Alex's even longer post thread.

[chefzombie]

glad you're feeling better hon.

[Alex]

Since Ross's laptop has went kaput, our planned return to D&D didn't happen this week. Instead me and Kristi finally got to play our delayed game of Bolt Action. Flamethrowers seemed to be the dominant weapon of the night, with my Flammpanzer wagon baking her commanding officer (Chest Puller no less. If Andrew was still posting here, no doubt he could tell you a lot about that man), and her White Scout Car when it made the ballsy move of driving straight down the main street of town in the face of a mortar team and a howitzer, while in return her squad of Engineers BBQ'd my CO (Oberleutnant Bob, his batman and his Kubelwagon). My troops quickly grabbed most of the available buildings and set up some pretty murderous fields of fire, forcing the Amerikaners to retreat to a safer position and await reinforcements. Alas, my Nebelwerfer failed to hit anything the entire match, so those Nebels are still out there... waiting. I did make a very silly move when I had my submachine gun squad jump out and spray her Scout Car with automatic fire, only to discover they couldn't cause any damage to it, but its been a while since I last played this game and I'd forgotten most of the rules.

So, Ellie, I am afraid I did not get the ass-kicking you wanted, but maybe next time. We are going to try and have a game a month. For the moment though, the jackbooted ubermen hold the village.

[ER]

Kristi needed a Popeye figure so the battle could've been over in a five-second theme song. Little spinning tornado of fists, Germans flying everywhere.

[Alex]

Kristi needed a Popeye figure so the battle could've been over in a five-second theme song. Little spinning tornado of fists, Germans flying everywhere.

She did have Sgt Rock on her team if that counts for anything, but my sniper blew his head off. I may have to amend the rules of Rock-Paper-Scissors to indicate that Sniper, in fact, beats Rock.

This is from my facebook status today.

When you were a child, did you ever dream about being a hero? Saving the world? For myself, I tended to prefer anti-heroes. Six year old me thought Quint from Jaws was way better than Superman.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because now you have your chance to fulfil those childhood fantasies and tick it off your bucket list.

All you have to do is nothing. Stay at home / socially isolate and you'll never know how many lives you might have saved, but you'll have contributed to saving them nonetheless. Even if you are not at risk, you might save the lives of people who are.

Quint remained my hero until the first time I saw Snake Plissken on TV.

People in the UK do not seem to be listening to the stay at home advice and the government is looking at emergency laws to force the issue. Yeah, watch Boris let go of those powers once he gets them. It'd be like Darth Sidious at the end of the Clone Wars.

So the beating heart of capitalism in the UK has, at least for the moment if not fully stopped then it is in critical condition. Not from the working masses as Marx predicted, but from that tiniest of living organisms (ok, you can argue on wither viruses are alive or not if you wish, but for the moment I am going with it), the germ.

How very H.G. Wells.

The other ones of these I've done have been British soldiers so far, and while there are a few more of them I'd like to cover, I thought I'd do some of the figures from the other nations involved first. This particular one was Hitler's favourite commando and although he never renounced naziism, rumour has it that he at one point worked for Mossad. It is rather a long article, but then again he had a much longer fighting career than most, continuing long after the end of the war. I have cut out a few bits to try and make it a bit shorter.

Maniacs of the second world war.

Otto Skorzeny.

After the 1939 invasion of Poland, Skorzeny, then working as a civil engineer, volunteered for service in the German Air Force (the Luftwaffe), but was turned down because he was considered too tall at 1.92 metres (6 ft 4 in) and too old (31 years in 1939) for aircrew training.He then joined Hitler's bodyguard regiment, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH).

Skorzeny took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union with the SS Division Das Reich and subsequently fought in several battles on the Eastern Front. In October 1941, he was in charge of a "technical section" of the German forces during the Battle of Moscow. His mission was to seize important buildings of the Communist Party, including the NKVD headquarters at Lubyanka, and the central telegraph office and other high priority facilities before they could be destroyed. He was also ordered to capture the sluices of the Moscow-Volga Canal because Hitler wanted to turn Moscow into a huge artificial lake by opening them. The missions were cancelled as the German forces failed to capture the Soviet capital.

In December 1942, Skorzeny was hit in the back of the head by shrapnel; he was evacuated to the rear for treatment. He was awarded the Iron Cross. While recuperating from his injuries he was given a staff role in Berlin, where he developed his ideas on unconventional commando warfare. Skorzeny's proposals were to develop units specialized in such warfare, including partisan-like fighting deep behind enemy lines, fighting in enemy uniform, sabotage attacks, etc. In April 1943 Skorzeny's name was put forward by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the new head of the RSHA, and Skorzeny met with Walter Schellenberg, head of Amt VI, Ausland-SD (the SS foreign intelligence service department of the RSHA). Schellenberg charged Skorzeny with command of the schools organized to train operatives in sabotage, espionage, and paramilitary techniques. Skorzeny was appointed commander of the recently created Waffen Sonderverband z.b.V. Friedenthal stationed near Berlin (the unit was later renamed SS Jagdverband 502, and in November 1944 again to SS Combat Unit "Center", expanding ultimately to five battalions).

The unit's first mission was in mid-1943, Operation François. Skorzeny sent a group by parachute into Iran to make contact with the dissident mountain tribes to encourage them to sabotage Allied supplies of material being sent to the Soviet Union via the Trans-Iranian Railway. However, commitment among the rebel tribes was suspect, and Operation François was deemed a failure.

On the night between 24 and 25 July 1943, a few weeks after the Allied invasion of Sicily and bombing of Rome, the Italian Grand Council of Fascism voted a motion of no confidence (Ordine del Giorno Grandi) against Mussolini. On the same day, the king replaced him with Marshal Pietro Badoglio and had him arrested.

Hitler's common procedure was to give similar orders to competing organisations within the German military. So he ordered Skorzeny to track Mussolini, and simultaneously ordered the paratroop General Kurt Student to execute the liberation.

Mussolini was being transported around Italy by his captors (first to Ponza, then to La Maddalena, both small islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea). Intercepting a coded Italian radio message, Skorzeny used the reconnaissance provided by the agents and informants (counterfeit British bank notes with a face value of £100,000 forged under Operation Bernhard were used to help obtain information) of SS-Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler to determine that Mussolini was being imprisoned at Campo Imperatore Hotel, a ski resort at Campo Imperatore in Italy's Gran Sasso massif, high in the Apennine Mountains.

On 12 September 1943, Skorzeny and 16 SS troopers joined the Fallschirmjäger to rescue Mussolini in a high-risk glider mission. Ten DFS 230 gliders, each carrying nine soldiers and a pilot, towed by Henschel Hs 126 planes started between 13:05 and 13:10 from the Pratica di Mare Air Base near Rome. The leader of the airborne operation, paratrooper-Oberleutnant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch entered the first glider, Skorzeny and his SS troopers sat in the fourth and fifth glider. To gain height before crossing the close by Alban Hills the leading three glider-towing plane units flew an additional loop. All following units considered this manoeuvre unnecessary and preferred not to endanger the given time of arrival at the target. This led to the situation that Skozeny's two units arrived first over the target. Meanwhile, the valley station of the funicular railway leading to the Campo Imperatore was captured at 14:00 in a ground attack by two paratrooper companies led by Major Otto-Harald Mors, who was commander-in-chief of the whole raid. They also cut all telephone lines. At 14:05 the airborne commandos landed their ten DFS 230 gliders on the mountain near the hotel; only one crashed, causing injuries. The Fallschirmjäger and Skorzeny's special troopers overwhelmed Mussolini's captors (200 well-equipped Carabinieri guards) without a single shot being fired; this was also due to the fact that General Fernando Soleti [it] of the Polizia dell' Africa Italiana, who flew in with Skorzeny, told them to stand down. Skorzeny attacked the radio operator and his equipment and stormed into the hotel, being followed by his SS troopers and the paratroopers. Ten minutes after the beginning of the raid, Mussolini left the hotel, accompanied by the German soldiers. At 14:45 Major Mors accessed the Hotel via the funicular railway and introduced himself to Mussolini.

Subsequently, Mussolini was to be flown out by a meanwhile arrived Fieseler Fi 156 STOL plane. Although under the given circumstances the small plane was overloaded, Skorzeny insisted to accompany Mussolini, thus endangering the success of the mission. After an extremely dangerous but successful lift-off, they flew to Pratica di Mare. There they continued immediately, flying in a Heinkel He 111 to Vienna, where Mussolini stayed overnight at the Hotel Imperial. The next day he was flown to Munich and on September 14 he met Hitler at the Wolf's Lair Führer Headquarters near Rastenburg.

The landing at Campo Imperatore was in fact led by First Lieutenant Georg Freiherr von Berlepsch, commanded by Major Otto-Harald Mors and under orders from General Kurt Student, all Fallschirmjäger (German air force paratroop) officers; but Skorzeny stewarded the Italian leader right in front of the cameras. After a pro-SS propaganda coup at the behest of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Skorzeny and his Special Forces (SS-Sonderverband z. b. V. "Friedenthal") of the Waffen-SS were granted the majority of the credit for the operation.

"Operation Long Jump" was the alleged codename given to a plot to assassinate the "Big Three" (Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt) at the 1943 Tehran Conference. Hitler supposedly gave the command of the operation to Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the RSHA, who, in turn, ceded the mission to Skorzeny. Knowledge of the whole scheme was presented to the Western Allies by Stalin's NKVD at the Tehran conference. The Soviets said they had learned about its existence from counter-espionage activities against German intelligence. Their agents had found out the Nazis knew the time and place of this meeting because they had cracked a US naval code. According to the NKVD, the assassination plot was foiled after they identified the German spies in Iran forcing Skorzeny to call off the mission due to inadequate intelligence.

Following Tehran, the story was treated with incredulity by the British and Americans who dismissed it as Soviet propaganda. Skorzeny supported this view by stating in his post-war memoirs that no such operation ever existed. He said the story about the plans being leaked to Soviet spy Nikolai Kuznetsov by an SS Sturmbannführer named Hans Ulrich von Ortel was a complete Soviet invention; Hans Ulrich von Ortel never existed. Skorzeny claimed his name was used only to add credibility to the story because the NKVD knew his renowned record as an SS commando would make the existence of such an operation more plausible.

In early 1944, Sonderverband z.b.V. Friedenthal was re-designated SS-Jäger-Bataillon 502 with Skorzeny staying on as commander. They were assigned to Operation Rösselsprung, known subsequently as the Raid on Drvar. Rösselsprung was a commando operation meant to capture the Yugoslav commander-in-chief, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, who had also recently been recognized by the Allies as the Yugoslav prime minister. Marshal Tito led the Yugoslav Partisan resistance army from his headquarters near the Bosnian town of Drvar, in the centre of a large area held by the Partisans.

Hitler knew Tito was receiving Allied support and was aware that either British or American troops might land in Dalmatia along the Adriatic coastline with support from the Partisans. Killing or capturing Tito would not only hinder this, it would give a badly needed boost to the morale of Axis forces engaged in occupied Yugoslavia. Skorzeny was involved in planning Rösselsprung and was intended to command it. However, he argued against implementation after he visited Zagreb and discovered that the operation had been compromised through the carelessness of German agents in the Nazi-affiliated Independent State of Croatia in occupied Yugoslav territory.

Rösselsprung was put into action nonetheless, but it was a complete disaster. The first wave of paratroopers, following heavy bombardment by the Luftwaffe, jumped between Tito's hideout in a cave and the town of Drvar; they landed on open ground and many were promptly shot by members of the Tito Escort Battalion, a unit numbering fewer than a hundred soldiers. The second wave of paratroopers missed their target and landed several miles out of town. Tito was gone long before paratroopers reached the cave; a trail at the back of the cave led to the railway tracks where Tito boarded a train that took him safely to Jajce. In the meantime, the Partisan 1st Brigade, from the 6th Lika Partisan Division, arrived after a twelve-mile (nineteen-kilometre) forced march and attacked the Waffen-SS paratroopers, inflicting heavy casualties.

n October 1944, Hitler sent Skorzeny to Hungary after receiving word that the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Miklós Horthy, was secretly negotiating with the Red Army. The surrender of Hungary would have cut off the million German troops still fighting in the Balkan peninsula.

Skorzeny, in a daring "snatch" codenamed Operation Panzerfaust (known as Operation Eisenfaust in Germany), kidnapped Horthy's son Miklós Horthy Jr. and forced his father to resign as head of state. A pro-Nazi government under dictator Ferenc Szálasi was then installed in Hungary. In April 1945, after German and Hungarian forces had already been driven out of Hungary, Szálasi and his Arrow Cross Party-based forces continued the fight in Austria and Slovakia. The success of the operation earned Skorzeny promotion to Obersturmbannführer.

As part of the German Ardennes offensive in late 1944 (Battle of the Bulge), Skorzeny's English-speaking troops were charged with infiltrating American lines disguised in American uniforms in order to produce confusion to support the German attack. For the campaign, Skorzeny was the commander of a composite unit, the 150th SS Panzer Brigade. As planned by Skorzeny, Operation Greif involved about two dozen German soldiers, most of them in captured American Jeeps and disguised in American uniforms, who would penetrate American lines in the early hours of the Battle of the Bulge to cause disorder and confusion. Skorzeny was well aware that under the Hague Convention of 1907, any of his men captured while wearing U.S. uniforms would be executed as spies and this possibility caused much discussion with Generaloberst Jodl and Field Marshal von Rundstedt.

A handful of his men were captured and spread a rumour that Skorzeny personally was leading a raid on Paris to kill or capture General Eisenhower, who was not amused by having to spend Christmas 1944 isolated for security reasons. Eisenhower retaliated by ordering an all-out manhunt for Skorzeny, with "Wanted" posters distributed throughout Allied-controlled territories featuring a detailed description and a photograph. In all, twenty-three of Skorzeny's men were captured behind American lines and eighteen were executed as spies for contravening the rules of war by wearing enemy uniforms.

Skorzeny spent January and February 1945 commanding regular troops as an acting major general, taking part in the defence of the German provinces of East Prussia and Pomerania, and at the Defence of Schwedt Bridgehead. On 17 March, he received orders to sabotage the last remaining intact bridge across the Rhine at Remagen following its capture by the Allies, but the bridge collapsed that same day, and the naval demolitions squad prepared instead unsuccessfully attacked a nearby Allied pontoon bridge between Kripp and Linz. Hitler awarded him one of Germany's highest military honours, the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross.

Skorzeny was interned for two years before being tried as a war criminal at the Dachau trials in 1947 for allegedly violating the laws of war during the Battle of the Bulge. He and nine officers of the Panzerbrigade 150 were tried before a US Military Tribunal in Dachau on 18 August 1947. They faced charges of improper use of US military insignia, theft of US uniforms, and theft of Red Cross parcels from U.S. POWs. The trial lasted over three weeks. The charge of stealing Red Cross parcels was dropped for lack of evidence. Skorzeny admitted to ordering his men to wear US uniforms, but his defence argued that as long as enemy uniforms were discarded before combat started, such a tactic was a legitimate ruse de guerre.

On the final day of the trial, 9 September, F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas, a former British SOE agent, testified that he and his operatives wore German uniforms behind enemy lines; the Tribunal acquitted the ten defendants. The Tribunal drew a distinction between using enemy uniforms during combat and for other purposes including deception and were unable to prove that Skorzeny had given any orders to actually fight in U.S. uniforms.

Skorzeny was detained in an internment camp at Darmstadt awaiting the decision of a denazification court. On 27 July 1948 he escaped from the camp with the help of three former SS officers dressed in US Military Police uniforms who entered the camp and claimed that they had been ordered to take Skorzeny to Nuremberg for a legal hearing. Skorzeny afterwards maintained that the US authorities had aided his escape, and had supplied the uniform.

Skorzeny hid out at a farm in Bavaria which had been rented by Countess Ilse Lüthje, the niece of Hjalmar Schacht (Hitler's former finance minister), for around 18 months, during which time he was in contact with Reinhard Gehlen, and together with Hartmann Lauterbacher (former deputy head of the Hitler Youth) recruited for the Gehlen Organization. Skorzeny was photographed at a café on the Champs Elysées in Paris on 13 February 1950. The photo appeared in the French press the next day, causing him to move to Salzburg, where he met up with German veterans and also filed for divorce so that he could marry Ilse Lüthje.

Shortly afterwards, with the help of a Nansen passport issued by the Spanish government, he moved to Madrid, where he set up a small engineering business. On April 1950 the publication of Skorzeny's memoirs by the French newspaper Le Figaro caused 1500 communists to riot outside the journal's headquarters.

In 1952 Egypt was taken over by General Mohammed Naguib. Skorzeny was sent to Egypt the following year by former General Reinhard Gehlen (who was now working indirectly for the CIA) to act as Naguib's military advisor. Skorzeny recruited a staff made up of former SS and Wehrmacht officers to train the Egyptian army. Among these officers were former Wehrmacht generals Wilhelm Fahrmbacher and Oskar Munzel; the head of the Gestapo Department for Jewish Affairs in Poland Leopold Gleim; and Joachim Daemling, former chief of the Gestapo in Düsseldorf. In addition to training the army, Skorzeny also trained Arab volunteers in commando tactics for possible use against British troops stationed in the Suez Canal zone. Several Palestinian refugees also received commando training, and Skorzeny planned their raids into Israel via the Gaza Strip in 1953-1954. One of these Palestinians was Yasser Arafat.

He stayed on to serve as an adviser to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The Israeli security and intelligence magazine Matara published an article in 1989 claiming that Skorzeny had been recruited by Mossad in 1963 to obtain information on German scientists who were working on an Egyptian project to develop rockets to be used against Israel. Reporting on the Matara story, the major Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronot said that it had confirmed the story from their own senior Mossad source. Former Mossad head Isser Harel confirmed the story that former Nazis were recruited to provide intelligence on Arab countries.

Unnamed sources asserted Skorzeny was recruited after Mossad visited his home in Spain, where he expected that he would be assassinated. After undergoing instruction and training in the Mossad's facilities in Israel, the rumoured work for Mossad included assassinating German rocket scientist Heinz Krug who was working for the Egyptian government and mailing a letter bomb which killed five Egyptians at the Egyptian military rocket site Factory 333. He also allegedly supplied the names and addresses of German scientists working for Egypt and the names of European front companies supplying military hardware to Egypt.

No confirmed source can explain Skorzeny's motives for working with Israel, but he may have craved adventure and intrigue and feared assassination by Mossad. An article featured in Der Spiegel on 22 January 2018 raised doubts as to the involvement of Skorzeny in Krug's death, stating that Mossad boss Isser Harel ordered the murder.

Went into work today and my boss accused me of having broken self-isolation and told me I'd been spotted picking up Ash from the creche on Friday (I guess in the US that would be kindergarten?). I pointed out that Ash did not attend the creche. He did have a playgroup, but that was only on Mondays and had been cancelled a few weeks ago. I also straight away called Kristi, put her on speaker and said: "Can you tell everyone what days Ash attends playgroup and when he was last there."

That seemed to settle their hash down a bit. That is the second time I've been off ill and someone has accused me of that and I get a bit irked about it. Unfortunately, whoever has done it gets anonymity, otherwise I'd be having words with them. Angry, angry words.

Because my brother is has received an organ transplant and has to be on immunosuppressant drugs to prevent rejection, his work has told him to isolate for three months.

Lucky bastard. I wish I got to stay home in my man cave for three months.

[ER]

There are a lot of stories about Skorzeny's work for the Israelis floating around out there, and I've often thought if he had a change of heart and was trying to atone for his service to a terrible cause in Nazi Germany, good for him.

I've also thought if he was only working with the Israelis to save his own life and was willing to betray his former comrades to do it, well, then he belonged in the lowest circle of Hell.

Considering the tone of his funeral and the guest list, I am leaning toward him having done it all to save his own ass.

[Alex]

Yeah, that is what I figure. Part of his work in South America appears to have been aimed at establishing a 4th reich. I could imagine Mossad threatening him to get him to work for them. I never heard of him at any time denouncing naziism. 

[Alex]

Spent a few hours chatting with a friend from Denmark reassuring her that eventually the world will return to normal. She is around the same age as me, so I pointed out a whole bunch of the s**t we'd already been through and life had kept going and then broke out my special mental image that I only use in extreme cases of really needing to make someone smile.

Every time now she thinks of that image for the rest of her life she will find herself involuntarily smiling.

[Alex]

So I went into work today and had decided to give them until lunchtime to do something before I asked a question loudly "So what are my rights if we the management don't allow us to practise social distancing and we then fall ill?"

Terry had been trying to find out some official direction, was getting nowhere and had decided that off his own authority he'd go down to minimum manning.

We were discussing this around 10:00 when Si walked in and announced that everyone non-essential was to go home. Terry said I was essential, but I talked him into letting me give the people who send me work my phone number. If they send something, then I'll go into work and do it. Otherwise, I will come in for two hours in the afternoon to do the normal daily tasks and then isolate the rest of the time.

Last night when I got home Kristi told me we were having friends round for dinner. They have a grandmother in hospital and they've been told that she doesn't have long left (non-Covid reasons), so they were stopping in to get fed on the way to go to the hospital. Anyway, we all had dinner together and gave them hugs before they left.

About five minutes after they left I said to Kristi "It has just occurred to me, that we just did an amazingly stupid thing."

"Yeah, but," she replied "They have a relative dying in hospital and won't be feeling like cooking for themselves.

"I don't disagree that it was a nice thing to do, but it was also bloody stupid of us. Two of the other members of the family who live in that house (who weren't at ours for the meal) are in isolation. We need to be smarter than this."

Anyway, it got into a bit of a circular debate at that point. It is easy to slip and forget though.

[chefzombie]

i understand wanting to help friends, but yeah, it was stupid. but then, i was stupid yesterday too, and opened the door  to give deni her bread. SHE was smart and stepped back and told me to set the bag on the porch and close the door. 

[Alex]

So today when we were discussing shift rota's it was mentioned having Barry (my immediate boss), on shift to do my job and give me a break from doing all the cover while Joe is in quarantine. I said that I'd rather do it myself as I did not trust him to be able to do my job and I'd just end up with more work fixing things if he messed them up.

Afterwards, it occurred to me that, that was a pretty damning inditement by itself. I am sure I can handle two weeks working on my own. Hell, when we were establishing this post I manned it by myself for months so it is no real biggie.

It isn't a matter of disliking Barry. He is a nice enough guy, but he is playing the system. When his time in the mob ends he will not do well in civvy street. Then again, you can play the system there too, its just a different one. Certainly not one where you get to stay on a full wage.

Right now though, I am going to make the best I can of the extra time off this whole thing is giving me. Yes it is serious, and yes there are going to be some dark times to get through before it gets better, but here is the thing. Right now, it isn't. Enjoy life while you can, cause once its gone, that is it. Unless the Buddists are right there are no second chances there.

[Alex]

First day of my minimal exposure working hours. Wither that is minimal expose to Covid, or work well I leave that up to you to decide. Certainly, I tried to balance work needs Vs risk, but you are always going to have that bias that wants not to be at work, but still get the money.

I had just gotten up around 8ish (oh the rare luxury of a mid-week lie in) when I got a text message from Joe. He lives at the far end of the street from us and his wife and one of his kids have Covid. He asked if I could pick up milk and bread for him as they were running short. Didn't expect the shop to have either of those and since Joe is a nice guy I was quite happy to go help out. I'd have even taken him some stuff out of our private stock (which I wouldn't do for everyone I work with), but the shop appeared to be almost fully stocked, so that was good. I wonder if the panic buying is over or did I just get lucky?

Anyway, dropped in a box of chocolates as a surprise for him and his family. Having the basics is all you need, but there is nothing wrong with a treat now and then. I was going to knock on his door and just leave the bag, but I started to feel paranoid that I'd gotten the wrong house, so I waited until I could see someone coming. Joe opened his window to let me know he'd pick the stuff up. He wanted to pay me (he'd put money in the frame of the other window), but I told him we could settle up once he was back at work. I may have to do some more supply runs for him in the future. Besides, money is a good way of transferring germs and my carefully horded supply of apocalypse money is mostly useless since people are only using cards at the moment.

I say mostly useless, but I could actually fill some socks with all those coins and use them to cosh anyone who tried to raid my supplies, or load them into a wrist-mounted catapult. A coin from one of them is surprisingly lethal. Especially if you clip the edges and file them down into sharper edges. The world could run out of bullets surprisingly quickly, but there will always be improvised weapons.

[ER]

Put a poisonous snake in a five-gallon bucket and threaten to toss it on anyone who comes near your stash. It's surprisingly intimidating to be faced with a viper being hurled at you.

[Alex]

Making progress writing stuff with my extra free time. Not as much as I should be doing, but I am getting there slowly. And any progress is better than none I guess. Splitting my time between three separate stories and the D&D campaign of course does not help.

First world problems eh?

Spent the day playing with Ash. He loves it when I get down on all fours and growl, chasing him through the house. He'll giggle and run until he gets cornered, and then he'll run up to me, shove my head down and climb up onto my back so I let him ride around there until he jumps off. I guess it is the simple pleasures.

Having a chill out night tonight. Kristi had an urge to go watch Maverick so it's on now.

The police in the UK have the power to split up groups now. I wonder if they will start with Coldplay?

[Alex]

Busy, busy days. I wonder what they are like?

Got Kristi a boxed set of Merrills Mauraders and using some of my time to paint them up. Got them based and the undercoat on. Still, the equipment & skin to go through. One unit isn't really enough to make an army, but I reckon her Marines will fit in for the rest just as well.

Ash and Kristi are taking a nap, so I am catching up on my quota of horror movies for the year. Got to go get ready for work soonish though. Everywhere seems quiet and empty now. If only I could have the world this way more often and it didn't take a pandemic.

The latest news in the UK is that the virus has claimed its youngest and oldest victims in the country, 18 and 102. Both had preexisting health conditions.

I have a good way of getting people wandering outside and breaking the whole self-isolation stuff. Walk up to them and cough. Just watch them panic and run home.

[Trevor]

I say mostly useless, but I could actually fill some socks with all those coins and use them to cosh anyone who tried to raid my supplies

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