Seed saving, area denial and long range shooting

Seed saving

A British video with some footage germane to saving seeds during times of economic crisis. Posted in response to a question by Michael the sometimes anonymous. Ability to import seeds from traditional sources of seeds were impacted by WWII. They could not import from occupied Europe and the U-boats impacted all shipping across the Atlantic.

 One of the vegetables mentioned in the Wartime Cooking video series are leeks. Leeks are not well suited to industrial growing because they are relatively fragile. However, they were well suited to growing in England during WWII.

Vintage pictures from the 1940s suggest that people were not as thick.

Apparently, most open-pollinated varieties of leeks tend toward in-breeding depression and feeble seedlings. Selecting for vigor works against selecting for "fixed" attributes like long, thick shanks. Carrots have similar issues.

One intriguing detail about leeks is that some varieties like Bandit and Oslo are suitable for over-wintering in-place (beneath mulch in the coldest climates).

Have any of my readers cooked with leeks? Do they sautee as well as regular onions? The only time I ever cooked with leeks was to make potato-and-leek soup and the leeks seemed "slippery". 

Virus

An earlier post had a spirited discussion in the comments about virus in potatoes. The general tenor at the end of the back-and-forth was not very optimistic.

What was not brought up is that most plants have a viral barrier between the mother-plant and the seed. That is, most seeds (and seedlings) are free from virus even if their mothers were infected.

That gives some insight into the fanfare around newly introduced potato varieties which slowly fizzled as the stock become infected with multiple species of virus...only to be replaced by newly introduced (recently seedlings and thus free of virus) seedlings.

A minor side-note is that scientists were studying the effects of radiation in the 1930s by irradiating crops and seeds. They found that potatoes that had been grown from irradiated seeds produced much more than potatoes grown from non-irradiated seed potatoes. Sometimes by as much a factor of three-or-four times. In retrospect, it was due to the radiation killing the virus. In an interesting twist, that erroneous cause-and-effect may have made its way into popular culture in the comic books with Captain America and Spiderman being turned into super-heroes due to exposure to radiation.

"40% of nurses quit during their first year of work" 

I don't know if this is true, but the woman who is speaking is describing a death-spiral. The consequences of being understaffed is overworking the remaining staff. Over-working the remaining staff drives more of them out of the profession, resulting in even more severe under-staffing.

I know two nurses who are still working in hospitals. They are both saints.
 

Dementia

I spent 90 minutes with my friend who is caring for his wife.

He is the proverbial frog-in-a-blender. He ran through the unlucky-forest and got swatted by every branch. I am not at liberty to say any more than that.

I did turn up some local resources for him. The local Health Department has a Council on Aging and they have a department that supports caregivers and even an arm of that department that specifically targets caregivers of people with dementia. One of their publications. 

One of the crueler characteristics of "dementia" is that she has good days when things seem to have turned the corner and she has bad days when he is filled with despair. 

He has been finding great solace in the Novena of Surrender prayers.

A tip-of-the-hat to Nikita our waitress at T&D Coney Island in Eaton Rapids. She understood about my dental issues and recommended the biscuits-and-gravy. She also gave us the time and space to talk about what my friend needed to talk about. 

Area denial

This was going to be a stand-alone post about the doctrine of "area denial" but I was afraid that I would come across as a pompous ass. 

It is my non-professional opinion half-baked biases that the doctrine of "area denial" is most successful within a matrix of abundant resupply, rapid transport of casualties to medical help, rock-solid command-and-control communication and the ability to deliver precision mortar, drone, artillery, air-strike or other support to ground-troops. That matrix will be in tatters in typical SHTF scenarios. 

Nobody will be able to afford a quarter-million rounds of small-arms ammo expended per enemy neutralized. Ergo, doctrine will have to rapidly evolve and the people most inflexibly married to it will lose, just like the generals who were married to fighting from mass formations lost in the US Civil War.

I would love to have the professionals correct the errors in my thinking.

Long-range shooting

Wes commented that his kids are very proficient long-range shooters. It is my opinion that his children are blessed to have Wes and his wife as parents. They have both given their children incredible gifts.

How hard is it to hit a "gong" at 1000 yards?

I ran some numbers on a ballistic calculator. At 1000 yards, a 143 grain ELD-X bullet from a 6.5mm Creedmoor (a cartridge specifically designed for 1000 yard shooting) is dropping one inch for every five feet of forward travel. In-the-wild, if your range estimate is off by 50 feet (at 1000 yards) you will be ten inches high or low. The gong is 21 inches in diameter. If you are holding the cross-hairs in the exact center of the gong, you will just BARELY hit the edges. Oh, and that completely ignores the issue of mirage distortions from the ground or rifle barrel or other causes of variability.

"So use a range-finder" you might say.

That could be a death-sentence on a battle-field. Range-finders use lasers. On the battlefield, drones are likely targeting coherent light sources of the frequencies used in range-finders. Toggle the switch of your range-finder and suddenly you are inviting a visit from death-from-above.

Tiny variances in how tightly the neck of the brass case grips the bullets will turn a "hit" into a miss at 1000 yards. Precision shooters have tiny lathes to turn the outside of the neck of the cartridge to ensure that they are dimensionally within 0.5/1000th of an inch...and then they anneal the necks to ensure that there is no variability in the "springiness" of the metal.

The vitals of an adult, male torso is about 16" from crotch to top-of-sternum and maybe half that side-to-side. Gravity is a constant. Wind is not. The effects of wind are more bedevling than bullet drop because the winds down-range will be different than they are on your cheek. Another factor is that you might have flags down the side of the shooting range. The wind will change between the time you reference the flags and the instant you squeeze the trigger.

And all of that presumes that you can SEE a man at 1000 yards. And that he is stationary. It can happen. You might catch your opponent refueling a vehicle or smoking a doobie behind the barracks. But those guys are not likely to be the high-value, high-leverage targets that will make a difference to the outcome of the contest.

Yesterday's work-tickets

All of these rootstocks are candidates for "interstems". Shorter lengths (4", for instance) of the most dwarfing ones like BUD-9 work well. Longer lengths of the more vigorous ones (8") will have a similar size reducing effect as the shorter length of BUD-9.

I moved 6 more apple rootstock to the stool-beds. They were not MM106 but a more dwarfing type that is suitable as interstems with MM106 to create the "Goldilocks" sized apple tree.

A possum got whacked in the road at the end of our drivewi. It was enormous. It was the biggest possum I have ever seen. I think it is one of the possum that have been stripping our persimmon trees. Pigs get fat. Hogs get slaughtered. 

I was reloading some .223 when I noticed that I could not see the powder in the case. Over time, while reloading, the hopper had slowly spun around and shut off the flow of powder. I weighed my day's production and ended up scrapping about 20 rounds that did not weigh the correct weight. Note to self, do not touch the hopper while working the powder drop. 

I bought some gear-oil for the differential on the Silverado. I anticipate topping it off today.

Seen while dropping Quicksilver at play-group

I saw the mother who drove this vehicle.

I can attest that she has a firm grasp of reality. 

On a more serious note

Draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power. Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the Devil.
For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens. Therefore, put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist on the evil day and, having done everything, to hold your ground. So stand fast with your loins girded in truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate, and your feet shod in readiness for the Gospel of peace. In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all the flaming arrows of the Evil One. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. -from Ephesians Chapter 6