The Ming

Thank You, John Carpenter
Once again we honour the world's most daring documentary-maker.  By now it should be obvious - neither McReady nor Childs were infected at the end of the most terrifying documentary ever made; because if either of them was, John could never have made it back to civilisation*.
     Which has nothing to do with - LITHIUM BATTERY DESIGN!
     Which we're not going into.  Ha!  Did you really think we'd examine something so deadly dull, when we could be discussing THERMONUCLEAR WEAPON DESIGN!
     Which, once again, we're not going into.  I have to consider that those nosey parkers over at UNIT might be eavesdropping electronically, not to mention those equally annoying pikers at SPECTRUM, and MI5.
     Let us instead acknowledge NORWEGIAN SPECIAL FORCES!  As you ought to know by now, Conrad is fond of praising the Marinenjaegerkommandoen, who keep our North Sea oil rigs safe.  I am not the only one who's a fan; this chap over on Youtube also bigs them up. 

     They are much too modest to boast about deeds done, but they got a Presidential Unit Citation for their work in Afghanistan.  You don't find those in packets of breakfast cereal, matey.  Bad guys take note.

Given recent events, you might want to skip this one -
Insane Weapons
If anyone has a lock on designing and using Insane Weapons, it's the South Canadians.  Over there, everyone has a gun, if not four or five.  It's in the Constitution, or something.  At least, that's what it seems like to us on the saner side of the Atlantic.
     Not satisfied with being able to own automatic weapons, some rapscallion over there decided that you can't kill someone dead enough by only shooting them ten times in the space of a second.  No!  That simply won't do - so they gimmicked up a makeshift Gatling gun, by welding six automatic rifles together.  Art?

     This thing fires ridiculously fast - basically, the faster you crank it, the faster it fires.  If the notion took you, you could always connect it to an electric motor, in which case you are approaching the Death Ray Of Lead model, as seen with the Minigun**.

Conrad:  He's So Bad
And I should know.  I am Conrad, incidentally, for those who have only just arrived.  Small wars undertaken, minor kingdoms toppled and pocket dictatorships overthrown, all at reasonable rates (no working on Sundays).
     Back on track.  THERMON - er, no, we're avoiding that one today, aren't we?
     Words!  There you go, nice safe topic.  As has probably become clear by now, your humble hack does not think the way Hom. Sap. does.  This gives him an advantage when it comes to hand-to-hand combat doing the Cryptic Crossword, and an insight that has to be shared to be appreciated.  Art?

     Where you would see something quite different, Conrad sees "SCA OIL", and wants nothing to do with the horrid stuff.  My human camouflage skin is quite oily enough on its own, thank you very much.

Dammit, it's hard to keep off the subject of Foofoodillies.  Quiet Tom, during our meal at Sweet Mandarin, was commenting on Really Bad Ideas About Weapons, and mentioned the "Davy Crockett".  This was a <sighs> never mind.  Moving on -

Planet Earth: Still Going
Conrad recently came across an item on the Beeb website about a chap called David Meade, who is unlucky enough to share his name with that of another chap who can politely be called a "Swivel-eyed conspiranoid loonwaffle".  David Mk.2 is pushing the idea that a rogue planet called Nibiru is going to wham into the big blue ball of rock we inhabit, utterly destroying us.  This is bad; my subscription to 'Empire' will lapse.
     David Mk.2 confidently made a prediction that the world would end on 23rd September.
     Surprise!  It didn't.  You would have noticed, right?

Planet Eart - it was good whilst it lasted

     Not satisfied at still being alive, David Mk.2 promptly backtracked and started qualifying his statement.  Conrad confidently predicts that matey will continue to blather on about how the world is ending, is due to end or has already ended (though I think we would have noticed). This is nothing new, idiots and charlatans have been predicting the end of the - sorry, that ought to be capitalised - The End Of The World*** for at least the past thousand years.  None of them got it right.  We're still here.
     Right?

Bitten By The Coincidence Hydra - Yet Again
Dammit all to heck, my nethers must taste extra-specially wonderful.  Yesterday we had that stuff about "Ambrosia" and today I open up my copy of 'Empire' and what do I find?  A many page spread about "The Thing" and another article about Things in cinema generally.  If the Universe is trying to tell me something, couldn't it at least use social media?

Davy Crockett
Dog Buns, I am going to go on about this.  UNIT are busy with the Ortons (or so I heard) and Spectrum are fussing about the ISS so -
     Would you trust these men with a ten-ton bomb?
     The Davy Crockett was one of the smallest tactical nuclear weapons ever deployed, with a yield of between 0.01 and 0.02 kilotons - which is 10 to 20 tons to you and I.  They were issued in the thousands, and were intended to be the world's biggest anti-tank round, targeting the Sinister armoured hordes hunkered down in East Teutonland.  Cross the border and say Hello! to a bucket of 'instant sunshine', as RAF artificers have been known to call them.  

Did he eat the meat?

They were crewed by a team of 3, and due to their small size, there were no Permissive Action Links or failsafes; if you build it, they will - no, sorry, that was "Field of Dreams", wasn't it?  If you fired it, the Davy Crockett went off.  Boom.  No messing.  However, it wasn't terribly accurate, and the M28 model only had a range of just over a mile, so - Caution!  May Kill The User!

Davy, in his coonskin cap.  No - hang on -

* Unless he - no, let's not go there.
**  The most inappropriate name ever.
***  Cue sinister oboe music