A Quick Run Around the Web (1/17/2020)

"The Best Headlamps and Lanterns for Camping, Bushcraft and Survival"--Corporals Corner (10 min.). The primary upgrade between what he had been using and what he switched to was the ability to recharge the battery off a recharging pack or small solar panel.

• To start things off, check out this week's Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Articles on the castle doctrine, wound ballistics, a comparison between three .44 Magnum loads, an article that compares velocities from some "obsolete" cartridges, an article on what to do with your concealed carry firearm when you have to use the toilet, and lots more.
• "The Basics of the Tactical Flashlight"--Ammoman. The author describes his requirements from a tactical flashlight, then explains how to compare advertised features from different brands, including explaining the FL-1 industry standards that were intended to standardize how companies would report the capabilities of a flashlight. The author also describes the different batteries commonly used in tactical flashlights, and common options for controls and modes (e.g., high or low intensity, strobe, etc.). He recommends basic controls (momentary and hard on/off switch with no alternate modes), especially to someone that hasn't or won't put in the training to learn to manipulate the different modes under stress. He concludes:

Every tactical flashlight is different and has its own unique features that can make it more suitable for you than for me. However, through my extensive testing, I have found that Streamlight, SureFire, and Elzetta tend to make reliable lights. These brands will take a beating and survive long term use. Yes, they are more expensive than a no-name light at Walmart, but your life is worth the extra money.

• "Do You Fly Often? | Stranded Far Away From Home After SHTF Event"--Modern Survival Blog. He relates what colleagues did following 9/11 (most rented cars to drive back home) and provides a list of some things to take with you when travelling. Cash is probably one of the most important things: but in smaller denominations (nothing larger than a $20 bill).
• "First Look: Timney Impact AR-15 Trigger"--Shooting Illustrated.  The article reads like a press release, but, nonetheless, Timney is releasing an AR drop-in trigger pack for $150.
• Another from Modern Survival Blog: "How Much Wheat in a 5 Gallon Bucket – Pounds, Calories, #Loaves Bread." Short take is that if you are planning on a 2,000 calorie a day diet with half of your calories from bread, you will need to store (roughly) 230 lbs. of wheat per person (about 7 five-gallon buckets). If you are looking at only getting 1/4 of your calories from bread, then you need 115 lbs. of wheat per person (about 3.5 five-gallon buckets). The author also has links to other articles on how to safely store the wheat.
• For you history buffs: "Throwback Thursday: Rise of the Renaissance Gunner"--NRA Family. During the early part of the age of gunpowder, experienced gunners were few and far between, and expensive: they generally acted as mercenaries in order to have and maintain regular employment.
• "This year's flu shot doesn't match virus circulating: report"--Fox News. So, in order to have enough vaccine, scientists have to make an educated guess as to which flu strain is going to be the one that spreads from SE Asia to the United States, and sometimes they are wrong. Such was the case this year. Nevertheless, the strains were close enough that the flu shot was not valueless.
• "Wheelgun Wednesday: Colt King Cobra Target .357 Magnum Review"--The Firearm Blog. The author reports that fit and finish was excellent, but he wished for more visible sights. Also: "Collectors will love this wheelgun and simultaneously be surprised by the accuracy you can push out of a mid-size revolver. Whether it was .38 Special, .357 Magnum, light loads, heavy loads, target projectiles, or hollow-points, essentially it did not matter the ammo type, this revolver drives tacks!"
• "How to Break In a Gun Barrel"--NRA Family. Per the author, "Every barrel, no matter how smoothly the bore has been machined, still has surface imperfections created during the drilling, reaming and rifling process," and the process of "breaking in" is to remove these imperfections through repeated shooting and cleaning over a short period of time. 

One popular method is to thoroughly clean the barrel between each of the first 15 to 25 shots, then between every two or three shots for the next 10 shots. Finally, several five- or 10-shot strings are fired with a complete cleaning between each. Barrel break-in is typically completed within 50 or fewer rounds and is usually signaled by a noticeable reduction in fouling during cleaning.

• "How dangerous are bushfires and volcanic ash for the lungs?"--DW. The article explains:

       Volcanic ash usually consists of solid crystalline rock and glass particles, only a few millimeters in size, which are formed when magma is broken up. In addition, eruptions  release vast quantities of carbon and sulphur dioxide, which together with the dust condense to form thick black clouds of smoke.

      Ash dust can cause a dry cough and irrtitate the throat and sinuses. It is difficult to breathe, the eyes become watery and red, the nose itches, and the dust particles often make you sneeze.

     The smaller, the more dangerous

     The smaller the particles released, the more harmful the ash is to human health. Larger particles can cause a cough when inhaled, but they do not get further inside the body because they are first absorbed by the mucous membrane.

     Smaller particles can get into the bronchi. From there they are transported back up through the small hairs ciliated epithelium and coughed up. However, tiny particles smaller than 4 micrometers could penetrate deep into the aveoli, i.e., the air cells in the lungs, and cause lasting damage to the lungs.

     People with lung problems or asthmatics must be particularly careful. However, severe damage is not to be expected in healthy adults. If possible, however, you should stay outdoors as little as possible and wear a protective mask.

• "The Problems With Small Self-Defense Guns"--Shooting Illustrated. The author notes that most new shooters coming to his class are choosing compact or sub-compact handguns for self defense. The problem, he writes, "is the inherit difficulty in shooting them well as a result of their smaller sizes." Part of the issue are generally poor sights and trigger on this size of firearm, while the other is the diminutive size of the grips. He continues:

The smaller size makes them easier to conceal, but hard to hold and shoot well. I find some are better to grip than others. A common occurrence is when the pinky finger is left to dangle in the wind. A lot of people worry about this, but my comments are just the opposite. Don’t worry. If your pinky fits on the bottom of the frame, that is great. If not, don’t sweat it too much. Instead, curl your pinky so the magazine base can rest on the surface. It seems a little odd at first because we are used to wrapping the pinky around something. In this case, there is nothing, so don’t worry. You can still apply pressure with the other two digits and pull a little bit of power from the pinky if you can press it into the heel of your hand. There are, of course, aftermarket extensions for some magazines, but I find this technique works just fine. Under certain circumstances I actually prefer this technique rather than extending the profile of the gun with a grip extension. It kind of defeats the purpose of the subcompact when you increase the footprint, making the pistol more difficult to conceal.

I've been fortunate in that, over the years, I've owned some smaller handguns and I've had the opportunity to test many others. I have a relative who has collected several small handguns, including several pocket pistols, that I've handled and fired. Kel-Tec makes the lightest pocket pistols, and I know people that swear by it for this one reason: particularly when having to carry while in business clothes. The one pocket pistol I've been most impressed with is the Sig P238 in .380. Small, light (although not quite as light as the Kel Tec), and comes with good sight which can be switched out, and a pretty good trigger. It uses a Browning type system, so it is single-action, but with a good manual safety--anyone use to the 1911 will find it easy to switch over to this firearm. One impressive feature is that you can rack the slide with the safety engaged allowing you to more safely load or unload the weapon. And, at least with what I've seen, it is reliable and accurate for the distances you would be using such a a weapon (I haven't tried it over longer distances). The downside is that it is rather more expensive than most comparable sized handguns. But probably worth it. 

• "Bait and Switch: Fact Checking Australia’s Gun Laws And Crime Statistics"--The Truth About Guns. The author writes:

       There were 354 murders in Australia in 1996, when the ban began. In 1997, there were 364. Even with the amnesty still going on, as people turned in their firearms, we’d expect a drop in murders if the ban was at all effective. We don’t. Only in PolitiFact’s chosen 1998 do we finally see a drop, to 334.

     Again, if the ban was effective at their claimed goal, 1999 should be around the same or lower, right? Instead, murders rose significantly to 385, well over 1996’s 354.

If firearms are the reason for murders, I would expect a ban to eliminate 90% or more of murders, not some piddly single digit changes. 

• "Reviewed: Federal Force X2 Home-Defense Buckshot"--NRA Family. This is Federal's attempt to come up with 00 buckshot that have reduced penetration against interior walls. Their idea was to cut a slot into the buckshot so that when it impacts an object, the shot will break into two and the reduced mass and increased surface area will slow it down. I'm always leery of frangible ammo because less mass = less momentum = less penetration. If it isn't going to penetrate a wall, my concern is that it will not have sufficient penetration into the target. But the article claims otherwise, citing an 18-inch penetration into bare gel. Cost is steep as well: $22.95 per box of 10 rounds.
• I saw this at Instapundit the other day: "Tech lessons from 72 hours without electricity"--MacWorld. The author was able to keep his devices running using backup batteries, solar chargers and UPS's. He explains:

       If you don’t own any backup batteries to charge your devices, get some. They’re useful when traveling—I always bring at least one with me fully charged when I go on a trip, so I don’t end up in an unfamiliar city without a fully functional iPhone. I have two 10,000 mAh batteries with two USB ports, capable of charging an iPhone several times.

      Just in case of extended blackouts, I also bought a solar charger earlier this year. By keeping it in the sun all day, I could almost completely recharge one of those big batteries, extending the time before all my devices would be completely out of power.

      I also flipped on Low Power Mode across all my iPhones. (Apple, how about a Low Power Mode for the iPad?) In Low Power Mode (accessible from the Battery menu in the Settings app), iPhones are much more aggressive at putting off tasks that can drain a battery—and my goal was to ration power as much as possible. I even turned off always-on mode on the display of my new Apple Watch, to extend its battery life.

     Another smart tech product that you should probably own is a UPS, or Uninterruptable Power Supply. These are fat power strips with heavy integrated batteries that let your devices stay on briefly when the power goes out. Not only can they help you ride out momentary outages during storms, but the give you time to save or transfer files to other devices and then shut down in the case of a longer outage. In the case of a power outage that doesn’t take down your internet connection, you can also use the battery in a UPS to power your cable modem and router to keep the Wi-Fi on.

• Interesting: "Training vs. Experience"--Active Response Training. Citing an FBI study of  40 cases of serious attacks on police officers where the researchers interviewed both the officers and the attackers involved in each case:

Nearly 40% of the criminal attackers in this study had received FORMAL firearms training (mostly in the military).  More than 80% of the criminal attackers regularly practiced with their firearms, with an average number of 23 Practice Sessions Per Year.  They conducted these practice sessions in trash dumps, wooded areas, back yards and “street corners in known drug trafficking areas”.  What that means is that the practice sessions were taking place in realistic environments, under conditions similar to those the attackers were likely to face in combat.

"WHY Do MILITARY GUYS Wear PANTYHOSE?"--Black Scout Survival (2-1/2 min.)

The two reasons given are: (1) to act as a bug barrier; and (2) if cut down to knee highs, it reduces blisters while hiking.

• "An Introduction to Q"--Deborah Franklin at American Thinker. If you don't know what WWG1WGA means, this article if for you.

• Related: "WE NOW KNOW: FISA COURT MUST GO"--Powerline. The FISA court has appointed David Kris to review changes proposed by the FBI to the court’s surveillance application process. Kris is a former Obama DOJ official and media apologist for the FBI's illegal surveillance on Trump associate, Carter Page. As the Wall Street Journal has observed, "Mr. Kris contributed to public confusion by lending his supposed authority as a legal intelligence expert to justify the FBI’s actions." The author concludes:

I don’t think “fiasco” and stupidity (“obtuseness”) do justice to what is going on with the court’s appointment of David Kris. We now know beyond any reasonable doubt that the FISA court has been compromised. It is going through the motions to mitigate the revelation of its own fault now that we know it too is among the institutions corrupted in the Russia hoax. 

• Related: "Jeffrey Epstein used database to keep track of his ‘numerous’ victims"--New York Post. The article relates: "Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein kept a harem of abused and trafficked girls as young as 11 that was so large he needed a computer system to keep track of them, according to a new lawsuit filed Wednesday against his estate."

• Project Veritas comes through again: "Sanders' Field Organizer: Cities Will Burn If Sanders Loses Nod or Trump Wins. Cops Will Be Attacked. Gulags Coming for MAGA Supporters."--New American. 
• It's all about the graft: "A Full Third Of Flint’s Emergency $390 Million Water Funds Did Not Go To Clean Water"--The Daily Caller. From the article:

       About $129 million was spent on economic development and “social development,” nearly as much as the $144 million spent on safe drinking water, according to the state budget tally.

      Money from a state water grant was used to bring “a youth basketball league back to the city after a fifteen-year absence,” according to the book “The Poisoned City.”

     State water-crisis money has been providing free daycare for children ages 3 and under in the city, even though none of them were alive or in utero during the primary water crisis, a state spokesman acknowledged. ....

     Of $66 million that went toward economic development, $20 million went to Uptown Reinvestment Corp., a firm associated with four investors, two of whom are donors to [then-Michigan Gov. Rick] Snyder, according to campaign finance records. Seven million dollars went to renovate an old building into new apartments, and $5.5 million to renovate the Capitol Theatre.

     Under social development, the government also spent nearly $4 million providing extra money on the food stamp cards of residents, the state data show.

      Some money under the “clean water” category itself was used to prop up general city activities, such as plowing snow and maintaining traffic lights, with the justification that it “support[ed] water distribution.”

     The Flint Registry, which a federal grant supports, is paying residents $50 to fill out a form enrolling them, which in turn connects them to further services such as health screenings and education.

• Demographic winter: "China's birthrate falls to lowest level under Communism despite push for more babies"--Yahoo. The article relates:

      Despite abolishing the one-child policy, the country posted 10.48 births per thousand people last year, the lowest since 1949, according to China’s national bureau of statistics. That amounted to 580,000 fewer babies in 2019, compared to the previous year.

     China is battling a shrinking labour force, squeezed on both ends by a fast-aging population and waning births, a trajectory that will impact growth at a time the economy is already suffering. On Friday, China posted annual GDP growth of 6.1 per cent, the lowest rate in three decades.

     The country’s working-age population has been on the decline since 2012, and is expected to fall roughly 23 per cent by 2050, according to official data.

• As Anonymous Conservative points out, with an upcoming presidential election, we should see an increase in illegal aliens attempting to cross the border, to-wit: "Honduran migrant caravan rumbles on through Guatemala"--API. "More than 1,000 Honduran migrants broke through a police barrier on the border with Guatemala on Thursday in a bid to join hundreds of others heading for the United States."

• Related: "Guatemalan leader says Mexico plans to contain new caravan"--Reuters.

• Another "build the wall" article: "CBP Issues Alert for ‘Four Nationals of Iran Possibly Carrying Explosives’ Into California From Mexico"--Right Journalism. "'We received reports that four nationals of Iran possibly carrying explosives were going to attempt to cross the border in the area of San Luis to Mexicali. We were told it was three men and a woman to be on the lookout for, ' said Andrade."
• "I’m a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted"--op-ed by Jerry Kammer at The New York Times. An excerpt:

       In 2001, when I was the new Washington correspondent for The Arizona Republic, I attended the annual awards dinner of the National Immigration Forum. The forum is a left-right coalition that lobbies for unauthorized immigrants and expansive immigration policies. Its board has included officials of the National Council of La Raza, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, as well as the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association and the American Nursery and Landscape Association.

      After dinner, the group’s executive director, Frank Sharry, made a pitch to business allies who wanted Congress to allow them unfettered access to foreign workers. “You guys in business get all the workers you want, whenever you want them,” he proposed. “No bureaucracy.”

     “Sold!” yelled John Gay, a lobbyist for the American Hotel and Lodging Association. Mr. Sharry quickly added that the deal must include advocacy for “three little, tiny pieces of paper: a green card, a union card and a voter registration card” for unauthorized immigrants.

      For me, a reporter who had long covered immigration in the Southwest and Mexico, the exchange was a revelation about the politics of immigration in Washington. Business lobbyists like Mr. Gay — conservatives who seek loose labor markets so employers can keep wages down — align themselves with liberal activists like Frank Sharry to pursue policies that serve their groups.

      Who, I wondered, was lobbying for the American workers competing with the new arrivals? The answer, I learned, was no one. ...

• More Muslim outreach discovered in England: "The descent into barbarism"--Vox Day. Turns out that the Pakistani rape gang operating in Rotherham had more victims than previously reported: "New figures by the National Crime Agency (NCA) put the number of children believed to have been sexually exploited in the town of Rotherham over 16-year period at an astonishing 1,510 – up from the 1,400 figure identified in a 2014 report." 1,400 of these were females, and included children as young as 11.
• Rabbits: "Revealed: Baltimore has the HIGHEST rate of STIs in the US with TWO cases of chlamydia, gonorrhoea or syphilis for every 100 residents"--Daily Mail.  Or 2,004 STD diagnoses per 100,000 people. If this had been gun wounds the City would have been jumping all over it. Perhaps they need to implement a 3-day waiting period before residents can have sex, and require mandatory health background checks.

• Related: "Natural selection is leading to more transmissible HIV in United States"--AIDS Map. Researchers from UC  San Diego and the CDC have found that "HIV that is being transmitted in large population clusters in the United States is more likely to cause high viral load in people who acquire it, leading US researchers to conclude that natural selection is causing HIV in the United States to become more infectious and virulent." A 2018 study found that "rapidly growing transmission clusters in the United States especially involved young Latino/Hispanic men who have sex with men." 

• "Phase one agreement aside, could the trade war future mean choosing China or the US?"--DW. Basically, the article suggests that trade tensions will continue between China and the U.S. and, because of the trade war, China will continue to decouple it from dependence on the West (particularly the U.S.). The result, the author predicts, will be China forcing other nations to pick with whom they will trade: the U.S. or China. 
• "Disease that killed millions of China's pigs poses global threat"--Reuters. Australia and the U.S. have stepped up efforts to keep African swine flu from spreading to China to the respective countries. 

       The U.S. government is fielding dogs at airports and seaports, conducting outbreak-response drills and adding capacity to test pigs. France and Germany are killing hundreds of thousands of wild boar that might carry the disease. France also erected 132 kilometers (82 miles) of fencing to keep out wild boar and is planning stricter sanitary rules for pig farming, including requirements to disinfect trucks that transport swine.

      Thailand culled pigs in a province close to Myanmar, where the disease has been found. South Korea ordered soldiers on its border with North Korea to capture wild boar, while Vietnam used troops to ensure infected pigs were culled.

     Australia expelled travelers from Vietnam for smuggling pork and banned imports of pork products. Australia also deployed advisors to Pacific islands in an attempt to protect its closest neighbors from African swine fever. ...

• "Terry Glavin: There's a revolution going on in the Mideast. Why doesn't the West see that?"--National Post.  The revolution is against the "Khomeinist despotism that runs from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran through Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq" and could reshape the Middle-East and Central Asia. As for why the West doesn't see it is because the Neo-cons and Liberals believe that disrupting potential enemies through endless war is preferable to no wars or, even, winning wars.
• Greta Thunberg disappointed: "New Studies: Antarctica Stable, Temps Falling, Ice Mass Growing!"--Climate Change Dispatch. Although geothermal heat is melting a portion of the Western Ice Sheet, overall the temperatures are steady or falling, and the ice mass is increasing.
• "Crater Left by One of Earth's Biggest Ever Meteorite Impacts Finally Found"--Science Alert. The article explains that "[a]bout 800,000 years ago, a monster space rock struck the Earth hard and fast. The impact of the 1.2 mile-wide (1.9 kilometre-wide) meteorite flung debris across 10 percent of the planet's surface," but scientists had been unable to locate the impact crater, until now. "In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists describe the location where they think this massive rock crashed: a volcanic field in southeastern Laos."
• Reminds me of accounts of islands that appeared and disappeared within days: "Mystery of where a giant pumice raft twice the size of MANHATTAN drifting towards Australia came from is finally solved - as geologists claim it was produced by an underwater VOLCANO in Tonga"--Daily Mail. 

      Geologists have traced the origin of a huge 'raft' of floating rock in the Pacific Ocean that is three times the size of Sydney Harbour and twice as big as Manhattan. 

     They say the 150-square kilometre mass of pumice was produced by the eruption of an underwater volcano 50 kilometres northwest of the Tongan island of Vava'u.

• A reminder we live in the 21st Century: "Elon Musk says SpaceX will build 100 Starships per year to put ONE MILLION humans on Mars by 2050 as he aims to make humans a 'multi-planetary species'"--Daily Mail. Probably an overly ambitious goal, but like the saying goes, better to aim for the moon and hit an eagle, than to aim for an eagle and hit the earth.