HOME |
RSS | 
This beautiful AR-15 by Guns & Gardens looks like the stars of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic just barfed all over it. So it’s just right for the little girl or Brony in your life. The rifle comes with a handy chainsaw bayonet for any undead issues that s/he may encounter while walking around the neighborhood.
Video Link and Official Website -via Geekosystem
In the past year, we brought you the obituaries of Frank Buckles, the last U.S. veteran of World War I and Claude Choules, the last surviving combat veteran of that war. Yesterday, the very last member of the military from the War to End All Wars passed away.
Florence Green was only 17 years old when she signed up for the Women’s Royal Air Force in 1918. She worked at the military airfields in Norfolk.
Mrs Green spent her war days working ”all hours” serving officers breakfast, lunch and dinner and would often spend time wandering the base simply ”admiring the pilots”.
Before her death she said: ”I enjoyed my time in the WRAF. There were plenty of people at the airfields where I worked and they were all very good company.
”I would work every hour God sent but I had dozens of friends on the base and we had a great deal of fun in our spare time. In many ways I had the time of my life.
”I met dozens of pilots and would go on dates. I had the opportunity to go up in one of the planes but I was scared of flying.
”It was a lovely experience and I’m very proud.”
Mrs. Green was a couple weeks short of 111 years old. Link -via reddit
As if combat isn’t scary enough, imagine a future where bullets zip around, homing in on laser guided targets and doing a deadly dance in the air, curving and rolling until they hit home.
Well, this future battlefield phenomenon isn’t that far off, because Sandia National Laboratories have created a prototype for a self guided bullet that can hit a laser designated target from over a mile away. Here’s how it works:
While in flight, the guided bullet collects information with an optical sensor and relays it to an eight bit central processing unit that controls electromagnetic actuators. You may think it’d be tough to load all this equipment onto a bullet, but the researchers say that the bullet’s diminutive size has actually made things easier. With a rocket, course adjustment is a slow, meticulous process. With the bullet, adjustments are so responsive that the guidance system can compensate for over-correction pretty easily, which gives everything a little extra wiggle room.
I hope someone creates bullet proof armor with laser targeting jammers before these suckers start flying!
Although it might seem odd to see the crossed keys of St. Peter on a gun (well, maybe not), the Popes commanded armies, off and on, until the collapse of the Papal States in 1870. This model, popularly known as the Pontifico, was a variant of the M1867 Remington.
Link -via View from the Porch | Photo: Keith Doyon
Think you're tough? Probably not as tough as these Chinese soldiers, who played a lethal game of Hot Potato ... with live bombs!
During an exhibition drill in Hong Kong, last month, an elite garrison of 6,000 PLA troops staged a series of impressive exercises for the visit of the island’s chief executive, Sir Donald Tsang. Snipers shot tiny glasses, soldiers carried heavy logs and jumped through rings of fire, but nothing as incredible as a group of men playing a game of pass-the-bomb.
The lethal game is played by six soldiers standing in a circle with a dug whole in the middle. They pass an explosive satchel from one two another, counting down until it detonates. Just before it explodes, one of the soldiers throws it in the hole and they all leap away as the ground trembles and dirt starts flying from the pit. Any miscalculation could mean the end for all six players, but they don’t seem very intimidated by that. They just calmly pass the live satchel as if it were a simple bag.
Man, with all the innovative ways people have come up with to destroy zombies, humanity should be well prepared if we ever end up in neck deep in the walking dead!
The latest innovation comes in the form of the Doublestar Zombie X Chainsaw rail attachment-just attach it to your favorite assault rifle and get to chopping if the rotten buggers start to close in on you! Perfect for channeling your inner Gear or Space Marine, badass suit of armor not included.
Link –via Geekosystem
You’ve probably seen the ad for this underground missile base in New York state that’s been on the market for some time. Now you have a chance to take a virtual tour! Scout from Scouting New York went to the site and the owners were gracious enough to let him look around and take plenty of pictures. There’s a nice house on top, and part of the underground has been renovated for use as a modern living area. Then there are parts that recall the facility’s original use during the Cold War. Link -via the Presurfer
Legolas is alive, and he’s a Russian woman named Iza Privezenceva. Watch her send arrows downrange about once a second and, as you can see at the end of the video, hitting her target most of the time.
George Lucas’ new movie Red Tails open today, about the exploits of the unit known as the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II. Before you see it, read the real story of Tuskegee Airman Dr. Roscoe Brown.
“The most difficult part is something that the movie refers to: overcoming the negative beliefs about blacks that we couldn’t do certain things. Our training was relatively fair; however, once we went into combat, initially they didn’t want us to be in the high-responsibility positions escorting the bombers. Once they realized they were losing so many bombers, they wanted as many people as possible to escort them; we were given that mission, and we did it extremely well. Then, once people began to hear about us, they said, ‘We want those guys, they’re really good!’ We were probably as good as many of the white pilots, but many of the white pilots would leave the bombers and shoot down planes to become heroes; our commander insisted that we stay with the bombers, which is why the bombers would like seeing our Red Tails flying over them.
Brown also talks about how he came to be a pilot, some close calls, and the indignities the Airmen endured in the military. Link
Denmark is responsible for the defense of Greenland. To serve this role over such a vast and harsh land, the Royal Danish Navy maintains Sirius, the only special forces unit in the world that travels primarily by dogsled. Photographer Fritz Hoffman joined one team on its patrol into the frozen wilderness, snapping pictures of the amazing men and dogs who keep the peace there. You can view several more at the link.
Link -via Marilyn Terrell | Fritz Hoffman’s Website
Is it inappropriate or genius? Or maybe it's both. David S. Palmer used
a torch to create portraits of people killed by a bullet, on a canvas
of bullet shells casings.
David wrote:
The materials I have chosen to use serve my purpose because of the blatant and emotionally charged response they evoke. These mediums already have a strong mental imagery that is attached to them. Around the world they are still used to either help build dreams or destroy the dreamers. My hope is that you will feel the agony and then see the miracles that can arise from choosing to create rather than destroy.
His painting of John Lennon shown above, called "Walking in the Light," used 8,000 spent shell casings. David has also drawn Tupac Shakur, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy - all killed by gunfire.
Oddity Central has the gallery: Link | David's official website
Usually video game themed weapons look like shiny plastic, perfect for cosplay but not likely to put fear in the hearts of all who oppose you. But these arm blades, inspired by the video game Bloodrayne, look like they can do some serious damage.
From their stainless steel construction, to the rubber pistol grip handle that ensures you don’t lose your grip when the red stuff starts flowing by the gallon, this is the perfect backup weapon when you’re surrounded by Nazi zombies and need to make a big hole real fast.
(note: you should read the hilarious review left for this item on Amazon, which has been included in the Super Punch article)
Link –via Super Punch
"Guns
don't kill people, bullets do" or so the saying goes, but 59-year-old
Verlin Q. Alsept was a bit unclear of the concept that you still need
that gun:
Rather the fellow who entered a Family Dollar Store in Dayton on Tuesday threatened the cashier with a bullet — a single .38 caliber round he pulled from his pocket.
The 59-year-old man asked the cashier for all the money in the cash register. Unfazed by the threatening bullet, she declined, and he left the store empty-handed. A nearby private security guard at the Westown Shopping Center — alerted by the cashier — quickly ran the man to ground as bystanders called police.
Link - via News of the Weird
Krystopher Sapp takes antique gun parts and reassembles them into fanciful sculptures. This is “The Privateer,” and it looks the part. It’s made from the remains of a Savage, a M1 Garand, an ’03 Springfield, an AR-16 and a M-16. His exhibit, “When a Good Man Goes to War,” is on display at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles until January 29.
Link -via My Modern Met
Comments Off
For a year and a half, the 401st Air Expeditionary Group of the United States Army Air Force wreaked havoc on Nazi Germany. You may know that these brave men often decorated the noses of their bombers with cartoonish or saucy images. But they also personalized their jackets with similar works of art, often marking down individual bombing runs. You can find a gallery of pictures of these jackets at the link. Content warning: some NSFW images.
Link -via American Digest
There’s a good reason why this Spitfire is painted pink. It helped its pilot hide in the clouds. Esther Inglis-Arkell explains how:
To make sure they were rarely seen from above, these planes were painted to fly just under cloud cover. Although the planes were ideally meant to fly at sunset and sunrise, when the clouds took on a pinkish hue and made the plane completely invisible against them, they were also useful during the day. Clouds are pinker than we give them credit for. We perceive them as white against the sky because the particles in the sky scatter blue light, sending some of it down towards us and letting us see the sky as blue. Clouds scatter every kind of light, and against the intense blue sky look whitish gray. But their color depends on what kind of light gets to them, and what they are floating next to.
Although we see the sky as a radiant blue, the particles are actually filtering out a lot of the blue light that gets down to the earth’s surface. When the blue light is scattered, a good deal of it goes right back up into space, which is why the atmosphere of earth glows blue in some pictures. This filters out a good deal of the blue that gets to the clouds. The clouds scatter what they have, which is a spectrum of light with at least some of the blue filtered out, shifting the overall light ever so slightly towards red. Add to that the fact that the water droplets in clouds can diffract light at different angles, and the clouds are often rife with pastel shades of pink, orange, and green. They look white compared to a glowing blue sky, and a quick glance leaves people with the impression that they are white, but a long look should reveal this shifting, if minor, shades. A light pink plane is safer against them than anyone would expect.
There’s a video at the link that demonstrates the effectiveness of this camouflage scheme.
It is not unknown in the annals of history for warring powers to continue to trade with each other, on a limited basis, during active hostilities. But journalist Adam Hochschild found a remarkable episode of it during World War I and wrote about it in his new book To End All Wars. Tyler Cowen, an economist, summarizes:
My favorite section details how the British responded when it turned out they had a drastic shortage of binoculars, which at that time were very important for fighting the war. They turned to the world’s leading manufacturer of “precision optics,” namely Germany. The German War Office immediately supplied 8,000 to 10,000 binoculars to Britain, directly intended and designed for military use. Further orders consisted of many thousands more and the Germans told the British to examine the equipment they had been capturing, to figure out which orders they wished to place.
The Germans in turn demanded rubber from the British, which was needed for their war effort. It was delivered to Germany at the Swiss border.
Cowen offers a few possible explanations for this transaction at the link.
Link | Amazon Link | Photo: Imperial War Museum
Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more drones! Thankfully, the US Navy has developed the Cicada Mark III disposable drone. Technicians have equipped the Tempest Unmanned Aerial Vehicle with two of them. They’re about a foot long, but can fly up to eleven miles and land within fifteen feet of their targets.
Link -via Geekosystem | Photos: US Navy
Comments Off 
You can buy a pen like this, but the more ambitious tinkerers among you may try to make their own. Instructables user Mrballeng shows you how to make a reliable click ballpoint pen with two .30-06 cases. Find photos, written instructions and a lengthy video at the link.
Link -via Make | Maker’s Website
Comments Off The greatest problem with using a puncture-based weapon against zombies is that it may become lodged in the skull of your undead foe. That’s a problem that Jörge Sprave, maker of the sawblade-firing slingshot, the pump-action slingshot, and the Gatling-gun slingshot has now solved. His weapon includes a standard slingshot on one end, and a mace on the other that’s paired with a heavy spike. If your spike gets stuck in a skull, pull the lever to push it out.
-via Make
What is this odd helmet-like object? It’s an armored car built by Venezuela. Machinists at Puerto Cabello Naval Arsenal constructed the Tortuga (turtle) over a Ford 6×4 commercial truck chassis and usually armed it with a Vickers 7mm machine gun. They built only twelve because the Tortuga was hard to steer, poorly ventilated, and offered limited visibility to crewmen. This is one of twelve weird tanks and armored vehicles highlighted at Oobject. Check out the rest at the link.
Link -via Gizmodo | Photo: William A. Kirk
Comments Off 
Batman would have been proud. In 1942, California’s state defense force experimented with bat-like wingsuits for soldiers. The ultimate goal, as explained by the magazine Mechanix Illustrated, was to create an airborne unit that could be deployed with them.
Comments Off 
Launched in 1972, the Kiev was once the pride of the Soviet Navy. But in need of cash, Russia and Ukraine sold it and another carrier called the Varyag to China. Although the Varyag is at sea, China has converted the Kiev into a luxury hotel:
This is the Kiev, currently anchored in the Chinese port of Tianjin. Once she was the flagship of the mighty Soviet navy’s Pacific fleet. Now she’s available for business retreats, intimate getaways or simple relaxation.
That’s because the Chinese have bought the aircraft carrier and transformed her into a floating luxury hotel.
The Kiev will stay permanently docked. Much as a Soviet-era sailor might resent the indignity, Kiev won’t go back out to sea. She’ll entertain guests and clients at anchor, a bizarre museum to a different country’s naval power.
View a slideshow of the hotel’s fancy interiors at the link.
Slideshow and News Story -via DVICE | Photo: Xinhua
Comments Off Built in the 1950s, this bunker in Wiltshire could house and feed 4,000 people for three months. The United Kingdom designed it to house the government if the worst happened during the Cold War. Watch this video tour of its facilities and make an offer. It’s up for sale.
Link -via Boing Boing
In the 1970s, during the heights of the Cold War, more than 1,000 engineers
worked on a project
so secret that they couldn’t tell their wives and children decades
after it was over.
In September 2011, the project – a series of spy satellites so advanced
that it could see objects about 2 feet wide from space (mind you, this
was in the 1970s before the ubiquity of computers so the satellites were
built with slide rules), was declassified and with it, the stories of
the men who kept their secret for 45 years:
"Ah, Hexagon," Ed Newton says, gleefully exhaling the
word that stills feels almost treasonous to utter in public.It was dubbed "Big Bird" and it was considered the most
successful space spy satellite program of the Cold War era. From 1971
to 1986 a total of 20 satellites were launched, each containing 60 miles
of film and sophisticated cameras that orbited the earth snapping vast,
panoramic photographs of the Soviet Union, China and other potential
foes. The film was shot back through the earth’s atmosphere in buckets
that parachuted over the Pacific Ocean, where C-130 Air Force planes
snagged them with grappling hooks.The scale, ambition and sheer ingenuity of Hexagon KH-9 was breathtaking.
The fact that 19 out of 20 launches were successful (the final mission
blew up because the booster rockets failed) is astonishing.So too is the human tale of the 45-year-old secret that many took
to their graves.
Helen O’Neill of the AP has the fascinating story: Link – via Boing Boing | More at SPACE.com
What happens when a top-secret government project is canceled? The details are not quite clear, but it’s hard to keep a secret when prototype parts are sold for scrap and end up on eBay.
Anyone interested in top secret aircraft will know of the A-12 Avenger II, which was cancelled in 1991 and remains at the centre of ongoing litigation to this day. The stealth attack aircraft, developed by General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas, was terminated before the first airframe had been assembled. But the latest twist in this still-shadowy tale comes in the form of an A-12 canopy appearing on eBay – and it looks like the real thing.
See more pictures at Urban Ghosts Media. Link
Comments Off 
Man, Christmas seems to come and go faster each year! These ads harken back to a simpler time, a time when cowboys were all the rage, and gun ads were allowed to appeal to kids during the holidays.
It’s a nice bit of nostalgia, and a few of the pics in this gallery are definitely chuckle worthy. Just don’t shoot your eye out!
Link –via BoingBoing
Well, of course. Did you think that he was going to use an alphorn? Those things take up too much room in a sleigh.
The tune becomes more recognizable about halfway through the video.
-via View from North Central Idaho
A lot of wars get left out of our history books because they left no changes in maps or the balance of power. However, some of these lesser-known wars lasted for hundred of years! There are also declared wars in which no one was killed, and, in the case of the Paraguayan War, hundreds of thousands killed for no apparent reason.
The President of Paraguay, Francisco Solano Lopez, was a huge admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte. He fancied himself a skilled tactician and excellent commander, but lacked one thing, a war. So to solve this problem, in 1864 he declared war on Paraguay’s three surrounding neighbors, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The outcome of the war? Paraguay was very nearly annihilated. It is estimated that 90% of its male population died during the war of disease, starvation, and battles with enemy armies. This was perhaps one of the most needless wars in history since Lopez had almost no reason to declare war on his more powerful neighbors.
Read about ten of these obscure and bizarre conflicts ay Listverse. Link -via The Daily What
Comments Off YouTube user Hickok45, who we’ve seen previously seen carving a jack-o’-lantern with a Glock, knows how to use tools in unorthodox ways. He starts out trying to chop down a small Christmas tree with a heavy knife but then adds a unique “attachment” that gets the job done.
