A Quick Run Around the Web--January 25, 2016

• The video above is "Steel Chain Carnage!" from Zombie Go Boom!, which is a You Tube channel whose creators test out various weapons--production weapons and improvised--on reproductions of skulls and brains to determine what would be best at killing a zombie. Of course, it also gives you some ideas of the relative effectiveness of the weapons in the real world. This particular segment, recommended to me by my son, shows the effectiveness of a length of heavy steel chain as an improvised weapon.
• "Area Air Purification, Part 2"--Blue Collar Prepping. Part 1 dealt with how to seal off an area. Part 2 discusses air pumps/fans and filters.
• "Gut Feelings and Sleepless Nights: Here’s a 24/7 Prepper News Resource"--Advanced Survival Guide. "The KA9OFF News and Alerts page is the product of many sleepless nights and is built using server space donated by the preparedness-minded folks at Centerfire Antenna and US Dipole."
• "Rural Defense Comms: The Hardware"--Lizard Farmer. Self-explanatory, I think.
• "Is prepping by stealth becoming a norm?"--Survival UK. "Seems there are a lot more of us than we think although the media has done the damage around the label prepper and made it unpalatable to your average person in a similar way they have demonised survivalist and survivalism. So people just do it, they don’t label it to make themselves feel better. Bit like all the tory voters who just denied it in the polls to avoid being tormented by socialists they just put their heads down but voted as they wished."
• "When The Lights Go Out, How Will You Protect Your OPSEC?"--Survivalist Blog. "I hadn’t really thought about how much light comes from our house until I read Survival Mom by Lisa Bedford. She mentions an elderly woman whose candlelight and flashlight power could be seen through her windows at night. When neighbors and others approached her home asking for lamps and oil she had none to spare. They were upset and angry with this woman because she wouldn’t share her preps." The author goes on to discuss ideas to black out your windows during a disaster or other event. I'm reminded, reading of this, of a prolonged power outage that my wife and I experienced in our college days. We lived off-campus in an apartment complex at the time. A transformer exploded, leaving the neighborhood without power for most of the day, including into the evening. Inconvenient, but not a terrible disaster: temperatures were warm, but not hot, and we simply used a camp stove to cook dinner and a couple propane lanterns for light after it started to get dark. In the evening, we took a short walk. Here and there in the complex, among the darkened apartments, were a number with lights. We quickly realized that the ones that were lit were primarily those with LDS students who, like us, had some emergency resources available. It was easy to see who was prepared--just by the lights.
• "Bug Out Boats Revisited, by P.J.C."--Survival Blog. There is something compelling about a retreat that can move around, withdrawing to a deserted cove, or over the horizon, from post-SHTF threats. But vessels are complex and maintenance intensive. Nevertheless, if this is something that interests you, the author has some good ideas. I agree that, for the size and draft, a catamaran (or trimaran) is the best choice. It is also more stable than a single hulled vessel. Although I didn't see any mention in the author's article, there are solar systems available that are designed to run the electrical systems on a boat. 
• "Blade Steel: Here Comes the Science"--The Load Out Room. Some materials science basics as it relates to making blades.
• "College Food Storage or Food Storage for Singles"--Prepared LDS Family.
• "Swedish police warn Stockholm's main train station is now overrun by migrant teen gangs 'stealing and groping girls'"--Daily Mail. Anyone want to guess from where the members of these "teen gangs" came?

• Related: "Musings on Immigration III"--Vox Popoli. Musings on whether the current invasion of Germany will result in fascism, Balkanization, or it becoming part of the coming Caliphate.

• Related: "Swedish asylum worker, 22, is stabbed to death 'in frenzied attack' at a CHILD migrant centre as refugee boy, 15, is arrested for murder amid rising tensions over violence and sex assaults"--Daily Mail. The victim was originally from Lebanon. One thing to remember about Lebanon was that, until it being overwhelmed by Muslim Palestinians, it was a prosperous and stable country, with Beirut compared to Monaco and Paris.

• "China Capital Outflows Rise to Estimated $1 Trillion in 2015"--Bloomberg. Not exactly a vote of confidence in China's near term economic prospects.

• Related: "China Warns 'Social Stability Threatened' As 400,000 Steel Workers Are About To Lose Their Jobs"--Zero Hedge.

• Via Zero Hedge: "Deadly virus leaked from US laboratory in Donbass - DPR Army and Intelligence"--Donbass International News Agency. "More than 20 Ukrainian soldiers have died and over 200 soldiers are hospitalized in a short period of time because of new and deadly virus, which is immune to all medicines. Donetsk People's Republic intelligence has reported that Californian Flu is leaked from the same place where research of this virus has been carried out. The laboratory is located near the city of Kharkov and its base for US military experts. Information from threatening epidemic is announced by Vice-Commander of Donetsk Army, Eduard Basurin."
• "As Frustrations With Mexico’s Government Rise, So Do Lynchings"--New York Times. 

But the people of Ajalpan had another explanation: Tired of government corruption and indifference, the mob fashioned its own justice, part of a longstanding problem that Mexican officials say is on the rise.

The killings raise difficult questions for Mexico, highlighting an alarming development: By some accounts, there were more public lynchings this past year than at any other time in more than a quarter-century. There were at least 78 lynchings last year in Mexico, more than double the number the previous year, according to data collected by Raúl Rodríguez Guillén, a professor and an author of the book “Mexico Lynchings, 1988-2014.”

The mob actions were born of a sense of hopelessness and impotence shared by many in Mexico, where 98 percent of murders go unsolved and the state is virtually absent in some areas. By some estimates, just 12 percent of crimes are even reported in Mexico, largely because of a lack of faith that justice will ever be served.

Such a void, taken to extremes, has found its resolution in violence.

• "Jeff Bezos launches and lands again in another first for booming space industry"--Washington Post. "Two months after Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin launched a rocket just past the boundary of space and then recovered it in a soft landing, the space company repeated the feat Friday with the same rocket in another breakthrough for the booming commercial space industry." Also:

If these so-called “New Space” entrepreneurs are able to reliably recover and reuse rockets, the cost of space flight could dramatically decrease — a key step toward realizing their dreams of democratizing space and one day flying tourists to the cosmos.

Recovering and reusing rockets reliably would be a huge breakthrough, analysts say.