HelixDab2

In re: medical -

I'm uninsured because the only insurance I had available to me at the time was about $11,000 annually if anything happened where I needed insurance (that's between the premiums, the annual deductible, and the out of pocket maximum). I have a torn rotator cuff. It was >80% torn when I got an MRI in late August. It might be fully torn now, because it doesn't hurt very much anymore. I tore it in May of this year, and yeah, it took me a few months to be able to get an MRI, and then a few weeks for them to deliver the results (even though that should have been under a week). I need surgery. I got a quote for $16,300 and managed to pony up the cash from long term savings. Then surgery was cancelled by the clinic. I rescheduled and it was sent to a hospital instead of a clinic; the new quote was $49,000. That was three weeks ago. I have another consult next week.

It's been about six months since I tore my rotator cuff. I should have been able to get in to see a doctor and get an MRI immediately, but I couldn't have afforded and ER visit on top of all of the rest of this. I don't even know if it's repairable at this point.

Complaining about long waits, given the alternative, seems really, I dunno, privileged?

In my experience--and I'm very solidly middle aged, so take that with a double handful of salt--the young women in the deep south trend fairly centrist/liberal, while the young men trend hard right. The women that tend to be Trump supporters appear to be middle aged and older, and usually don't have any significant college education.

Eh, I dunno, I'm currently really enjoying Ghosts of Tsushima, although strictly in off-line mode. And I enjoyed the first Jedi: Fallen Order, again, solely off-line.

On some level it's reasonable to say that you own shares in a mutual fund, not shares in the individual companies.

But the other side of that is that you can fairly easily see what the mutual fund is doing, and copy it, without the problematic companies. Yes, it will be less profitable, but you can do it, and you can do it without too much difficulty when you're talking about millions of dollars in investments. So it seems, I dunno, weak to say that you can't divest your own personal investments from these things. Plus, I'm pretty sure that there are at least a handful of mutual funds that entirely avoid those kind of companies in order to attract ethical investors.

Most people in the military do a basic qualification that is pretty easy to pass (23/49 targets, at ranges from 25 to 300m); these aren't head shots, these are just on the target. Once you've done that, and graduated from basic, depending on your specialty, you may rarely touch a rifle. Lots of former military people think that they're good, just because they managed a single qualification, and that they know a lot about guns, but it's often just fudd-lore. Spec ops guys and Marines tend to be more proficient overall, because they spend more time practicing. (TBH, a lot of the spec ops are very mediocre as far as competitive shooting goes, but they have a lot of other skills that are relevant to the military, and tend to refuse to give up.) Cops are often even worse; their qualifications are at short distances, with very lenient time standards.

Bear in mind that the kill-to-bullet ratio in Afghanistan was about 1:300,000; most shooting in the modern military is suppressive, rather than directed at a specific target.

Compare that to someone that's a USPSA B class shooter, or someone that regularly shoots PCSL 2 gun matches; they will tend to outshoot a lot of retired military, because they tend to practice, and practice on a shot timer, a lot.

Where o where is UniversalMonk when you want to shove something in his smarmy, trollish face...?

Without claiming outright magic [...]

...We're still talking about zombies, right? Animated corpses that have an overwhelming need to consume human flesh, and can only be killed with overwhelming brain damage? I'm pretty sure that's the definition of magic right there. If you're talking about something like the cordyceps fungi--which, to infect humans, would still need some kind of magical power--you still have a very, very finite limit on how long a 'human' will survive (about four weeks without food, give or take), so you should be able to just wait them out, rather than needing to proactively kill them.

That zombie horde will be a lot less dangerous and easy to clean up once it’s crawling on the ground with all the speed of a toddler.

Less dangerous, yes. Not not dangerous, depending on which version of zombies you're talking about specifically.

You haven't shot with people that were in the military, have you? :P

I thought that they still used them for destroying some munitions? Like, those burn pits in Iraq that caused so many cases of cancer? IDK.

You can quite legally buy them in the US though. They're pricey, but, hey, you never know, right?

You'd still need to hit each zombie individually though.

Kinda hard to walk with one leg

Zombies can and do drag themselves, or even worm their way across fields. Until the brain is destroyed, they're a threat.

25mm chain gun is probably going to mist a few bodies.

Sure, but, again, unless you hit the head, they're still a threat. And meanwhile, you've blown through a thousand rounds of ammo.

Artillery is an area denial weapon.

You can only deny area when people aren't willing to charge into it. Zombies aren't doing massed charges though; each and every zombie is Leroy Jenkins, acting entirely independently, and with zero foresight.

IMO, the most effective method weapon would be a steam roller, as long as all the mechanical parts and the operator cockpit were completely covered so that a zombie couldn't damage anything. Like, say, some of the mine removal vehicles. Moving around is going to attract the zombies, and then running them over would eliminate them.

Conventional infantry tactics don't really work against zombies. For instance, suppressing fire; you can't suppress zombies, because they don't care if they get shot, and it only matters if they get shot in the head. You can't inflict any amount of damage that's going to force a retreat. Artillery and bombs are only going to effect them if they're in the direct blast zone; shrapnel still has to penetrate the brain.

Your best bets are likely going to be napalm and flame throwers. I'm not sure how many napalm bombs the US military has, but I'm pretty sure that they don't have tons of flamethrowers.