THE SCARIEST THING EVER

Those of us who experienced The Andromeda Strain, Soylent Green, and a host of other Charlton Heston movies can probably appreciate this article from The Atlantic. I say that and mean it because people who didn't see those end of the world apocalypse movies don't really understand how mankind can end itself, overnight, accidentally, without even trying. Frank Herbert wrote a scary book about this and leaves people like Atwood in the shade when they imagine a future horror that could be.

We now have people who are seriously talking about engineering a genetic kill specific to a particular predator that they dislike, a lot. They propose to kill it to death in a small place using a tool like the black plague and nothing bad ever happens when fools or governments use weapons of mass destruction to kill a housefly problem.

I was reading the latest research on global extinction events. It turns out the planet did it. All the nonsense about asteroids killing the dinosaurs, or smoking....is piffle. It looks like vulcanism did it and it did it again and again and again and I just wish global warmists would step into a busy street and look up. I'm so tired of them and the rest of people who confidently predict that if we just adopt a little bit of socialism and send just a handful of deserving scum to the gulag, life will be perfect and go on forever and ever..

Right now, at this moment, we have the power and the tech to make a gene that can be unleashed on the planet, spread around it in days and can be tailored to kill very specific entities. I'm a specific entity. The world won't even know what hit it. It will be the Spanish influenza on steroids but pointed at very specific targets.

I can think, offhand, of a dozen organizations that would do it in a heartbeat and I know people who could make it happen. If you read, have a look at John Ringo's books on zombies. I'll give you the money quote from the endnotes.

The same can be said of biotechnology. I recall a friend who worked in the Tropical and Emerging Diseases Lab, a Class Four Facility (highest contagion) located on the UGA campus and associated with the CDC who's team was attempting in the early Millenia to build a virus following the prescription of the first person to do so from scratch. They tried time and time again to replicate it and were unable. 

In 2005, five years later, a Newsweek reporter, buying materials from EBAy, did the same thing, literally, in his kitchen. (With Spanish Flu no less. He was later fired as was the editor who approved the story since they LAID OUT THE ENTIRE RECIPE!) 

That is how fast biotech advances. Moore's Law, to some extent or another, applies to all emerging technologies. One day it takes a genius, the next day anybody with the right IQ and background finds it to be child's play. 

Second point: A few years ago, at a bio conference in London, a researcher proudly stood up and showed that his lab had proven they could create an infection that would infect a vast swath of population (choose species, genus, phylum or family) but only kill ONE INDIVIDUAL based upon that individual's DNA. 

When he asked for questions one member of the audience stood up and proclaimed:
"We've known that in (university research center) for the last five years but we were never STUPID enough to speak about it in PUBLIC!" At which point things became shouty. 

By the same token, one can create a pathogen that will infect a vast population, but only target certain races. And, yes, there are clear markers to target race for values of race. It's a term of art in biology, not a term of politics. Westphailians, for example, have distinct genetic markers. Now, Westphalians are MOSTLY still found in Westphalia but the markers are found in a huge population elsewhere (especially the US.) But Negroid? Easy. Han Chinese. Very easy. Jewish. (Racially.) Blonde. (See Live Free Or Die) Etc. 'Northern European' (white) is just as easy. Choose your target or immune population. But be careful. You may not understand your population a well as you think. (The 'crazy' president of Iran is genetically turk but most of his supporters are fars which is a variant of Northern European.)

We are beginning to play with fire and those leading the charge introduced one killer after another into a gene pool with no natural predators except those enormous salt water crocodiles which the birds could see coming a million miles away.

You just know human extinction is going to be done by some dorks that just wanted to make a better world. Which, you know, brings Serenity to mind.

UNIFORMITY

I've had about 40 years of experience with Marines. In my experience they are constantly concerned with image and uniformity. I find it interesting that the last few days have shown a divide between each pair of Marines who are engaged in Presidential service. I didn't expect that from the few. Obviously, one of them has maligned his hat. The question is, which one?

Hey Sarge! Nice hat.

NO NO, NOT THE PURSE!

One occasionally sees the girl avec purse. A slim, no nonsense looking thing that might contain cash but little else but most of us are more familiar with the purse of the essential bricks of life and the idea that one could, in a moment of life and depth, reach into said purse to pull out a gun.....no no. Unless it was the giant .44 magnum, no way would you find it before being well ventilated.

De Caro’s presence threw the suspect, and Russell took advantage of the confusion by feigning a search for valuables in her purse. She then handed her purse to her husband, who pulled the gun out from it and was able to shoot and kill the alleged assailant, but not before being shot three times himself.

That guy was lucky he only got shot 3 to 5 times. My God! Have you seen inside a women's purse?

ENDLESS FUN

Do you also find it amusing that our legislators in a city that bans all weapons, is all the time deploying or talking about deploying nuclear weapons, missiles and guns everywhere in the world?

Tra la la Boom da Day, tra la la Boom da Day

I don't think they know what irony is. They probably think it is used to press clothing.

A WAKE UP CALL

In 1988 I woke up the ship by playing this enroute to a minefield at 0600. Because I could.

The captain was so enamored he asked for my tape and then took two steps to toss it overboard.

Cheater.

They never prosper.

BLACK FLAG

None of the poor dears understand who they hate so very much. There are two powers that can wage a form of warfare not seen since the middle ages. Sadly, the most liberal progressive regime is the most likely to resort to biological warfare.

If ever there was someone evil enough to unleash plague and bio war, the present incumbent tops the list. Putin might beat him but Chechnya has really quieted down these last decade and years. Kind of makes one wonder though, is anyone still alive in Chechnya?

PRESENT AT THE CREATION

I spent the holidays at my parents house in Virginia where I was asked to perform a few minor repairs using the tools at hand. In the first of my tasks, I was asked to install some towel racks and the tool I used was this:

You might have to embiggen the picture to see what I did. It is, in fact, a metal case with a power cord inspired by Edward Scissor Hands and no ground plug. Why yes, it was used by Pericles after it turned up in Egypt where it was used in building the Sphinx.

It is the single most scary tool I have ever used. Cannons were once labeled with Ultima Ratio Regum. This thing simply shrieks, Electrocution. My father says it dates from 1940.

COLORADO ROAMING

I am sorry the posting and commenting has been a little sparse. We went to Colorado and I decided to see if I could survive on just an iPad, iPhone and iPod. It turns out I do very well without a laptop but it does limit me on posting and writing. I once knew how to put pictures into posts using an iPad but I lost the knack.

It was a glorious week for a visit to the mountains. We flew to Denver, drove up to Fort Collins and for the first time in my life, I experienced a dry heat. It was 96˚ but it felt like low 70s. I'm used to enormous heat accompanied by 99% humidity. Fort Collins is a bland little town but we did take a couple of hours to tour the New Belgium Brewery and quaff some of these:

We visited several towns during our stay. I had to stop in Idaho Springs to check on my friend Steve Canyon. He's still there, right where he's been since the first time I saw him some 20 years ago.

Steve Canyon

We stopped at Colorado Springs since I'd never made it to the Air Force Academy and had a look around. It is an impressive place but it's a wilderness. It's not like Annapolis where the mids can hop over the wall and be in town right next to a bar. The Air Force Academy is in the middle of nowhere. We did get to see some impressive planes. We saw both a B52 on a stick and the Stealth Bomber behind it.

B-52 on a Stick

Exotic Stealth composite layered polymer reflecting an alien death ray

Stealth Bomber on a Stick after the alien attack

It was a good trip but we're happy to be home.

AH IS IT ONLY ME

Given this administration, and that the enemy has gained control of Haditha dam, can't you just see the administration response? It probably looks something like this.

"Let's take away the threat and blow the dam ourselves."  I'm not sure if that was Hillary, Donilon, Jones or Brennan talking. They all have the same point of view. I'm sure it occurred to all of them.

WHAT THEY FEAR

You know, after thinking about it for a couple of minutes, I know what the ruling elite fear.
It is actually pretty graphic. You might want to turn away so you don't yack on your keyboard.
All of the ruling class think of the Taxed Enough Already as the equivalent of terrorists like ISIS.
They all think that if we start to move, they will be the ones lined up face down in the ditch waiting for the gunshots to the back of the head or knife at the throat.

They couldn't be more wrong.

Something to look forward to.

TRON DIES HORRIBLY ON THE WIRE IN CYBERWAR

Iranian muslims were surfing the Navy Marine Corps Internet for over 4 months that we know about. They made their way into the unclassified network in the usual way of hackers and other cyber ne'er-do-wells and had a fine time examining all the content they could suck through their cyber hookahs. The ugly little secret is that once you're in to the NMCI network you can pretty much roam at will through the largest intra-net in the world. Once you're in and attach the data vacuum all you have to do is suck, a lot. The code breakers and other hackers will get you into the password protected sites and files and you can read them at your leisure.

Nothing happens without a reason. I hope the Iranians enjoyed reading the public mail. Sometimes one has to remember that the Soviets didn't suddenly come to the realization that they were competing so far out of their league it wasn't even a contest. Somebody had to help them to see for themselves just how disparate was the correlation of forces. There's enough on the unclassified networks to make it pretty clear that the US could do a complete take down of the Iranian forces and impose a regime change in less than a week. If it wanted to. It doesn't hurt anybody to let them know that before they make it necessary.

THE LONELY LUNAR RABBIT

It was with a heavy heart that I read of the apparent demise of China's Jade Rabbit lunar rover after it dropped into the Sea of Rains. The article at NewScientist attributes the malfunction to charged dust particles stirred up by the rover's arrival and initial motion.

Charged dust particles, hhhmmmm.

Russia's particle beam weapon could raise the dust and rover to the same electrical potential

If it doesn't work out, Jade Rabbit will join other hardware left behind in Mare Imbrium and one small statuette left behind by the astronauts of Apollo 15 commemorating fallen astronauts known to them at the time they departed the Sea of Rains.

AIR ASSAULT ON GUAM

UPDATE

The 4th Air Assault Wave was launched in Guam this week.

We have a problem in Guam it seems.

Specialists have been consulted:

Let a new rain of terror begin!

Last image courtesy of Photobucket

FORCE PROJECTION DEATH RAY

This little gem was one of the systems we used as the model for our initial Joint Capabilities documentation on a completely unsimilar program I once worked on. It was the very model of a cool, well thought out, endless funding stream sort of program that would do very well in sales to our own military and go on to a full and rich career in the Foreign Military Sales program where dictators and tyrants everywhere would delight in bringing their agitators and riotous ones up to oven temperatures just before their heads exploded.

There were a few drawbacks, naturally. The whole deliberate infliction of pain without injury was soon outed as 'waterboarding with a radar range' and the guys in the 5 sided wind tunnel were not impressed with the lab's pitiful argument that this was a force protection system. They knew it for what it was, an endless boondoggle to get another 3 inches of range out of a road portable, self-powered, self-propelled microwave.

I think a few of us also understood that it would only take about 5 minutes before Sheriff Arpaio wanted a couple and then every police force in America would need a half dozen and the next thing we knew they'd be as ubiquitous as the dreaded AR-15 and the forces of order would be compelled to use them on thugs at tea parties and degenerate book thieves.