Jospehs' Pepperbox Revisted

I wanted to spotlight a gun that has caught my attention for many years. It’s called the Allen and Thurber Pepperbox. Looking at a pepperbox pistol, you can’t help but think of a bygone era. Gamblers shooting at card cheaters, Prospectors protecting their gold claim, or Civil war soldiers keeping one as “backup.” The six (or more) barreled gun looked like a pepper grinder of the time so it was nick-named a pepperbox. The first pepperbox pistols were produced around 1790, constructed with flintlock systems, and were fired by rotating the barrel by hand. With the invention of the percussion cap, and the mass-production capabilities ushered in the industrial revolution, pepperbox pistols became more affordable, and therefore, more accessible to the general public. The pepperbox addressed the need for an inconspicuous, easily-concealable weapon; and gamblers did use them to deliver a quick response to a card game gone wrong. Most of the pistols were small weapons, ranging from .31 to .36 caliber. However, not all pepperboxes were small in size or caliber. For example, a dragoon pepperbox, fired up to a .44 caliber ball! The pepperbox enjoyed a period of popularity from 1830 through the end of the Civil War. In America, the vast majority of pepperbox pistols in circulation were produced by arms maker Ethan Allen of Massachusetts. Allen (not related to the Revolutionary War patriot, Ethan Allen) and his business partner and brother-in-law, Charles Thurber, produced the most popular multi-shot pistols of the 1830s and 1840s, including the 6-barrel pepperbox pistol. Often referred to as ‘the gun that won the east’, the Allen and Thurber pepperbox was primarily used for civilian self-defense. A pepperbox wielding person wouldn’t “aim” the pistol, but rather “shoot from the hip,” holding the gun low and pointing at the largest area of the target in front of them. While smaller pistols were preferred by civilians, larger varieties were favored by gold prospectors of the California Gold Rush, for protection against rival prospectors, robbers, and Indians. Although intended for civilian use, many military men made private purchases of pepperbox pistols and carried them into battle as a last line of defense. While the pepperbox had its benefits; namely concealability, self-defense, and intimidation, it had its fair share of issues. For one, most pepperboxes were made with smooth-bored barrels, which limited their range of accuracy. They were also front-heavy because of the multiple barrels, making accurate aiming difficult. Even when trying to aim, the hammer (known as a “bar-hammer pepperbox”) is directly in the line of slight. The pepperbox was also notorious for accidental chain firing. Most pepperboxes were constructed with exposed nipples (for percussion caps) which were positioned in close proximity to each other. As a result, these pistols had a tendency to accidently fire all barrels at once. In his book entitled “Roughing It,” Mark Twain detailed his brief encounter with an “Allen” revolver and its propensity for accidental discharge. Twain wrote, “It was a cheerful weapon–the “Allen.” Sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it.” This gun is often the subject of LDS Church detractors. They claim the Church kept the fact that Joseph Smith shot the gun a secret. The gun was smuggled into him at Carthage Jail when he was martyred. These disgruntled, usually ex-members don’t realize that the very gun that was used in Carthage is on display in the Church’s museum in Salt Lake City. Next to it is the other gun that was smuggled in and given to Hyrum Smith which he never used. Sorry silly anti mo’s, being armed does not mean that he didn’t die for his beliefs. I have vowed to find a pepperbox to add to my collection. Someday I will. Semper Paratus Check 6 Burn

Fragility Of Water Systems

Water On February 8th officials from Pinellas County in Florida announced that an unidentified hacker remotely gained access to a panel that controls the City of Oldsmar's water treatment system. The hacker changed a setting that would have drastically increased the amount of sodium hydroxide in the water supply. This would have, in effect, poisoned the water system. “The city’s water supply was not affected,” The Tampa Bay Times reported. “A supervisor working remotely saw the concentration being changed on his computer screen and immediately reverted it. City officials on Monday emphasized that several other safeguards are in place to prevent contaminated water from entering the water supply and said they’ve disabled the remote-access system used in the attack.” In short, a likely inexperienced intruder somehow learned the credentials needed to remotely access Oldsmar’s water system, did little to hide his activity, and then tried to change settings by such a wide margin that the alterations would be hard to overlook. This story does give an example of how some real terrorism can be done. It also emphasized to me why I need water storage. There are approximately 54,000 distinct drinking water systems in the United States. The vast majority of those systems serve fewer than 50,000 residents, with many serving just a few hundred or thousand. Virtually all of them rely on some type of remote access to monitor and/or administer these facilities. Many of these facilities are unattended, underfunded, and do not have someone watching the IT operations 24/7. Many facilities have not separated operational technology (the bits that control the switches and levers) from safety systems that might detect and alert on intrusions or potentially dangerous changes. Water is one of the easiest and most economic part of preparation that there is. Buying bottled water is pretty cheap. Or, saving juice containers or soda pop containers and filling them is quite economic. After reading the story above about Florida I decided to change out my water storage. I actually started this as I was moving from an old shed into a newly built storage shed. This weekend I will finish by replacing, and retreating, our barrels and the single 400 gallon tank that we have. We try to not waste the water and we water our garden with it. I also am going to look at our filter situation. I will get all of our water filters together and determine what may need to be replaced. Water is one of the most important things to have in an emergency. I used to follow the “one gallon, per person, per day” standard. Several years ago I talked to an emergency worker who worked in Haiti in 2010 after their bad earthquake. He said that the “one gallon” rule did not really apply there in Haiti. He would recommend 2 gallons, per person, per day. I changed to that several years ago in my storage. One gallon is enough, but I like the option of more. Take a look at your filters. Most filters will last a life time if they’re not used, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. You can test them if you like but if they are in good physical shape they’re probably fine. I just want to know how many total gallons we can filter with what we have. I also take it as a good time to test hooking our generator to our well to see how that works. Politicians like to never let a catastrophe got to waste, well I feel the same way. When problems happen in other parts of the country or world I take it as a sign to check what I have in place. Prepare today for tomorrow. It’s always better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. Semper Paratus Check 6 Burn

The Entire U.S. Convinced To Wear A Mask and Give Up Liberty

And yet another update on my original “Masks Research” from July 15, 2020 and subsequent updates. I know what you’re thinking. “Burn aren’t you suffering from PTSD? Aren’t you a little mental? Or at the least, a little paranoid?” Well I am here to tell you…. Maybe. And I know, everything is a conspiracy theory by white supremacists. But I’m sorry, I keep getting bombarded by this “Wear a mask, save a life” propaganda. I still have not seen the science behind the claims. The CDC gives you this study that says: “Respiratory droplets are the primary transmission route for SARS-CoV-2. Evidence suggests that virus transmission can be reduced by face coverings, but robust evidence for how mask usage might affect safe distancing parameters is lacking.” https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.11.20145086v1 “We estimated that a person standing 2m from someone coughing without a mask is exposed to over 1000 times more respiratory droplets than from someone standing 5 cm away wearing a basic single layer mask.” How is it that this science seems to be tentative. Maybe the CDC just doesn’t want to be libel so they use ambiguous words like “suggests” and “estimated”. Maybe I shouldn’t mince words but I feel like I’m being played by these studies. Maybe that’s the norm for studies. It’s fishy to me but I’m not very trusting of the medical community. So maybe they are right and masks do work. I wish I’d be better assured. I do This another update on my original “Masks Research” from July 15, 2020 The ambiguity continues. I guess I’ll never get a definitive scientific answer. Everyone says “Masks save lives!” They can’t tell me how many lives. They can’t tell me much of anything concrete, but they seem to know. It’s an inspired guess. These are just snipits from this article: “Face Masks: What the Data Say” By Lynn Peeples from “Nature” Research Journal 06 October, 2020 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8 “Face masks are the ubiquitous symbol of a pandemic that has sickened 35 million people and killed more than 1 million. In hospitals and other health-care facilities, the use of medical-grade masks clearly cuts down transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But for the variety of masks in use by the public, the data are messy, disparate and often hastily assembled.” “You don’t have to do much math to say this is obviously a good idea,” says Jeremy Howard, a research scientist at the University of San Francisco in California, who is part of a team that reviewed the evidence for wearing face masks in a preprint article that has been widely circulated6. But such studies do rely on assumptions that mask mandates are being enforced and that people are wearing them correctly. Furthermore, mask use often coincides with other changes, such as limits on gatherings. As restrictions lift, further observational studies might begin to separate the impact of masks from those of other interventions, suggests Grabowski. “It will become easier to see what is doing what,” she says.” “The idea that exposure to more virus results in a worse infection makes “absolute sense”, says Paul Digard, a virologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who was not involved in the research. “It’s another argument for masks.”” “Even well-fitting N95 respirators fall slightly short of their 95% rating in real-world use, actually filtering out around 90% of incoming aerosols down to 0.3 µm. And, according to unpublished research, N95 masks that don’t have exhalation valves — which expel unfiltered exhaled air — block a similar proportion of outgoing aerosols. Much less is known about surgical and cloth masks, says Kevin Fennelly, a pulmonologist at the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.” “Benn worked with Danish engineers at her university to test their two-layered cloth mask design using the same criteria as for medical-grade ventilators. They found that their mask blocked only 11–19% of aerosols down to the 0.3 µm mark, according to Benn. But because most transmission is probably occurring through particles of at least 1 µm, according to Marr and Jimenez, the actual difference in effectiveness between N95 and other masks might not be huge.” ““There’s a lot of information out there, but it’s confusing to put all the lines of evidence together,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. “When it comes down to it, we still don’t know a lot.”” My guess is, they will not know how masks work for a long time. In the meantime, I’ll wear it when I have to. “Across the United States, mask use has held steady around 50% since late July. This is a substantial increase from the 20% usage seen in March and April, according to data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle (see go.nature.com/30n6kxv). The institute’s models also predicted that, as of 23 September, increasing US mask use to 95% — a level observed in Singapore and some other countries — could save nearly 100,000 lives in the period up to 1 January 2021.” As usual, the “scientific” wording of “could save nearly 100,000 lives” is what is used to justify masks. Well, I could make nearly 100,000 dollars this year! Or not. “Masks work, but they are not infallible. And, therefore, keep your distance.” So, even now, 3 months later from my original article, we don’t know much more. I still maintain that this is people control. Semper Paratus Check 6 Burn Update of “Masks Research” July 15, 2020 Another study on masks. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-mask/art-20485449 “At this time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved any type of surgical mask specifically for protection against the coronavirus, but these masks may provide some protection when N95 masks are not available. (Bold type added) A cloth mask is intended to trap droplets that are released when the wearer talks, coughs or sneezes. Asking everyone to wear cloth masks can help reduce the spread of the virus by people who have COVID-19 but don't realize it. Cloth face coverings are most likely to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus when they are widely used by people in public settings. And countries that required face masks, testing, isolation and social distancing early in the pandemic have successfully slowed the spread of the virus.” What it comes down to is you’re screwed with an N95 mask worn properly. They just can’t bring themselves to get off these vague words. I guess they don’t want to be legally libel to say “masks will protect you.” Also, they know that they don’t protect you. Another thing that I’ve noticed is that just about every study talks about “proper wear” of a mask. They usually talk about not touching the mask. How often have you seen anyone anywhere do that? So they are vague about protection if the mask is worn properly, what would they say about the reality of masks not being worn properly? That masks do very little. But let’s keep pushing that narrative. Here is the final definitive word from the CDC dated 27 AUG 2020 “Masks may help prevent people who have COVID-19 from spreading the virus to others. Masks are most likely to reduce the spread of COVID-19 when they are widely used by people in public settings.” (Bold type added) Nothing has changed since I first posted this article on 15 JUL 2020. All the “new” studies and the CDC could not change the verbiage to be a little more definite? This should concern all Americans. Not only that, I feel too many people only wear a mask. All the other advice is glossed over. I also feel most people don’t wear their mask properly. So how much protection are the American people truly getting? Not much. 94% of those who are positive for COVID-19 live. “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned.” So other problems were the cause of death, but the patient was positive for COVID-19. That’s 6% of 182,000 actually died from COVID-19. The reporting procedure is messed up. There may be more, or even less. I don’t know if the error would be 10,000 in either direction but I would say not. This is the Influenza information, even with a vaccine. “CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.” I’m not trying to compare diseases but it does seem that this thing is not such a devastating disease as they want us to believe. It is certainly not something to warrant giving up our rights! I understand a store being paranoid and not wanting to be libel for spreading sickness, but a mask is not going to do it! Walmart has produce just sitting out where people touch it and breathe near it. What about all the handles on frozen foods? I know store try to clean, but I don’t see them following each person around and cleaning up behind them. Yet these masks are saving us. Extreme false sense of security. Security that is not needed. Original article from July 2020 Please hear me out. What I’m going to say here is wildly unpopular. Some think it’s downright dangerous. But I’ve come to the conclusion that wearing a mask is a complete, and total, waste of time! I’m not sure why the medical world is heaping this silly practice upon the world. I’m not a healthcare worker, nor do I have an education in medicine. Because of this, I had to really get in there and study this out as best I could. I’ve come to the conclusion that we are being duped. Masks do little to nothing. Not having a background in medicine and not being familiar with medical terms and phraseology made it difficult for me to understand and read these studies and analysis. So I had to really read these things. My conclusions may not be the same as yours. I originally only wanted to know how much, in percentage numbers, cloth masks helped the wearer or those around the wearer. I was thinking I would find 30% or even 20%. What I actually found was 0.02%, which to me is next to nothing. Here is my research: (I read the articles thoroughly but also looked at some, but not all, of the footnotes, resources, and supplemental material for these articles.) https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/masks-dont-work-review-science-relevant-covid-19-social-policy-0 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31142-9/fulltext https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/cloth-masks-are-useless-against-covid-19 https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-health/cloth-masks-given-ok-do-they-work https://www.nap.edu/read/25776/chapter/1 “Cloth face coverings may help prevent people who have COVID-19 from spreading the virus to others” “A cloth face covering may not protect the wearer, but it may keep the wearer from spreading the virus to others.” https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/about-face-coverings.html This is the definitive conclusion that the CDC has come up with? You “may” be, and “most likely” will be safe with masks. How less sure can you be? “Cloth face coverings are most likely to reduce the spread of COVID-19 when they are widely used by people in public settings.” If your mechanic described your fixed brakes in this way would you drive the vehicle? I think it’s criminal to put people’s lives in danger by telling them something will protect them when it won’t. Too bad no one will account for it. I love the 90’s series “The X Files”. It just fed my appetite for conspiracy. But as I watch the mess that has unfolded in this country I feel like I’m living an X files episode. Between COVID-19 and the racial divide in this country I get the feeling there is more afoot than bad timing. I’m not saying this virus does not exist but I think there are sinister hands involved in it. The race angle is constantly used for those with an agenda. I’m also not saying bigotry and racism does not exist. As long as there are humans on this earth there will be racism. Be very careful about what you accept. If the mainstream media is pushing something then be very careful. They usually ignore facts and quote each other. Research this mask thing yourself. See what you think. I just saw another “study” that had to do with 2 cosmetology workers. I don’t think this was actually a scientific study, but it fit the “mask up” narrative just fine. Beware of where you get your information and what that info is based on. This article is not about masks but about COVID-19 deaths. https://www.technocracy.news/cdc-confirms-extremely-low-covid-19-death-rate/?fbclid=IwAR2obGmDzyss5ueBPbC1lpqPGLDng-HD0dRm5yxOhQuVeB0rqk5_1y5qsx0 A quote from a Star Trek character comes to mind. “Spock, I’ve found that evil usually triumphs… unless good is very, very careful” Dr. Leonard McCoy, Star Trek Be very careful out there my friends. Semper Paratus Check 6 Burn