Also he wrote a great book about the Green Machine & his time in it. Grumpy
Category: Some Red Hot Gospel there!
New York City has always been pretty congested.
This picture dates back to the 1930s.
The news this morning sported yet another headline trumpeting the sordid state of my countrymen living in New York City. It seems every day brings some fresh new tragedy from some Leftist enclave overrun with homelessness, drug abuse, crime, violence and despair. In this case, some well-to-do woman was walking back to her building when she was accosted by a pair of muggers.
The criminals threw the poor woman against the building and snatched away her purse and phone. The many bystanders present just looked on with disinterest. What made the event newsworthy was that the doorman at her building actually chose to intervene. He shooed away the two miscreants and escorted the shaken woman inside. The two scumbags strolled away laughing as they cataloged their new swag. Oddly, that sort of thing really doesn’t happen down here in the Deep South where I live.
I don’t much want to live in New York City myself. However, the
Statue of Liberty is pretty darn awesome, so there’s that.
Photo by MCJ1800 / Wikipedia
Daylight and Dark
Far be it from me to insinuate that one part of our great republic is superior to any other. I freely admit that, in addition to more than 90,000 homeless people and roughly half a million illegal immigrants, the Big Apple also plays host to the Statue of Liberty. That is indeed pretty darn cool.
My own home state of Mississippi admittedly rates 47th in literacy. Only New Mexico, Texas and California beat us in our race to the bottom. Incidentally, New York is 43rd.
Mine is still a pretty Godly state. We are number one in the country for adults who pray daily and believe in God. We are fourth in church attendance. Additionally, Everytown for Gun Safety, a rabid mob of freedom-averse gun-hating hoplophobes, rates us 49th for gun law strength. I’m pretty proud of that myself.
Every single day at work, I see some redneck guy in my medical clinic and ask him to shed his jacket or vest so I can listen to his chest. That’s when I see it. The next question is invariably, “What you packing?”
I already know the answer to that question, of course, but it is a great way to start a conversation. And that is why we don’t have thugs throwing women up against buildings on the square in Oxford, Mississippi. It is not hyperbole to say that the first time you do that around here, half a dozen armed rednecks are just going to blow you away.
Mine is a constitutional carry state. Down here, your birth certificate is your concealed carry license. We also really love our cops, and they love us. The local fuzz is forever offering free classes on self-defense for women and similar civic-minded stuff. My wife took it. That was great until she got home and wanted to practice what she learned on me.
We had to call the cops a few years ago for a disturbance in the waiting room. Some crazy person was getting out of hand. It happens. One of the responding officers actually arrived on horseback. He had been across the street showing off his police horse at the nearby nursing home when he got the call.
Rednecks are a timeless part of the Deep South. These were photographed back in the early 20th century. However, guys like this are tough, they love America, and they will not stand idly by while women get beat up.
Find a Need and Fill It
If random armed rednecks are a deterrent to crime, that seems like an opportunity to me. We have plenty of armed rednecks down here in Mississippi, while our friends in New York appear to have a relative dearth. As such, I would like to announce my newest business venture. I call it Will’s Redneck Rentals. We gladly export.
Here is one of our hypothetical armed rednecks available for rent — Colt Thompson (I actually know a guy down here named Colt Thompson) has worked for the past 15 years as an electrician. He is 40 pounds overweight, married and has three children. He was a Bud Light man until last year when he inexplicably switched to Coors. His preferred carry piece is a 9mm Springfield Armory Hellcat in a well-used CrossBreed IWB rig. He’s looking for a side gig to help keep things spicy.
Nowadays, Colt is an overweight middle-aged redneck. However, right out of high school, he spent four years in a Ranger battalion. He still shoots regularly and recreationally. That fat, unassuming HVAC repairman can run that Hellcat like a Delta Force commando. He also loves America, goes to church regularly and absolutely hates people who pick on women, like viscerally. Give the guy a cot and keep him in food and beer, and he’s yours for as long as you need him.
So, surf on over to www.mississippiactuallysoundsprettyfreakingawesome.com to sign up for your own rental redneck. We deliver. Additionally, if you are the sort who shakes down women in public spaces, be forewarned. Try that in front of Colt Thompson or one of his peers, and that guy is going to kill you deader than rocks. We guarantee it.
From Hiroshima’s first operational strike to the Demon Core’s deadly lessons, this is how nukes, missteps, and raw physics still terrify a very modern world.
Why Nukes Still Keep Putin Relevant
Humanity has a weird love-hate relationship with nuclear weapons. They are at once everywhere and nowhere. The spectre of nuclear war shapes geopolitics unlike anything else. However, nobody really knows what that would look like.
The Trump Card
Nukes are the only reason anybody on Planet Earth still takes Vladimir Putin seriously. Russia has a population of around 146 million. Russia’s gross domestic product falls just behind that of Italy and just ahead of that of Canada. Germany’s economy is twice as vibrant as that of the Russian Federation.
Ours is ten times larger. Were it not for the 4,309 operational nuclear warheads that Putin maintains, Russia would be rightfully viewed as a Third World backwater goat-spit of a nation. Absent those nukes, the world would have long ago banded together and spanked the Russians right out of Ukraine. However, nuclear war scares absolutely everybody, and for good reason.
Nuclear weapons have only been used twice in real combat, and that was back in 1945. Both of those bombs were essentially prototypes.
North Korea conducted the world’s last live nuclear test in 2017. Imagine how much the world has changed since 1945. Back then, telephones were the size of shoeboxes and were tethered to the wall.
Now they are smaller than a box of wooden matches, ride in your pocket, and will let you talk to people in Norway from a subway in Istanbul. Nuclear weapons evolved just as transformationally; it is simply that nobody tries them out anymore.
Hiroshima: The First Operational Atomic Strike
On 6 November 1945, we dropped the world’s first operational nuclear weapon on Hiroshima, Japan. The Hiroshima bomb was a gun-type design powered by uranium-235. In this case, a slug of uranium was fired along a short barrel to impact a target made from the same stuff.
This violent kinetic reaction created a critical mass that resulted in a nuclear detonation. The Hiroshima bomb had a nominal yield equivalent to around 15,000 tons of conventional TNT explosive. It killed 70,000 people at the time of detonation and claimed about the same number later from residual effects.
Nagasaki: When Smoke Saved Kokura
Three days later, we deployed a second nuclear device over Nagasaki. Curiously, Nagasaki was not the primary target. The second atomic bomb strike was to be directed at Kokura, but thick smoke over the target spared that city. The aircraft commander, a 25-year-old Army Air Corps pilot named Charles Sweeney, made the call on the fly to switch targets to Nagasaki.
This second bomb was an altogether different design that was markedly more complicated than the first. This weapon was powered by plutonium-239. Plutonium-239 does not occur in nature.
This isotope is a byproduct of the reaction that occurs when uranium-238 captures a loose neutron inside a nuclear reactor. Plutonium-239 is more easily produced than uranium-235. However, it is tougher to get plutonium-239 to go off uniformly.
The second bomb used an altogether different mechanism. A series of chemical explosive charges configured similarly to the individual components of a soccer ball were arrayed circumferentially around a plutonium core.
When carefully detonated at exactly the same moment, this created an immense imploding pressure wave that drove the plutonium to critical mass and resulted in a nuclear detonation. This nuclear strike killed 74,000 people at the moment of detonation and claimed a further 70,000 souls by the end of the year.
Manhattan Project Money, Pressure, and Mistakes
The Manhattan Project was the program that created these two weapons. It cost $2 billion in 1945. That would be about $30 billion today.
The Manhattan Project was the second-most expensive military undertaking of World War 2. Curiously, the most expensive was the production of the B-29 Superfortress bomber that delivered the weapons. The overall cost of the B-29 program was closer to $3 billion.
Nuclear research in 1944 and 1945 was moving at light speed. We desperately needed the A-bomb as a tool to end the war. We knew that every other major combatant nation on Planet Earth was rabid for this capability. Whoever first deployed nuclear weapons at scale would undoubtedly emerge victorious. That pressure to produce resulted in some tidy little tragedies.
How Atomic Energy Gets So Big From So Little
Nuclear energy is just crazy weird if you think about it. The laws of conservation of mass and energy posit that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed; they just change forms. When you strike a match, the fuel in the match doesn’t actually cease to exist. It just changes into hot gases, smoke, ash, and the like. Those laws no longer apply when it comes to nuclear reactions.
When the first bomb detonated over Hiroshima, about 0.7 grams’ worth of uranium—roughly the same weight as a small paperclip—was instantly transformed into pure energy. That uranium no longer existed within the physical universe.
It had actually been turned into energy in accordance with Einstein’s E=MC2. If my math is correct, that paperclip’s worth of uranium released as much energy as two million conventional 155mm high-explosive artillery rounds all going off at one time. Wow…
The Demon Core: A Softball-Sized Killer
The thing about radioactive material is that you really don’t want to get any of it on you. The half-life for plutonium-239 is 24,110 years. That means it takes 24,110 years for half of a quantity of radioactive plutonium-239 to degrade into something less lethal. That stuff is unimaginably dangerous.
Back in 1945, we had little clue what we were doing. The eggheads who made it called this particular sphere of plutonium gallium alloy Rufus. Rufus was 8.9 cm in diameter. That’s roughly 3.5 inches. For the sake of comparison, a regulation softball is 3.8 inches across.
Plutonium is really dense. This softball-sized chunk weighed 14 pounds. As plutonium corrodes readily in the presence of oxygen, this sphere was coated with nickel to help retain its stability. Rufus eventually became known as the Demon Core.
We built this monster to power the third atomic bomb that was obviously never dropped on Japan. When Japan capitulated, the core was retained at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico for research. One of the questions that needed to be answered was exactly how close this thing was to criticality just sitting on a table.
Daghlian’s Accident: A Brick, A Spark, A Fatal Dose
Plutonium naturally releases neutrons. Focusing these neutrons back into the material is what causes the mass to go supercritical and explode. How much of that neutron flux was required to get the party started was important to know.
On 21 August 1945, a 24-year-old physicist named Haroutune “Harry” Krikor Daghlian was studying just that. To do so, he stacked tungsten carbide bricks circumferentially around the magic ball. Tungsten carbide is an effective neutron reflector. While he was occupied doing this, a 29-year-old military security guard named Robert Hemmerly sat at a desk some dozen feet away.
As Daghlian carefully stacked these heavy bricks around the core, he accidentally let one slip out of his hands. This thing bounced off the plutonium sphere, creating an impressive shower of sparks.
He immediately moved the offending brick back to its intended spot. 25 days later, Harry Daghlian died of acute radiation syndrome. Private Hemmerly succumbed to acute myelogenous leukemia in 1978, 33 years after the accident. Hemmerly was 62 at the time.
Tickling the Dragon’s Tail: Slotin’s Fatal Slip
On 21 May 1946, a physicist named Louis Slotin was tending to Rufus alongside seven assistants. They were, likewise, studying the effects of neutron reflectors on critical mass. Slotin was actually scheduled to leave Los Alamos. He was only present to demonstrate the technique to Alvin Graves, another physicist who was planning to use this core during Operation Crossroads, the nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll.
In this case, the reflectors were a matching pair of machined beryllium spheres. The astute film nerd will recall the comic reference to beryllium spheres in the epic sci-fi farce Galaxy Quest. Galaxy Quest is one of my favorite movies. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. You’ll thank me later.
Anyway, the protocol required that these spheres be arranged around the plutonium core using shims to maintain a slight separation so the mass did not become critical. However, Louis Slotin was a rebel. Arcane workplace safety rules didn’t apply to him.
Slotin had done this many times with several different cores, often while dressed in blue jeans and cowboy boots. His technique was to wedge a flat-tip screwdriver in between the beryllium spheres and twist as needed to adjust the spacing. When the esteemed nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi heard about this, he predicted that Slotin would be dead within a year. A colleague named Richard Feynman referred to this unorthodox technique as “Tickling the dragon’s tail.”
As he lowered the top sphere, Slotin’s screwdriver slipped. The two spheres were in contact for less than a second before Slotin flipped the top half onto the floor. Slotin was crouching over the apparatus at the time, so his body shielded most of the rest of his team from the explosive neutron burst.
Slotin was 35 at the time. He died of acute radiation poisoning nine days later. Of the remaining six people present, Marion Cieslicki succumbed to acute myelocytic leukemia 19 years after the accident in 1965. Surprisingly, the rest all died of fairly reasonable causes.
What A Real Nuclear Exchange Might Mean Today
The Hiroshima bomb had a nominal output of 15,000 tons of TNT. The Russian Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, was 3,000 times more powerful. The W88 warhead that currently rides atop modern American nuclear missiles produces 475 kilotons of explosive force, roughly 32 times that of the Hiroshima bomb.
I read recently that somebody believed that the US would return to its current GDP roughly a decade after a global nuclear exchange. Other really smart folks think a serious nuclear war would end all life on Planet Earth. Personally, I’d just as soon we not answer that question any time soon.
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Written over 3,000 years ago, the ancient adage “Iron sharpens iron” is traditionally attributed to King Solomon via the Book of Proverbs. (Proverbs 27:17)
The imagery reflects ancient blacksmithing practices where one iron tool was used to file, hone, or carve an edge on another. In traditional wisdom, it symbolizes mutual improvement, constructive challenge and character development through community.
Today, elite athletes, shooters, martial artists and warfighters use this same concept to make themselves better prepared for engagement with others. When applied to self-defense, there are three such pieces of iron that can be used in developing your skills to survive a violent physical altercation. What are these three and how can you use them to both sharpen your skills and strengthen your resolve?
The First
The first piece of iron is discipline, where you challenge yourself. Some people say follow your passion; others say find your motivation. Even if you can somehow muster both, when passion eventually wanes, and motivation dissipates, all that remains is discipline. In the long run, long after emotions fade, discipline will carry you the distance.
Discipline isn’t something you’re born with; it’s something you earn through consistent, intentional action. Its potential is available to all of us, but it is made manifest by those completing two halves.
In shooting and defensive tactics, discipline begins with a clear purpose: a goal strong enough to push you forward when motivation evaporates. From there, it’s forged through repetition. Showing up to practice, completing each drill with intent, and maintaining the fundamentals even when no one is watching gradually hard-wires discipline into behavior. Over time, these daily choices turn into personal habits. What once required effort becomes unconscious competence.
The other half of discipline comes from environment and accountability.
Training partners, coaches, and teammates create pressure and support that sharpen your performance. They leverage mistakes, raise expectations, and challenge you to raise the bar. Through this process, you learn to become comfortable being uncomfortable and act with purpose instead of emotion. Discipline fully develops when you repeatedly choose the long-term result over short-term gratification, until that choice becomes part of who you are.
The Next Step
Next is being challenged by others. Placing yourself in a competitive environment will expose the gaps you didn’t know you had. Whether it’s sparring rounds, timed drills on the range, rolling on the mat, or pressure-based scenario work, competition forces you to confront reality. You learn very quickly what holds up under stress and what falls apart the moment adrenaline or uncertainty shows up.
Other people, especially those who are more skilled and experienced, become the second piece of iron. Their presence pushes you to elevate your performance, tighten your fundamentals, and lose the excuses. When you face someone who gives you honest resistance, you sharpen not only your technique but your mental game, adapting in real time and discovering a higher gear you didn’t know you had.
This type of challenge is not about ego; it’s about exposure and growth. Controlled pressure reveals weaknesses so you can address them before they become liabilities in real-world conditions.
When you’ve hammered the rounds with people who can push you to your limits, when you’ve performed under watchful eyes or against the clock, you develop a calmness that only earned experience can create.
You learn to stay composed, think clearly, and execute under pressure because you’ve already faced environments that demanded it. Confidence is the sharpening effect of this second iron: the honest challenge of others who make you better by refusing to go easy on you.
Where It Counts
The third piece of iron is adversity itself: the unexpected, the uncomfortable, and the uncontrollable. While discipline builds your foundation and other people refine your skill, real adversity is what hardens you. This includes training sessions where everything feels off, drills you fail repeatedly, physical fatigue that tests your will, or situations where stress and uncertainty overwhelm your plan “A”.
Most people tend to avoid adversity, but in self-defense and performance shooting, adversity is the most legit instructor you’ll ever have. When things do not go your way, when the environment is chaotic or stacked against you, that struggle forces adaptation. It teaches resilience, problem-solving under duress and the ability to regain composure when the situation is anything but comfortable.
Adversity sharpens you by stripping away what doesn’t work. Under stress, you can’t BS your way through or negotiate with reality. You must respond. You discover your real thresholds, your real habits, and your real mental focus.
Over time, facing adversity builds a deep, internal confidence: not the kind based on perfect conditions, but the kind rooted in having survived and adapted to imperfect ones. In self-defense, this matters more than any drill or trophy.
Conclusion
Violence is chaotic, unfair, and unfolds fast. The person who has trained through adversity, who has stumbled, adjusted, and kept moving, is the person far more likely to stay in the fight when it counts. This final piece of iron ensures that when life hits back, you don’t break; you respond with resilience and skill.
The ancient Spartans viewed adversity as a gift from the gods. Hardship was seen as the raw material from which strength and courage were shaped. They believed that only through struggle could a warrior discover their true limits and expand them. Comfort softened a person; adversity revealed them. Every challenge, every setback, every grueling test was considered an opportunity to strip away weakness and build a level of resilience that couldn’t be taught any other way. It runs parallel to the U.S.M.C. mantra, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
To our ancestors, iron sharpening iron wasn’t something to endure reluctantly, but a divine gift to willingly embrace. It was the crucible that burned away hesitation and fear, leaving behind the disciplined, skilled and unshakeable. It was what made you worthy of the shield you carried and the trust of those you protected.
