Just Asking Questions

Little Boy killed 100,000 people, folks.

“ Filthie’s problem is that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and then he expounds on that.…”

- General Aesop (Ret.)

🤨?

I’ve built multirotor drones. I’ve flown them. I’ve tried to carry payloads purportedly being used in the ‘Kraine every day. I poasted my results on the old Thunderbox blog. But physics and science are irrelevant. People’s eyes glaze over, icky math and physics start getting bandied about, and psyops, urban legends and Big Lies become real. “Ebola!!! We’re all gonna diiiiiiieeee! Covid!!! Ebola again!!! Russia is a paper tiger! The Ukes will lick them in two weeks!!! Oh no!!! The Russians are going to roll over Poland and then onto Germany!!!” Aesop entertains me. 

HOWEVER: The fiddly-bits and pieces parts that ARE on the inside tend to get bombarded and break down, no matter how reinforced over time, requiring the aforementioned maintenance to keep the thing able to go and do that “Earth Shattering Kaboom!” when people want/need it to….” 

-Tiny

Tiny entertains me too, but not the way General Aesop does. You can ask the guy questions and he’ll try to answer you - often with a free rude joke or story thrown in. If you stump him with a question he can’t answer he’ll shrug and tell ya he doesn’t know. General Aesop will huff and puff and blow your pants house down.

Yesterday we were talking about the mysterious surveillance drones looking for nukes. I expressed concern; I didn’t say we should head for the fallout shelters or that were all gonna die. Ain’t saying that today.  I’m saying we need to ask questions. We need answers from experts - not opinions by stubfarts and retards. 

I love Tiny, and I love Matt Bracken. As shithouse area analysts and military consultants those guys have been spot on the money from the very start of the Ukrainian conflict. But like crapcopters in weaponized applications… they’ve been suckered. They’ve heard others shooting their faces off and they’re parroting what they’ve heard. I’ve inadvertently done it too. It’s all General Aesop ever does. I’m not trying to shit on Tiny or Bracken - I’m using them (and myself) to make a point. Often we need to question ourselves and separate what we know from what we think we know. I’m using General Aesop to underline that point.

So…maintaining a nuclear arsenal, eh? I’m being told plutonium will rot the guts out of its delivery system and needs constant care and TLC from warlocks and mages, and since the rag heads are all turd brained goat humpers, they’d never actually be able to deploy one. Weeeeeeelp…

Plutonium is not magic. For all the world plutonium resembles any other piece of machined steel. It doesn’t glow, or emit rhythmic humming sounds. People are often disappointed in the appearance of weapons grade fissiles because they look so boring and mundane. No, plutonium isn’t caustic or an oxidizing agent. If there’s any rust or corrosion in the warhead - it came from the ambient environment around the warhead. Your rifle can rust too. The half life is north of 25 thousand years, and while plutonium decays over time… the yield falls off very slowly over decades. When they are removed, warheads are often refurbed for use in lower yield weapons. What fiddly bits are we talking about? Not trying to be a dink, I’m asking because I don’t know? And how are they compromised? 

The bomb itself is straightforward and simple. Basically it’s a gun that fires a slug at the fissile material and the deformation of that material induces the critical mass sustain the chain reaction that explodes the bomb. Here is the kicker: Tritium is used as sort of a “catalyst” to lower the initial energies required to start the fission process … and it must be replaced periodically because Tritium has a half life of just over 12 years. I suspect that the vast majority of weapons maintenance are reliability checks on the electronics and delivery systems. It’s the rocket that tends to require the lion’s share of attention. Can the rags get Tritium on the black market? Does anyone know? Because I don’t!

So. What’re the chances the rag heads or other bad actors have viable nuclear weapons in the US? I’d say it’s guaranteed. Why bother with subs and rockets and naval support fleets? Buy a property in Russia (or NYFC, Tel Aviv or Paris) - and build your bomb in the basement. Or stash your preferred WMD in a van or a couple hundred mislabeled bottles of Sarin in a warehouse somewhere… the nightmares are endless. Tom Clancy is your friend.

Yet, we always convince ourselves that our enemies are stupid and incompetent. Two years ago Aesop told us the Russians were incompetent drunken peasants with garbage equipment. Welp… they’ve killed over a million Ukes so far. Today Aesop is bleating that the Russians can menace the rest of Europe.

Today guys like Aesop are laughing at those stupid goat humping ragheads. Weelllp… A couple months back, some rags put the run on a US Naval group in the Red Sea. Iran targeted and destroyed several heavily defended targets in Israel with hypersonic missiles.

The world is changing. The balance of power has shifted. The western countries no longer have the tactical advantages we had in the 90s. Yet we bully and provoke people everywhere as if we have the divine right to do so and nothing has changed.

Are those drones really harmless diversions? Do you have any idea who came over your borders in the last 5 years? Do you have any idea what’s come over your borders? 

A lot can change in 5 years. Not saying the sky is falling, or that we’re all gonna die… all I’m saying is that what you don’t know CAN hurt you and we all need to check ourselves and our facts. We need to talk to the guys that know what they’re talking about and listen to them speak.

Or you can listen to guys like Joe or Aesop.