theme-sticky-logo-alt
PREVIOUS POST
The Precedent of the United States.
NEXT POST
Quantifiable.

51 Comments

  • December 11, 2019 at 12:12 am
    Kafiroon

    Well, Sam will give him no rest until he satisfies her.

    Heh.

    There are those of us that can build/manufacture all kinds of interesting, some difficult and other dangerous things. It is called a “broad’ “education”.

    REPLY
    • December 11, 2019 at 12:18 am
      Too Tall

      Ah yes, the days of making nitroglycerine in garage or basement.

      (Gently) pour it over sawdust to make dynamite.

      Smokeless powder (gun cotton, nitrocellulose), as well.

      REPLY
      • December 11, 2019 at 9:46 am
        MasterDiver

        Rusted steel wool and aluminum grindings, mix well, pack in a soup can. . Magnesium ribbon fuseVoila! Thermite! I got that recipe from a little book entitled “Not This August”by CM Kornbluth, and confirmed it with another slim tome: “Chemical Magic” that I got when I was ten thru the Scholastic Book Association. Now I would be labelled a potential terrorist! HA!

        Zar Belk!

      • December 11, 2019 at 12:15 pm
        Brent Dotson

        ammonia and iodine in the right proportions. NOTE: once it dries, it is so unstable that it can steal an electron from the air and explode. Knew a chemist that mixed this and poured it on little pieces of crumpled up toilet paper. Put it on a table surrounded by sugar. When a fly landed on it, it went boom. I thought landmines for mice was hilarious.

      • December 11, 2019 at 12:16 pm
        Brent Dotson

        Sorry meant landmines for flies. Senior moment

      • December 11, 2019 at 5:34 pm
        Vince

        My dad taught me that!

      • December 13, 2019 at 12:57 am
        tom ploszaj

        Wow, wayback machine> Use to get books in 1965 thru them while in middle school . Among other things during the ’60s nitro was being made in the basement fireplace as a flume hood. I’m not sure how I survived keeping both my eyes and all ten digits.
        I’m tempted to add more to this but I suspect I’m on enough “lists” already. I wonder how many other Chem Engineers are patriots.

      • December 11, 2019 at 10:16 pm
        Wulfenite

        Packing foam peanuts & gasoline make a fine homemade napalm. Please use sparingly since there is no putting it out once lit.

      • December 11, 2019 at 11:36 pm
        Toxic Deplorable Racist B Woodman

        Be sure to use the Styrofoam peanuts, not the cornstarch based packing peanuts.

    • December 11, 2019 at 7:10 am
      GWB

      Who you callin’ a broad?!

      REPLY
      • December 11, 2019 at 8:36 am
        Kafiroon

        That is another subject I learned much about by observation, listening to old buzzards that had experience and practical hands on learning.

        Heh!

    • December 11, 2019 at 9:47 pm
      Toxic Deplorable Racist B Woodman

      Zed, can you say “Pandora’s Box”? I knew you could.
      If it’s nothing that you want revealed or exposed to public view, best keep it under close personal guard, 24/7.
      Sam is all female (duh!), and an engineer. If that’s not a combination to out-curiosity a cat, I don’t know what is.

      REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 12:22 am
    JTC

    Well, i’m a little curious myself.

    What it is *not* is anything Red would disapprove of since 1. It is in plain view, 2. Everything Zed does is for the family, and 3. He doesn’t want to eff with Red.

    Well maybe that last one is off in a way, but you and he know what I mean. 😉

    REPLY
    • December 11, 2019 at 3:33 am
      NotYetInACamp

      So far there was only one broad who I would have done anything legal and moral for. I even made a small fortune for me and her. But she ripped out my heart and never knew of the small fortune. Though I had attempted to explain. Having someone that you believe and who believes you is not overrated. Not having one is often a piece of baggage of those with certain levels of higher natural intelligence. (I did not say other qualities, such as certain common sense.) Questioning everything is something many cannot do. Questioning everything and having a woman who can deal with that and do it herself while believing you and letting you keep areas untold, that you would tell if needed, is hard to find and keep. Vice versa.

      Some things are best left unsaid. But how often do we succeed in doing what is best?

      REPLY
      • December 11, 2019 at 5:05 am
        Jefferson A Selvy

        I had a redhead myself once. I trusted my back to her and she armed me. Unfortunately she passed seven years ago, probably the last of her kind.

      • December 11, 2019 at 8:42 pm
        GWB

        No, there’s at least one other. I know.

      • December 11, 2019 at 11:16 am

        “So far…”

        True the brightest/most naturally talented can be self-limiting, even self-destructive. That can be overcome. Question everything together.

        Time’s a-wastin’.

  • December 11, 2019 at 12:31 am
    cb

    Plain to see what Zed is looking at… curiosity gonna kill the proverbial cat if Sam notices.

    REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 12:50 am

    You mean there’s something better than a coffee can with a sheet of foil under the plastic lid?

    Cleaning out ancient paperwork, catalogs, and stuff, guess I can let the 5 1/4″ floppies and copy of Windows 3.1 (with inch-thick user manual) go away. In 1999 for only $2499 and a MSN subscription I could have gotten a WinBook with 12.1 display, DVD-ROM and 3 1/2 floppy drive, 400MHZ CPU and 128MB memory, expandable to 256.

    And security experts with a van of equipment could pick up your monitor signal from down in the street. Nowadays we use cordless input devices and wireless tablets made in China with WiFi that can be picked up halfway down the block. Did we ever really have a chance at keeping our data secure?

    REPLY
    • December 11, 2019 at 1:42 am
      Too Tall

      Re: Coffee cans

      As a kid, I knew a couple of foremen who retired from Walker (automotive) Mfg. in 1963.

      They had worked for this (then) family run business since the 1920s.

      During the Great Depression, Mr. Walker would pay his employees in shares of stock, when there was no cash to make payroll. The employees stayed loyal because there was always hot coffee, hot soup, and bakery goods, and you could take some home to the family.

      Anyway, their wives would take the stock certificates, place them between sheets of wax paper, roll them up with a rubber band, and store them in a coffee can.

      In 1963, those coffee cans filled the trunks of their cars, and Walker was now publicly traded, Each of the gentlemen had over $3,000,000.

      REPLY
      • December 11, 2019 at 6:37 am
        DeeKayT

        Hi, Too Tall. Is this the Walker Manufacturing Company that was based in Racine Wisconsin? Made auto mufflers and tailpipes among other things? If so, my father worked for them in the sixties as a factory rep based in Texas. Had The southwest district.

      • December 11, 2019 at 8:36 am
        Too Tall

        Yep. My father opened their manufacturing plant in Aberdeen, MS, worked at corporate in Racine, WI, and then opened their distribution center in Batavia, IL.

      • December 12, 2019 at 6:26 am
        DeeKayT

        Small world.

    • December 11, 2019 at 3:44 pm
      Pamela

      I keep getting spam calls from Apple about my Apple device being corrupted and I need to speak with an agent to not get arrested.

      I called Apple and let them know the number, date and times.
      I said the only Apple product we have is a Macintosh which never had a serial port to hook up to the internet in the garage.

      REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 1:01 am
    interventor

    Secure data —books! Cars are a Faraday cage. Metal frame forms the cage. Tires insulate from the ground.

    REPLY
    • December 11, 2019 at 1:17 am
      WayneM

      As a Faraday cage, cars aren’t ideal. Yes, they offer a degree of protection from shocks but RF energy easily penetrate most automotive glass. EMP is RF energy ergo no protection.

      REPLY
      • December 11, 2019 at 9:09 am
        interventor

        Main point is that car still will work if exposed to EMP. The electronic within the car are similarly insulated within the system, else they wouldn’t work. There is question as to whether cars would work if running during an attack.

      • December 11, 2019 at 2:07 pm
        Old Codger

        That is something I’ve been saying for a long while. From an EM perspective, the area under an automobile’s hood is positively hellish. My Toyota’s V6 idles at around 2,500 rpm which means 83 voltage/current spikes through the spark plug wires per second. Add in the detonations at the cylinders and you have a very inhospitable environment for microelectronics. The car’s computer has to be very protected from EMR just to survive that environment (I built an early prototype Motorola EEC-4 and had to confirm that it was). I personally do not see how even a nuclear/thermonuclear detonation in the stratosphere would shut down the control electronics in a modern automobile. Cell phones, tablets, laptops (my two regular PCs are in metal cases connected to my home’s ground) and other equipment might be hurt but I would expect larger voltage spikes to be induced in the 10s-of-miles-long electric power grid wires but I already run all my equipment through surge protectors.

    • December 11, 2019 at 1:25 am

      Cell phones and radios work inside cars therefore EM radiation gets in and out just fine, therefore they’re not Faraday cages.

      If you want to protect a laptop, leave it in an old microwave oven. It holds in radiation damaging to electronics thus will also keep it out. Run a separate ground wire and stake instead of plugging it in for electrical grounding. Your house electrical ground is a pathetic backup to keep the 120/240 split somewhat balanced if you should somehow lose the large incoming neutral connection, any grounds and that neutral are joined in the main box.

      REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 1:12 am
    Ol' Country Boy

    Having run aerospace laboratories, I would go buy a 5- or 10- gallon galvanized garbage can . Easily carried and moved. Can hold computers, telephones, radios and sensitive equipment. For greater EMP protection, fasten (solder) a flexible grounding cable with a clip or steak that can be driven into the ground. We built complete rooms out of copper mesh as Faraday cages. They would protect against a growler so they would protect against anything that can be thrown at you. Remember, all you really need is a galvanized garbage can. just make sure you don’t wrap up anything (insulate) going inside of it (unless you wrap the contents in aluminum foil).

    REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 3:42 am
    NotYetInACamp

    The government already has more data and information on us than we would ever want them to have. And they are increasing it. And Big Tech and China (et al.) already have even more. And the data is growing. (AI? Skyyenet?)
    The government already has been limited by law in what they can use (cough cough).

    Then there is that person to whom and with whom law is not part of the equation.

    REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 4:22 am
    Mike-SMO

    Playmate for Jo?

    REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 7:13 am
    GWB

    What’s in the box…?

    Maybe phone records?

    REPLY
    • December 11, 2019 at 5:55 pm
      Bob in Houston

      “home movies?” maybe?

      REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 7:57 am
    Badger

    Occam’s Razor; maybe he’s just hiding a Christmas present.

    REPLY
    • December 11, 2019 at 10:01 am
      Too Tall

      Post of the thread.

      REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 9:59 am
    ottersmith

    Not to mention survival from those too frequent boating accidents.

    The coffee cans referred to here are the old metal cans, before “fluffy grinds”; the can was close to a gallon in volume (and held 48 oz. of ground coffee.

    Hmm. Currently we buy roasted coffee beans that come in plastic bags with a foil-appearing inner layer. Are those effective shielding?

    That I’m married does not mean that I do not want to eff with Sam, only that my self-control would be tested. And my imagination.

    REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 10:49 am
    Spin Drift

    What’s with the kick starter?

    REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 11:23 am

    Red has already called him on the Faraday line…”What’s in the damn case!?”

    And in any case (heh), about a decade late.

    REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 3:47 pm
    Pamela

    You Guys need to stop talking about hardening stuff. 😉

    REPLY
    • December 11, 2019 at 8:48 pm
      GWB

      I… ummm… well…

      REPLY
    • December 11, 2019 at 11:54 pm
      Too Tall

      The wisdom of a redhead.

      REPLY
  • December 11, 2019 at 7:29 pm
    James Ponder

    If I may, please see blog post #003, where I address steel garbage cans and “EMP proof bags” among other things:

    http://empsurvivalsystems.com/#blog

    Written over the weekend and put up last night, I did not realize that such would need coverage today.

    James F. Ponder
    Cofounder/CTO
    EMP Survival Systems

    REPLY
    • December 11, 2019 at 10:46 pm

      Your blog click-to-unroll feature works in Chrome but not Firefox (71.0, just updated a few days ago).

      REPLY
      • December 12, 2019 at 11:48 am
        Punta Gorda

        Who in their right mind would “unroll” from this bastion of sanity?

  • December 11, 2019 at 10:39 pm
    Pamela

    Black Case? Does Zed have a prototype self-defense piece of equipment?

    REPLY

LEAVE A REPLY

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

15 49.0138 8.38624 1 0 4000 1 https://www.daybydaycartoon.com 300 0