Friday, April 21, 2017

April 21, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Suarez International  (3 min.)

Firearms/Prepping:
  • TGIF: Time for another Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Links and comments on articles concerning bullet penetration in a house, triggers for boobytraps and improvised alarms, muzzle velocity of 9 mm from different barrel lengths, and more.
  • "How To Properly Remove A Tick"--The Weekend Prepper. I don't know why, but we suddenly have problems with ticks in our backyard. I expect it is the wet winter and spring. I think most of them are being brought in by pets, so we will be getting some Frontline Plus, I think, to douse the pets.
  • "Reprise: Is Muzzle Energy Really a Measure of Handgun Effectiveness?"--Ballistics By The Inch. The author cites from an FBI study on the topic:
Kinetic energy does not wound. Temporary cavity does not wound. The much discussed “shock” of bullet impact is a fable and “knock down” power is a myth. The critical element is penetration. The bullet must pass through the large, blood bearing organs and be of sufficient diameter to promote rapid bleeding. Penetration less than 12 inches is too little, and, in the words of two of the participants in the1987 Wound Ballistics Workshop, “too little penetration will get you killed.” Given desirable and reliable penetration, the only way to increase bullet effectiveness is to increase the severity of the wound by increasing the size of hole made by the bullet. Any bullet which will not penetrate through vital organs from less than optimal angles is not acceptable. Of those that will penetrate, the edge is always with the bigger bullet.
       To me, kinetic energy at the muzzle (muzzle energy) or energy down range is a one of several tools for measuring the effectiveness of a particular round. Of course, velocity is important, not just for external ballistics, but also terminal ballistics; particularly when using an expanding bullet, it is important to have an idea whether your round will expand at a given velocity. For instance, 55 grain 5.56/.223 FMJ will perform well out to 100 to 150 yards because the velocity is still enough that the bullet will spectacularly yaw upon striking a soft target, but beyond those ranges, velocity typically has dropped enough that the wounding effect is much less.
       In many ways, I believe that momentum is a better measure of potential penetration than muzzle energy. The kinetic energy equation gives far too much weight to velocity, whereas momentum seems to better express the balance of mass and velocity--i.e., how difficult it is to slow or stop the object. Generally speaking, whether high or low velocity, rounds with large momentum will penetrate deeper into a soft target than those with low momentum.


Other Stuff:
       Every day, Claire Morton thinks back to that moment in November when she could have saved her marriage.
           Her husband of 24 years, the father of her three children, had come home from work and announced he didn’t love her any more and wanted to leave.
             She sat and calmly listened to his footsteps upstairs in the bedroom as he packed his bag. She didn’t think to follow him up. Not once did she ask him to reconsider. To talk it through. To try to make it work.
               ‘Bye then,’ she said, as he walked out of the door and out of her life
                  Though shocked and hurt, Claire, a 53-year-old travel agent from Colchester, Essex, admits part of her was excited at the thought of being single again.
                   While she loved her husband, like most couples in long marriages, she felt they had become a little staid and set in their ways. Their sex life was hardly the firework display of their 20s, and sometimes she’d look over at this snoring, paunchy, greying man on the other side of the bed and wonder: ‘Is this it?’
              The article indicates that she then went to Tinder to find her new exciting life. The results were disappointing and demoralizing:
                       To Claire, it sounded like a different world; a sweet shop filled with thrills and excitement, all available at her fingertips. Just the pick-me-up she needed.
                         Sadly, six months later, Claire would do anything to be back in the marital home, listening for the sound of her husband’s key in the door.
                           For she, like countless other middle-aged divorcees, has found the world of internet dating — of which Tinder leads the field — to be a tawdry, loveless, moral abyss.
                             In fact, she’d be the first to warn any married woman secretly thinking the grass might be greener on the other side to stay firmly where she is.
                      Her lack of alarm at her husband's leaving belies any statement that she loved him. The opposite of love is disinterest, and she obviously had no interest in her husband or their marriage. 

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