Jim bob can’t, because they’ll kill him easily.

Now if there’s thousands of Jim bobs, all moving around, things get tricky. Now you need people on the ground looking for these people.

We spent 20 years in the Middle East fighting this exact kind of war, and guess who still exists? The fucking terrorists.

You Should Really Considering Explaining Acronyms Before Posting, obviously.

A remote command from some random phone to reboot does sound like the a wonderful vector for malware, though

YSRCEABP

I was worried because we didn’t know how heavily involved Bethesda was in writing and story development.

The studio has been in steady decline, writing wise, for a very long time. The games are still fun, if you mod it or ignore the main quest for as long as possible, but the writing is still pretty abysmal.

I was pleasantly surprised to find the show well written, with lots of references to classic fallout. And to hear that New Vegas will be in the second season, has me really excited.

Designing any kind of space vehicle is always a trade off.

The vehicle needs to be light enough to be launched from earth to mars, but durable enough to fulfill its mission goals.

I’m sure if nasa had access to a vehicle that could send an M1 Abram’s sized, solid steel rover to mars, they totally would, but that would probably cost more than a moon mission, and the whole point of rovers is that they’re fairly cheap for the amount of research you can get out of them.

They’re testing their new program where the outsource the beatings for liability reasons.

Ah yes, because police love when people start reaching for objects under car seats

Genghis didn’t have access to thousands of poorly assembled Humvee knockoffs and millions of poorly trained mechanics to make them somewhat functional. I’m sure some of them could survive the drive.

They think not masturbating will give them anything from higher testosterone, better focus, or to a higher IQ.

They think masturbation makes you weaker in every way.

This is of course patently false, and all basically rises from an old athlete myth that sex during training will reduce your progress. Which these dorks then took to an extreme by saying any ejaculation will reduce progress in physical and mental training. Because we all know that the key to success is stored in the balls.

You know, it would be a horribly evil plan to try and start WW3 while the new president is being confirmed.

Hell, given today’s modern technology, a leader may be able to plan the opening shots for a few minutes before or after the transition of power, essentially starting a war while the US is asleep. A traditional war may not be really affected by a transition of power, as all of the US military leadership is still able to make limited decisions about how to respond to being fired at.

However, use of nuclear weapons could be severely limited by a presidential transition. The US nuclear arsenal can only be used at the sole discretion of the acting president. The president is the only one with physical access to the launch codes, and the only one that has the authority to order a launch. So what would happen if say, North Korea or Russia launched an ICBM or dropped a nuclear bomb from a traditional bomber, or worse, launched a sub launched ballistic missile that can hit its target in under 20 minutes. MAD dictates that any use of nuclear weapons requires an immediate and proportional response. But with the president having just been confirmed, how long would it take to get them to a secure location, get the codes, order a launch, and have it be carried out? Probably too long. In the case of an ICBM, it only takes about 30 minutes to get from the launch location to anywhere in America.

Now NATO does have some nuclear bombs, but I am fairly sure most of them are provided by the United States and still require US presidential orders to launch. Britain and France have their own nuclear weapons, but far less than the US possesses. Maybe there is enough of a difference where taking the US out of the picture could allow an attacking nuclear country to not be totally glassed.

I could see how an absolutely insane leader might want to try something like that. There’s no way to win a nuclear war, but there may be a way to crawl away alive from one in the form of decapitating your enemy while they’re busy figuring out who can actually launch the damn bombs. Maybe enough of your government can survive the exchange to rebuild an 18th century style empire. The empire will have holes in it like Swiss cheese because of the cities that are now unusable wastelands, but it’s still technically an empire. And of course, the course of human history will now be irreparably altered, setting the species back by centuries of technological and industrial innovation due to all of the EMPs and human knowledge that got turned into carbon dust.

Could be insane enough to work. But I’m sure there’s some ultra classified, so top secret you get shot for seeing the folder, type plan that magically fixes this by giving the Strategic Commander sole launch authority for one day while the president transitions. I mean, the government wouldn’t be so stupid as to leave a glaring hole in nuclear security for decades, right? They fixed the issue with all ICBMs having to fly over Russia to get to Korea, right? Oh wait. Well at least we have anti ballistic missile platforms all along the coast, right? Oh those are all in other countries. At least the Exo-Atmospheric kill vehicles work 50% of the time in the simulations. And we’ve got like 40 of those, so I’m sure that’s enough to deal with hundreds of warheads.

It’s just a ball of plane batter with coke mixed in.

Look up a recipe for fritters made with flour, replace some liquid with coke syrup. Easy.

Back during Apollo, they relit the lunar transfer stage engines in orbit, and just pointed it so it would escape earth and go into deep space.

This also allowed them to have the stage fueled, without risking a giant explosion if it entered the atmosphere. Because the stage was already in a stable orbit, even if the engine didn’t light, all of the fuel would boil off before it entered the atmosphere.

A suborbital flight would only allow a short term test, whereas the real HLS will be spending many days between relights. Plus, the ship will be entering the atmosphere with a substantial amount of fuel in the tanks, which just seems needlessly dangerous.

The setting stage, Starship, needs to do in space engine relights.

Starship is supposed to go all the way to the moon. They need to demonstrate that refueling in space is possible, that the engines relight multiple times in orbit and after multiple days, and that it’s capable of landing safely on the moon.

I remember doing the bear grills one, and one of the choices was to jump over a ravine, or walk over it using a fallen tree as a bridge.

Being the hiker I am, the obvious choice of walk around it being missing kind of annoyed me, but I chose the tree option.

Bear died.

So I got to go back and pick the jump over option, which was apparently the right one.

Who the fuck does running jumps over a 15 foot deep ravine.

I never bothered with the choose your own adventure things again. When the correct choice is just not available and the next logical choice just means an instant loss, you don’t have a very fun game

If you’re a government, you can pretty much put anything in a rocket fairing and call it a reconnaissance satellite.

The only warning that actually has to be given is that a rocket is being launched, so you don’t accidentally trigger WW3 by setting off launch detection satellites without warning. After it’s in space, no one can really tell what was in the fairing. Could be a spy satellite, could be navigation. Could just be a box with a bunch of little rockets in it, designed to slam into whatever you want at ridiculous speed.

But it’s way more likely that this was just Boeing having a tiny leak in a propellant tank, or a bad thruster and as soon as the concentration of propellant and oxidizer got high enough, it triggered a detonation. They certainly have a history of not leak testing their shit: airplanes falling apart, space capsules with leaky thrusters, and now a blown up satellite point more towards incompetence than malice.

One of those fancy plasma lighters, sure. But butane lighters have been around for decades

The taliban took over a lot of American equipment when the pull out happened.

When the Military abandons equipment, they often sabotage it in some way so that it’s not useful to the enemy force.

Likely this helicopter had its tail rotor fucked with. It would have started and taken off okay in calm weather, but the moment the pilot attempted any kind of rotation, or got hit by a strong gust of wind, he was doomed.

This may have been the best pilot in the world, but once you’re in an out of control helicopter, there’s very little even the best pilot can do. It’s like if the stabilizer fell off a plane, there’s just not much you can do.

Is it really a punishment if they asked for it?

Peppers take a good idea, having extra supplies and tools for an emergency, and take it to 11.

I’m not a prepper, but I did read my local government’s disaster preparedness list and have everything on it that applies to my family. I keep 3 days or so of extra, shelf stable food in the house; bought a home water cooler and keep an extra jug of water that I rotate when we use the one in the machine so that we have a few days of clean water at all times, which is way more practical and safe than a camping water jug that will sit and stagnate in the basement; I have a battery “generator” that I keep topped up with a solar panel because we have a sewage ejector pump and a sump pump to stop the basement from flooding in bad weather; and I have good first aid kits for the house and cars.

The only thing not on my local government list are the emergency car kits, which is really just a basic vehicle toolkit, jumpstart kit, flares, sweater and space blanket, all in a cheap bag that lives on top of the spare tire.

I don’t live in the most disaster prone area, but we do get tornados and nasty thunderstorms that knock out power for a day or 3. We don’t exactly have the lights on when that happens, but we do have food, water, a non flooded basement, and even some heat in the winter, and both cars have something to keep you warm while you either fix the car or wait for the tow truck.

I kind of understand peppers, because planning all of this out after we lost power a few years ago for 4 days in fall was interesting, and there was just so much shit the internet was saying I needed: weeks or months of dried beans and rice, a generator for the whole house, enough guns and ammo to ward off a small army, etc. my local government list was hard to find compared to all of the forums and YouTube videos, but I’m glad I found it, it’s sensible and if spread out over months, very affordable. I highly, highly recommend you poke around your local government website for their natural disaster page, they’ll have resources of who to contact if you need help, and what you should have on hand. If it’s not on your city’s page, try your county or state government. One of them should have a page about disasters and how to prepare for them.