November 24, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around The Web

"Navy SEAL test Ballistics through Walls | Tactical Rifleman" (32 min.)

The Tactical Rifleman has built segments of wall similar to what you might find used for a house or small business structure: plane brick facade (1 layer) over wood, brick facade over cinder block, bare cinder block (1 layer), wood exterior wall, and sheet rock interior wall. He also obtained a section of wall from a trailer house. The rounds he tested against each wall section were: 12-gauge bird-shot, 12-gauge 00 buckshot, 12-gauge 1 ounce slug, 9 mm FMJ (115 grain), 5.56 FMJ (55 grain). Of course, the interior sheet rock walls did not stop anything. The standard wood exterior wall also did not stop anything. As would be expected, the brick, brick/cinder block, and cinder block walls stopped the birdshot, buckshot, 9 mm and 5.56 rounds. Surprisingly, they also stopped the 1 ounce slugs. The damage from the slugs, the 9 mm, and 5.56 were sufficient, however, that multiple rounds at the same location probably could have quickly been able to breech the walls. I would have liked to see more powerful rifle calibers, such as 7.62x39 or .308.

• John Lott writes about "How gun-free zones invite mass shootings" at The Chicago Tribune. A couple of take-aways. First:

        ... America doesn’t lead the world in mass public shootings. We’re not even close. Just last month, a school shooting in Crimea, Russia, claimed 20 lives and wounded 65 others. But Americans usually don’t hear about such events.

* * *

        Over the course of 18 years, from 1998 to 2015, our list contains 2,354 attacks and at least 4,880 shooters outside the United States and 53 attacks and 57 shooters within this country. By our count, the U.S. makes up 1.49 percent of the murders worldwide, 2.20 percent of the attacks, and less than 1.15 percent of the mass public shooters. All these are much less than America’s 4.6 percent share of the world population.

       Of the 97 countries where we identified mass public shootings, the U.S. ranks 64th per capita in its rate of attacks and 65th in fatalities. Major European countries, such as Norway, Finland, France, Switzerland and Russia, all have at least 25 percent higher per capita murder rates from mass public shootings.

       While Americans are rightly concerned by the increased frequency and severity of mass public shootings, the rest of the world is experiencing much larger increases in per capita rates of attack. The frequency of foreign mass public shootings since 1998 has grown 291 percent faster than in the U.S.

Second:

      ... 98 percent of mass public shootings since 1950 have occurred in places where citizens are banned from having guns.

Just a reminder that gun control isn't about safety, or even guns, but is simply about control.

• If you haven't checked it out already, take a look at this week's Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. One article of particular interest is "New Small Arms Survey report: Improvised weapons widespread, important source of firepower for many." An excerpt from the Executive Summary:

Improvised and craft-produced small arms and light weapons—which vary widely in terms of quality and safety—remain an important source of firepower for a wide range of actors, including tribal groups, poachers, criminals, insurgent groups, and even some states and quasi-state groups. In some areas, these weapons account for the vast majority of firearms used in crime; in others, their production is institutionalized, providing essential income for local gunsmiths. Some of these weapons are used locally, others are trafficked on a national, regional, or international scale. In Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere, armed non-state actors are regularly developing and employing new designs of improvised and craft-produced small arms and light weapons. 

• "How to Stockpile and Store Water"--The Survivalist Blog. The article lists (without details) some places to find water in an emergency and containers that can be pressed into service to collect and store water in an emergency. The bulk of the article, however, discusses different containers that you might use to deliberately store water as part of your general storage.
• "The Comfort of Wool"--Blue Collar Prepping. A reminder of the insulating properties of wool, even when wet.
• "Kershaw Camp 18 Machete Review"--Alpha Survivalist. It features an 18-inch high-carbon steel blade and what appears to be a very nice sheath.
• "The Best Survival Bicycle Transportation"--Modern Survival Blog. The author has compiled a list of things to consider when picking out a bicycle for preppers/survivalist. His choice is a mountain bike because of its off-road capabilities. This assumes using a bike for bugging-out to a rural location, or, perhaps, in a paramilitary role. As I've written before, the more likely scenario may well be using bicycles for day-to-day transportation when gasoline is in short supply or unavailable. In those cases, simplicity, ease-of-maintenance, and ability to haul cargo may be more important than off-road capabilities. Cargo racks and baskets are important, but difficult to attach to most mountain bikes.
• More important than ever: "Spiritual Preparedness"--Tim Gamble. 

Figure out your relationship with God.  This is the most important prep you can make, because the one SHTF event we are all guaranteed to face is our own death. Think about that for a moment. All the things we may be concerned about - an EMP attack, the collapse of the dollar, nuclear war, the Yellowstone super volcano, a worldwide pandemic, or whatever - may not happen in our lifetime, if it happens at all. But death is guaranteed to come for us all. If we spend a lot of time and effort preparing for events that might not happen, shouldn't we spend at least of little time and effort preparing for the one event that will happen?  

Gamble gives some specific points to help boost your spiritual preparedness, so read the whole thing.

"WHAT WOULD STILL BE WORKING AFTER AN EMP ATTACK?"--Penny University (4 min.)

• Sodom and Gomorrah? "An exploding meteor may have wiped out ancient Dead Sea communities"--Science News. From the article:

      A superheated blast from the skies obliterated cities and farming settlements north of the Dead Sea around 3,700 years ago, preliminary findings suggest.

       Radiocarbon dating and unearthed minerals that instantly crystallized at high temperatures indicate that a massive airburst caused by a meteor that exploded in the atmosphere instantaneously destroyed civilization in a 25-kilometer-wide circular plain called Middle Ghor, said archaeologist Phillip Silvia. The event also pushed a bubbling brine of Dead Sea salts over once-fertile farm land, Silvia and his colleagues suspect.

      People did not return to the region for 600 to 700 years, said Silvia, of Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque. He reported these findings at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research on November 17.

       Excavations at five large Middle Ghor sites, in what’s now Jordan, indicate that all were continuously occupied for at least 2,500 years until a sudden, collective collapse toward the end of the Bronze Age. Ground surveys have located 120 additional, smaller settlements in the region that the researchers suspect were also exposed to extreme, collapse-inducing heat and wind. An estimated 40,000 to 65,000 people inhabited Middle Ghor when the cosmic calamity hit, Silvia said.

See also this article from Newsweek. 

• Related: "Sodom and Gomorrah 'destroyed by a comet', say astronomers"--The Independent. A 1997 article postulating that the cities may have been destroyed by a meteor storm between 2200 - 2000 B.C.  

• "‘True polar wander’ may have caused ice age"--Rice University. "Gordon said, 'It was only about a 3 degree shift, but it had the effect of taking the mantle under the tropical Pacific and moving it to the south, and at the same time, it was shifting Greenland and parts of Europe and North America to the north. That may have triggered what we call the ice age.'"
• Apparently not everyone in Pakistan is on board with China's New Silk Road: "Karachi attack: China consulate attack leaves four dead"--BBC. The article reports:

       A separatist group, the Balochistan Liberation Army, said it had carried out the attack. It is one of a number of separatist groups operating in the province, which has seen a long-running nationalist insurgency.

       "We have been seeing the Chinese as an oppressor, along with Pakistani forces," a spokesman for the group told the AFP news agency.

       Over the years, construction projects and Chinese workers in Balochistan have been repeatedly targeted by militants. Most recently, a suicide bombing in August injured a number of Chinese engineers.

       So far, none of the incidents has been large enough in scale to really threaten the viability of Chinese investment in the country. But this is one of the most prominent attacks to date.

        Officials told the BBC's Stephen McDonell in Beijing they were confident the Pakistani government was able to manage the security situation to guarantee Chinese investment.

• "A Murder in Bamako - TTG"--Sic Semper Tyrannis. Commentary regarding the 2017 murder of a Green Beret by two Navy SEALs and two Marines. An excerpt:

       Since the initial reporting of this murder back in June 2017, stories circulated about the reason for the assault. The SEALs were skimming intelligence contingency funds, money meant to pay sources. That’s a mark of death among case officers. It’s a crime of unlimited opportunities. The only defense is the integrity and discipline of the practitioners. SSG Melgar reportedly called the SEALs on their transgressions and was prepared to report their crimes. That the SEALs may have committed a murder to cover up their crimes of theft and breach of trust is especially enraging.

      At least one report I read said SSG Melgar also confronted the SEALs about their poor fieldcraft or tradecraft. The special operations ethos doesn’t lend itself to running agents. That requires the finesse, patience and humility more common to my Special Forces brethren. 

       My experiences with the SEALs of DEVGRU did not leave me overly impressed. I and a couple of former Det Berlin Green Berets noted that their fieldcraft was shit when they weren’t assaulting an objective or swimming in the surf. I don’t know if this was a trait of the DEVGRU SEALs or all SEALs. 

• "50 Years Ago, The Population Bomb Dropped"--The Silicon Graybeard. A look back at one of the most influential Progressive lies--that a burgeoning population would render the planet uninhabitable by 1980 or so.
• I wonder why the Tech Oligarch's are so supportive of immigration and H1B visas? "Study: Over 20 years, Silicon Valley workers’ median wage has fallen by 14%"--Ars Technica. This is, obviously, looking at wages as measured by real dollars. It is simple supply and demand, and immigration is all about increasing the supply of labor in order to drive down wages. Anyone that supports immigration is in favor of undermining Americans' wages.
• This should end well: "Germany: Turkish-Muslim Appointed Second-In-Command of Domestic Intelligence"--Gatestone Institute. The intelligence officer in question is Sinan Selen. The article speculates that he was chosen to appease Turkey who has been pushing Germany to crack down on Kurdish separatists living in Germany. However, the article also notes that he might have been chosen for his willingness to investigate German nationalists, such as support the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In other words, use a non-German to keep a thumb on native Germans.

• Related: "Angela Merkel: In This Day and Age States Must Be Ready to Give Up Sovereignty – Nationalist Countries are Not Patriotic"--Gateway Pundit.  It's like globalists are all reading from the same script. It was only recently, on November 11, that France's President Macron similarly claimed that nationalism was a betrayal of patriotism. 

• Toys in the attic, someone took their marbles away: "POPPING THE PILL: SEVERE MENTAL HEALTH SIDE EFFECTS OF CONTRACEPTIVE PILL REVEALED IN NEW BBC DOCUMENTARY"--The Independent. From the article:

       Despite research linking it to everything from breast cancer and blood clots to low libido and weight gain, it remains the most popular form of contraception for women today and is taken by more than 100 million women worldwide.

       But countless studies have identified strong links between taking the pill and poor mental health, and a new BBC Two documentary sheds light on the severity of the problem, revealing how it’s left some women suffering from depression and experiencing suicidal thoughts.

       The hormone in the pill that has been linked to prompting psychiatric complications is called progesterone, which is found in both the combined pill and the mini pill.

       Studies have linked the hormone to depression, anxiety and low mood, but researchers have yet to find an ethical way to prove cause and effect because this would involve distributing placebo pills to study subjects, which could lead to unwanted pregnancies, the moral complexities of which are obvious.

       A survey conducted by the team behind the documentary, titled The Contraceptive Pill: How Safe Is It?, found that one in four women taking the pill said it had negatively affected their mental health.

Common knowledge in the manosphere.

• "Smoking, Orphans, and the French"--Wilder, Wealthy and Wise. Correlation is not necessarily causation, but John Wilder notes a strong correlation between the popularity of smoking and incidences of heart disease.