You know how people are always talking about Ft. Knox being really secure? Well, here is the civilian equivalent!

Iron Mountain Inc is a company specializing in data storage. The best known Iron Mountain storage facility is a high-security cave in a former limestone mine at Boyers, Pennsylvania near the city of Butler in the USA.

It has been in operation since 1950, and it is here that Bill Gates stores his Corbis photographic collection in a refrigerated cave 220 feet underground.
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Here is an amazing clip of a small plane crash landing in California when one of it’s landing gears refused to function properly. Funny thing is, there wasn’t really any “crash” in the landing.

What makes this especially interesting is that someone apparently got another plane up in the air in time to film what was going on, and they did a really good job of capturing the entire event.

POINT MUGU, California
Monday Jul 30, 2007
A twin-engine turboprop aircraft with its left main landing gear stuck in the up position skidded to a safe landing at a Navy air station Monday.Twelve people were aboard.

The civilian Grumman G-159 was on a shuttle flight from the military’s San Nicolas Island to Point Mugu.

The Phoenix Air plane carrying nine passengers and three flight crew members circled for about an hour to burn off excess fuel.

The airplane came in with its left engine feathered — the propeller slowly turning — and it set down gently before settling onto its left wing, then skidded to its left off the runway and onto an unpaved area.

Everyone aboard jumped out of the aircraft as fire trucks sprayed the craft.
There was no fire and the plane appeared to be repairable.

San Nicolas is a Navy-owned island off Southern California. The plane is leased to shuttle military personnel and civilian workers between the mainland and the island.

Point Mugu Naval Air Station is part of the Navy base in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles.

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This is an old clip of a study of the effects of LSD on combat troops. It appears to be from around the 1940’s, and I don’t have any clue where it came from originally. But its mildly amusing to see a bunch of highly trained killing machines walking around aimlessly and falling over laughing.

LSD is typically delivered orally, usually on a sugar cube or in some sort of food product, so I’m guessing they were trying to determine how they could weaponize it by contaminating an enemy’s water supply or food supply. One surefire way to win is to make the other side not care if they fight any longer!
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Came across this great short film about Mutually Assured Destruction. It’s not really a political commentary or anything, it’s just funny.

Be forewarned however that this one is NOT for the kiddies. Plenty of really bad language in this. Still, you’ll be laughing your A– off mates.

PS – Watch out for those nasty kangaroos!
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You don’t ever want to be sitting on a beach and see this heading your way… unless they are coming to rescue you!

Can someone please tell me why the Russians are taunting the British by flying bomber/reconnaissance planes to the border of British airspace?

With relations between Russia and Britain deteriorating, the number of incidents in which Russia’s submarines have been found close to British shores or in contact with Royal Navy warships has also risen, reports said yesterday. London’s Daily Telegraph said there was a suggestion Russia could be testing the West’s air detection systems and response times.

Diplomatic tensions between London and Moscow — already stretched by the murder in London of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko — intensified as the Bear bombers headed towards Britain. It was the first time Russian bombers had threatened to penetrate British airspace since President Vladimir Putin indicated, with no little chutzpah, that he had ordered his bomber force to resume long-range patrols around the world.

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It’s hard to believe that it’s been 18 years since the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the legendary “tank man”. But this month marks the anniversary, and given that enough time as passed that a new generation has been born and without hearing about it I thought I’d give a little reminder surrounding events of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

Although it is believed that Chinese troops under orders from the communist leadership massacred thousands of people, the event was immortalized in Western media by the famous video footage and photographs of a lone man in a white shirt standing in front of a column of tanks. This man has come to be known as “Tank Man” around the world.

He reportedly said, “Why are you here? You have caused nothing but misery.” As the tank driver attempted to go around him, the “tank man” moved into the tank’s path. He continued to stand defiantly in front of the tanks for some time, then climbed up onto the turret of the lead tank to speak to the soldiers inside. After returning to his position blocking the tanks, the man was pulled aside by onlookers who perhaps feared he would be shot or run over.
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Thanks to Steve for finding and sharing this with me. Also, thanks to United Airlines for taking care of our Marine Corps to the very end.

People need to remember that the US Marines live to protect freedom.

They are deployed by politicians and they execute on commands to the very last man, without question. You can be for, or against, this or any other war but you owe your freedom as an American to a dead Marine somewhere.
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I recently acquired a bad ass treadmill as part of an effort to get back in shape (more on that later), and I went searching for some USMC cadence recordings to listen to while I run on it. They were harder to find than I thought they would be, so I figured I would share them here in case anyone would like to hear them.

These work songs are sung while a platoon is running in formation and let me tell you – they are motivational. When you hear 80 sets of boots pounding the ground in unison while 80 Marines sing cadence it is a site to behold.
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Although China will be hosting the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee meeting in April, that didn’t keep them from making the colossal mistake on January 11, 2007 of firing an anti-satellite rocket at an old piece of space junk, shattering it into at least 1,000 new pieces of debris now in orbit around the planet.

Space was already so cluttered that scientists live in fear of a chain reaction which will make launching vehicles nearly impossible. They claim that there is already so much floating around that it’s a matter of when, not if, pieces will begin colliding – creating more pieces – and eventually forming an impenetrable belt around the planet.
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Imagine a weapon that can fire 16,000 rounds per second, that’s nearly 1 Million rounds per minute! At this rate an enemy target basically has a wall of supersonic lead coming right at it, and the effect is simply devastating.
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Say hello to the newest weapon in the US Military’s arsenal. The good news? It’s non-lethal! The bad news? If you get hit by it you’ll wish you were dead until it stops. :-)

The new Active Denial System which produces what experimenters call the “Goodbye effect,” or “prompt and highly motivated escape behavior.” In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.
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