God help America

[Bruce Tuncks]

Cracker night....  I remember that 20 kids were blinded on the last guy Fawkes night where there was open slather on buying crackers first.

How much does a blind kid cost?   That depends of course on the amount of pension etc support . Reluctantly, I came to support the idea of the bans.

[old man emu]

We know that fireworks are dangerous. Those who use them must take the bad with the good. However, we also live with animals. They have no knowledge of where these sudden loud noises come from, just as they do not understand thunder. How much distress does the use of fireworks cause. Isn't that sufficient reason to ban the indiscriminate use of them? 

 

I don't want to ban fireworks displays carried out by professionals. Those displays are well advertised so that owners of animals can protect them. The displays usually are of short duration so that while there is noise, it does end and noise doesn't occur spasmodically for hours.  

[Bruce Tuncks]

I read once about dogs in ww2. The US had the best system by far. Their recruitment for dogs mainly consisted of stopping noise-sensitive dogs from joining up. The book said that 50% of dogs failed the test and were scared of noise.

Personally, I reckon there are more than 50% scared, but remember that these dogs were brought along by their owners to a recruitment place. The owners clearly thought the dog was ok.

Anyway, at it's peak, the US army had 40,000 dogs. They were mainly assisting guards, but many combat platoons had a dog too. Those with a dog had a lot less casualties. I reckon the US army was the only one in history that really cared for its own soldiers.

[Old Koreelah]

Fireworks are legal on “Territory Day” in Darwin. They are on sale for a few days beforehand. Human nature dictates that plenty of idiots break the rules; sudden whistles and bangs keep people awake during those few nights, but the dogs have a terrible time.

[facthunter]

There were a lot of serious eye injuries associated with crackers. NSW used to have a cracker Night when I was a kid. It's a good way to start bushfires also... Fun though.  Nev

[onetrack]

The Americans are simply obsessed with explosives, and blowing things up, or blowing them apart. No American action movie can have a simple car crash - it has to be a crash where the car rolls over and blows up like an explosives-carrying truck.

 

The premium idiocy in America has to be the clowns blowing up anvils. The mere fact you can buy explosives pretty freely in America means if they do manage to control the gun problem, they will still kill themselves regularly with explosives.

 

I can remember one American in the early days of the internet had a website totally dedicated to warning imbeciles who loved making pipe bombs. It was a ripper of a website, full of large red warning text and gory photos of missing hands and limbs.

What the pipe-bomb-making imbeciles failed to understand, was that if any explosive - even "totally safe" black powder - falls into the threads of pipes, the act of screwing a cap on to complete the pipe bomb, creates enough friction to set the pipe bomb off prematurely.

 

https://hackaday.com/2015/10/11/anvil-firing-awesome-or-reckless/

[facthunter]

If each owner has more guns the death rate/gun will fall. The gun  craze is sheer Lunacy. I think they are too close and conditioned to see that with any clarity. NRA is too powerful an influencer. Nev

[Bruce Tuncks]

I see their point...  if everybody else has guns, would not you be silly to be the only one without?

[kgwilson]

Why stop at 0ne? Get 2 or 3 because the todller may be playing with one and it can't be found, the kids have taken it to school or are out the back shooting snails and frogs or even each other.

Edited March 30, 2023 by kgwilson

[Old Koreelah]

[red750]

That coffee can be deadly at Starbucks.

 

[rgmwa]

Probably just the local militia rep waiting for the Redcoats to arrive.

[willedoo]

9 hours ago, onetrack said:

What the pipe-bomb-making imbeciles failed to understand, was that if any explosive - even "totally safe" black powder - falls into the threads of pipes, the act of screwing a cap on to complete the pipe bomb, creates enough friction to set the pipe bomb off prematurely.

 "totally safe" black powder - that's a good one. Black powder is very dangerous stuff compared to smokeless powder. I guess that's why so many Americans lose bits of their bodies when they play with black powder. They are just too gung-ho with it. I remember a few years ago, one cannon re-enactment group in the U.S. had a member lose a hand doing something stupid. And that was an experienced group that had been doing it for years. Their cannon swabbing and reloading rules are fairly lax compared to our rules here.

[spacesailor]

Some of my ' ex-army ' munitions were '' cordite '' , filaments like '' sting cheese .

How do I know ! . Silly me changed them into ' black powder ' loads . As no one wanted that propellant .

spacesailor

[facthunter]

Jet Ex things use cordite don't they? During the war  and in mining towns also this stuff  was everywhere. Nev

[old man emu]

Cordite is now obsolete and it is no longer produced. Production ceased in the United Kingdom, around the end of the 20th century, with the closure of the last World War II Cordite factory, ROF Bishopton. However, Cordite propellant may still be encountered in the form of legacy ammunition dating from World War II onwards.

 

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/encyclopedia/Cordite.html

[facthunter]

What's used to propel Mortars?. Nev

[old man emu]

Eat baked beans and you'll fart like a belt-fed mortar.

[willedoo]

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

What's used to propel Mortars?. Nev

Usually nitrocellulose ball powder in modern mortars.

[willedoo]

Cordite is basically made of the same components except it was extruded into long spaghetti strand like segments.

[willedoo]

These are modern mortar round propellant increments:

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

I expected some argument about the US being the only army in history that cared about its own soldiers. But you guys are hard to fool.

Remember " saving private Ryan"? apparently in the real war, about half of those platoons had dogs. The dogs ranged out in front to sniff out hidden enemies. The platoons with dogs had HALF the casualties compared with those without.

My uncle Jack was on a patrol on a jungle track in ww2 when he saw a 2 shilling piece. As he bent to pick it up, a japanese sniper bullet went down his back. Bending saved his life, and it was only a bottletop. 

I reckon if only those patrols had dogs, the poor japanese snipers would be found out well before they had a shot. So I give the Australian generals less marks than the US generals.

[willedoo]

4 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

So I give the Australian generals less marks than the US generals.

with Blamey at the bottom of the class with an F.

[Old Koreelah]

On 31/3/2023 at 3:15 PM, Bruce Tuncks said:

I expected some argument about the US being the only army in history that cared about its own soldiers. But you guys are hard to fool. Remember " saving private Ryan"? apparently in the real war, about half of those platoons had dogs. The dogs ranged out in front to sniff out hidden enemies.

Not only dogs could smell Germans, if this story is to be believed:

http://www.strangehistory.net/2015/03/20/24713/

[onetrack]

The story about "smelling Germans" is quite believable. BO can be quite strong, and carry a fair way - but other smells such as the type of tobacco smoked and the foods they ate, would be even stronger.

I can smell smokes from 200 metres away when the wind is in my direction.

During the Vietnam War, the Americans used "people sniffers" in Cessnas and choppers, they detected the ammonia in sweat and urine. But they weren't 100% successful, as they picked up ammonia smells from other sources, too - including animals and allied troops.

 

https://www.wearethemighty.com/popular/strange-weapons-of-vietnam/