Most of what I'm about to show you has not been made public. Your money is no longer made of silver nor of gold. You trade your wealth for paper so your life can be controlled. You pay for crimes that make our nation turn from God and shame. You've taken Satan's number. You've traded in your name. You've given government control to those who do you harm so they could burn down churches and seize the family farm. And keep our country deep in debt. Put men of God in jail. Harash your fellow countrymen while corrupted courts prevail. Your public servants don't uphold the solemn oaths they've sworn. And your daughters visit doctors, so their children will be born. Your leaders send artillery and guns to foreign shores, and send your sons to slaughter fighting other people's wars. Can you regain the freedoms for which we fought and died? Or don't you have the courage or the faith to stand with pride? And are there no more values for which you'll fight to save? Or do you wish your children? to live in fear and be a slave. O sons of the Republic, arise, take a stand, defend the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the land, preserve our great Republic and each God given right, and pray to God to keep the torture freedom burning bright. As I awoke, he'd vanished in the mist for whence he came. His words were true, we are not free, but we have ourselves to blame. For even now as tyrants trample each God given right, we only watch him tremble, too afraid to stand and fight. If he stood by your bedside to dream while you were asleep and wondered what remains of the freedoms he'd fought to keep, what would be your answer if he called out from the grave? Is this still the land of the free? and I'm Donald Betcher. We're also on AM and FM micro stations, CB Bay stations and Ultra Net technologies both east and west of the Mississippi along with Central and Southern Alaska. Don, today's date is... Hey you guys, it's 9th of September. Almost 9 minutes. 8 o'clock. And I'll tell you what, we've got a half moon out there tonight. It is clear on this end of Michigan and cold dropping down real fast, losing all the calories. It's chilly today in the daytime. It didn't get into the upper 60s here in the middle of Michigan. It never got really super warm at all. Global warming. Global warming. That's where we're cooling. Oh, don't worry about it. There's another word. Let's think about something else we can call it. Climate change? Climate change, dudes. Yeah, okay. Well, nothing new there either. But when the witch doctor is desperate, then they start doing the dance in another direction. Again, we've got a lot of work to do. You should be working on your harvest operations, getting your canning preparations in order because we are going to be canning big time. We just finished the first of our one gallon containers of pickled eggplant, which by the way, yes, these were all critical things knowing how to produce when all the other systems are offline. So it is an intelligence process. In other words, you need to go through and do the background if you don't know how to deal with these issues. You better be knowledgeable now. At the very least have the info on the shelf if all you can do is just follow the instructions. Guys, a few books on canning, drawing, and other technologies would be a good idea. But here's the thing. Go to survivalblog.com. That's survivalblog.com. That's survivalblog.com. And that's James Wesley Rawls' site. The author of Patriots surviving the coming collapse if you get a chance Please take time check out the book if you've read the book then you'll know what we're talking about Again, the idea is it's a how-to book done in the storyline and I prefer that because that way you can get things right or Characters can do things wrong and then look at solutions because they made errors now some errors can be very very So it makes you can only make once. Yes, so the good thing is that the characters make them and not you. And by reading through the scenarios you get to understand why it is you need to be prepared better in virtually every way possible. Prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance, the P principle. Okay? We have a lot of work to do, but we are still forging ahead. The Michigan Exercise here with Houtari is only three weeks away. It is one of several, but it is a train the trainers class. The next one, now scheduled for Oklahoma, will be in January. If all goes well, I think they are pegging the dates to the 8th to the 11th of January. That is the 8th to the 11th of January 2009 for the next Oklahoma training exercise, which will be at Durant. However, this is a train-the-trainer class. It will not be free. It is going to cost $50 per person to participate. This is a whole program set up for that. Go to offthegridgirls.com. One more time off the grid girls dot-com There's a whole bunch of solutions there for you, but also it gives you an idea. What's going on schedule wise? The hutari exercise one more time if you'd like to find out more first you can go to hutari dot-com h-u-t-a-r-e-e dot-com or you can email them at hutari at symbol That's huitari at yahoo.com. Yahoo is, of course, their email. You get an RSVP. That's what you need to plug everything in. You will need a helmet. You will need a gas mask. You are going to be training for two days solid and like the Oklahoma and Arizona exercises. It's going to be crammed day and night people. You're going to have a little time to sleep, but you're going to be right back in motion. Take things seriously. Make sure you have everything squared away because when we hit the ground, we'll be hitting the ground running. We will be providing a number of different support units. They're in place. That will be medical, for instance, and others to ensure that we have all of the trainers focusing on training and not doubling up on other jobs they shouldn't be doing. So this is going to be a run run exercise and we expect all of you to be up to speed. Practice, practice, practice. Knob Creek, 10th, 11th and 12th of October. The clock is ticking so we're going to be looking at those events getting closer and closer as we go. Beyond that we will be in the Carolinas sometime in the next two weeks, also on top of everything else. I have to deal with the rest of the Carolina meetup there with both North Carolina and South Carolina respectively. We will be moving at high speed. We don't have any time to waste on any nonsense because the clock is ticking. Time is running out. Other events, other activities. We have a general meetup with brigades on the east, northeastern side of the state for Florida. That is a goal for this weekend coming up. Again, for northeastern Florida, that is a go for the brigades that are participating in the up and coming meet that will be taking place. It's a field exercise. You guys know it. Well, I don't need to know any more. We're just making sure it's confirmed. You guys are in motion. Southern Arizona, they are looking at scheduling another date there. We are going to see what we can do to participate and help with that in whatever way we can. And we are looking at mobilizing for a third deployment of the Minuteman type project on the border. And again, keep everything frosty because that is going to be obviously a one month deployment. The idea is to go across the whole of the border. To do a good job of shutting things down, but making sure that we have timely communications with the border personnel so they can intercept and act as needed. We are going to be their eyes and ears times tens and tens of thousands of people if all goes well. That is a project up and pending. This is a warning order because people are getting very serious about that. Now, Osama bin bin Dingdong, I've seen all these pieces the last couple of days. They are not accidental pick ups guys. When he makes a comment about getting the guns or whatever, the only difference is this. That for a change, somebody standing there was not part of the click. Okay? All the rest have recorded him talking about gun grabbing over and over and over and over again. The idea behind this though is that what they are trying to do is they are trying to fog the battlefield. Oh he just wants change. What kind of change does he want Don? He wants to turn the place fully communist outright. Now, here again guys, don't think Maclean will be any better. He is just another one of the Soviet parasites from the other side of the coin. Trotskyites and the regular Bolsheviks in their worst case form are what you are facing here. The Trotskyites as opposed to the what? Leninites, small Russians, big Russians. Or I should say correction, not Russians. Small communists, big communists or small Soviet socialists, big Soviet socialists. These characters both have the same agenda. But, having read several of the emails and listened to some of the transcripts, in other words, some of the recordings, it came out, first of all, it is not a quip. It's not like, oh, I'm going to say this out in the open for a change. Wrong. In fact, it is obvious by the very nature of the discussion and the speech and what was said by Ossema Mamadindong that it is part of his normal vocabulary. It is something that he was doing repeatedly. He just forgot what people he was amongst and there was one or two that weren't the regular stooges. Now, this is why you all need to be carrying pocket recording systems of some kind. I never throw up pocket recorders. We've got boxes of tapes, we've got all kinds of systems here. Little micro recorders, there's MP3, there's memory sticks of other types that are out there. Plus you've got, for instance, combination. All they are are just a cell phone and audio pickup from your phone adapted to small pocket television cameras. to include ports for dumping everything you got on board and now the latest ones done have supplemental memory stick spaces. So we're talking, guys, I mean, and I'm looking at the quality of some of these videos that these cameras are putting out. It's as good as the larger equipment that's commercially used. In fact, properly executed, properly used, the cameras It would be fantastic and are something we are going to be using for certain projects when it comes to filming because we can do multi-perspectives, kind of like a little aliens movie. The little aliens, headset, cameras, but in this case a little more controlled. But the idea is it can be from several perspectives at once. This makes for some really interesting shooting when the time comes in video. These little cameras are handy for that, but they are also handy for security operations or when you are in amongst the bad guys. What you are able to do is video tape, film, and audio record whatever is necessary to get the job done. There is a lot of work that will make a big difference there. We are going to do what we can and you should be doing what you can. Again, we are building up archives of what the bad guys are up to. Another thing, real quick, we've had this discussion with somebody else as soon as I mentioned it yesterday. You just go to Harvard. I'm not impressed with Osama bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin bin They don't have the ability to debate. So what they do is they rant and rave like a bunch of little children. And literally they screech and scream. I don't know if any of you have seen this. They were showing this for a little bit in certain circles. Any time that somebody has come on campus at Harvard or Princeton or any of these other Eastern schools, this is why I don't hear much about them anymore. They are not exactly higher education institutions. In fact, they are pretty well contaminated across the board. I wouldn't say this were enough for the fact that the Harpy Syndrome, example, they had a news crew that was interviewing people. What was really cute is the Harpies, which are all the same group. They are all over campus. They are not one or two people. As soon as they were being asked questions and they decided that they just went into the Norman Coordinate phase, instead they started to rant and scream. It really is infantile. It is childish at best. Mostly it is just a demonstration of genuine ignorance. Again, don't throw any documents out in front of you that are supposed to impress me when it comes to where these people come from institution wise. Number one, they have been given preferential treatment. They turn a blind eye to them while a regular standard is expected of others. I mean, to me, that double, triple, quadruple standard, because it varies. You know, oh, you know, well, we have to do this for this group and this for that group. Now, forget it. Then you don't have any. There is no equity involved there, and there isn't any justice involved there. So just throw it out the window, okay? Then don't come back to me yapping about qualifications, because there aren't any with regard to those goofs. And I wouldn't trust them. I mean, number one, it's an old arbitrary scale anyway, Don. Today it's one thing, tomorrow it's another. Oh, yes. So what is that? Well, and of course conditional ethnics will take you right over the cliff and into mass exterminations, socialist agendas being plugged in, which of course, well, they aren't into that Christian thing or the religion thing, so they have their own. They have their socialist commissars, the psycho-babble crew, psychologists and psychiatrists. Then you have the enforcer elements, which again are totally screwed up in the head. They have no restrictions. What a surprise. Those two combined, you can imagine what the end result is. Wait a minute, we don't have to imagine. We saw it in Russia. Sometimes we bring up examples of movies, and over the years we have brought up that. Oh, I can't say it's legendary and I can't say it was a blockbuster, but incredibly computer generated. Now we brought up Starship Trooper One talking about how governments will just waste. And we brought up Starship Troop to reinforce, but I don't know if you've seen Starship or Three, Mark. Oh, yes. Eddie talked about it a little while ago, mentioned it, brought it to the hour. But I watched it the other day. And it is very, there's a lot of parallels in what's going on right now. And, you know, only thing really being war-proteur, playing hang-um, because they weren't citizens and they were traitors. But, I guess that's not as bad as, or rather, it's, you know, if they only hold you for three or six days, that's not as bad as hanging ya. But all I was doing was going to the Ron Paul thing, you know. If you get a chance, sit down and watch Starship Troop. Because there's a good little twist at the end as far as it's much like we've talked about both the light switch Patriots I used to call him the John Wayne Patriots But they learned a little more and I think John Wayne so much But you know all of the light switch after 9-11 you've mentioned this many times mark plastic by a way Yeah, yeah, got it by the way Another thing down another thing I've noticed is the flags are disappearing Because after all to be politically correct now, they're going to it's what's funny is It's like the occupied French and L.S. Lorraine with two flags behind their back. Which army is coming? That's the flag you wave. When the army is going the other way and it's the other army, you wave the other flag. That's exactly what it's like. Well now I noticed in fact and I'm guys I watch for stuff like this when I see a red white and blue something sticking out of a I always stop to look at it. Now there are two reasons. Number one, sometimes it is people that are improperly retiring flags that have been desecrated. And oh my goodness, I wanted to stop at places only because I want the flags. See, we are doing filming. I don't want to ruin a good flag. I am not going to do damage to a flag. I don't have to. If I'm patient, Don, I'll find the exact model of flag that I need just by watching these flag poles of these plastic patriots. They'll leave the flag out there until literally the individual stripes are threadbare and separated and the individual stars are blown out or stuff's fallen off. Hey, all I gotta do is add some smoke and a little bit of brown dust here and there on the flag and she looks like she's been through World War III. But here's the thing, now what I'm seeing is brand new American made parquet flags being thrown away. Brand new flags. In fact the flags that you see, both of the American flags that you see in the videos for the antique, 25th Annual Antique Vehicle Show that we just did with Jim Monahan. Both of those flags, when you look at them, are flags that were thrown away. They are parquet flags individually stitched. The stars are stitched. These are not cheap flags. They are one of many, well two of many that we have found this way where people are tossing them out because I don't want to be caught with a flag here down the road. After all that new NAFTA global thing, you know, and it's all these ring knocker wannabes is what it is. They've already been told or the politically correct ones can see the writing on the wall that it's going to be the attack American Patriot time here real quick. We are not talking the plastic patriots, we are talking American patriots. Watch and see what happens here. You are going to see this more and more, the flags are going to start to disappear. Even at the car dealerships and places like that, you are going to see them start to fade off for other types of corporate symbol flags. Just general bunting flags and all kinds of fun stuff. Well, you know, we don't want to be too ultra-patriotic. They didn't throw the light switch this time, Mark. They're just turning down the dimmer. Right. It's a rheostat. Exactly. It's a fading out. But here's the thing. Then there's going to be a spot where you'll see a flash of light. You know what it is? Them demanding that the flags be burned that are flying. Mark my word on this. You pay attention to what's going on, guys. Pay attention, people. And certain people aren't going to know what to do, Don, because you're going to the brain fart. I have to evoke those semi-immortal words from that guy, Johnny Cash. You know, someplace in my little cutouts and snippets here, I should kind of build a scrap. I think girls. So I just tuck things away and keep things in other books and what. Somewhere here, Mark, I have a clip from the Detroit Free Press. about 1978, maybe 1979, back in the sports section it was Johnny Cash about an eighth of a page and it said, oh it was a quote from Johnny Cash, picture of him right there and he was quoted as saying, I'm glad that I live in America where you can burn the flag or let me start again. He said, I am glad that I live in America where you have the right to burn the flag and I have the right to shoot you if you try to burn mine." It is September 9, 2008. I can already see the writing on the wall because I am already seeing the first elements of this people. All of you, I want to say, we told you so. Once they start this nonsense. Of course, you are going to start to see another thing coming to play again, heavy. It is going to be that UN thing. Well, I'll tell you what, you live somewhere else under the UN. The UN will do a fine job of operating without us because it doesn't need the whole world. It just needs whatever whoever wants to participate because after all it is voluntary. Right? or is it that they are parasites and it is the old deal with the devil thing. They think that after all they have to keep telling you that if you are involved with them you can never get away from them. Yes we can. Maybe we will just shoot your heightened net and be gone. How does that sound? That is how it is going to work. You know what, otherwise we plan on leaving peaceably. We plan on walking out the door. Oh by the way, do you hear the real steam shovels outside? You see this building you are standing in? It is on American soil. That UN building really doesn't need to be here. In fact, if everybody loves internationalism, Don, why is it in New York? It would make more sense. Let's see how many of them show up for this. There are some beautiful islands. What do we have? How about the Canary Islands? Have you ever looked to see where the Canary Islands are people? There you go. Isn't that cool? That's a beautiful place for UN headquarters number one. Now, UN headquarters number one in the farthest western island of the Canaries, we can take the exact same building, we'll move it, traditionally, brick by brick, from New York and we'll put it in the middle of the Atlantic. Now, don't worry, we will build an exact copy somewhere on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific. Now, it won't be too much of a desert island because we'll have an airport there. And this way, nobody will feel over pressured as an ambassador by going to the United Nations and knowing full well that they are on neutral territory where nobody but nobody would bother them. Of course, if you are a parasite UN slob and you plan on stealing millions of dollars per year or sliding money into your account and then waddling out the back door and going down the street to spend it in a drug house in New York. or to buy whatever you can imagine in the way of obscenity in whatever way down the street or just pick up your usual buckets full of American liquor or whatever, well that won't happen anymore. But I'm a little confused because my basic challenge to that is why would you need New York if you're there to govern and help her justice in the world? Why does it need to be in any country in a specific form? It needs to be in a neutral, isolated location so that those people can go there and spend a minimal amount of time. Although I think perhaps they should spend their lives there. We can put a big fence around it to keep them in. They still have a nice building. But the point is that it's going to be completely isolated. You all want to go there. Everybody has to fly there. Nobody lives there other than maybe superintendents and rotational support personnel. See how neutral and equal that is then? Isn't that a wonderful thought? And they wouldn't have to impose themselves upon us, nor do we have to impose ourselves upon them. And they can take that fine little statue of the bent up gun with a barrel and a knot and we'll dump that sucker right in the middle of the... Well, no, no, no, wait a minute. We had to figure out what the hell that was made out of. If there's some decent steel there still, probably we can make a few... Yeah, we can mount it down and remake it into firearms. It won't be a problem. I think we can do that. Sorry guys, we won't let you take the statue. That's coming with us. But otherwise, a UN East, UN West, and of course you have to rotate halfway through the year. They've got to meet in the Pacific in a very isolated location. Just keep trying to order. That's right. Where everybody will feel safe and feel neutral and whatever. Notice how even as I would say this people are old, they would never do that. Well of course they wouldn't do that because they're parasites. We're going to run up to the break here and just... I think it was a Stephen King book and movie called The Tommy Knockers. just gobble up everything in sight and the world behind them did disappear. It might have been a different Stephen King movie. More on that later. I know we're going to go to break here in a minute you guys. So I just thought I'd leave you in suspenders there. The Switzer do something tomorrow that we'll talk about when we come. But I'm pretty sure Eddie's going to spin a disc here in a moment. And let's do it like this you guys. Liberty Tree Radio. The Intelligence Report. And here it comes. Those bastards took their throne To a marching drum we'll win the war and be Fighters of one in heart and soul Midnight there and below Keep this land your own On the heart and all the cry and The rocks and the swings shining up We're ready to... We're gonna test... It might have been Fermi who wanted to place a bet with someone Who would have been a Fermi said, how much do you want a bet? Or I'll bet you five dollars We burned the hydrogen We beat the atmosphere When they first... That's an example. And another example is the quote from the guys who up there in the Tude Radio Research Project. And they are throwing enough elections in the upper atmosphere, not an exaggeration. That is not an exaggeration. And one of the guys up there, Mark, and Dave, he says, well, we don't know what we're going to do, but we're going to do what it's going to do, but we're going to do it anyway. Now, over the years, we've talked about this before. It's been brought up on the intelligence report, but on the evening news tonight, they talked about the cyclotron in Swint. You guys, the largest cyclotron in the world, you know, you might call them atom smashers, but that's kind of a Fred Flintstone. Oh, they're building an atom smasher. They accelerate individual atoms and streams of atoms with magnets. and if you do it in a huge circle you can keep them going faster and faster and actually if you do it in a timing in such a way when the magnet is on the opposite side of this 17 mile circle you can get another electron going the other way and pretty soon you can get them to smash together so you know thusly they're building an atom smash oh Fred Flintstone would call it that I call it we call it a cyclic well Mark this has been proposed the studies they want to do they want to do things in such a way that they end up with They're going to build little portions of atoms and look at other things. But one of the things they're hoping to do is build a microscopic, at least one, if not multitudes of, microscopic black holes. Now there's this one scientist, he's been opposing it here in Switzerland for a long time and basically they've done everything but call him crazy. He bought suit against the government and they still call him crazy, but he's the guy who says that, well if you build a black hole here on Earth, it's going to consume. you know, earthly parts, even if it's just, you know, the little dinky tiny little things around it in the cyclotron, eventually it gets bigger. How do you kill a black hole? I have no idea. I don't think a 50 caliber bullet would do it. You have to be really, really precise. And then again, that just might increase its mass. So how do you kill a black hole? I have no idea. And I'm certain they don't either. Tomorrow they're going to create one. And, you know, it's, tomorrow will be September 10th. the year 2008. This one scientist that opposes this, Mark, he says that, well, these things will be so small. It might take months. It might take three years. It might take 40 years before we start to notice their effects. By that time, oh, we're noticing the effects of a black hole eating up the world. Can you say Tommy Knuckles? For Shades of the Stephen King movies. Mark, we've got... You've got gone. Yeah. We've got, we've got butter knuckles. Hi guys. Hey, how are you? Not too bad here. I had just a couple of things. I wanted to gripe for a minute or two. I just had to order new batteries for UPS's and discovered that those prices have gone up. What used to cost $15 post paid. Now I got four of them for $90 with shipping and that was after, I guarantee you, ferocious hunting on the internet. So that's up 50%. Of course that's something that contains more than 3 grams of plastic and a bunch of marketing hypes. So anything with metals in it, if you think you might need it, you'd better get it. On another front, you will recall that I mentioned in the past that I had done deals with a local dollar store. Yes. Well, I just got a shipment in, or he just got a shipment in and got to run down and collect it. Interestingly enough, about two-thirds of the shipment did not arrive. meaning the wholesaler was unable to fill the orders. And a proprietor grumbles that many of his items didn't come in either, that this is a new effect and that he has not seen this previously to about a year ago and it's getting worse as time goes by. So that's just another little data point in the curve, but it suggests that the wholesale portion of the supply chain is starting to break down. Now real quick on that, that makes a great deal of sense because one of the things to consider is most companies or countries are not going to send material here on time or on any kind of payment system of whatever mechanism. If they fear the idea that they will never see their money. Or they will get paid back in worthless greenbacks. Yeah, exactly. Or the FRNs themselves would be the real issue. The other problem is it is also another way to wage war in that you got everybody. This is another aspect of the economic war we have been arguing about for years. At first, there were a variety of tools on the shelf. There were a variety of widgets of whatever category. Then the Chinese and a few other countries systematically attacked the lower and middle market that was mostly American. Now, they kept the prices low, which we used to beat the Japanese on constantly for because they would intentionally try to undermine our market. markets, not just one. And what happened is we would throw tariffs and trade taxes. all but with NAFTA and GATT and favored nation status. We can't do that now, so what progressively has happened is all this Chinese junk, which was fine in its category, is now replacing and is now costing as much as the middle and lower upper grade tools did when they were American made. And by no stretch of the imagination are they of comparable quality, but they certainly are now the same price. I tell you, I never chipped a piece out of a Craftsman screwdriver, but I've got some Chinese ones here that are a little lopsided. Yeah, come out on a wedge, depending upon when you have uniform pressure. You shouldn't have to worry about that. This is from a civilization that brags being over 5,000 years old. Well, move into the 20th century. Well, they had crummy metal in the great leap forward, and it looks like they still do. But it's good enough to sell to the round eyes. Exactly. Now the thing about it with the wholesalers, in this case we're talking other widgets, but still it's the same problem. Well actually these were consumables. The things that did not come in were several cases of sardines and several cases of candles. Now, candles are petroleum products, so that could be part of that. It's a byproduct of refining, and it's more of a waste product than anything really. And if their actual refining of fuels is dropping off, that would produce less and less of the byproducts. Especially the paraffins and such, which have to be pulled before they can use the oil the rest of the way. I had one other question and this one was a little bit different. This is not about equipment available to us but equipment available to the bad guys. I was just thinking the other day and was wondering if the bad guys are wearing gas masks, can they use their Do you have any night vision gear that they can use with a mask at the same time? One cool thing about it is, well Don, what is that thing they are looking at inside that boot? Well, it's a dinky little television screen, Mark. So if I step it away from the face because I have to look through an eyepiece for a gas mask, what does that television screen do to everything behind it? Well, it actually illuminates the heck out of it is what goes on. Yes, out the other eye ports. In other words, what's going to happen is, think about it this way, they're going to adjust the frame so that it fits the M40 series of mask or whichever model they're wearing. And when it comes down, remember, their eyes aren't going to come up to the glass. Their eyes are in a stand-off position about an inch and a half away from the lens, an inch to an inch and a half depending upon the type of mask. And there's a bit of a bevel to that mask too, remember, because it offers a certain amount of widescreen visibility. So when you adjust it with the night vision equipment, the night vision unit itself is going to sit on the outer lens, which means everything behind it is going to be kind of bright. Okay, so that means the good news is that if they do that, we'll see glowing green eyes floating around. Green faces, yeah. The bad news is that just because a CS canister comes through the window does not mean that they are without night vision. No, but the one thing about it, remember that CS, and actually this is where there are two techniques. The Europeans had a neat idea here, especially the East Germans. They produced as much black smoke as they did white smoke. Now, white smoke for disruption during the day is best because of how its fogs and screens light. But what does black smoke look like on your night vision? Oh yes, and at night. So black smoke or any kind of smoke at night is actually quite effective because if they are using conventional night vision, they are still not using the thermal at the same time. Now it is rumored, and I would be one to bet somebody is out experimenting with it and they are doing it, that they have a combo system where they are using a side by side where you have thermal and you have conventional starlight. The problem is the cost. Again, the more widgets you throw together, the more likely something is going to fail or break and then you only have half a widget. In this case, it's still the same problem. If you throw smoke or if you throw other, and again, this has to be thermally active. That's one of the advantages of different types of smudge pots that you can build. You're actually going to create thermal screening in addition to conventional optical light screening, visible light screening. That is one of the things we have experimented with for years. At night, black smoke is very deceptive. It creates still the same illusion that you have darkness to a certain point when in reality all you are doing is creating a dark screen while you are moving with whatever resources you have either to the left or the right or even moving through that smoke. Which is one of the most interesting developments as one of the concepts. Again, using smoke and moving forward with it. provided you can sustain the field. Now that's where knowing the direction of the wind is critical obviously because you can take advantage and move the smoke with you so that it travels and then builds up concentration. It's not more relevant to outdoor scenarios but yes generally applicable anyway. Oh and indoor would be even better. I mean indoor smoke of any kind is going to cause problems for night vision. Well, the emitter itself will be hot and that will be a little campfire there, but yeah, then the smoke will spread. Right. Well, the thing is that, like we were talking about, CS grenades or regular smoke grenades, one of the things I'm going to mention here real quick, because this is experience, the older that a CS grenade or a smoke grenade gets, the more pyrotechnic it becomes. The hotter it burns. Yes, now the other aspect of that is this. They will detonate. Oh, that's lovely. Well, no, it's a good thing because it creates a bit of a shock. No, but first of all, rule number one, you want it out of your hand anyway. Just remember to toss it towards the bad guys because what will happen is you'll have the initial burn, which is what is expected, but you'll have the casing actually rupture and expand a bit. where you may have a change in the crystalline structure of the mix, the on board chemical used, depending on whether or not it is white concentration smoke, CSCN, or whatever. I actually have this on film a few times because typically I will control the smoke during assaults or during operations. In one shot I have it on video where we had an out for slash militia, we were coming in with a helicopter. After we hit and drop the troops, policy is we throw smoke because we are enveloping and attacking a building. This was a fairly large complex. It had already been burned. It was a big complex. Two stories. We had a chance to use this site and we used the hell out of it. It was still smoking from that complex. My logic is to do what I always do, but I am running a camera while I am doing this. So, I was doing two things at once and I have the smoke ready to go. Well, what was cute is I threw the smoke that I normally would and I'm so focused on running the equipment that I caught the explosion, but I wasn't thinking that that's what had happened. What was interesting is it caused excessive pyrotechnic response in the area and caught the grass on fire. I had to stomp that out real quick before I went any farther just to make sure we didn't have any time wasted in another area. I've seen this many times. It's purely a matter of age. With the Eastern European smokes, there are two problems that we've seen with those. One is green crystal because of mass production. The stuff is still raw. It continues to develop after it's been encased. And you get a response like that, a pyrotechnic response, not dramatic, but it's there. The other aspect that we found is that the crystalline material that is lining the fuse channel will continue to grow and it becomes snug or tight. So people miscalculate what they need to do to actually get that little striker ball to come through the channel and activate the smoke grenade, the pyrotechnic material inside. Both of those need to be considerations when looking at the equipment. Most important is just prep everything and remember you don't let go of the fuse and hold any grenade. I don't care what it is. At the very least, always remember this, Molly might have been thinking more about getting off work at 9 o'clock in the evening because it was Friday rather than worrying about fuses. Everybody gives us all day, got tired. She got tired and she is thinking about going on a date. Or Fred is thinking about going to the bar. It is 8.15 and all of a sudden he wasn't really paying attention to the fuse setter. It is a one second fuse or a no second fuse. Ideally that is the worst case, no second fuse. But usually it is like one or two instead of three or four or five seconds or a ten second for a trainer. To that reason, it's best to make sure that you let it go as you're throwing it to get it as far away from your hand as possible. They're tossing it back and forth between two hands before you toss it. It's great Hollywood stuff, but the prop is not going to blow apart the actor. I noticed that the camera cuts before the explosion. The point is, again, was it two or was it three? The problem is that again it's not all the times that it works fine, it's the one time that it doesn't. Again, the only true thing, and you'll see this reported time and time again, of all the pyrotechnic systems, obviously American are best quality or traditionally were. I don't know what they're doing now and I don't know if I'd trust them that far. Traditionally in the past, American was best quality with regard to pyrotechnic ordnance of all types, or in other words munitions of all types. The Europeans had pretty good standing like the Dutch, the Brits, the Germans, but the US was still premium grade. And a good example of that was in Vietnam. Obviously, guys had Vietnamese homemade grenades thrown at them all day. And for everyone that went off, there would be one or two that didn't. Part of it is they're building stuff in tropical rainforest environments. So moisture is a terrible factor. And moisture kills when it comes to a lot of special ordnance like this. The American stuff on the other hand, when the bad guys would get hold of it, if they were lobbing American grenades at the American troops, they knew they were had. There are many accounts of that. In fact, we were soldiers. The events that took place around that during that action, one of the worst actions of the Vietnam War, remember, took place around that. The biggest problem is that American troops were pinned down. They were trying to drop equipment in. The problem is that they had miscalculated some of the perimeters in certain situations and they virtually were resupplying the NVA or Viet Cong. I don't know what we got. Yeah, they could tell it. We were just doing a moment as soon as the, in fact it's recorded, they were being, you know, the regular old Viet Cong grenades or North Vietnamese grenades were being lobbed and, eh, condition varied. All of a sudden they got one pallet or a couple of bosses of U.S. grenades and the casualty rate changed dramatically. Oops. Yeah, so again, they're good stuff. It's just, I assume the worst. I won't be disappointed. The other thing is if all fails and you think you might have a problem with grenades, guys, remember do what the Russians did. Cut yourself a bunch of 8 inch or 10 inch stakes. or 8 inch or 10 inches of water pipe. Cut them on an angle so they've got an edge. And then what you do is you paper tape the grenade. Make sure you don't paper tape the clapper. You just paper tape the grenade to the stake. Put them out in front of you about so many feet. Loosen up the pin very carefully after you've got the wire connected or the fishing line connected. And use them as command detonated mines. Yeah, and don't trip over the threads you've got lying around. That's right. Like somebody with all of the threads and say, you don't let go of these threads. Right, exactly. But the thing is that, again, even if you knew that you had a questionable batch, remember if they had a zero fuse, grenades are built, some are built with intentionally, again, for the purpose I mentioned, what they were designed to be used as were I heard that some of them you had to unscrew the fuse and inspect it. The markings for number of sex were inside the mechanism? Yes. There are two ways that grenades come in. You see them in the movies but they usually don't. The one system, I'll describe it. Number one, the grenade is individually packed with already a preset fuse system and the canisters are about black, they're a paper cardboard, they're about What would I say, 8 inches to 10 inches tall. There's a double encasing in that. Remember that the grenades coming out of the box do not have just the pulp and safety. There is a keeper safety that goes around and locks onto the fusing system and wraps around the clapper as a second safety system. It's made out of wire. Well, considering the vagaries of vibration during storage and transport, I would just assume that there was another safety. Oh yes, exactly. The thing is to know this, it has a little thumb tab so that if you were in a hurry you can push that thing out in an instant. You push it off to the side, then all you do is go through the motion with the conventional pull pin and then let go and throw and let it go as it leaves your hand. Some of them actually even had wire binding as a third safety, but that's one method is carried individually. The other is in racks. The explosive charge slash the body of the grenade will be in one box, and then a nest of fuses of comparable size will be sitting there individually boxed, and you actually have to assemble them. And they can be training fuses. They can be trading fuses, they can have a short standard fuse, or they can have zero fuse. And that's purely a matter of personal discretion as far as what you think you need to use. Needless to say, I wouldn't want to mix up my zero fuses with my, I think I got a lot of time fuses. I would be tempted to put a dab of paint on anything that's preset. They actually are color coded. Right, they are color coded. And that's another critical factor. Again, the military does a good job of color coding. Know the codes. A friend of mine was in Vietnam. One of the things that happened is the Vietnamese who were traitors to their own country, the Arvin, the Oregon Viet Cong infiltrating into Arvin units would actually sabotage American soldiers' grenades. A friend of ours lost his little finger, his ring finger, and most of his middle finger because basic policy is to pull the pin and throw. Had he done anything else, he would not be here with us today. I thought he was lucky as is. Right. He knocked him out and put him down for a few days. The important thing is that you have a good arm and it blew up beyond him and took the fingers off. He has got trapped in one or two other places around him. But the point is that pretty lucky considering, and one of the reasons because he was throwing the grenade is it's typically policy from cover. And so as you know, the number is grenade. And when you hear grenade, everybody, if you'll notice, this is a condition everybody drops or at least takes some hunkers down. This puts everybody outside of the blast just in case the very thing happens that did happen. There is material between you and the grenade. So when he threw the grenade, it went over the revetment, over the dug-in position and moved past his hand and his hand was the only thing that was exposed. And that was really damaged the most but he has a shrapnel in his shoulder and he has a little bit in the side of his face. Same problem. So again, it is not an off subject. It is very much a pertinent subject that people need to remember. When handling the grenades they have great respect for the main known