Exactly what, pray tell? Broomsticks and hobgoblins? They are supermen with superweapons? What comic book does this come from?
This is why I have long disagreed with the faint-hearted who urge MAGA Republicans to declare defeat and surrender the Republican Party to the RINOs and struggle as a third party. The RINOs are aware that the MAGA way is the future of the GOP. Why aren't we aware? (Well, some of us are, but the defeatism and unwillingness to fight are not a good suit.)
You know very well that "DEW" on this board is shorthand for a laser weapon. Any other variant is even more rare and problematic. Microwave weapons are primarily electronic warfare systems, not kinetic kill systems. They wouldn't have any effect on physical structures. The world's most powerful DEW was the YAL-1A airborne laser (RIP), on which I worked.
Not lying at all. It is evident that I am the only DEW expert here (though I would be glad to shake hands with a fellow professional). I can provide technical and scientific information to back that up. No classified stuff, of course. But there is no question that infrared radiation is strongly absorbed by water vapor and droplets. There is no question that we cannot see through the usual kind of cloud (and storm clouds are even denser).
And there is no question that tornadoes can explode houses and buildings, having done so repeatedly in the past. One of the reasons why people run to shelter in a storm cellar. No point in holding out in a house that may explode.
This is a discussion board and people who are not experts should ask questions and learn, not get up on their hind legs and lecture to experts. I said you didn't know what "proof" you needed, and you still haven't said what it is (because you don't know). I have provided the necessary scientific information to accept what I have said about this. I don't grovel before frivolous demands for "sauce." If you are serious, you will ask an informed question.
As I am not a shill, I don't have to worry about your nonsense dreams about college debt or being paid...which I take to be a rather feeble insult.
It reiterates what I said: lasers and particle beams. (Microwaves are cool. Didn't mean to slight them.) None of which had any appearance. I said lasers cannot penetrate clouds and they can't. I designed them and analyzed their performance. Particle beams can barely penetrate air. MIcrowaves are okay, but they don't have power levels that would produce explosive effects.
The easiest way for the building to be destroyed was for a tornado to pass over it. The differential air pressure is explosive (as I and others have pointed out).
You wouldn't know "credible sauce" if it stamped all over you. Since you know nothing about actual DEWs, you don't know what "sauce" would mean. Half the time on this board, the demand for sauce is entirely frivolous, because the demander doesn't even know what he wants---he just wants to make an impossible challenge. In your case, you reject expert knowledge. Infrared laser radiation is strongly absorbed by water vapor and even more by water droplets. Clouds are essentially impassible. And---clue for the wise---you can't see through clouds...and if you can't see, your targeting sensors can't see either. Ever shot at a target that you can't see? You must be a real fun guy to have on a midnight grouse hunt.
Besides, you have the burden of proof to establish that it was not natural phenomena. And proof is a hell of a lot more than sophomoric speculations about what might be possible with magic weapons.
Just a wild thought. I've read elsewhere that the military may supervise the 2024 election, with paper ballots---and individual identification as U.S. citizen. But what if the ballots were write-in? No dots. No chads. No segregation by party affiliation. A written-in name. No problem for a voter, but a huge logistical problem for any cheaters. And write-ins cannot be legally prohibited respecting persons. If someone is not on the ballot ( ! ), one can always vote for them as a write-in. What do you think?
You want to play with word games? Go ahead. It won't change the fact that DEW stands for directed energy weapon, i.e., laser or particle beams. Particle beams were proven impractical in the 1980s.
Rocket-triggered lightning (as shown) is just another form of lightning rod. How do you propose to shoot a rocket to the ground and deliberately hit anything? That requires a guidance and control system and a targeting system to find the target. Do you realize how large such missiles are? Happy landings if the rocket takes a lightning bolt before it hits the ground. You are aware that airplanes must take special measures to dissipate lightning strikes while they are in the air? The province of a wild tantasy is that it doesn't correspond to anything that would be designed.
The end result is that neither DEWs nor rockets were present at a tornado, and tornadoes result in such drastic ambient pressure drops that houses will "explode" from the pressure the air still in them.
They made their bed and they lay in it. The alternative was the Communist Party. It was the fact that these were the only alternatives that lay at the feet of the public, which points out the public's responsibility to have had better choices. (There was also a kind of Bolshevik revolution before the end of the war that deposed the Kaiser and installed the Weimar Republic. There was also no unified national polity. There are all kinds of excuses, but no other responsibility.)
Read more about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He conceived his duty before Russia and God to "tell the truth" or to "combat the Lie." He was only one man. Did he think he would prevail? They suppressed him. They exiled him, because he was drawing too much attention. But he prevailed. He returned. His masterwork, "The GULag Archipelago," is now required reading in Russian high schools (thanks to Vladimir Putin).
Solzhenitsyn simply brushed past the flimsy excuses for victimhood and accepted responsibility to combat the Lie. That's what we need to do.
I am with you on this point, which I have been belaboring for some time. We are up against mass psychosis, which is characterized by a disconnection from reality. The "shock treatment" is another way of saying "cognitive dissonance," where the perception of reality clashes with the conception of reality. Generally, perception will prevail, which usually means that the conceptual framework is destroyed. Not a happy time, but fully recoverable. It's better than hitting an iceberg. (I suppose some people will have melt-downs, but those are fully self-chosen. They will need a diet of Jordan Peterson videos.)
Disregard the mainstream media. This is a world in which word-of-mouth is supreme. Talk up the movie. Urge people to see it. The more who see it---and the more who discuss it---will form the nucleus of a Cultural Moment, and outsiders will feel awkward not being part of it. (There should be a pin saying "I've seen Sound of Freedom. Have you?") Especially if the conversation includes the consensus that the news media is telling a biased and fake account of the movie...that you have to see it "to understand what we're talking about." People who haven't seen it, and express opinions, should be sharply dismissed as not knowing what they are talking about.
Remember, in a polity it is NEVER necessary to obtain a consensus among a "majority". It is only necessary to obtain a consensus among the LARGEST MINORITY. Which is always possible, if you are patient and willing to accumulate member by member.
But I would take a sterner look and see that they are NOT good people. They are dishonest cowards who are afraid to disown perversion. What does "good" mean? That they like butterflies and pastel colors? No, it means that they are committed to truth and human (i.e., non-predatory) behavior. They cannot avert their eyes and be committed to truth. They cannot be indifferent to child exploitation and be committed to non-predatory behavior. They would be morally grey at best, and pathetic at least.
They may be worth some sharp words. The time has come to decide for or against the truth, and against evil the truth wounds. Will we shrink from speaking the truth? Only we can decide.
No, I blame those who bear ultimate responsibility for their own terrible plight, for not stepping up when it would have made an easier difference. I don't absolve anyone of anything. Too many dead people for that.
But you are taking up the mantle of "we're victims---we're not responsible," which is the least honest take I've seen this week. Every drunken driver who is killed in a car crash is at least a victim---of his own folly. Unlike some people here, I don't celebrate the doom of the foolish, but I do lament it.
You need to get your antecedents straight. I am with "289m". "They" (whoever they are) are a figment of your imagination ("discrediting the truth"). In this case, the truth is that there are no DEWs at play, So those who say they are, are "they"---which would be you.
A little bit of knowledge is productive of confusion, as exemplified here. Yes, there are DEWs---of limited capability and application. No, there are no DEWs at play in natural and man-made catastrophes that are easily explained with conventional causes. Hyperventilating and speculation are not a basis for the discernment of the truth. An emotional need for exotic technology to be involved is even less a basis for the discernment of truth.
Where's the "doom" if there are no DEWs at play? You are not making sense.
Fact. What do you think clouds are? They block the passage of light. In our design activity, we took it for granted that attempting to engage below 30,000 feet (tropopause) was not a likely case, since that was the typical height of clouds. We had very detailed beam propagation models. Even ordinary air would limit co-altitude propagation from ambient humidity. Engaging ground targets was an amusement to consider, but did not constitute any actual threat objective. Why bother, when you had artillery?
Water clouds would soak up a power beam in a matter of kilometers, or less at lower power. Smoke clouds would stop it dead. And there is the little problem that if you cannot see your target, you cannot shoot at it.
So, yeah, my career at doing DEW weapon design and analysis trumps the complete lack of sauce for your speculation.
Depends also on conductivity, which is largely invisible to assess. And has a lot of influence on successive strikes.
The public has the power of free speech and popular elections. One can argue that these freedoms are imperiled, but that is no argument to give up in unilateral defeat. Think about it: All this started going to hell when our freedom was intact, the news was halfway honest, and the elections were mostly legitimate. Where were the conservatives? Some were trying hard, but fewer were running for school board or municipal offices. I think it was Plato who said "The price of good men not being involved in public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
And nearly 100% went along with it. What is your point? That the German population is not responsible for Hitler? Sorry. In a notional democracy, the electorate is responsible. Responsibility means they inherit the consequences of their collective decision.
I cut the Russians some slack. There is no basis for thinking the Bolsheviks gained control democratically. They conquered a resisting population through a civil war.
You basically prove my point. If the cowardice is so prevalent and overpowering that people are not compelled to force of arms to defend their rights---then all this talk about a fully-armed nation is so much posturing garbage. No teeth. No guts.
We are not at that point yet...but we are getting close. No, there is no excuse. What prevented conservative parents from dominating the school parents' presence in our society? Were their family woes so huge and unique? No, they just decided to let it be someone else's concern. I saw the same thing in my union experience at my employer. It was no surprise that the union was run by activists who were dominantly left-liberal-socialist in their views. Nearly every other engineer was conservative and would complain about this. I would ask, "Well, then, why don't you run for Council Representative? We need people to fill vacancies." And the answer was, "Nah, I don't have the time to be interested in that." At which point I would burn their ass with a scolding for just being a carper who didn't want to do anything to solve the problem. They didn't like that. But this is the way that self-righteous conservatives turn themselves into cultural and political zeroes.
Thins are not as bad as Nazi Germany, so that is no excuse for anyone chickening out and keeping his head down. The people who went along with the "mandatory" vax were functional idiots who couldn't tell the difference between life and death. Now, they get death. Just look at the statistics. I've read that over 90% of the current Covid fatalities come from the vaxxed. That's too bad, but it just underscores the fact that we are the authors of our own destruction, if we simply go along and comply.
Babylon Bee. Nothing here, walk on. (Any doctor who would countenance removal of a CPAP machine from a patient with sleep apnea would be guilty of malpractice. This is just pulling your leg.)
Lightning strikes where the electrical potential is high. (There is a school of thought that they originate from the ground, notwithstanding the prejudicial mental conditioning that they flow downward.) This can be affected by structures (poles, antennae, towers) or highly conductive surfaces. My family had a lightning strike on our TV aerial into our TV set. Quite the amazing flash out the backside of the vacuum-tube TV, woggle of the image, but all was well afterward.
And you go along with the fantasy that it exists, so they have succeeded after all.
Were there clouds? No DEW can penetrate clouds, anon. Besides which, tornadoes have been bursting houses for centuries of recorded events.
The low external pressure means the pressure inside the house is sufficient to burst the house. Atmospheric pressure (100%) is about one ton per square foot. If the tornado produced an environment of only half normal air pressure, a 10-square foot of wall panel would be subjected to 5 tons (10,000 pounds) of force. Don't disdain the forces of nature.
More absurdity.
Just remember, a painting is not a photograph. It can be a work of fiction, but it is always a work of interpretation. Just because it can be congruent with a fantasy does not mean the fantasy is true. It does not even mean the artist shares the fantasy.
There is a divine connection. I am mindful of the formulation that I think first appeared in the Book of Isaiah: "I shall be your God, and you shall be my people." The parallel might be "I shall be your native son, and you shall be my people." A mixture of kinship bond, loving fellowship, and a sense of duty toward all.
Another resonance is with the phrase from the movie "Excalibur" (1981): "The Land and the King are One"---that there is a metaphysical link between a land and its sovereign, such that if there is prosperity with the one, there will be prosperity with the other, and likewise malady. This is more mystical, but it resonates with the feeling that one's well-being is absolutely linked with the well-being of one's native land and people. We are not solitary islands. We are human beings. If one can say, "To Hell with the others," that is not a basis from which to expect patriotism.
And also the love of the symbols of our native (or adopted) land, because of what they symbolize. Siegel and Shuster did not do badly to cite "truth, justice, and the American way" as being the guiding ethic of Superman, the ultimate adopted immigrant. In some sense, as Americans, we should live to a higher calling, than being merely ourselves.
Vacuous and fixated at the same time. Drugs. Neurosis. Both are possible today. Never underestimate the human capacity to be inhuman.