On The Scene With Hydrazine
Don't worry, both these items will impinge in the near future. If you've been a follower of BOOJUM! for Lo! these may years, then you ought to recognise Hydrazine from our old, old series on 'Extremely Hazardous Substances'. Art!
Hydrazine, lest you be unaware, is a rocket fuel (amongst other less exotic uses) that is extremely volatile, flammable and toxic. The only thing it's missing in this catalogue of cacophony is radioactive, and I don't have time to research and see if there is a radioactive version with 'hot' carbon or oxygen atoms.
Those characters above ↑↑↑are loading up propellant for a rocket launch, which requires them to wear a full Hazmat suit, with an oxygen supply, which seems to be coming in via pipeline, rather than as a tanked version. Hydrazine, it seems, is not a chemical to muck around with lightly. Art!
Abruptly jumping topic and location, here we see the Palisades district of Los Angeles, where the wildfires have wrought absolute havoc in terms of human, physical and economic cost. The Palisades borders the Los Angeles shoreline, and there have been calls as to why these fires have not been quenched by the use of seawater, since it is in such abundant and proximate supply. Art!
The immediate and obvious answer is that the seawater is kind of in the sea, and the fires are kind of on the land, and there is a kind of barrier between the two. Unless you can invoke the spirit of Gandalf to transpose them, real-world physics are always going to get into the way.
Not to mention the conspiranoid loonwaffles who conflate the use of seawater as being as dangerous as piping hyper-hot hydrazine onto these inflagrations. SEAWATER THE DEADLY DRINK! to paraphrase a tad.
Yeah right.
Fortunately we have an expert over here in the corner: Sal Mercogliano, whom is responsible for "What Is Going On With Shipping", the international maritime shipping Youtube channel that underpins all human existence*. Art!
Conrad has previously noted that, in the background of his Youtube vlogs, Sal has a South Canadian fire helmet on display, which seems a bit out of place for a sailor sojourning on the high seas. Except that he has been a volunteer fireman for Lo! these 25 years, working in North Carolina. Art!
Thus Sal has a generation of experience in firefighting and being a mariner, which combines in a synergism for today.
Sal's primary focus was on the "Saltwater as Hydrazine " nonsense, and since we here at BOOJUM! are nothing if not devoted to the truth, let us put forward his rebuttals.
1) "Saltwater Is Incredibly Corrosive And OMG DANGEROUS! OMG!!"
You'll notice that I put out TWO EXCLAMATION MARKS here to underline how over the top people have been in making this assertion. Art!
Apologies for the incomplete title, this is from the clip that Sal posted, and if he can't be bothered to put up the complete thing, then neither can I.
You may well wonder why surfers don't instantaneously explode into a cavalcade of coruscanting conflagrations when they venture into salt water, and the reason it that the idiot who posted the above has tomato soup for brains. Once again for the hard of thinking, seawater is not HydrazineArt!
Sal scoffs at this, saying that fire crews will use ANY water source to extinguish fires: the sea, a nearby river, a reservoir or a duck pond in extremis. Nor do pumps and other fire engine equipment corrode instantly and terminally on contact with salt water, or salt. He quotes the fire engines in north-east South Canada in wintertime, which travel along many a millennial mile of road that is coated with salt, and which yet do not disintegrate.
Conrad, being a logical cove, also postulated that fire-fighting equipment contaminated with saltwater could merely be flushed out afterwards with fresh-water. Because salt-water is NOT Hydrazine and will not instantly destroy anything it touches. Which Sal confirmed. Art?
The valves present in contemporary South Canadian firefighting equipment are made of polyurethane, which is - you may be ahead of me here - highly resistant to saltwater, as in not affected by it at all.
Before Sal came to his logical conclusion about using seawater to extinguish fires, Conrad reasoned that, if you had to use it, once the emergency was over, you'd just flush your pumps out with fresh water - seconds before Sal said exactly the same thing. Of course - obviously! - this is mysteriously obscure to those with tomato soup for brains.
You better bet we'll be coming back to this. O Dog Buns indeed!
"The War Illustrated Edition 200 16th February 1945"
We are still on the central montage dealing with war in winter and have seen British and American troops using white camouflage suits to avoid standing out in the snowy landscapes of Belgium and France. Art!
Unusually this picture has a very detailed notation. It's at Laroche in Belgium, but since these photographs are at least two weeks old, that info won't be of any use to the Teutons. The tank is being driven by Sergeant J. Brown, from Wigan, one of Britain's hardy northern sons and whom the Teutons probably cannot understand if they eavesdrop on his radio transmissions. The tank is making a passage for an ambulance convoy and is pushing aside an ammunition truck busily burning. No, there is no nearby seawater to put it out, Dougal.
Revenge: A Dish Best Served Bold
Cement. A fine, versatile building medium, which as you ought to know is made as a liquid slurry and which cures to become as strong as stone. Art!
A Qoran posted about an acquaintance of theirs who was a plumber, and who had re-plumbed a new build office block. However - you knew that word was going to crop up at some point today - the General Contractor responsible for the construction refused to pay Mr. Plumber the balance of his fee, no doubt tweaking his moustache ends in best Victorian villain style, thinking there was nothing Mr. Plumber could do about it. It's not as if he could dig up all the piping, right?
Back to cement. Mr Plumber quietly mixed up a thin cement batch and poured it down all the access points to the plumbing, wiped away any tell-tale residue and left. How creative and vindictive!
None of this sabotage was discovered until the offices opened. They were then closed for months as ALL the piping had to be dug up and replaced. The Qouran posting this citric revenge tale said the cost to do so was easily ten times the balance Mr. Plumber had been owed.
Ooops. Art!
NOT A GOOD IDEA
Meanwhile, Back To The Orange Land Whale
A telling picture and caption from the BBC's News webpage. Art!
Of course he has. He has the intellectual punch of a spiteful, petty, bloviating seven-year old. He ran for election to stay out of prison and would promise the Moon on a stick to keep out of an orange jumpsuit. He and his minions have already been backtracking on his campaign lies - you may have noticed that the war in Ukraine is still going on long after the 24 hours he informed it would take to stop it. Now, two months after being elected, it's going to take at least three months and perhaps as many as six. Donold Judas Trump lying - I'm shocked, I tell you! Shocked!
Finally -
Your Humble Scribe is going to be a bit of a shut-in for the near future, thanks to this bloody diabetic ulcer on my right big toe. No walking Edna nor into Lesser Sodom <sad> face but that does mean not fending off the wind, wet and general January woeful weather <moderately happy face>.
* Only a slight exaggeration.
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