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Wednesday, November 28, 2018

November 28, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"How does Remington R51 work?"--Noble Empire (2 min.)
A cutaway animation of how the R51's mechanism works.

The radio receives 150kHz-30mHz, and transmits on the amateur bands of 80m-10m. It is a true SDR, having an excellent receiver and a very simple layout for controls. There are not any complicated menus, being even simpler than my Icom 7200 to operate. Finding a frequency is as simple as using the arrow buttons and turning the main tuning knob. The operator can rapidly skip through the various bands using the band button and change the operating modes via the mode button. I have not seen a radio with a layout this simple; the Icom 706 series came close and the 7200 does also, but this rig by far has the shallowest learning curve to getting on the air.
He also notes, later on:
Other features of this rig really demonstrate the thought towards versatility the designers put in. All attachment points are on the rear of the rig, including standard speaker and CW (morse code) key plugs, Yaesu microphone jack, and a standard data jack found on Yaesu radios as well as a USB jack for firmware updates and to pull data being received by the radio over the air.
The unit is a pricey at $1,000, but the author really likes all the features (and there are much more than detailed in the excerpts I've included).
The #1, absolutely, positively, you're going to die mistake, is to take the "Lone Wolf" approach.  You know who I'm talking about.  The guy on the prepping forum that plans to move out to the national forest and "live off the land" like the Legend of Mick Dodge.  I would estimate that only 30% of those individuals actually believe they have the necessary skills to pull it off, while the other 70% are too lazy to actually make long term preparations and they've just convinced themselves that if Rambo can do it, then they can too.  Either way, none of them have ever stopped to actually consider what surviving in the wild looks like AFTER YOU FACTOR IN A SHTF SCENARIO.  While a small percentage of the 30% might make it through the winter in normal times, only a small fraction could do it during a SHTF scenario.
Lest you feel smug, he then discusses why other strategies--being a looter/raider, roamer, living in a suburban bunker, being a pacifist, trying to survive in place or by fortifying your neighborhood are also poor strategies. He continues:
The overwhelming truth in all these scenarios, once again, comes down to a single focus.  It’s not the EMP, the cyber attack, or the solar flare that is going to kill you.  Your plans MUST include staying as far away from the starving masses as possible.  Aside from the resurgence of long forgotten diseases like cholera and dysentery from poor sanitation and hygiene, the starving and desperate masses (even the everyday Joes) are going to be the real killers.  So maybe I’ve convinced you to second guess some of your plans.  Now what?  Back to square one?  Not quite.  All the supplies and food you’ve already attained is still needed.  You just need to stage them far away from the population centers and you can actually do this on a budget.  Don’t bank on the fact that you are going to have a running vehicle or clear roads to load up all your gear and bug out of town.  Regardless, you must get out of town which means bugging out.  To do so requires a pre-organized plan of action though.  Here are my recommendations.
This is a complex subject, and the reality is that no one has any idea what major upheaval will look like in an advanced technological culture with over 300 million people and over 400 million firearms. For every historical example I can think of where fleeing for the hills was better than staying in the city (e.g., the 70 A.D. siege of Jerusalem), I can think of other examples where it was better to stay in the city or, at least, it was no worse than the countryside. Selco survived a civil war in Sarajevo and I've never seen anything he has written suggesting it would have been better for the people living in a small town. FerFal survived an economic crises in Argentina and was adamant that living where the jobs were and trade still flourished was critical. During the Black Plague, in Europe, there were cities that saw as high as 50 or 60% mortality rates ... and smaller towns and villages that were completely wiped out. During the 30 Years War, living in rural communities or remote locations did not save you when roaming armies and mercenaries passed through. 
  • "The Top 10 Attacks You Should Train For"--Schafer's Self-Defense Corner. They are: (1) Charging forward and throwing multiple punches; (2) The right roundhouse punch; (3) The sucker punch; (4) Being attacked from behind by surprise; (5) "The sacrificial lamb" where one guy distracts or attacks you from the front, and his buddies attack from the sides or rear; (6) A two handed choke; (7) Having your collar grabbed; (8) Getting stabbed "for real", i.e., not seeing the knife beforehand and being attacked with multiple, quick stabs; (9) Having a gun pulled on you from outside of arm’s reach; and (10) Having a gun pulled on you from within arm’s reach.
  • "Marines Get the Official OK to Wear These 7 New Boot Styles"--Kit Up! So, if you are looking for list of boots that are tough enough for the Marines, here you go. Needless to say, models from Danner dominate the list.
  • I'm shocked, I tell you! Shocked! "Study By Anti-Gun Researchers Finds Universal Background Checks Do Nothing to Decrease Violence, Suicides"--The Truth About Guns. I suspect a ban on beanie babies, however, would show some real results.


"NATO Falls Apart - But Not Because of Trump"--Classiarius (5 min.)
NATO is falling apart because its purpose--defending Western Europe from the Soviet Union--is moot. It no longer has a real purpose ... at least, from the perspective of most European countries and the United States. But it did have an unintended purpose, which was to protect the rest of Europe from Germany. Which is why, the author suggests, France is calling for a European army even as the U.S. signals a reduced interest in supporting NATO. The author predicts that if the U.S. withdrew its forces from Europe, Germany would quickly realize that it needs to expand its military and would do so. He also predicts that there will, eventually, be another European war as a result.

        A pair of researchers with the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Norway has found that IQ test scores have been slowly dropping over the past several decades. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Bernt Bratsberg and Ole Rogeberg describe their study and the results they found. They also offer some possible explanations for their findings.
          Prior studies have shown that people grew smarter over the first part of last century, as measured by the intelligence quotient—a trend that was dubbed the Flynn effect. Various theories have been proposed to explain this apparent brightening of the human mind, such as better nutrition, health care, education, etc, all factors that might help people grow into smarter adults than they would have otherwise. But, now, according to the researchers in Norway, that trend has ended. Instead of getting smarter, humans have started getting dumber.
            The study by the team consisted of analyzing IQ test results from young men entering Norway's national service (compulsory military duty) during the years 1970 to 2009. In all, 730,000 test results were accounted for. In studying the data, the researchers found that scores declined by an average of seven points per generation, a clear reversal of test results going back approximately 70 years.
              The mother seen in a now-famous photo desperately pulling her daughters away from tear gas plumes at the US-Mexico border said she never imagined American forces would fire mace canisters at women and children.
               “We never thought they were going to fire these bombs where there were children, because there were lots of children,” Maria Meza said in an interview with Reuters.
          It seems that THOTs [That Ho Over There] on Snapchat and other platforms are using PayPal to charge men to see "premium snaps," which are nudes or pornography. It's also possible that these ladies of social media are not reporting their earnings to the IRS. In an effort that can only be described as hilarious, the anons at 4chan have launched a full-scale war on THOTs across all platforms. Women who fish for lonely and susceptible beta boys are the bane of many gamers, whose platforms are being taken over by the sex trollers. These women solicit in male-dominated platforms and many of the men who use the platforms are sick of it.
             More from Heartiste if you are interested. 
                      Bradford, known as E.J., was among the shoppers who crowded the [Riverchase Galleria] mall on Thursday when, police say, gunshots wounded an 18-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl. Bradford apparently was armed. Police showed up on the scene and shot him, and announced that in doing so, they had ended the threat. They later acknowledged that Bradford had not been the shooter. But they claimed that he had "brandished" his gun at the scene, leading to a "heightened sense of threat" in an already dangerous situation.
                      Certainly, if a man holds a gun at the scene of a shooting, police are more likely to zero in on him than on others. Officers arrive in the midst of extremely tense, life-threatening and fast-moving situations and must think quickly.
                          Yet guns are ubiquitous in this nation, whether we like it or not. Many people carry them legally, and for just this kind of situation — to be the "good guy with a gun" who stops the armed bad guy. No less than the president of the United States has called for more armed citizens, so that in the midst of an altercation, many guns might be wielded by good guys and bad guys alike. Officers should expect it. They should be trained for it.
                          Police are human, but they are also specialists. It should not be asking too much to require them to understand who they are about to shoot at before pulling their own triggers — not just in spite of the chaos that's inherent at the scene of a fight but precisely because of it. They represent the law and they represent order. That's what they should be expected to bring to a scene of violence and confusion.
                             China has become a major investor in Africa, challenging Western influence on the continent.
                              It has promised to spend $60bn in investment, aid and loans in Africa over the next three years, mostly in infrastructure development.
                                "The thing that makes you happy about their aid is that it is not tied to any conditions. When they decide to give you, they just give you," Mr Magufuli said.
                            I think what he means is that China doesn't care if corrupt government officials skim off the top.
                            The extreme space weather events of early August 1972 had significant impact on the U.S. Navy, which have not been widely reported. These effects, long buried in the Vietnam War archives, add credence to the severity of the storm: a nearly instantaneous, unintended detonation of dozens of sea mines south of Hai Phong, North Vietnam on 4 August 1972. This event occurred near the end of the Vietnam War. The U.S. Navy attributed the dramatic event to magnetic perturbations of solar storms. In researching these events we determined that the widespread electric‐ and communication‐grid disturbances that plagued North America and the disturbances in southeast Asia late on 4 August likely resulted from propagation of major eruptive activity from the Sun to the Earth. The activity fits the description of a Carrington‐class storm minus the low‐latitude aurora reported in 1859. We provide insight into the solar, geophysical, and military circumstances of this extraordinary situation. In our view this storm deserves a scientific revisit as a grand challenge for the space weather community, as it provides space‐age terrestrial observations of what was likely a Carrington‐class storm. 
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                            Weekend Reading -- A New Weekend Knowledge Dump

                            Greg Ellifritz has posted a new Weekend Knowledge Dump at his Active Response Training blog . Before I discuss some of his links, I want to ...