New Bombs & Bants Podcast (Streamed 2/23/2022)

 

VIDEO: "Bombs & Bants Live!" (52 min.)

We had some sound issues, so go to 3:15 to start listening.

New "Bombs & Bants" Podcast (Streamed 2/16/2022)

 

VIDEO: Bombs & Bants podcast for 2/16/2022 (41 min.)

POTD: Hashima Island

 

Hashima Island is a popular place for photographs of modern ruins, and was even used in the James Bond film, Skyfall. This photograph, however, shows a different perspective of it than is typical. (Source: "15 eerie abandoned cities around the world that are real-life ghost towns"--Independent).

Paper: "Is Atlantis related to the green Sahara?"

     In his journal article, "Is Atlantis related to the green Sahara?," published in the International Journal of Hydrology, Hong-Quan Zhang makes the argument that the greening of the Sahara between approximately 12,000 B.C. and 5500 B.C. could explain the myths of Atlantis. During the green Sahara period, there were vast river systems and several large lakes (called megalakes and as large or larger than our Great Lakes) in or bordering the Sahara region. 

This map shows what North Africa was believed to have looked like during the Sahara greening period, with the author having marked what he postulates would have been the rough boundaries of the Atlantian empire as related by Plato. 

    He postulates that an Atlantian civilization could have formed around one of these inland lakes, connected to the Mediterranean by a river or outlet. And, in fact, he seems to have located what appears to be a circular structure that is perhaps the source of the description of Atlantis having circular harbors around it. This is the not the circular structure known as the Eye of the Sahara, which has also been suggested as a possible location of Atlantis. Rather, this structure which seems to be a smaller version of the Eye, is located almost on the Tunisian-Algerian border at 33°49’45”N, 7°43’50”E. 

    I've noted before that we live in strange time when what where previously considered conspiracy theories have been proven to be true. And I don't know think many people, including archeologists and anthropologists, have quite grasped how much the discovery of Göbekli Tepe has upended our long held beliefs about pre-Bronze Age history. I know that if I had suggested in my college archeology class that humans 10,000 years prior had been able to erect large, elaborately carved monuments, I would have been laughed out of class.

Bombs & Bants (Streamed 2/9/2022)

 

VIDEO: "Bombs & Bants" (52 min.)

Covering a lot of current event topics including the trucker strike in Canada and the Left's growing unease over the Right co-opting the Left's tactics.

Why .380 ACP Sucks for Moose Hunting

I came across a Daily Mail article today that recounted the experience of novice Iditarod musher whose dog team was attacked by a moose while they were out practicing. She tried to scare it off, but as it continued to stomp on some of her dogs, she finally resorted to her pistol, which she emptied into the moose with no effect. Eventually a friend arrived on scene with a rifle and killed the moose with one shot.

    I don't know what make or model of pistol she had, but she described it as a .380! I'm sure in her naivety she was thinking more of minimizing the weight and bulk of the firearm rather than its effectiveness. She also only intended for the firearm to deter or scare off an animal. Fortunately, none of the dogs were seriously injured. The article does report, though, that "She has since upgraded to a larger caliber firearm after [the .380] didn't stop the moose."

    The sad part is that the .380 didn't even injure the moose enough to make it angry (or angrier). So, the lesson from this is that although the .380 may be acceptable for self-defense against two-legged critters, you should not expect a 1-shot (or 7 or 8-shot) drop when hunting moose.

Near Far Drill

The YouTube Channel "Modern Tactical Shooter" recently released a video on what the presenter called the "Near Far Drill." Basically, the drill uses 4 targets, two of which are closer together as well as closer to the shooter. The other two are set slightly farther back and spaced apart far enough so that they are obscured from the shooter's view unless the shooter moves farther left or right, respectively. It seems a good drill to introduce you to movement to acquire a target, and it is a timed drill so there is a bit of pressure/stress on the shooter.

    The video demonstrating the drill is below. If you like something that you can print out, the author has copies of this drill (and others) that you can save and print later on his Facebook page.

VIDEO: "Near Far Drill. Forced rifle manipulation exercise." (8 min.)

Planet Ebook and The Creative Archive

    I've just barely finished a couple books on the collapse of Roman/Classical Civilization in the early 7th Century AD following the violent spread of Islam throughout the Near East and most of the the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The Islamic invasion and predations caused a three century "dark age" throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Near and Middle East where there is virtually no activities that left archeological evidence (this is has inspired a theory that the 7th, 8th, and 9th Centuries were "made up" and never occurred). This dark age was not just physical destruction of communities and trade, but also a destruction of books and libraries, and the end of trade in papyrus that was used as "paper" at that time throughout Europe and other Mediterranean areas. As much as anything else, this resulted in the loss of the Roman/Classical Civilization with its widespread literacy and helped usher in the period of feudalism. 

    It must be presumed that any disaster sufficient to destroy or seriously disrupt civilization could result in a similar loss of libraries and centers of learning on a national level, and certainly disruption of elementary and secondary education at the local and state level. Yet I have only seen at most one or two books on prepping that have discussed preparing to educate your children and to set aside books that important to preserving our culture. I believe it was Alexis de Tocqueville who related that in the early American Republic there was not to be found a home, high or low, that did not have a Bible, something written by Shakespeare, and a newspaper or similar. And, in fact, the shared love of Shakespeare by both the "masses" and the "elites" was a feature of American civilization until the flood of foreign migration in the post-Civil War era.

    We are not in so dire a predicament of losing our civilizational knowledge today. Libraries, both great and small, are widespread across the continent; and the average person can likewise afford personal libraries greater than all but the wealthiest individuals could afford in prior centuries. If electronic devices can be preserved, then a person can easily put together a collection of books ranging from kindergarten level to college and professional texts and treatises, reference books related to the trades, engineering, medicine, manufacturing, etc. 

    But educating future generations is more than just assembling a bunch of how-to books. Even the Arab invaders of the 7th Century saw the value in keeping alive knowledge concerning science, medicine, and other technical subjects. What they destroyed were the religious, philosophical, and cultural and literary works of the ages. For instance, although parts of the collection of the Library of Alexandria had been victim to fires, mobs, and armies before, the Library met its final end on the orders of the Second Muslim Caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab (634 – 644 AD). Although some historians consider the account apocryphal, an early account of the destruction related (footnotes omitted; brackets in original):

    "We are told that the Arab emir, ‘Amr ibn al-‘Āṣ, consulted ibn al-Khattab on what to do with the books in the Library of Alexandria. Ibn al-Khattab’s answer came quick to him:

    “As for the books you mention, if there is in it what complies with the Book of God [Q’uran], then it is already there and is not needed and if what is in these books contradict the Book of God there is no need for it. And you can then proceed in destroying them.”

    ‘Amr ibn al-‘Āṣ then ordered that the books should be dispersed in the public baths and to burn them in the bath’s heaters. Al-Qifti adds: “And I was told that at that time several public baths used [the books] for heating, bringing some fame to new public baths which later on were forgotten afterwards and it is said that they had enough heating for six months. One who listens to what has happened can only be amazed!”

    So, with the importance of preserving cultural and literary works in mind, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a web-site called Planet Ebook that has a collection of what are generally considered some of the great cultural and literary works of Western Civilization (at least, those that are no longer under copyright). Books by Mark Twain, James Joyce, Nicolo Machiavelli, Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, and more. Each book, moreover, is available in PDF, epub, and mobi formats so you can be sure to get one that is compatible with one of your electronic book readers. And, of course, I have listed other resources for locating books in my ebook resource page.

    Another source I came across recently was a site called The Creative Archive that has collected together ebook versions of the classic Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Three Investigator books. The books are offered in PDF, but they don't have page numbering, header or footers, so they should easily be converted to epub and mobi files. I know these are not classics of American literature but they do inculcate many Western values through fun and interesting stories for tweens and early teens. 

Marcus Wynne's Obituary

 Jon Low came across what appears to Marcus' obituary (link here) posted by the funeral home. You can sign the guest book and there is provision for making a donation to the family.

Some Thoughts On The 10mm And Energy

Peter Grant, over at Bayou Renaissance Man, has an interesting article on the topic of "Renewed interest in the 10mm Auto as an optimum defensive round." He has a good look at the current and probable future of the evolving criminal threats that private citizens face, and I suggest that you read his article before continuing with my post. I only fault him in one regard: he expresses a common misconception about energy and bullet effectiveness in discussing why the 10mm may be an optimal defensive round. 

    Before I delve into Grant's article, just a little history on the 10mm as a defensive cartridge. After the 1986 FBI shootout in Miami which resulted in two agents being killed and five injured, the FBI drew the lesson that bullet penetration was suboptimal with the firearms it used and so it created standards still used to this day to judge the effectiveness of bullets. These standards drive bullet design to this day, mixing penetration against various materials as well as both maximum and minimum penetration in ballistic gelatin. 

    Because bullet technology was not what it was today, the FBI's quest for a better duty weapon necessarily resulted in it turning to a more powerful round that would be able to ensure both expansion and penetration. That initially was the 10mm, but when the 10mm was found to have too much recoil for its agents, the FBI necessarily started using a down-loaded round; which, in turn, prompted Smith & Wesson to develop the 40 S&W which is, essentially, a shortened 10mm.

    For purposes of my discussion, the key part of the FBI standard is that when shot into ballistic gelatin, penetration was to be no more than 18-inches in order to avoid over penetration--the bullet passing completely through a person. Consequently, hollow-point bullets for police duty use or civilian defense are engineered to open up (mushroom) which acts similar to a drag chute and slows the bullet limiting its penetration. (It also creates a larger wound channel). 

    So, with that in mind, and turning to Grant's article, he makes the common mistake of equating handgun "power" with effectiveness. He writes concerning the 10mm:

    There are those who'll argue that more accurate shot placement would allow the smaller round to perform just as well as a larger one.  That's fine in theory, but when you've got a moving target (the perpetrator) closing on you rapidly, possibly with a weapon in his hand, and you're moving to avoid his attack, and your stress and adrenaline levels are off the charts . . . it's a whole world away from shooting slowly, calmly and without stress on the square range at paper targets that don't move and aren't threatening you.  Some (very few) shooters can perform as well under such extreme stress as they do during training.  Most of us can't.  We should expect to be less accurate - which places more of a burden on the rounds we're shooting to do the best job they can when they hit whatever they hit.

    I know many shooters blindly trust the "official" figures, charts and data, which claim that a quality 9mm hollowpoint will deliver as much expansion, penetration and energy as a bigger round.  They're right, on paper.  However, real life doesn't take place on paper, and drug-addled criminals can and will make a mockery of what "the book" says should happen when they're shot.  I discussed this issue in an article some years ago:

Bullet and cartridge effectiveness for self-defense

    If you didn't read that article at the time, I strongly suggest that you click over there and read it now.  In particular, read the whole thing, not just the beginning.  There's a lot of "meat" in there, and it's all important.  In brief, size (projectile cross-section, bullet weight and overall expansion potential) does matter;  and bigger bores have benefited from the same technological advances that have improved the 9mm.  They've all gotten better than they were.

    In brief, due to the possible need to repel multiple assailants, cartridge capacity is important.  While the 9mm is champion in that regard right now, the 10mm (and its smaller cousin, the .40 S&W) is pretty close on its heels, and all of them usually outperform the venerable .45 ACP.  (For example, comparing full-size models, the 9mm Glock 17 holds 17+1 rounds;  the 10mm Glock 20 and the .40 S&W Glock 22 both hold 15+1 ;  and the .45 ACP Glock 21 holds 13+1.)

    On the other hand, there's the need to hit a potentially hopped-up assailant as hard as possible, to make him cease his attack on you.  The 9mm is no slouch, but it hits less hard than the .40 or .45 - and the 10mm outperforms all of them, if a full-power round is used.

    To understand why the Power = Deadliness equation is not accurate you must remember that, absent the bullet striking and destroying something essential like the heart or the brain, incapacitation of a living target is due to shock either due to hydrostatic shock or the loss of blood, itself largely dependent on the size of the wound channel (both diameter and depth). Unfortunately, no single factor--bullet mass, velocity, energy, momentum, cross section density, bore diameter--can tell you how effective a bullet will be at putting down a living target.

    Because of the properties of the water in living tissue, hydrostatic shock is largely a function of velocity. Turning to Ballistic Studies, a great source of information on terminal ballistics on game animals, it notes that "[h]ydrostatic shock, in bore sizes from .243” up to .338”, begins to lesson at impact velocities below 2600fps and most modern high velocity sporting cartridges including the magnums gradually lose shocking power beyond 300 to 350 yards," although with larger calibers, "hydrostatic shock can occur on our medium game species at velocities as low as 2200fps." (Interestingly, the effects of hydrostatic shock can also decline if the velocity is over 3150 fps). 

    Like most every cartridge, the muzzle velocity of 10mm is well below even 2200 fps. Ballistics 101 has compiled the muzzle velocity of numerous commercial loads of 10mm. You will note that the typical muzzle velocities of the most widely distributed commercial ammunition is between 1000 and 1250 fps. Some of the more boutique manufacturers like Buffalo Bore, Cor Bon, Double Tap, etc., offer selections with muzzle velocities in excess of 1400 fps with one as high as 1600 fps. Even these are still well below the minimum necessary for producing hydrostatic shock. And, I would add, largely within the same velocity ranges as 9mm loadings.

    So we are left with the size of the wound channel, which as I noted is going to be a mix of the depth and width of the wound channel. Lucky Gunner has tested the 10mm in ballistic gelatin, and you can see the results here. Per FBI protocol, you can see that most of the defensive ammunition remained in the 12 to 18 inch penetration depth, with the bullets expansion in the range of .61 inches up to .81 inches. Compared with 9mm, the penetration for defensive ammunition is about the same, but as you expect from a smaller bullet, the expanded diameters are slightly smaller overall. Nevertheless, the newer and better quality defensive rounds such as HST and HST +P loads were up in the same range of expanded diameter. 

    So, even though 10mm is more "powerful" than 9mm, at least when looking at kinetic energy, the tests do not show that the 10mm is going appreciably more effective than the 9mm when using common police duty or civilian defensive loads. This is better illustrated by comparing the 9mm versus the .357 Sig which, notwithstanding its name, still uses the same .355 diameter bullets as the 9mm. The .357 Sig uses a larger case than the 9mm, but necked down to accept the .355 bullet. The purpose was to provide greater powder capacity and, therefore, greater energy--in other words, a more powerful round. But due to the constraints of the FBI protocol to avoid overpenetration, it doesn't actually appear to be more effective than 9mm in either tests or on the street. Chris Baker of Lucky Gunner actually discusses this in a video and article entitled ".357 Sig: What’s the Point of this Cartridge?" He relates, in part:

    Any time we test a new caliber, I like to do some background research on it. So a couple of weeks ago, I was reading an article published back in the Fall of 2000 by Dr. Gary Roberts, who is probably the most well-known wound ballistics researcher active today. He was sharing the results of a .357 Sig gelatin test he performed at the California Highway Patrol Academy range. This was printed in the Wound Ballistics Review, which was a scientific journal intended for hardcore ballistics nerds, so it tends to be pretty dry and technical most of the time. But at the end of this one article, Dr. Roberts breaks into editorial mode and he says,

    “Compared to a 9mm, the .357 Sig has a decreased magazine capacity, more recoil, as well as greater muzzle blast and flash, yet at best it offers no gain in bullet penetration and expansion characteristics. What is the point of this cartridge?”

    The 10mm offers slightly larger expansion--but still less than .1 inches--and the depth of the wound channel is pretty much the same. But if you were to compare the 10mm versus the .40 S&W, you would again be asking what is the point of the 10mm over the .40 S&W. 

    The reason the 10mm started seeing a resurgence was not because of defensive reasons, but in the realm of hunting and defense against wild predators. In that case, the bullet designs are not limited due to overpenetration. In fact, against a large animal such as a bear, the heavy hide, bones, and dense muscle mass calls for something with good penetration. This is where the 10mm really shines over lesser cartridges like the 9mm, .40 S&W, or even standard .45 ACP, because instead of all that extra energy being wasted, it will be converted to work: i.e., driving the bullet deeply into the body of the target. 

    Now, I will note that my discussion falls into the realm of "on paper" or "in theory" that Grant complains isn't a substitute for experience on the street, and he cites an officer that carries a 10mm as a backup to his duty 9mm, and uses the 10mm as his primary against drug crazed offenders. I can't speak to what the actual on the street statistics would show--I don't have that data. But I would note the following from Greg Ellifritz's study on the effectiveness of cartridges:

Something else to look at here is the question of how fast can the rounds be fired out of each gun. The .38 SPL probably has the slowest rate of fire (long double action revolver trigger pulls and stout recoil in small revolvers) and the fewest rounds fired to get an incapacitation (1.87). Conversely the 9mm can probably be fired fastest of the common calibers and it had the most rounds fired to get an incapacitation (2.45). The .40 (2.36) and the .45 (2.08) split the difference. It is my personal belief that there really isn't much difference between each of these calibers. It is only the fact that some guns can be fired faster than others that causes the perceived difference in stopping power. If a person takes an average of 5 seconds to stop after being hit, the defender who shoots a lighter recoiling gun can get more hits in that time period. It could be that fewer rounds would have stopped the attacker (given enough time) but the ability to fire more quickly resulted in more hits being put onto the attacker. It may not have anything to do with the stopping power of the round.

So, a 10mm may seem better to the cop on the street at stopping someone because it took less shots, but that in turn might only be because of the 10mm having such recoil that the officer was not able to shoot as fast with the 9mm giving the appearance of the 10mm being more effective because of the lower round count. 

    That does leave us with the question of what about the extra energy had by the 10mm? Is it just wasted, turning to heat rather than work? In soft tissue, I would say yes. But although I don't have the results of penetration tests against barriers, some of the testing I've seen in YouTube videos does seem to show that the 10mm is better for breaking down hard barriers such as cinder blocks and, perhaps, by extension, bone.