Blight And Frothy

NO! That Is NOT A Typo

Beware of traducing Conrad, for he is sitting right next to the Remote Nuclear Detonator and his fingers are itching for action.

     I am not going to apologise for returning to the subject matter of that enormous conflagration at the Proletarsk oil depot in darkest Modern-day Mordor, because it's fascinating to see $20 million-worth of petroleum products go up in smoke every day.  Art!

There's your blight, mate, right there

     In the nearby town they complain that they are experiencing 'darkness at noon' thanks to the ever-present smoke.  Conversely, when another tank explodes at night, said residents compare it to the sun at dusk.  Art!

     We are now up to Day Five of this earthly-inferno, and I'm guessing that the firefighters have more or less given up, because this thing is too big to stop let alone extinguish.  Also, the tanks of fuels are extremely dangerous to get anywhere near, because you can't tell when one of them is going to get depressurised and it's contents explode in a gigantic fireball.  Art!

Before

After

     This video clip was taken by a nearby Ruffian, who was far too near and in order to avoid going bye-bye, he turned and ran as fast as possible.  Sensible chap.

     The fire is not only still burning, it continues to spread, to the point where it threatens tanks containing not oil but petrol and kerosene, which are far more volatile and explosive.

    There is also another, much more insidious risk for the orc oil oligarchs.  Art!

     An old advert from the Sixties.  In the case of Proletarsk, it's not tigers they need to worry about - there are native Ruffian tigers in Siberia - it's bacteria.  You see, the horrid little rascals are endemic in crude, and if an oil tank is in close proximity to a heat source - Art!

     It will degrade, even if it never caught fire.

     Ooops.

     Now, I bet you're wondering where the 'Frothy' part of today's title comes from?

     Well - do you see what I d - O you do - how does one extinguish a fire involving flammable petroleum liquids?

     With foam.  Like Conrad, you may have thought that firefighting foam was simply firefighting foam and that was that.  O noes indeed!  Not at all.  Not in any way.  Art!

     This is a list of FAQs from "Oil Technics" "Firefighting" page.  From this I understand that, for combatting an oil fire on an industrial scale, you need a Class B foam.  The principle of foam used against a fuel fire is that it coats the surface of the burning liquid, helping to cool it down, and it cuts the fuel off from oxygen, thus starving it.  Art!

     This is the only clip I can find of the Ruffian firemen using foam against the fire, which is the approved method.  Problem is, I bet they ran out of foam all too quickly, because a fire engine can only carry a few hundred gallons of the stuff, and may have resorted to using water.  BIG MISTAKE!

     Water is heavier than oil or petrol and will cause the burning fuel to float atop it, usually with a great big explosion to boot.  Thus, the plans to have Il-76s equipped with a water-delivery system normally used for quenching forest fires was dropped, because hoiking a couple of hundred tons of water onto the fire might well have destroyed the aircraft.  Art!

What never came to be

     The Ruffians have tried foam, water and are now casting around for anything that might work, including men in dresses, apparently.  Art!

     Another tank exploded after their service.  Conrad doesn't want to risk a thunderbolt for blasphemy but I don't think The Chap Upstairs is inclined to help much.

     Also, and you may not believe this, firefighting foam was invented by Aleksandr Loran in 1902.  Yes, all that time ago!

     In Russia.

Kirsty's Skirt

As you should surely know BECAUSE ONLY THAT WAY WILL YOUR DESCENDANTS AVOID THE URANIUM MINES Conrad did an Intro on Taylor Swift versus Donold Trump, in a case of whose cult was better.  Also mentioned was my work colleague Kirsty, who is something of a Swift fan.  Conrad is unaware if they have a special appellation but will try to think up something appropriately horrid and insulting.

     ANYWAY Kirsty didn't explicitly forbid me to display The Skirt.  So, here it is.  Art!

     It contains 1.5 million beads threaded onto 8 kilometres of twine, and took 27 months to construct*.  Each thread contains the name of a Taylor Swift song, which I'll have to take on trust as I don't know a single one (this will get me into trouble on Teams next week).

"The War Illustrated Edition 192 October 1944"

We are currently working our way through the montage that usually graces the centre-pages of TWI, so let us see what they covered next.  Art!

     Here you see one of the less-fortunate Teuton defenders, members of the SS and quite willing to die for Herr Schickelgruber, which wish has been granted.  This picture would have been taken not long after the bridge was captured, as enemy dead would be collected and buried as soon as possible, being a health risk.

     Next to the deceased is a British Tommy doing 'stag' as they called it, in a recently-liberated guard post, and again this picture would have been taken very soon after capture, because otherwise someone would have stolen the Schickelgruber picture as a souvenir.

I Shall Keep This Short And Sour

The redoubtable Joe Blogs, whose Youtube channel 'Joe Blogs' is well worth watching, has another interesting vlog up about that most feeble of currencies, the Ruffian ruble.  He goes over a lot of old ground that I've already relayed so I shall concentrate merely on a small part of his vlog.  Art!

     This timeline shows the value of the ruble since late July.  The Ruffian Central Bank tries to keep the ruble below ₽90 to the $, which they were managing until the 6th of August, by burning through FOREX reserves.  Gosh, what happened then?  O yes, Ukraine invaded Modern-day Mordor and the ruble went into a slump.  From ₽85 to the $, it's now slipped to ₽92.452 and doesn't show any signs of rallying.

     As Joe remarked, this implies that the RCB has been told not to spend any more reserves on propping up the ruble, or, in other words, they have reached the point where they have to make very hard choices about what to prioritise.

     Bring on the wheelie-bins of popcorn!

Kyle's Isles

More wholesome goodness from "Geography King" and number 5 in his list of 15 South Canadian islands of interest for various reasons.  Art!

     This is French Island, Wisconsin, sitting to starboard in the Mississippi River, on the Wisconsin side of the state line between WI and Minnesota.  It's only about 4 miles square, with a population of about 4,200, so not a lot of people.  Part of the reason for this low population is the fact that half the island is occupied by La Croix Airport.  Art!

Why?  Why not!

     In case you were wondering, it was named after a Mister French, not the French nation, although after being named so, it did acquire French-Canadian settlers.  Homesick?

Progress Report

Now up to Page 150 of "Heinrich Himmler" and he's just been appointed to the position of Reichsfuhrer SS after the Nazis come to power, meaning he really does have his hands on the levers of power.  Before that he was more a pen-pusher than anything else, if a diligent one.  Art!

Finally -

I was due to attend my annual diabetic medical appointment tomorrow, at 12:40, but the pikers rang and texted today at 16:20 to inform it had been cancelled and I need to re-arrange.  So much for a bit of a skive in the afternoon 😕 At least I don't have to have a shave and shower tomorrow morning and can just fester as usual.

CYA!

*  Some of these numbers may be a little out.