One of my least favorite parts of creative work is the writing lull after something gets finished. And now with The Fuldapocalypse World War III book out, I’m feeling it again. Oh, work on the next All Union. No, work on that other project you wanted. No, work on…
I’ve learned after years of creative writing that it’s very hard to force creativity. I just have to wait and see what inspiration comes to me next. Hopefully it’ll be good and workable.
A collection of essays by me that might have been inspired by blog posts I wanted to elaborate on, inspired by posts I never wrote, and just random inspirations, is now out in ebook and soon in paperback form.
It’s short and is kind of an unconventional stream of conciousness writing exercise, fair warning. But it does explain (partially) why I had fewer blog posts lately. Anyway, it was fun to write and I hope it’s fun to read.
The Amphibious Hook is a type of theoretical maneuver that allows for a naval support of a land offensive. It is either an operational or tactical offensive, with the Heavy OPFOR Operational noting that such ones would never be done outside of extensive air support. The document also argues that it generally would take the form of an amphibious regiment/brigade in the first wave and then normal mechanized troops unloading on the shore after the beach was cleared to continue the push. But of course, depending on shipping, it could easily be more.
(Brief note: Strategic amphibious operations are D-Day and even Inchon. Tactical ones are things like doing a boat raid. Operational ones are, fitting that level, more vague and mean things like ‘land a big enough force to divert their reserves so that the main land push can run more freely’).
The section on amphibious landings (Heavy OPFOR Operational sec. 2-13 to 2-15) also speaks of naval units being an easy way to reinforce airborne ones, assuming the geography works. There’s also, as happened in the Gulf War, the threat of an amphibious hook.
Ironically, one of the best ways for a defender to counter an amphibious hook is to ignore it. Or if not ignore it, recognize that it’s going to have trouble moving inland and can be contained with second-line forces and not divert too much to stop it, leaving the opponent with a small toehold always at risk of being cut off.
Reading Dominion got me thinking about an alternate history setup of a similar nature. Not a plausible one but a way to pit the British Empire against the ex-British Empire/Commonwealth. What got me thinking at first was the British in the book struggling to hold onto India. I’m thinking “hang on, this could be playable.”
So I fired up Command: Modern Operations and saw an opportunity to use many of the low-end WWII-era platforms, including German 1940s ones. I did a sample scenario and fell in love. So I expanded. It may or may not lead to anything more, but it’s something worth telling. Again, historical plausibility is not the main focus, so I’ve probably gotten a lot wrong.
The main forces are the fledgling independent Indian Army along with reinforcements of ANZACs and other volunteers, including American “Flying Tigers” in that animal’s home country. Opposing them are the Collaborationist UK Government and Germans, the latter struggling massively to project power. They still send the now-completed Graf Zeppelin carriers over. (Look, this isn’t a hard AH).
The scenario I did was of a bombing raid on Karachi from Oman-based Anglo-German bombers. (Why Oman? It was in range. Why Karachi? Partition into India and Pakistan hasn’t happened, at least not yet). While this scenario saw the attackers sweep aside the defenders and drop successfully with the loss of only one bomber, circumstances can always change. In any case, it was very interesting and fun to play in an area not typically covered by wargames, and got my imagination flowing.
From (where else) Australia, this motorcycle chariot racing was apparently a real sport at some point.
One of the most overlooked but the single most fatal (in terms of direct casualties) nuclear incident on American soil is the SL-1 disaster. Occuring at the height of the Atoms For Peace phase in 1961 in a remote part of Idaho, it’s understandable that it wasn’t as publicized. But it is an ‘incredible’ story, one that seems to combine the worst parts of Chernobyl and the Byford Dolphin.
The US army was experimenting with small reactors. One such reactor was the SL-1. On January 3, 1961, three men were performing maintenance on the ‘shut down’ reactor. John Byrnes moved a control rod too far, causing the reactor to go prompt critical and immediately explode in a blast of radioactive steam. Byrnes and fellow technicians Richard Legg and Richard McKinley were killed.
That Byrnes’ moving the control rod caused the disaster was well established. But since all with possible knowledge of why he did that died in the explosion, that part remains mysterious. The most likely explanation is simply that the ill-built reactor had a rod get stuck, and while Byrnes pulled he moved it too far. Other theories range from a distraught Byrnes over a failing marriage not paying attention, Legg pulling a prank that caused Byrnes to get startled and yank on the rod, and most infamously the theory that a love triangle involving Byrnes, Legg, and their spouses led him to intentionally cause a murder-suicide.
We will never know the why.
Rally Racing is a distinctive form of car racing. Cars go down specially cordoned off sections of roads called ‘stages’, which can be all shapes, sizes, and surfaces. They do not directly race against each other but instead compete for the fastest time. Cars have a crew of two with a navigator/co-driver giving rapid directions to ensue the driver has greater reaction time.
Rallying is one of those sports that’s not very big in the US compared to its massive European popularity and it’s easy to see why. Rallying came from small, closed, twisting European roads. Big open American ones were/are more favorable to things like straight-line racing (less popular on the other side of the ocean).
I find it an interesting distance sport, and I don’t mean the length the cars travel. Rather it’s incredibly fascinating at a distance. A rally driving crew and their car has to be a generalist unlike the specialists of other racing disciplines. One has to be a speedster AND a cornerer AND an offroader and so on. Yet it’s also not very photogenic, whether in person or on television. It’s because the cars aren’t directly racing each other. So you see a car go by, then another car go by, and so on.
Still, I like looking at sports from a distance, which is why rallying is my newest fascination. That it’s extremely easy to simulate in BeamNG.Drive doesn’t hurt either.
I heard a complaint in a review that character names were just like real ones only changed slightly. However, I disagree. Slight changes from real historical names are actually realistic. Look at all the variants of John, Juan, Jan, Jean, Johann, etc…, which goes back to the Hebrew/Greek Biblical roots of it. So far from being bad, I think it’s a good way to make the characters distinct and at the same time relatable/understandable.
With the official trailer for the next Duke Nukem Forever Grand Theft Auto 6 finally being out and the game having a vague ‘sometime next year’ release date as of this post, I’m reflecting on how uh, “meh” a lot of people are about it. Since it’s been over a literal decade since the release of the previous installment, which is about as much time between GTA III and V. Back in the day, when we had to walk uphill both ways, for people’s consensus to be “ok, something to look out for” at best and dread at worst would be as unthinkable as the Cubs winning the World Series. But here we are.
So what happened?
I still think it’ll be playable, make a gargantuan amount of money, and look good. But the old-time hype is just gone.
So yeah, time to bust the legend of super-classic cars. In short. They sucked.
This video shows the biggest reason I dislike “classics”. They were/are horrifically, monstrously, massively unsafe. Bad seatbelts even assuming people wore them (they didn’t), cars that were basically metal sculptures designed with no concern for the people inside in mind, and yeah.
Ah, but what about the handling? Good question. Your car engine was either so underpowered that a modern econobox can match it or it was a gargantuan rocket inside a frame that could barely contain it, which doesn’t exactly help with safety. And said engines burned through gas so massively that the supposed halcyon days of cheap gas (even beyond inflation) often actually weren’t. Oh yeah, and they were tremendously space-inefficient.
But they built them to last unlike todays evil capitalist planned obsolesence machines, uh…? Well, I’ll just point out that an odometer on an old car being a full order of magnitude (10 times/1 digit) lower in max numbers speaks for itself. But even if it didn’t, you remembered the survivors who stuck around, the lovingly maintained Cadillacs and not the five millionth Chevy Nova that instantly broke down.
So yes, in everything except raw performance (and sometimes not even then), this rightfully regarded bottom-feeder 2017 Mitsubishi Mirage is vastly superior to the fin-boats of old.
Fuldapocalypse Fiction 