Bombe Surprise

I Shall Need To Put Up A Photo Of An Ice Cream Dessert, Shan't I?

Otherwise the Facebook twod mods will be poking around looking for things to be insulted about, just like those interfering busybodies from UNIT.  Really, the impositions I have to put up with!  Art?

     This particular dessert is French, as you might expect, and Conrad is in danger of collapsing in a diabetic coma just looking at it.  I can tell you that 'Baked Alaska' FORESHADOWING is another variety of bombe.  The name comes from it's apparent resemblance to a cannon-ball.  Which, to be fair, is true of the 18th century cannons in use when the recipe came about.

     ANYWAY my alternate title for this blog was going to be "Rocket To Russia", and I could have put up a picture of The Ramones record - Art!

     Horrifyingly, this record is 47 years old in about a fortnight.  Erk.

     "What is the fatuous gimboid on about now?" I hear you query, and pausing only to congratulate you on your grasp of Arnold Judas Rimmer's slang, I shall explicate.

     We are, as I reiterate every six months or so, living in the future.  What follows would have been only within the province of the CIA or NSA a couple of decades ago and yet is now within the reach of any citizen with a few hundred pounds.

     As you have no doubt guessed by now, I am talking about the recent enormous BANGS taking place on the territory of Modern-day Mordor, which have been picked up by various orbital satellite imaging platforms.  I'd like to give a shout out to "Jake Broe" and his vlog for collecting these in one place.

     I did think another potential title might be "No Fork In Way" except that sounds rather coarse.  We'll come to that shortly.  Art!

Courtesy Maxar Technologies

     This is one of the Ruffian ammunition depots.  Note the train offloading ammunition, which has been dumped IN THE OPEN next to the protected bunker.  This may be due to the bunker being full, or, equally, it may be due to the orcs being lazy beasts.  O, remember when I said we are living in the future?  Well, not the orcs.  They have no pallet system for logistics and the forklift truck has yet to be invented there.  Art!

AK-74 ammo box

     That's a sample Ruffian ammunition crate.  These will have been offloaded by sweating relays of orcs, then dumped alongside the railway, because Ruffian logistics is still firmly stuck in the Fifties.

     I did say 'Bombe' and 'Rocket' when the truth is the damage was done by Ukrainian drones, possibly including their new "Palyanitsya*" turbo-jet model.  Which model is a tad academic since a sparkler dropped amidst all those lovely flammable wooden crates would have the same effect.  Art!

Before, with Jake not being gloaty at all.

After.  Okay, perhaps a bit gloaty.

     The surrounding woodland has been completely flattened by a gigantic explosion occurring in that central bunker, in devastation akin to that at Tunguska.  Now, Ruffia does not want you to see this image as it proves how utterly destroyed the entire site is.  Problem is, this is 2024 not 1924 and you can't keep prying eyes away from your hinterland any longer, so the Kremlin has forbidden any of these images to ever, ever, ever be shown to the unwashed Ruffian hordes.  Art!

     This is part of the smaller ammunition depot at Octyabrski, where there were no hardened bunkers, just warehouses.  Art!

Gone, baby, gone

     This depot was hit several days after the big one at Toropets, so the Ruffians had time to at least begin remedial measures to disperse the exposed storage on site.  Yes, except this is Ruffia we're dealing with and their eternal mindset of "What could possibly go wrong?" instead of "Houston we have a problem".  Note those blue storage items to lower port in the top photo of this pair.  Art!

     I'll bring up the last two photos for this Intro.  Art!

     Blue storage site to upper starboard in this picture.  You can see a train is still present opposite the blue storage warehouses.  Art!

     Just staggering.  This sloppy conduct may be what the enraged Ruffian milblogger 'FighterBomber' was ranting about when he said all safety standards had gone out the window since the SMO began.  A Ruffian troll on Twitter was trying to pretend nothing had happened to the depot above because there was no video of it.  Dude, anyone close enough to film that would be ash and vapour.

     Human casualties?  The official Ruffian line is 13 injured.  Your Humble Scribe very much doubts that we'll ever find out the true total until the Putin regime collapses and a successor comes in.  Don't laugh, Putinpot will be living in mortal fear of this happening.

     O just picked up another detail - Toropets was 'protected' by an anti-drone electronic warfare system that cost ₽200 million.  Better see if it was still under warranty, hmmmm?

Truth Strange As Fiction

Whilst doing further research on my current bats-in-the-belfry topic, which I insist on calling a 'Thing' not a 'Project', I came across a curious item called the 'Pacific Route'.  Art!

The air bridge flies from 'Ferbanks'

     This was the name for the supply route carrying Lend-Lease supplies from South Canada to the Sinister Union, principally to Vladivostok, in the lower of the two red arrows above.  This was the primary route because the upper arrow denotes freighters traversing the dangerous environs of the Bering Sea, which was only seasonally possible.

     What's missing from this picture?  The Imperial Japanese Navy, that's who.  The incredibly aggressive and attack-oriented IJN allowed Sinister ships to carry cargoes to the Sinister Union, instead of sinking them.  Why so?  Because both nations maintained a very, very strict policy of neutrality which served them both very well.  Art!

     The Sinisters didn't have enough freighters of their own, so the South Canadian transferred lots to their flag, hip hooray.  The IJN, not being entirely naive, mounted regular inspections of these ships to make sure nothing military was being shipped, only things like food and locomotives.

     Rather wild, hmmmm?

I Say

Conrad was rather - pleasantly - surprised to see a promo ad for "The Thursday Murder Club", which is going to be a film.  No 'may' or 'perhaps' about it, because this puppy has producer Steven Spielberg behind it and when he sticks his oar in, the boat moves.  Art!

     I've only seen a brief mention of the cast - but what a cast!  Sir Ben Kingsley, Pierce Brosnan, Celie Imrie and Dame Helen Mirren.  Yes, Your Humble Scribe has read the book, and a jolly entertaining read it is, too.

O Dear The Weather

The weather in This Sceptred Isle is never bad enough to be dangerous, and thus exciting.  No, it only descends to the level of miserable dreariness.  Conrad is not desperate to experience typhoons, hurricanes and monsoons, just that the prospect is more enticing than - Art!

This

     An endless vista of excrement-coloured wasteland.  Ho hum.

Finally -

'The Kids', as Wonder Wifey insists on calling them despite Darling Daughter being dangerously close to <redacted>, are due mid-afternoon Friday, so they will have to get on with the merry banter and quaffing beer without Conrad, who is chained to his works laptop and phone <heavy sigh>.  But - it is payday, which compensates a tad.

Toodle pip!

*  Named after a kind of Ukrainian loaf, and it certainly results in a well-risen orc arsenal.