Fear Pron

Article making the rounds.

Their "worst case scenario" involves running 365 simulations based on daily weather patterns and adding up the dead. 

It also assumes an attack launched by a super-power capable of delivering 450, HUGE nuclear warheads and every one of them hitting their target. And, I assume, they assume the fallout will include the plutonium in the warheads in the silos that the incoming weapons are supposed to vaporize.

This post was written in 2013 by Alex Wellerstein and I think it contains a lot of useful information. In my humble opinion, it is not "Fear Pron".

Key points:

...terrorist nuclear weapon manages to combine the worst aspects of both: targeting civilians and kicking up a lot of fallout, for lack of a better delivery vehicle.  ERJ adds: and have low fission yields so much of the plutonium is not consumed

...fallout mitigation is one of those areas were Civil Defense is worth paying attention to. You can’t avoid all contamination by staying in a fallout shelter for a few days, but you can avoid the worst, most acute aspects of it.

Weapons that are designed to flatten cities, perhaps surprisingly, don’t really pose as much of a long-term fallout hazard. The reason for this is that the ideal burst height for such a weapon is usually set to maximize the 10 psi pressure radius, and that is always fairly high above the ground. (The maximum radius for a pressure wave is not intuitive because it relies on how the wave will be reflected on the ground. So it doesn’t produce a straightforward curve.) Bad for the people in the cities themselves, to be sure, but not such a problem for those downwind.

Personally, I think we will see terrorists-type nuclear attacks before we will see broadside exchanges. Any nation-state competent enough to pull off the broadside is smart enough to weaken us by using a proxy. Sort of like those tiny spears the clowns jam into the bull's shoulders to make it lower its head before the matador enters the ring.

After-Action-Report: Day One

Two, itty-bitty, baby deer sighted in 10.5 hours of hunting. That, folks, is why it is called "hunting" rather than "shooting".

The "Orchard Blind" is in the corner of an apple orchard and overlooks a bowl with the rim of the bowl some 100 yards away from the stand. The stand is blocked off to the eastsoutheast and has shooting ports in the other directions. The floor is about 10' above the ground it is a cold place to sit when it is windy.

It was windy this morning and about 34F. Not "Texas windy" but 10mph sustained and 20mph gusts windy. I froze my butt off. Belladonna joined for the morning hunt and she was our primary shooter. I was there for backup and for conversation.

The afternoon was more pleasant in terms of weather even if Belladonna had to go to work.

My read on the situation is that there are tons of deer there but they are not funneling past my blind. If you look at the nearby fields as slices of bread, there is a slice of alfalfa field, and then a slice of corn field and then a slice of "cover" that is, swamp and goldenrod meadow. My stand is at the corner of the fields where the corn slice becomes the "cover" slice.

All of the other field within eyesight are picked soybean fields. Picked soybean fields might have some spilled beans for food but are as bare as a baby's butt with regard to cover.

The fly in the ointment (for my situation) is that the corn has not been picked yet. The deer feast on the corn. They sleep in the corn. They mosey on over to the alfalfa at dark and stuff themselves on that. They have no reason to visit the goldenrod/meadow/swamp.

Things SHOULD change after the corn is harvested.

The alfalfa will still be there. There will still be corn missed by the harvester for them to glean, but the goldenrod and swamps will be the only game in town for cover for bedding.

Quicksilver

She has another cold. This is pretty much how I remember parenthood. Lurching from one set of sniffles to the next.

She is also moping. She misses Handsome Hombre and Mrs ERJ.

She gave me the rough edge of her tongue when I came home from hunting. "You have responsibilities. ME! Stop being a play-baby and do your job."

Properly chastised, I will be Mr Granddad tomorrow and Friday. Saturday I will go hunting again and perhaps the corn will be harvested 8-).

Michigan's Regular Firearm Season starts today!

Read the folks on the sidebar.

Prepper reveals arsenal of weapons-of-mass-destruction to the press (Satire)

An unidentified Michigan prepper revealed his arsenal of heinous weapons-of-mass destruction to Jimmy Olsen, intrepid reporter for The Daily Vapors.

The prepper proudly displayed stacks of metal objects that can be converted to the dread assault-stick.

The prepper explained how edges can be ground into the metal object (blue region) by rubbing the object against concrete. Then, the object can be mounted on a long stick and reused an infinite number of times against peaceful protestors!

The Daily Vapors performed careful calculations and determined that thirty of these weapons-of-mass destruction could inflict 144,000 lethal wounds in only eight hours!!!

But that's not all!!!

Cups are clearly visible that can be used for measuring explosives and so are "Bulldog" clips that can be used to create electrical switches for trip-wires to detonate explosives. 

---Satire---

Sparks through the stubble

But the souls of the just are in the hand of God,
and no torment shall touch them.
They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead;
and their passing away was thought an affliction
and their going forth from us, utter destruction.
But they are in peace.
For if before men, indeed, they be punished,
yet is their hope full of immortality;
Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed,
because God tried them
and found them worthy of himself.
As gold in the furnace, he proved them,
and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself.
In the time of their visitation they shall shine,
and shall dart about as sparks through stubble;   -from the Book of Wisdom Chapter 3

 There are a couple of vivid metaphors in this passage.

The bit about "...gold in the furnace..." refers to an ancient method of both purifying and assaying gold. A droplet of molten metal is quickly covered with oxides unless it is pure gold. So if you have a crucible (often a very open, conical one made of clay) and you melt the metal object it will form a droplet of metal, much like mercury forms when you break and old-fashioned thermometer.

If the droplet of metal stays shiny then it is pure gold...proven in the furnace or tested in the fire. If it dulls then it was alloyed with cheaper metals.

This is also a method of purifying gold. Sprinkling flux over the oxide covered droplet will dissolve the oxides and re-expose the molten metal to fresh oxygen. Repeating this process iteratively removes the impurities until pure gold remains.

Sparks through the stubble...

The sequence about sparks-through-the-stubble* is one of the few instances in the Bible where a reader might see support for "ghosts".

In the time before moldboard plows which bury crop residue and before chemical pesticides, fire was one of the very few options for controlling weeds reseeding.

And while most modern agricultural scientists and most ecologists have a very poor opinion of "burning", there are a few who have a different perspective.

Char is one of the few forms of organic carbon that is not rapidly consumed by soil organisms as an energy source. That is, if you want to increase the carbon content of your soil LONG TERM, char is the only way to go...especially in areas with warm, moist soils.

The dissenting opinion also points out that natural soils of high fertility contain char, that it is a natural product from natural processes. 

A fascinating paper on the development of some of the most fertile soils on earth. There's some evidence here suggesting the crucial role of fire and woody plants in the development of primo prairie soil. Think shifting mosaics of aspen parkland, scrub, and grassland...."In their study on nine A horizons from Saskatchewan Chernozems, Ponomarenko and Anderson (2001) found that the UV-oxidation resistant fractions (which they classify as char) account for between 25 and 65% of total C.   Source

Nearly every person who lived outside of Rome or Babylon or Memphis during Biblical times probably had first-hand experience watching the stubble of harvested grain fields being burned. The image of sparks being blown by the wind ahead of the flames would be a very vivid and memorable metaphor.

The analogy of removing the trash that would interfere with the plow and the destruction of the weed-seeds would not be lost on the thinking person. Nor would the analogy of the sparks jumping ahead of the fire to kindle new blazes be lost, either.

I wonder if Dickens was "informed" by this passage when he wrote A Christmas Carol where Scrooge was visited by the Ghosts from Christmas Past?

*In some translations it reads "...sparks through the reeds..."

Moral relativism

Not to diminish the tragedy that this child faces, but why was the press silent with regard to the 100-to-15,000 Americans (including children) abandoned by the Biden Administration behind enemy lines in Afghanistan just two years ago?

Even the wide range of estimates of the number of Americans abandoned is a damnation. The administration simply did not care. "At this point, what difference does it make?" a statement reeking of contempt and boredom.

Never forget, they consider your continued existence to be a burden to be shrugged off or ended in the most convenient way that presents itself.

Odds and ends

Mrs ERJ was driving and I was riding shotgun when I spotted some items beside the road with the word "FREE" next to them.

I asked her to turn around.

What caught my eye was a stack of "weights" that somebody was getting rid of. I assume they were sitting in his basement for the last fifteen years.

By my count, ten weights between 10lbs and 12kg.

It may be different in other places, but in Eaton County it is very rare to find exercise equipment that is "worn out". More likely, it was placed beside the curb because the owner got tired of feeling guilt every time he walked past it in the garage or basement. Rather than start using it, he gave it the old heave-ho.

Their loss. My gain. I have my eyes open for a tread-mill. They have spiffy electric motors, speed controllers and a wide, rubber belt.

Today was a lifting day. I knocked out four sets, 10 repetitions of 150 pounds and one set of 160 pounds. Gains come fast early on.

Mrs ERJ will be off on a mission of mercy

Mrs ERJ's sister lives in a far-away state. She recently moved in with her son and daughter-in-law. She can no longer live alone due to vision issues.

Her son and D-I-L will both be traveling on business so Mrs ERJ is flying unto the breach leaving me to eat pizza, bananas and ham-sandwiches for a week. I will also be watching Quicksilver.

Southern Belle made other arrangements for opening day, so I will get to go hunting on the 15th and on the weekend and after Mrs ERJ comes back.