18 Comments

My dad always wondered why the IRA didn’t target overhead cable pylons and transformer stations back in the eighties, would have been way more disruption without the negative PR of civilian deaths, and there’s too much infrastructure for the cops to be able to protect

Expand full comment

Doable, but as you said, bad PR, because it's inconvenience rather than terror. Also, Catholic homes aren't separated on the grid from Protestant homes, so likely to hit both your people and your enemy's people at the same time.

Also, a LOT of that infrastructure is buried. You'll rarely see pole-mounted transformers in Ireland.

Expand full comment

Nah, sorry mate, should have specified, UK based here - prods versus Catlick isn’t a thing here like it is over Eire.

Expand full comment

Ahem - "Northern Ireland" :)

Expand full comment

I’m on the mainland bruv - we don’t care

My own experience is most people need it explained to them, and 2 minutes into the main explanation the majority will frown and shrug and ask why we don’t just give it back to the rest of Ireland - most of think the reason NI is called that is because it’s… y’know, at the top.

A brief discussion of how the Protestant majority feel itself to be British is met with blank stares - a briefer still explanation of the more “enthusiastic” paramilitary groups and political parties associated with this view will meet with the nearly blanket reaction of “they sound like total arseholes, fuck ‘em.”

The only people even remotely interested in keeping NI was the conservatives, since they could really on the unionists from NI to vote their way with little to no effort on their part but even those certainties are increasingly fragile

Expand full comment

In an enormous country with no demonstrable border control, why is it so hard to imagine a foreign power, let's say Russia, wanting to mess with us in retaliation for messing with them by supporting Ukraine? Probably a lower probability that they wouldn't strike back in some way.

Expand full comment

I'm weird. I'm creative, whenever some media pundit says "I cannot imagine how they could have done that. my mind starts imagining it. Other things besides. This makes me think.

Expand full comment

It sure is a good proof of concept for future attacks on infrastructure, and gets the main actors in the culture war to continue to throw vitriol at each other.

Not saying it was a foreign actor but if I was one, this would have been a great opportunity.

I'd like to know how precise or imprecise the attacks were, if specific high-priority equipment was targeted or if was just a 'ruin everything' sort.

Expand full comment

> bullet hosed several banks of transformers with 7.62x39 fire, which for the uninitiated means either an AK-47 or common American clone.

Coulda been an SKS, too.

Expand full comment

> Eventually some master thief is going to figure this out. And when they do, we can be sure that the federal agencies investigating it won’t tell us about it, out of fear of copycat heists.

Not sure it matters, if the egregores have already started using the latest one as a baseball bat on one another. Those will popularize the concept more than the Feds saying someone did that specifically could, I suspect.

Hell, now that said drag show has been interrupted, even if unintentionally, it may already be too late to stop this the next time. And those transformers aren't easy to come by.

Why the fuck does it feel like everyone* has turned their efforts to bring about the collapse of civilization up to eleven, lately? Is that just me? Is that just some egregore whispering in my ear? Or is that actually a thing?

* Not literally "everyone".

Expand full comment

incels are hoping for it so that they can finally get laid, some conservatives are for it so that they can finally kill all the *insert democratic egregore here*, and some folk just want to set back and watch the world burn.

Expand full comment

None of the incels with which I've been acquainted would last long enough after the collapse of civilization to get laid. And I have never understood how the collapse of civilization would suddenly make them irresistible to women.

Expand full comment

Incels don't deal with reality all that well in the first place. And many think that their skills at FPS will carry over to the wasteland. Also it's not so much irresistible as it is desperation for a protector on the part of the girl.

Expand full comment

you can't really "bullet hose" with an SKS, more like "bullet spray bottle". not enough ammo cap to do a proper hosing.

Expand full comment

wasn't that where all the election records for that area were kept as well?

Expand full comment

Hold onto your Johnson.

No, the other one.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
December 6, 2022
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

It only takes one.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
December 5, 2022
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

Santa Claus is a member of the Church of John Moses Browning too.

Expand full comment