The first headline greeting me this morning, thanks to Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media, was “We Live in the Golden Age of Exploding Pagers.” (I hope I don’t have to explain what’s behind that title.) That it immediately made sense to me was as disconcerting as the events themselves.
In the 1990s, I carried not one pager but two. I was always “on call” for interviews and crisis-management duties, and I’d bought a second beeper as a lifeline for a troubled friend. Never did I consider that the devices clipped to my belt would blow up.
The coordinated mass detonation of Hezbollah operatives’ pagers yesterday by Israeli intelligence was at once brilliant and indiscriminate. (I can both admire and criticize Israel, see, ’cause I don’t carry around theo-geopolitical baggage.) There was bound to be collateral damage and harm to innocents.
But it was, as spycraft goes, genius. And after all, the only good Islamist terrorist is a dead Islamist terrorist, so there’s that.
The particular drama of this operation isn’t what has my attention, however.
Maybe you already suspected that such a thing was possible — that is, the ability to send a command to a connected digital device and disable or overwhelm its thermal regulation, causing it to overheat — but face it, you didn’t really know. Now the world knows.
And it wasn’t one pager — it was thousands.
The only way you’re able to read this blog is that you own such a device. Consider that you have no protection and no defense against an attack like the one that injured, maimed or killed a reported 3,000 people yesterday in Lebanon.
I’m not suggesting that you chuck your cell phone into the nearest river. All I’m saying is that your neat-and-tidy definition of “cyber attack” just got a major update. Your PERSEC ain’t what you thought it was.
But who would do such a thing to you?
I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t come from run-of-the-mill criminals. (Okay, maybe anarchistic hackers, but I think that’s a long shot.) There’s only one entity with the tech and the resources to pull it off.
Your government.
That’s right, I’m talkin’ ’bout the same Permanent State than sends out unsolicited “amber alerts” and “silver alerts,” the one that conducted a FEMA EAS “test” last fall and pinged every phone in the country (or tried to). Y’know, just to make sure they could reach us in an “emergency.”
This kind of attack could be strategic, like the one in Lebanon, or it could be tactical, even surgical. Think about it — a hostage-negotiation team could supply a cell phone to a suspect, ostensibly to establish communication, and if the standoff goes south the device could be detonated. There would be no need for dynamic entry. Snipers wouldn’t have to fire a shot.
More sinister, certainly, and yet undeniably plausible, would be targeted attacks. Individuals — political opponents, dissidents, those who speak truth to State power — could be eliminated without widespread suspicion, as long as the tactic is employed seemingly at random. A compliant, impressionable public would blame manufacturers and service providers — the mindless (and yet common) “Big Tech is evil!” reflex.
You know it’s true.
Birthrights guaranteed by the First Amendment and Second Amendment are under relentless assault from The Ruling Elite. It’s reasonable to predict that citizens fearlessly exercising those rights will be the first to be lined-up in the State’s digital crosshairs.
Honestly, I don’t mean for you to be paranoid about this. I do want you to be aware of another risk we assume by being connected. I want you to be acquainted with where you’re vulnerable and how.
Maybe, just maybe, you’ll look back at my post from last October 4th and consider that Deb and I weren’t so crazy for putting our phones into a Mission Darkness Faraday bag. You might think about picking up GMRS radios for yourself and your family, like we have.
Your call.
Today I want to talk about two things that people do with their knives in the woods — batoning and chopping. Both are subjects of much banter on social media, and both are (in my opinion) misunderstood.
Batoning — a technique used to process wood for fire and other purposes — involves splitting relatively small-diameter pieces of wood by resting the edge of a knife on the end-grain and tapping the spine of the knife with a solid stick (the baton). It can be a practical skill, arguably one that everyone who travels in the out-of-doors should learn.
But it’s not that important. Batoning a knife is rarely the preferred method for splitting wood. And no matter how many times you see it demonstrated in knife reviews on the Interweb, it’s not a very useful test of a knife, either.
Hell, I can baton my pocketknife (without breaking it) and make kindling — because it’s a skill, and because I know how. That doesn’t mean it’s a smart thing to do.
So I seldom baton my blades.
And then there’s chopping — y’know, like with an ax.
See what I did there? Everyone knows that an ax is made to chop — that’s what it does best. The reason is simple geometry.
Look at the head of an ax in cross-section. Notice that behind the sharpened edge is a whole lotta “meat.” That material supports the edge, allowing considerable force to be applied to the work without doing damage to the tool.
It’s that support that makes an ax effective at chopping, as well as forgiving of glancing and off-angle blows.
Now look at the blade of your typical flat-, saber-, Scandi- or (perish the thought) hollow-ground belt knife. Pick up the difference? There’s nowhere near enough meat behind the edge for hacking at sticks and branches.
Still, you’ll have no trouble launching YouTube and finding demos of guys flailing away with their “bushcraft” and “tactical” knives. It seems to be common practice to choke way back on the handle and grasp it near the pommel, often with the aid of a lanyard, and commence swinging.
Again, it’s supposed to be a test. Blades that never were designed to chop will break or chip and are declared unworthy. It’s stupid.
Some knives are, however, designed to take the kind of abuse that comes with chopping. They have certain characteristics in common.
First, they’re not “balanced” — a chopper is decidedly weight-forward, blade-heavy. Second, the blade is at least six or seven inches long and a minimum of 3/16 of an inch thick. Full-tang, of course.
Most serious choppers aren’t stainless steel. The best are made of relatively pedestrian carbon steel with Rockwell numbers in the low to mid-50s.
The knife you see pictured here (and in today’s header image) is my personal beater-chopper — an Ontario Knife Company RTAK-II. It checks the boxes.
Front-heavy, total weight 2.1 pounds. Blade length 10.3 inches, thickness 0.188 inches. Full tang, full-height flat grind, 1075 carbon steel at 53-55 HRC.
Overall length is almost 17 inches. The beefy Micarta slabs provide a secure and comfortable grip. Current street price for the RTAK-II is around a hundred bucks.
Yes, I have other choppers. (Machetes don’t count, by the way — they’re slashers, not choppers.) And I have axes, of course, even better suited to the task. But this knife has shown itself to be a veritable beast in the woods, plenty big enough without being cumbersome.
It’s fun to use. It swings easily. I like it.
Axes still rule the chopping and kindling-splitting realms, though. If you’re tempted to use a knife for either, make sure it’s necessary. It wouldn’t hurt to know what you’re doing, too.
The view through the Jeep’s windshield as Deb rolled down our road this morning (above), and a local resident that paid me a call this afternoon (below).
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB