Chapter 39-2 Chemical Reactions

[Grognaurd]

Redshirt, they still will need primers. I do not know how universal those are or if there is a standard big rifle primer.

[scbubba]

Thanks goes everybody for the HUGE support of my research and my throwing of ideas at walls.
Now, with my "inbox" asploding when I log in to the desktop site, I've noticed that I have killed a jumper, (yay me!) I'm a "Hoarder" now and I'm Loved to Death. Cool.

That's just cuz you're awesome, dude!

Now, for a moment I'd like to shift gears and talk about a few other things:

The first is the ammo situation. It has been discussed here on the boards, on We're Not Dead, and more recently on the WND Fan Cast with the situation now being directly addressed in show. Mick & Red, you discussed the issues with making your own powder, a non-trivial issue. What about the Naval Station? It has the potential to solve many current problems. Probably plenty of small arms and its ammo, more hummers (all you gotta do is jump them off), probably some fuel... hell, if they are lucky they could even stumble on a truck mounted Phalanx. (Though I'll readily admit that one falls squarely in the Deus Ex Machina category.)

Barring all of that if it turns out to be a bust, there is still one thing they may find to be useful. Shells for large naval guns, maybe powder bags. Attempting to "open" a five inch shell for a naval gun is, frankly, a stupid idea. I'd rather try to cut open a 16 inch gun powder bag. May not be exactly the type of powder needed but with a stash of those... well, powder until the end of time. Now, the last of the Iowa class were stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on March 17th, 2006, but the USS Iowa was retained in the Reserve Fleet until October of 2011. It stands to reason that the navy was maintaining a reserve supply of munitions for the big guns.

Now, about the fuel. I gotta ask, is the colony just too far to go back to the tank farm?

I've been thinking about the ammo situation since Season 4 started. At first it was concerning the minigun since it chews up ammo so damn fast. It eats 7.62 rounds which most of the other weapons don't. Then I thought of the the .50 cal machine guns, which use a different round (but more rare in that it wouldn't be available for scavenge in civilian locations mostly). The the small arms: 5.56 for the soldiers rifles and a collection of 9mm and other assorted calibers for handguns and the (probably rare) submachineguns.

A couple of things popped into my mind: 1) I could get pretty easy access to everything on that list other than the .50 by scavenging in a 10 mile radius of my house. 2) Unless it was during a supply scare for ammo like we had for almost the past year. 3) I don't live in a major metropolitan area in California - I live in a place that has some of the highest private gun ownership in the free world.

As someone else pointed out before (sorry I can't find the post right now), leading up to May 2009, there was a nationwide ammo shortage. It was hard to find everything from .22LR to popular hunting caliber (.308/7.63, .30-06, .243, .270, etc) and all the handgun calibers (9mm, .45 ACP, .38, .357, etc).

So the supply of ammo in commercial locations would have been low in general due to the shortage. The number of commercial places that sell ammo in LA is (IIRC) fairly small in general (a current yellow pages search turned up less than 2 dozen places in LA). And we have a year's worth of time for people to collect and use the existing ammo. So, yeah, the "private sector" in the area is pretty well tapped out, I'm thinking.

So the military locations. Other than the base that Michael mentioned (Navy base, right) and the National Guard base (which has long since been empties), we don't know the state of any other potential military supply locations. I'm guessing that Michael and Co haven't made a visit to any of these military locations in Season 4 but I wonder what they might find if they did... If the zombie opposition is so very smart AND observing Team Human's activities (and I think they are), would they recognize the push to resupply at a military location and seek to deny the humans access to the location/supplies?

As for access to reloading supplies, powder might be the easiest of the materials to come up with. Brass could be in decent supply depending on how much of their own they have saved. The primers are going to be the kicker there. During this year's ammo shortage, primers were one of the 1st reloading materials that I saw go into short supply. And given Cali's general low ownership of firearms (compared to most of the rest of the US) I would think that the general availability of primers would be really low in May 2009 in LA.

To the best of my knowledge, the US military doesn't do much if any reloading (Cabbage Patch, any info on this?) so I would think that there wouldn't be a supply of primers for any caliber available at any of the military locations.

Basically, reloading probably isn't as easy as you might think it would be for the characters.

EDIT: And while I'm typing, Grog snipes me with a short and to the point post...

That's enough for now, but as a parting shot I'll leave you with this. From the Science news segment of the Skeptic's Guide of the Universe, episode #432 October 26th 2013, (@8:20) they discus a recent development in antibiotics called PPMO's or peptide-conjugated phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer. Gesundheit. Current antibiotics fall into two categories: bactericidal which kill bacteria and bacteriostatic which prevent them from reproducing. Both function by disrupting cellular function. PPMO's may become a third class of antibiotics.

PPMO's have been found to be in many cases far more effective than existing antibiotics and found effective against resistant bacteria. PPMO's can also be used to treat genetic diseases.

SGU Episode
Article

Precision targeted gene suppression. What could possibly go wrong?
Sounds like something a particular pharmaceutical company might have been interested in.

Uhhh, yeah. What Red Shirt said. Most of that went over my head by I get where you are going, I think. Start playing God of the Genome and things probably get bad....

[Grognaurd]

We are the hive, eh bubba etal

Speaking of hive. All through out history humans have thought ants kick ass. How cool would it be to have an ant army? Achilles was a kick ass warrior in an of himself, but he led the Myrmidons. They were the greatest Warrior people because they are descended from ants. Even the name is ant people or ant nest.

So, my point on a Friday is to reinforce we are the hive.

[LiamKerrington]

So, a question here:

What, if everyone turns towards the shotgun - whatever type from sawed-off over double-barrel to pump-action or even combat shotgun ... Wouldn't it be kind of easy to "create" your own ammo easily? I bet there are plenty of handbooks available in any hunters' equipment store (if not any other gun-shop as well). And creating the blowing agent to propell the flechettes/ shells/ shot-charges should not be too much of an issue ... Ok. Shotguns means short-range combat ... And Shotguns also means: Behemoths and Little Ones (and maybe some more special zombs) are not killed easily; but for the average biter shotguns should do the job ...

So, you gun experts: What is your opinion about this idea?

Best wishes!
Liam

[Grognaurd]

If it was me, I go get the stuff that works. That means an amphibious resupply package. If that is not there, then I start to get creative.

It is a logistics problem that armies have had forever and they know how to solve it. Leverage what works and hit up a resupply node. I know the POMCUS have been decommissioned in Europe, but the navy and marines have to have something similar these days.

http://wikimapia.org/26690515/Former-US-POMCUS-Site

[UndeadSweeper]

I don't know, Michael has become a bit of a pushover to CJ lately. We all want the strong, leader Michael to come out to his friends defense, but if CJ throws out that Saul and Tanya would need to be exiled for their own protection; to keep the other colony members from killing them just to be sure and for their own safety, Michael will nod his head in agreement and get back in line.

I don't feel the same fight in Michael like he used to have.

I think we are confusing meekness for a pushover. We need to remember Michael is a soldier and a commander of soldiers. We seen time and time again that he not very good commanding citizens, remember what he did to Kelly to her in line? In his mind, he need people to follow orders, but when it come to grand plan of keep a whole group people alive beside teach them fight it hard for him to manage. Allow a citizen to manage everything beside military matters I think is the best for him. Lest we forget that he hasn't been a great people person and he still not seen under a good light by the colony. When it come to Tanya and Saul, those are his soldiers and he will fight tooth and nail for his troops and his group.

[Witch_Doctor]

Redshirt, they still will need primers. I do not know how universal those are or if there is a standard big rifle primer.

Ha!!! I thought you meant primers for us to follow Redshirt's science journal-worthy posts.

[Witch_Doctor]

Every morning I think people "like" me with like alerts.

love the sgu, that piece on ppmo's was really interesting....shit I'd love to get a novella bros take on whats happening in this story. People think WE post over-the-top craziness...

I want them to do a piece on their show about We're Alive. The science in WA will be off the Prometheus Scale for sure.

[scbubba]

Ha!!! I thought you meant primers for us to follow Redshirt's science journal-worthy posts.

We definitely need those!!!!

[scbubba]

We are the hive, eh bubba etal

Speaking of hive. All through out history humans have thought ants kick ass. How cool would it be to have an ant army? Achilles was a kick ass warrior in an of himself, but he led the Myrmidons. They were the greatest Warrior people because they are descended from ants. Even the name is ant people or ant nest.

So, my point on a Friday is to reinforce we are the hive.

You said it, bro!

I never knew that about the Myrmidon name. I always thought that they might not have been mortals. Maybe Hellenistic Little Ones?