Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "Ryan McBeth"
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Nonsense! Woke up dreaming of eating a cat from a Penthouse Pet. Thankfully, it was just a nightmare involving a needy model, don't want to relive that waking nightmare again!
Had feline in my mouth before, damned cat actually stepped in my loudly snoring mouth. Why and how mystified us both, both of us equally grossed out. Me, got litterbox du foot, cat got a mouth full of saliva, so we were tied on that debacle. Well, except that the foot couldn't digest my mouth, the same couldn't be said of the poor cat's foot, who was utterly unwilling to lick that foot clean for good reason.
Yeah, had an interesting life. Did I ever mention that I really hate interesting and prefer boring?
Oh, shall I discuss that this blood libel is over a century old and barely retread over anti-Chinese immigration from the railroad construction era? I've not heard a new idea come out of the GOP in decades, everything is a century old or older. Literally, just changed a few stickers, apply the same libel to a new group.
"They're stealing our jobs!"
Yet, oddly not a single one of them wants to sign up for minimum wage and muck out the industrial henhouse the size of a large warehouse full of chicken shit. Not. A. One.
Did it with my own small henhouse. Which is why I don't have chickens now.
Next up, Nativist Riots requiring artillery to suppress them.*
*Two incidents, Philadelphia Nativist Riots resulted in a number of dead, including responding militia and involved rioters stealing artillery to destroy Roman Catholic churches (Irish Catholic immigration wave at the time). The other, Big Army shelled the Bowery to suppress rioting.
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Hydrogen flames tend red-orange, which is decidedly within the human visual spectrum. If optimally mixed with air in a burner, they're blue flamed like a natural gas flame and well, still visible to the human eye - especially at night.
But yeah, the sealant and protective coatings of the Hindenburg were aluminum oxide paint, nitrate based sealant and basically, add in rubber and you've got the basic ingredients for a modern solid fuel rocket.
Still, balloons tend to be flammable anyway and somewhat delicate, a bit of WP dispensed by a few small dedicated drones, it's raining ruptured compartments balloons and netting, which I'm sure would do wonders for both the target and power grid. Might as well attack their protected target themselves, save some trouble and expense and end up with less damage.
Whenever possible, turn the enemy's defenses against that enemy.
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Heh, they started with "the sniper system, an AR" and have since been all over the map.
Thus far, the only thing missing in the mist is, no space aliens being invoked yet.
Well, beyond my "The Grand Conspiracy of the Space Aliens", which is my default label for any conspiracy theory, all of which are outlandish. And entirely have no space aliens involved, save when fancifully invoked for the purpose of hyperbole that even Helen Keller could see.
In a way though, I am thankful that a minimal skill idiot used the least appropriate common weapon. As much as I may loathe Trump, that ain't how we select candidates and leaders.
And the reality of it was, by the third shot, it was really over. By then, Trump figured out that wasp sting wasn't a wasp, Secret Service yelled for him to get down and for a change, he did what he was told to and agents had covered him with their bodies as they're supposed to do, buying time for the Secret Service snipers to neutralize the threat.
Still, what a goat screw!
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Deuterium doesn't have a half life, it's stable. Tritium half life is 12.3 years and usually is in a pressurized tank inside the warhead that can be swapped out, with only a small amount used, as both nations use lithium deuteride for the fusion stage, which neutrons from the boosted fission primary fission the lithium into tritium. Lithium is a weird element...
There are a number of common failure modes for nuclear weapons. The high explosives degrade over time, especially in the presence of ionizing radiation. The same is true of the electronics. Tritium does need replacement fairly often to maintain purity. Helium and hydrogen embrittlement is a problem in both the fission stage and the storage container for the tritium. Corrosion, yeah, but that's why the plutonium and uranium are plated with gold (typically).
When the Soviet Union fell, only one military portion received adequate funding, the Strategic Rocket Forces and their boomers (sort of, on a highly limited basis for fully operational boats). The stockpile dedicated for anything beyond limited tactical strikes likely did atrophy though, both due to corruption and lack of funding, as maintaining nuclear anything is damnably expensive.
And was a high priority for the US to maintain, as proved by the saga of fogbank. Code name for a polystyrene foam that the DoD literally forgot how to make and needed to replace, as it was crumbing over time. It was to be replaced with a more modern aerogel component, but that component wasn't functioning at all, so a crash project ensued to figure out how to make the old component, see what made it work and replicate it in the modernized version. That mushroomed into a 200 million dollar program and eventually, the issue was traced to a contaminant that made the x-ray laser actually work, as that was critical to the ablation system (this is all open source information). The laser is hugely inefficient, bad enough that Teller hung his hat on it being made efficient for his SDI contribution and destroying his and LLNL's reputation at the time, but was sufficient for inside of a confined, excited warhead and was eventually replicated in the new aerogel and now being actively incorporated in updated warheads.
Very important, utterly critical, entirely forgotten, it was so critical for us, Russia suffering economically fared worse, I'm certain.
So yeah, it's an open question on how many lower priority warheads would actually function, rather than splatter a few pounds of plutonium at the impact site and maybe a half ton of depleted uranium as well, the enriched stuff not weighing in all that much and still fairly long half life anyway (seriously, if you enjoy mineral water, it comes from wells that frequently have uranium leeching into them from the granite bedrock, folks, welcome to earth, didn't like that fact, maybe your ancestors should've stayed inside of the battlestar).
So, where we stand now is China vs Russia some years ago, where Russia laughed at "China's Final Warning", thousands of which being issued without action, we're getting dozens now of "Russia's Final Warning", while observing their paper tiger burst into flames in action. Paper tiger also being a term Russia used about China's military.
And Putin is an egomaniac, but not stupid, he's not about to launch and accept his family and nation glowing in the dark.
Like me, he has a gun and knows not to grab the end the hot glue comes out of.
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Although, I think with this one, the bots have set a new record in speedy response. The shooter's remains weren't even cooled down and they were stirring the pot.
I'm now fully on with the Obama Doctrine, consider any computer based attack by a nation state to be a WMD attack on the US and reply in kind with the only WMD we field. For some reasons, that makes the Ruskies nervous...
The other side view, also interesting though. One side is currently stirring in some mythical CIA operative being well, less competent than Maxwell Smart and the Secret Service was magicing it along, ignoring that the suspect experienced high velocity lead poisoning by the Secret Service.
And a nascent, but growing "The Shooter Was a RePuBlIcAn!!!" and well, Christ knows where they're going with that, got too dizzy watching all of the hand waves.
Sigh, I don't drink enough.
I do know that the governor of Pennsylvania didn't get a lot of sleep last night. I know that because his mansion is 3 blocks from me, well lit and way too much traffic for a building that normally has pretty much no traffic.
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The funny thing is, everyone gets their panties in a twist over radiation from a thermonuclear warhead and that isn't the greatest threat. Most of the radiation is in the fireball and well, if you're inside of the fireball, you've got a whole hell of a lot else to worry about - like being incinerated.
Fallout from a modern warhead is typically fairly low as well, as most are set for air burst to maximize destruction by heat and overpressure, figure around a half ton, most of which will decay in around 12 days, most a lot sooner.
But, that overpressure and heat, that is the destructive parts, think concrete wall moving at the speed of sound, with negative pressure between pulses, plus the fireball that well, is hotter than the surface of the sun. That's one hell of a pee-pee smack! Broken gas pipes, which the pulverized buildings help by adding fuel, the word being firestorm. Firestorms aren't any fun, we're talking about getting pulled into the fire from more than two blocks away.
Most deaths will occur from carbon monoxide poisoning from the firestorm, well, those who weren't ground into dogfood when their building collapsed on them or had their window glass shred their body.
Suffice it to say, I have intimate knowledge of how a nuclear warhead works, as I worked on nuclear missiles as my first MOS. I call them what they are, products of the insanity factory.
The problem is, if one country has them, well, we'd damned well better have them too, lest oh, nuclear blackmail occur, which is precisely what's being attempted.
Trust me, trying to blackmail me is a really shitty idea, not known for enhancing one's chances of survival. And realistically, I'm old, banged up, not in the best of health, so life in prison or the death penalty aren't exactly a deterrent.
So, what does it take to launch any part of our nuclear arsenal? One telephone call from POTUS, his identity confirmed by someone in the line of succession and in possession of "the biscuit", the magical boom-boom code phrase of the day that POTUS and others in the line of succession possess (typically, it'd be SecDef). Target selection via the SIOP.
No magic buttons, no red phones, a secure telephone is all that's needed. The "Football" being only used while traveling. If traveling, the Football comes along for between times, like while they're setting up the portable SCIF (yeah, they have one that converts a room into a full grown SCIF in kit form, pretty cool, looks like a royal gonad crusher to set up.
Apparently, Dick Nixon was drunk a lot toward the end of his Presidency and had actually ordered North Korea nuked. His Chief of Staff sat the orders on his desk and said, "We'll see if he still wants to do it in the morning, after he sobers up".
Yeah.
Oh, for the record, I actually hate nuclear weapons with a passion. But, we don't live in an ideal world, so we're not going to have ideal solutions to our problems.
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@redf7209 non-compliance opens their forces up for reprisals, up to and including summary execution, as the SS learned in France.
And having interviewed a former Soviet soldier some years back, even the Soviets trained their officers on the Conventions.
The closest that anyone ever got to getting away with not following the Conventions was Japan during WWII, as they were non-signatories to the Conventions, but had agreed at the onset to follow them - then didn't. Then, things got ugly and they started to follow the Conventions.
Japan committed atrocities against the Conventions, suddenly some of our service members were wearing Japanese body parts... They got with the program quickly enough.
One of my team was blowing off steam talking about non-compliance, I suggested that "when I can't tell you from the other guys by behavior, you're both getting killed". He remembered seeing our team in action and my marksmanship and tactical movements, he decided to nip that crap in the bud.
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@MA2-o2l it seems as if you're thinking that their primary weapons would be neutron bomb class weapons, but one doesn't require gaseous tritium to boost the primary, cryogenic tritium also would more than suffice. Especially true given the use of neutron generators to time a neutron pulse to accelerate fission initially.
For neutron bomb class, one simply substitutes the tamper casing, changing over from depleted uranium to aluminum, lead or even plain iron to provide tamper ablation and pressure, while being less neutron absorbing to an extent. The fireball itself and the explosives would absorb a fair amount of the primary neutrons anyway, hence why an EMP infrequently (especially in "super EMP" class) as the fireball essentially eats the neutrons.
The weapon core is a bit like Las Vegas, what happens in the core stays in the core, at least radiation wise. The weapon's primary purpose is basically a supreme air heater, so the heat and shockwave do all of the dirty work, save with EMP devices that utilize the gamma pulse and neutron bombs, which bombard the local area with fast neutrons to neutron activate and penetrate armor.
As gamma doesn't travel well through the air, oxygen especially ionizing easily and blocking it, that leaves neutrons which have limited range and activated metals tend to be short lived isotopes, which finally leaves the old fashioned nuclear and thermonuclear effects of shockwave and thermal pulse. Since the primary is of a limited low yield device, boosting provides much of the energy to help complete fission of the primary core and it again, is of limited yield, basically enough to compress the secondary that has the higher yield, up to half of the yield of the weapon, the tamper being the final stage and providing the final half yield, at a cost of making the bomb dirtier.
Regardless, as I recall, the typical size maximum I've seen in tritium dewars and flasks was only in the 100 - 500 ml size.
As for Russian functional devices, I'd anticipate moderate degradation of their functional stocks. Their strategic, high priority warheads being the highest in reliability, their countervalue designated, moderately degraded in reliability. Adding in attrition of malfunctions that are normal in missiles, I'd estimate around a 50% failure rate at most, minimum of 35 - 40%.
After all, everyone wants their dacha in the woods...
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