the NCNG. I have no doubt that the NCNG upholds the finest traditions of the US Military and is a bastion of world-class fighting men and women struggling to excel in an increasingly hostile world.

 

North Carolina had the misfortune of being well located relative to the fictitious community of Copperhead Cove.

Thank-you to all National Guardsmen, regardless of state.

 

Mil-Specs

Mil-Spec Data: Piping, General

1. All pipe is to be made of a long hole, surrounded by metal centered around hole.
2. All pipe is to be hollow through out entire length.
3. All pipe is to be of very best quality, perfectly tubular or pipular.
4. All acid proof pipe is to be made of acid proof metal.
5. O. D. of all pipe must exceed the I. D. otherwise the hole will be on the outside
6. All pipe is to be supplied with nothing in the hole so that water, steam or other stuff can be put inside at a later date.
7. All pipe is to be supplied without rust, as this can more readily be applied at the jobsite.
8. All pipe is to be cleaned free of any covering such as mud, tar, barnacles, or any form of manure before putting up, otherwise it will make lumps under the paint.
9. All pipe over 500 feet long must have the words "long pipe" clearly painted on each end so that fitter will know that it is long pipe.
10. Pipe over two miles long must also have these words painted in the middle so that the fitter will not have to walk the full
length of the pipe to determine if it is long pipe or not.
11. All pipe over six inches in diameter is to have the words "large pipe" painted on it, so that the fitter will not use it for small pipe.
12. All pipe closers are to be open on one end.
13. All pipe fittings are to be made of the same stuff as the pipe.
14. No fittings are to be put on pipe unless specified. If you do, straight pipe becomes crooked pipe.
15. Fittings come in all sort of sizes and shapes. Be sure to specify the direction you are going when ordering.
16. Fittings come bolted, welded or screwed - always use screwed. They are the best.
17. Flanges must be used on all pipe. Flanges must have holes for bolts quite separate from the big hole in the middle.
18. If flanges are to be blank or blind, the big hole in the middle must be filled with metal.

Back on-line

WOW!

Glad that Blogger resolved the issue that was buggering up my ability to post.

I am sure that the recent upgrades to FISA and funding for the NSA had nothing to do with the interruption in service.

Chelidonium majus

Celandine is an invasive, non-native species that is resistant to being browsed by deer. Consequently, it does well here. I went on a search-and-destroy mission today and will resume S-a-D tomorrow. It is better to whack them before they set seeds. I started using a commercial wetting agent and it is the cat's-meow for plants that have hard-to-wet leaves like celandine.

These leaves form a distinctive rosette and really stand out on the floor of the forest in the early spring.

I also cut some brush around the place and sprayed the stumps with herbicide. I probably went a little bit light and over-diluted.

On Friday, I went out to the property I am managing and sprayed Multiflora Rose with glyphosate. The best time to spray them is just before or after they flower so I am a bit early. If need be, I can spray them again.

Morel Mushrooms

The black morels are still popping up beneath one particular apple tree. The tree was planted in 1994 and is Liberty grafted on top of either MARK or M-26.

Southern Belle put them on top of pizza. Yeah, heresy. I expect to have another bag of them picked by Monday.

Bosnia

Bayou Renaissance Man has a post of an interview of a survivor of the Bosnian Civil War. Sobering stuff.

I splurged

I splurged and bought a new mouse for my lap-top. The USB port was not reliably "seeing" the old mouse.

Weather shift

We are back to seasonable temperatures with highs in the mid-40s.

It feels much colder after our warm spells.

A bunch of our family are dragging anatomy. I feel like I am running about 65%. The fact that I have poison ivy dermatitis on the insides of my forearms is not making me happy, either.

And this too will pass.

Planting by the phase-of-the-moon (Rabbit-hole alert)

Lars Nordstrom in his book Making it Home has a very short bit of prose that sheds light on why many cultures swear by "planting-by-the-phase-of-the-moon".

Paraphrasing (because I no longer have a copy of the book):

Everybody in Scandinavia knows that the full moon brings frost.

There are countless times when people were fishing at night (quite possibly for capelin which spawn in fjords*, in the spring during the night) when the clouds parted to reveal a full moon. The temperature plummeted and frost immediately followed.

This seems like a clear case of cause-and-effect where the full-moon caused frost. It would only be logical to avoid planting tender plants when the moon is full, right? But let's dig just a little bit deeper.

Clearing skies

First, let's consider what kind of weather results cloudy skies becoming clear.

Typically, it would be a high-pressure dome displacing a low-pressure front. High pressure domes, in the springtime, are often cold, dry air.

Radiant heat losses

Clouds act like blankets that buffer temperature extremes. They reflect solar radiation back into space during the day. They reflect surface heat back toward the earth at night. Nights that are cloudy seldom experience the large, downward temperature change that occurs when the sky is clear.

Clear skies do not buffer temperatures that way. At night, temperatures plummet when there are no clouds because surface heat radiates outward as infrared radiation and there is nothing to reflect it back. That is why deserts are brutally hot during the day and (surprising many people) brutally cold at night.

Salience

When are night fisherman most likely to notice that the skies cleared? There is not much change to trigger an observation when the moon is not in the sky. It goes from dark to....still dark. No change there. Or would they be more likely to take notice and make a mental note when there is a full moon and the night goes from dark to much brighter very quickly?

So everybody knows...

So everybody knows that the full-moon brings killing frost because Great Uncle Ole  or Uncles Angus and Paddy were fishing in the shallows of the North Sea and saw with their very own eyes that the sudden appearance of the full moon in the middle of the night was  immediately followed by a heavy, killing frost.

The other cultural event when normally-sane people would not be snug-in-their beds at that time of year is if they have sheep and are lambing-on-pasture. That is, if they didn't keep the ewes confined in buildings while they were lambing. Different cultures have different lambing practices driven by predator levels and length of grazing season**.

In logical-debate the connection between the bright moon and frost is called a spurious association. Yes, it occurred. Yes, is not uncommon. But no, the presumed chain of cause-and-effect is flawed because the null hypothesis was not rigorously tested. How many nights did killing-frosts occur when the moon was new and a high-pressure dome displaced a low-pressure front in the middle-of-May? We don't know.

Everybody "knows" that full moons cause frost, that is, except for people from cultures that did not harvest capelin or lamb-on-pasture. They were snug in their beds when those spurious associations were happening.

Since the Schwertler Swabians that formed the nucleus of Copperhead Cove were not from Scandanavia, Scotland or Ireland or Denmark I decided to forego their "planting by the phase of the moon" because I did not want to be guilty of parroting information that may not have been universally followed by Appalachians who were not of Scots-Irish decent.

*A big tip-of-the-hat to Lucas Machias who called my attention to capelin as a possible resource that would be attractive to Scandinavians.

**The narrative of Jesus' birth as written in Luke suggests that Jesus might have been born in April based on when shepherds would be out at night with their flocks in the hills near Bethlehem. That time-frame was suggested because that is when locals timed the lambs to drop to maximize forage utilization.

Mortality during the 1800s in the United States

One source estimates that the life expectancy in the United States did not increase between 1780 and 1890.

For example, the life expectancy of a man in his twenties in the 1780s was 67.4, thirties was 70.1 and fifties was 74.3.

In the 1870s it was 64.3, 66.3 and 72.3.

Those decades were chosen because the data came from diaries and the decades after the Revolutionary War and the Civil War inspired many people to write diaries while memories were fresh. That is, there were a lot of data-points for those two decades.

The increase in life expectancy as the person ages indicates that death-rates for people in the prime-of-life were significant. Cut your skin with an ax...you could die of an infection. Get the flu and you could die.

Cause-of-death data is pretty skinny for that century but we have reasonably good data for 1900. For the years 1900, 1901 and 1902 the official data lists.

Causes 1, 2, 4 and 10 are communicable diseases. Some circles believe that poor nutrition in the 1800s made diseases more lethal due to vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

Causes 3, 5, 6 probably include uncontrolled blood pressure, diabetes and inflammation from dental infections as well as clotting disorders.

1. Death by Pneumonia and Influenza at 113478
2. Death by Tuberculosis at 113113
3. Death due to diseases of the heart at 85681
4. Death by diarrhea and intestinal issues 74076
5. Death by what we now call "strokes" 64383
6. Death by diseases of the kidneys 54536
7. Death due to accidents 46302
8. Death due to cancer 39860
9. Death due to senility 29095
10. Death due to Diphtheria or Bronchitis  approx 8k/year

Quicksilver collected her first bee-sting for the season

Quicksilver got stung twice on her left foot yesterday. It was a paper-wasp that was still drowsy from sleeping all winter. It was lazing about on the carpet when Quicksilver stepped on it.

She is just a bit short of two-years old.

She has been retelling the story of the mean bee that made her go "Ow! Ow! Ow!" I think we are on the sixth retelling. The story gets better with each retelling.

I suspect that she will be a blogger when she gets older.

That apple didn't fall too far from the tree.

Wild Roses go with Pumpkins (Cumberland Saga)

The repetitive act of pulling potatoes out of the bag and cutting them into golf-ball sized chunks was a salve for Amira’s soul.

“You said you wanted to pick my brain about gardening” Sarah reminded her.

“Yes. My mother and I lived with my aunt in a small village in Bosnia for two years during the civil war. I was twelve at the time, so of course I didn’t pay much attention. But my aunt used to look at the trees and the flowers to decide when to plant her garden” Amira said. “I wondered if you did anything like that?”

“Civil war?” Sarah asked.

Amira shot Sarah a glance. Of course she didn’t know about the Bosnian civil war.

“After the Iron Curtain fell, Yugoslavia broke into several smaller countries. Bosnia -Herzegovina was one of those countries. No one group was in the majority. Basically, it was about a third Muslim, a third Serbian/Orthodox and a third Croat-Catholic. An election was held and the Serbs rejected the results and started a war.”

“My father had a small farm and cafe in an area that was primarily Serb. He also worked part-time in a factory. He was arrested. We were told that to get him out of prison we had to sign-over the farm and cafe to the prison warden” Amira said, bitterness creeping into her voice.

“We moved to Sarajevo, which is a very large city. We thought we could be safe. But we weren’t” she continued, her voice was flat and emotionless.

“My father sent my mother and me to stay with my aunt while he and my brother stayed in Sarajevo. I never saw them again” Amira said. “Snipers got my father. My brother was conscripted and went missing-in-action.”

Sarah continued to cut potatoes.

Amira looked over. There were tears in Sarah’s eyes.

“I am sorry” Sarah said. “I didn’t know.”

“It is not something that is easy to share” Amira admitted.

Sarah nodded her understanding.

“But we can talk about happy things...like gardening” Amira offered.

Sarah nodded, and then started talking about tulips and potatoes, lilacs or peonies and corn, Black Locust and tomatoes and beans, pumpkins and okra and wild roses*.

Evan was mesmerized as he stood between the handles of the large rotary tiller.

The rumble and shaking of the tiller drowned out everything else. The task demanded just enough attention to satisfy his OCD streak. He could see why men liked riding motorcycles!!! Video games just couldn’t capture the joy….

Blain was driving pegs and stretching cord to mark the rows across the land as soon as Evan finished tilling a strip. He was following up with a heavy hoe and making divots every fifteen inches. The seed potatoes would be planted in the divots.

“How is Walter?” Sarah asked.

“Much better” Amira said. “Copperhead Cove agrees with him.”

“He walks for hours and gets sunshine. He brings home mushrooms and greens and they go into the soup. Let me know if you need any greens. He brings home more than we can eat” Amira laughed.

“Yes, please. I would love greens. I am afraid our diet suffers during spring planting” Sarah said.

Amira paused, thoughtfully. She was looking at Evan and the tiller.

“You know, there is no reason Blain and Evan can’t split their time between my garden plots and yours” Amira observed.

“Well, there sort of is, at least for now. You need to plant at least two of your plots to potatoes and you are way behind. Maybe they can bounce back-and-forth once you are caught up” Sarah pointed out.

Amira rubbed her chin, deep in thought.

“In that case, maybe I can come over and help you plant your gardens while Blain and Evan are working on ours. Blain said it would be a train-wreck if Walter or I were in the gardens while he was working Evan” Amira said.

“I can’t think of a better way for me to learn how to garden in Tennessee than to be your helper...if you will let me” Amira concluded.

Sarah instantly saw the advantages. Having two people...her daughter Mary being too young to do everything that needed to be done, would save a lot of time in just the picking-up and putting-down of tools. And humans, especially women, are social animals. Work can be a joy when you are doing it with somebody whose company you enjoy.

"And when do you want to move the plants you sent me? I am afraid I already planted them..." Sarah asked.

"Please, keep them as a gift. I can get starts from you after they are growing but I think that to keep moving them will stunt them" Amira said. Then, as an after thought "That is, if you want them. Not everybody has room for fruit bushes."

"I will be honored to accept them" Sarah replied. Maybe Amira wasn't such a dragon after all.

*Note from ERJ: These pairings are my best guesses. Please don't take-them-to-the-bank.

The study of the order of biological progression through the season is sometimes called "Phenology". Using biological markers makes some sense but plants cannot predict the future. The timing-and-order are related to heat-accumulation and the need to be available to keystone pollinator insects and to hit the same time-window as other plants of the same species.

The pairing that is shakiest is Black Locust-tomatoes. Every once in a while, the Black Locust gets whacked by the frost. If you roll-the-dice and plant your tomatoes early, it is good practice to have extra plants that you keep under cover...just in case.

A quick report-card for Copperhead Cove

In Copperhead Cove's favor:

No natural resources worth pillaging

Far away from natural lines-of-drift

Geography is highly defensible from conventional attacks

Natives can squeeze a living out of a very small resource base

Natives are physically very fit (by modern standards)

Sugar consumption is limited and food is primarily consumed at three meals with very limited snacking.

Population surge was anticipated and steps were taken with regard to food production, fuel and housing

Optimally positioned to intercept radio signals from both Chattanooga and Knoxville

Copperhead Cove is well regarded by its neighbors

Disadvantages

Limited water resources, with implications for hygiene

Limited energy resources

Processing of human waste is primitive

Housing will be snug at 100 square-feet per person

Dental/oral health could be an issue

Limited resources makes overcoming a planned, well-resourced attack unlikely

Newcomers will have cultural differences to overcome

Bottom line

Slight advantage (9-to-7) for Copperhead Cove