Zombies and Devil-dogs

Kubota had one of his buddies over.  D (his friend) got a new video game for Christmas.  They were getting stuck when the devil-dogs came out.  The dogs just moved too fast for them to get a bead on them.

I suggested they pay attention to how the stairways funneled the targets into nice, straight predictable lines.

They put two-and-two together and got the right answer.  They became much more efficient at mowing down those zombies and devil-dogs once they started using the stairwells to their advantage.

Enfilade

The military term is "Enfilade".  At long ranges errors in aim tend to be in the fore-aft direction rather than left-right.  Having many targets lined up in the fore-aft direction means that there is a good chance you will score a hit on the target in front of or behind your intended target even if you miss your primary target.

During WWI tacticians learned a painful lesson when belt fed weapons were seized by the other side and turned on the trenches.  The countermeasures were to zig-zag the trenches to firewall the number of potential targets, to off-set the position of the belt-fed weapon so targets stacked up in the barbed wire were in enfilade position.  When the design of the weapon allowed, pins could be used as hardstops to limit the rotational travel of the gun on the carriage.

Shoulder fired automatic weapons tend to have the muzzle lift when fired in more than three round bursts.  One countermeasure for the lifting effect is to choose targets that are in enfilade position so even as the sight picture lifts off the primary target there are other high value targets being subjected to fire.  Another countermeasure is to intentionally aim low and let the recoil lift the sight picture as the gun fires.

D lives a half mile from us.  I walked him home because it was dark out, the roads were slippery and  I needed a breath of fresh air.

This is a picture of bunny tracks in snow.  All of the rabbits are funneling through one opening in the wire fence.  It is the opening that has the lower wire even with the top of the snow.

We had a nice discussion regarding the use of natural funnels or gates in deer hunting.  When hurried, deer can easily jump fences and cross steep banked creeks.  But mostly they conserve their energy.  Their natural travel paths tend to make use of gaps in fences, whether it is a planned gate or where a tree fell across the fence and leveled it.  They also like to use bridges and will cross roads where the road grade is level with the natural grade of the landscape.  This guy has a nice article on gates and deer hunting.

I get a kick out of watching the light bulb go off somebody's head.  I don't think D ever thought about natural gates and funnels.  I think the Devil-dogs are in for a rough week.