I'm Afraid We're Going To Be Waffling About Atom Bombs Again
Also "Dan Dare", and notions of serendipity and HOTOL versus VTOL. You see, I did manage to get hold of an "Eagle" anthology - Volume 2 - in order to compare the types of ships Frank Hampson's art studio was producing with Elong Tusk's 'Starship'. I also tracked down my blog from a good 18 months ago, about potential nuclear proliferation, because we have new and frightening scenarios to discuss. What fun! Art?
There you go, one of Space Fleet's finest, laying horizontally the better and easier to load cargo and crew. Conrad assures you it's a whole lot easier to arm your rocket-ship with nuclear missiles when it's on it's side than trying to use gantries and derricks to manoeuvre them in by warping. Art!
How very interesting! Here we are sixty years before "The Expanse" and Hampson is describing atomic missiles as 'torpedoes'.
A short aside here. In the spoken narrative by Sir Hubert, the UN had overseen the disassembly of, and destruction also, of all fusion weapons, leaving only a strategic stockpile of IIRC 9 fission warheads. Thus atomic not hydrogen, meaning a comparatively modest yield. Art!
If only I'd picked up on this earlier - I could have used it in the "Atom Bombers" Intro. Note the brace of chaps in a monowheel jeep, covering their ears because of the insane decibel assault on their ears.
Note, also, that the rocket-ships have all been elevated to the vertical for take-off, because as you surely noticed earlier, there isn't room for a long horizontal acceleration across the landscape. Art!
Annnnnnnd back to horizontal in preparation for landing, using ventral jets and 'helitugs' for landing in their 'cradle'. Rather a large baby. You can see Bomber 2 had already landed in Cradle B for Bravo?
After all that the real thing is an anticlimax. Art!
Now, back to more real life, in a scary way.
Back in April 2023, I published an Intro that mentioned how South Korea, and 75% of South Koreans, wanted nuclear weapons. This is to counter The Only Fat Man In North Korea - TOMFINK - and his much-touted nuclear weapons, because the South Canadian nuclear umbrella's utility seems to depend on which loonwaffle either gets into the White House or is kept out of it. Art!
ATOMFINK and Boo-Boo
I then explained how Israel had created it's own small and basic fission bombs by 1967, a process taking 19 years from scratch as they had nothing remotely associated with nuclear power or nuclear weapons when they gained independence. By 1985 they had fusion warheads.
Then, next up was Pakistan, which commenced nuclear weapons production in 1972 and which achieved same in 1988. Thus creating a fission weapon had reduced to 16 years.
This process is known as 'Vertical proliferation', when a new member of the nuclear club joins and bumps up the numbers. Art!
Then there's 'Horizontal proliferation', where a member of the nuclear club broadens their arsenal in terms of warhead numbers and types. Israel now has not only nuclear bombs, but nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and ICBMs, and possibly nuclear artillery shells. Because they are famously tight-lipped about their Big Bang Bombs, estimates range from between 80 to 200IDF 'Jericho' launch
Well well Walter Gotell, what has Prez Zed been saying about Ukraine? Either it joins NATO - or it creates a nuclear arsenal of it's own. Unlike Israel or Pakistan, Ukraine did have a nuclear arsenal of it's own. They have the expertise, they possess the nuclear power plants for fissile material, they have the ballistic missiles, they may have already been working on this. Bloaty Gas Tout has been loudly saying that Ruffia won't allow this, as if he had any say in it, because a nuclear-armed Ukraine is suddenly a quantum level more dangerous and it rather undercuts his plaintive bleating that everything is going to plan. Art!
Now that there are Norcs in Modern-day Mordor prepping to invade Ukraine, the Sorks may well decide to enquire if Ukraine wants to go halves in the investment for a nuclear weapons program?
You know who else will be eying Kyiv and considering an offer to go thirds in the investment for a nuclear weapons program? Taiwan, because they also have a much larger aggressive bully for a neighbour.
You know who else will be eying Kyiv and considering an offer to go quarters in the investment for a nuclear weapons program? Poland, because they also have a much larger bully for a neighbour. They're not as aggressive as the Poles, mind. The joke is that NATO forces are present on the Polish-Belorusian border to keep the Poles back. Art!
1612: Poles enter the Kremlin
(They invaded at 13;22)
Welcome to the very interesting 21st Century!
Conrad Is Mellow!
No, that's a lie. I feel rubbish and am angry to boot. Let's try again.
Conrad Is Fuming! FUMING!
Yes we are on about Codewords again. Your Humble Scribe is on the horns of a dilemma: if I kill the wretched compilers off via my Remote Nuclear Detonator, then the newbies are inexperienced and annoy me again; if I abstain from turning them into a vapour, they get cheeky and entitled and annoy me again.
GERBIL: A species of rodent, I understand, that tastes especially good when roasted over an open fire inhabits the desert regions of North Africa. From the French via Latin <hack spit> of 'Little jerboa'. Not a creature you'd ever expect to see in the UK countryside. Art!
Full of flavour! Cute
TOR:No, not a typo. Of course - obviously! - Conrad knew what it was. A hill. To add a little more detail, typically a bare and rocky one. Art!
A tor-tuous solution
QUIXOTIC: Egad! Now we're including derivations from Early Modern Spanish literature? After 'Don Quixote' of course, the elderly Spanish dude who was determined to go into battle on horseback against giants, even if they were really windmills. Blimey. That sangria must have packed a punch back in the sixteenth century, it sounds more like liquid LSD. Art!
The Don could teach Brave Sir Robin a thing or two
Post-10 And Rural Road Robustness
We did briefly mention the capeless hero 'Post-10' as he surveilled a beaver pond absent beavers, on a back road in the middle of nowhere, South Canada. He has sharp eyes and is pretty shrewd, noticing as much what's not there as what is. Art!
What's missing here? A beaver dam, because the diligent and conscientious little rascals will dam up any outflow from their pond - because they sure don't see Hom. Sap. as having any skin in the game. No beaver dam means they've been re-located, which is good news for the road. Art!
The road in question. This is a rural backwoods dirt road, made for and by logging companies, who work on the 'Cheap as possible' principle, thus no tarmac for durability or grassed verges to protect kerbs. If the beavers do build a dam, this road will wash out within hours of being overtopped, not so much here as any lower-lying parts. Post-10 scornfully dismissed the gravel at the road edge; since there is nothing to bind it together it might as well not be there.
Nature more complicated than at first glance, hmmm?
The Norcs Of Modern-day Mordor
As a certain witty Tweeter over on Twitter (me!) put it, the orcs of Mordor are delighted that the stunted, malnourished soldiery of Nork-land have arrived within the borders of Sinister Union 2.0. Firstly because someone else can now play at being cannon fodder for the Little Tsar, and because they now get a mass promotion to the ranks of the UrukHai. Art!
As for the Norcs, they are doomed to never go home again. It is rather hard if one is dead as a stone, and even harder if you've experienced life beyond the miserable borders of the starving shothule itself. These chaps will never again believe that they lived in a paradise upon earth under the omniscient gaze of Their Living God, a.k.a. ATOMFINK. Can't have them spreading the truth around, can we?
You WHAT!?
As you know, Conrad is inordinately fond of Reddit tales related on Youtube, which he uses as a resource to create content for the blog. Occasionally one of the thumbnails reallllly jumps off the screen at you, like this one. Art!
FYI, a Burmese python is one of the constrictor snakes, and is in the Top Ten largest snakes in the world, growing to at least 16 feet long and weighing 200 pounds as a mature adult.
You have to wonder how drunk hubbo was to make this purchase, or accept the dare. I shall read and inform you of the outcome.
Finally -
That's quite enough wibble for one day. Laterz!
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