Divemedic

I Don’t Think So

A man had taken some pictures while onboard an American Airlines flight. The flight was over, and he had departed the plane. The flight attendant had one of the officers prevent him from going further and made him return to the plane, so they could inspect the photos on his cell phone.

I had stepped into the jetbridge and the FA (flight attendant) had what I think was the pilot or FO (First Officer) block me from going further. Then they brought me back on the plane and the FA demanded I open my phone and show them the last several photos and then took the phone out of my hands to inspect them.

I don’t think so.

The flight attendants and the flight deck officers have authority on the plane. They do not have shit for authority off of the plane. You want to stop me from going somewhere? I don’t think so. I am not getting back on that plane without a fight, and I damned sure aren’t showing you shit on my phone. Go ahead, call the cops. I am not showing them shit, either.

Dwyer-Lindgren says that the staff cited policies about not taking photos of staff without consent, which later turned out to be untrue.

Taking pictures is not a crime, it is not reasonable to assume that someone who took a picture is committing a crime, even if that picture is of you, a flight attendant. I don’t give a shit what policies you think your company has. True or not, company policy cannot and does not grant you the authority to use force on anyone.

Try and force me to get on your plane, and we are about to have a fight, and if that means some people wind up with broken bones and some missing teeth, that is on them. I won’t be holding back. The airline will be paying my medical bills and anything else my my lawyer can come up with.

There was a case years ago where a loss prevention officer at a K-Mart tried to ‘arrest’ a woman who had just left the store, but that he believed had been shoplifting. She ran. He tackled her. It turns out that he was mistaken, but in the process of tackling her, she sustained a broken arm. K-Mart wound up paying her $12 million. Even in cases of false imprisonment, K-Mart once lost a case where loss prevention detained a woman who hadn’t stolen anything and wound up paying her $175,000 in damages when she sued.

By Divemedic, ago

Where I tackle a sacred cow

Stopping power is a myth. There, I said it. Every time there is a shooting, some yahoo comes forward to talk about how this gun or that one would be better because stopping power…

It’s bullshit. There are only four ways to stop a determined attacker:

  • A catastrophic hit to the brain or spinal cord (CNS)
  • Lower his blood pressure to the point where his brain is incapable of operating
  • A ‘mission kill’ where his body is so damaged that it can’t continue the attack (for example: damage his pelvic girdle so an attacker armed with a melee weapon can’t close the distance)
  • Convince him that he is out of the fight

Hitting the brain or spinal cord will usually end an attack. A hit to the head that misses the brain will not work. I can think of seeing at least three shootings from my years as a street medic where a bullet hit a person in the head, but didn’t penetrate into the brain. One of them was a suicide attempt. A good example of a head hit NOT taking someone out of the fight is Navy SEAL Matt Axelson. He took a bullet to the head that left his brain matter exposed, yet continued the fight.

Punch enough holes in someone’s vasculature, and they will lose blood pressure to the point where the brain is no longer being supplied with oxygen, and the person is rendered unconscious. Even a lucky shot with a small caliber like a .32 is capable of doing this- say if it hits the aortic arch and causes a transection. Sometimes it takes several hits. I have seen people take multiple hits to the torso from a .223 and stay in the fight.

A mission kill is where you damage a person’s body severely enough that they physically can’t continue the fight. Say, a hit to the pelvic girdle preventing someone from chasing you down. An excellent example of this was Kyle Rittenhouse shooting Gaige Grosskreutz in the arm. The hit not only rendered that arm as incapable of firing shots, but also made it impossible for that arm to release the handgun it was holding.

Then there is simply convincing someone that they are done. This is a well documented phenomenon where a person will be shot, and the wound is far from incapacitating, but the person simply lies down and is out of the fight.

There are people out there, however that still insist in the magical properties of this caliber or that bullet. Bullets are simple tools. They are a tool that delivers the chemical energy stored in the gunpowder to the target in the form of kinetic energy. The force with which a bullet hits the target is equal to the force that’s directed back into the shooter. It’s one of Newton’s laws- every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Any bullet that has enough power to “knock down” the target will do the same to the shooter. It is at this point that many will point to Marshall and Sanow’s work, and I will admit that I was a follower and believer in this study when it first came out.

The Marshall and Sanow “study” was fatally and egregiously flawed. The most basic flaw was “selection bias” in that the study excluded any shooting where it took more than one shot to halt the attack. So if I have a situation where I shoot someone and he doesn’t go down, so I shoot him three more times before he does, that shooting would be excluded from the study, even though that shooting demonstrated a complete failure to stop the attack.

What a bullet does is simple: the chemical energy in the gunpowder is converted to kinetic energy that is transferred to the bullet. That energy is then transferred to whatever that bullet strikes. If the object struck is a person, then physiology takes over from physics there. The damage done is dictated by how much energy was transferred to the targeted person, and what body parts of that person where targeted.

So there are a couple of things that are important in stopping an attack: the amount of energy transferred, and what part of the body that it is transferred to. Suffice it to say, you want a bullet to have enough energy to damage the body system that it strikes, and that means you want it to penetrate far enough to transfer that energy into something physiologically important. You don’t want a bullet bouncing off of the grizzly’s skull or getting stuck in a denim jacket. It does not do any good if that happens. You also don’t want that bullet to over penetrate. What ever energy that bullet has left after passing through the target is useless in stopping the target from doing things that you don’t want them doing.

You also want to work on shot placement. Hitting a right handed shooter in the left arm isn’t going to do you a bit of good.

Buy yourself a gun that you can shoot well, then spend time practicing. Load it with some high quality defensive ammunition, make sure the firearm functions well with that ammo, then practice.

Why? Because you want to keep shooting until the attack is over. That means if you have to shoot him to slide lock to stop the attack, then shoot him to slide lock. Make sure that you can hit a person-sized target 100% of the time at 10 yards, rapid fire WHILE UNDER STRESS. Make sure that you can hit a person sized target 80 percent of the time at 20 yards while under stress. Sounds easy, but studies show that shooting to this level is rare while experiencing the stress of an actual gunfight.

If you do carry a handgun, use a .38/9mm or larger if you can. If you can’t carry something that large, carrying any firearm is better than not carrying one at all.

Put good quality defensive ammo in it. Don’t worry about finding the perfect latest and greatest ammo, but do get something that is modern as well as being accurate and reliable with your chosen firearm.

Practice. A lot. At least 100 rounds per quarter at a minimum. Shooting is a perishable skill. The more you do it, the better you get at it.

To all of you 10mm or .45ACP fans: If you really believe in stopping power, then provide the physics or physiological basis for stopping power. How does it work, what causes it, why do you think your caliber is different from all of the others?

By Divemedic, ago

Veteran’s Day

It bothers my wife that I don’t take Veteran’s discounts. I don’t stand when they ask veterans to stand and be recognized. I don’t want anything for my years of service. I served because I loved the country I was serving. I do want to recognize the people I know who are veterans:

  • Dad
  • Stewart, soldier, paramedic, leader.
  • Shane, a good soldier and caring paramedic who proudly served his country and community well. His demons finally got the best of him and he became one of the 22 that day.
  • Big Country
  • Peter Grant
  • Jeff D.
  • My FIL
  • Joe, my Mexican connection. Even though you became a lifer chief and a Cowboys fan.
  • Most of my firefighter friends.
  • The friends of my youth, who served with me: Jeff, Joe, Mike, Dave, Ed, Rich, Rick the Mayor. John. Hernan
  • Chef John.

The veterans who came before me: my uncle, father, and others who wore the uniform. It was your love of country that taught me to love it as well.

So many people in my life who served with me. We wore the uniform with me: we cried together, got drunk together, and laughed together. Most of all, we served our country together. If only we had known what a gift our youth was and how soon it would disappear, followed soon afterwards by the death of the nation that we served.

Those I came to know after I served: some police, many firefighters. It is no surprise to me that those who would die to defend their country would also risk their lives to save their fellow countrymen.

I salute all of you. Each of you knows what duty, honor, and sacrifice means- something that is sadly in short supply. May we all retain that moral compass to guide us through the difficult days to come. If I missed anyone, it was not intentional. There are so many.

By Divemedic, ago

Baltimore Shooting

Officers arrived on the scene Sunday of a stabbing and shot the assailant 14 times.

It looks good to me. However, the cops are already taking criticism for the shooting. The assailant who was shot is a “community activist” who was in favor of establishing “no shoot zones.”

“I think it was overkill and it shouldn’t have went that far,” said Carlton Moorehead, the assailant’s father, who claims his son had been suffering from a mental health crisis, and that police wrongly handled the situation. He insisted that police should have tried to deescalate the situation and gotten his son mental health counseling. Nevermind the fact that he was stabbing the innocent woman, whose only crime was walking down the street while your son was getting all stabby.

The NAACP issued a statement following the video’s release, and said they would conduct their own investigation into the incident, because of course they will. After all, we need to support the rights of black men to be able to stab women in the throat without police interference.

By Divemedic, ago

I, for one, am relieved

The agency that is in charge of ensuring that our elections couldn’t be tampered with, the CISA, has declared that our election systems were, once again, completely secure. There were no shenanigans in this election. No siree, we are on the job, and can assure you that everything is in tip top shape over here. Everything is just as secure as it was in 2020, when it was revealed that the CISA was working with leftist lobbying groups and leftist corporations to lock down the most secure election ever. Ever.

If you don’t believe this, you are a threat to US security.

By Divemedic, ago

Are We Stupid?

The government is telling us that year over year inflation was 7.7% for October 2022. That is something that Biden is celebrating. Meanwhile, a dozen eggs in my neck of the woods costs $4.49, stew meat is $6.99 a pound, and ground chuck is selling at $7.99. The same week last year, eggs were $2.99, stew meat was $3.99, and ground chuck was $4.99. That is an increase of 50%, 75.1%, and 60.1%, respectively. Perhaps that is why they don’t include food when they are calculating the rate of inflation.

You will note that I didn’t include the cost of gasoline. The reason is that the oil market is being deliberately manipulated by the sale of oil from the SPR.

People are being fooled into thinking that increased prices=inflation. That isn’t the case. Inflation is caused by a currency losing value. This is reflected in higher prices, but the higher prices themselves are not inflation, they are merely a symptom of it. I expect that, now that the election is over, fuel prices will return to their true price. Still, many Americans are stupid enough not to know the difference and to continue voting for the same old people.

By Divemedic, ago

RSV, Influenza, and COVID

Joe asks in comments if I have heard anything about this article referencing a “tripledemic” of RSV, COVID, and Influenza.

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is a common respiratory virus. It usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms. RSV usually strikes children before the age of 2, and is also known to have a severe effect on those over 65 and with weakened immune systems. In the United States, nearly all children have been infected with RSV by age two. This virus has a season, and in the United States, Florida and Hawaii’s season begins in mid September, with the rest of the country’s RSV season beginning by mid-November. The incidence of RSV peaks each year by mid-winter. It is an airborne virus that can also be spread by fomites.

A fomite is a surface that is contaminated because a virus that can live for a time outside of its host is on the fomite’s surface. A person touches the fomite and then touches their face. The average person touches their face 4,000 times a day. Kids even more so. This is why frequent handwashing can be effective in preventing illness.

Influenza also has a season, as we all well know. It also strikes the immunocompromised and the elderly.

Until 2020, patterns for RSV in the United States were predictable. The patterns of RSV and other common respiratory illnesses have been messed up since the lockdowns in 2020. The number of RSV infections began to rise in the spring of 2021 and peaked in July. Why? I mean, this is usually a winter virus.

In 2020 and into 2021, there weren’t many cases of seasonal illnesses because kids were largely kept out of school during the peak RSV and flu seasons during the winter of 2020-2021. In most states not named Florida, the same happened during the 2021-2022 season, so all of the kids who would have brought the virus home to their younger siblings weren’t in school to do so. That means all of the kids born in 2019, 2020, and 2021 have not been exposed to RSV and this will create a heavier than usual RSV and flu season. It makes total sense.

The same is true of the flu. This year, the season appears to be starting a bit earlier than usual, but that is not surprising, considering what I discussed above. The past couple of years have been unusually light for the flu, and I think that we are going to have a rebound year.

So what does this mean? Nothing. Most people who get it have a bit of a cold and then soon recover.

As far as COVID: granted that this is anecdotal, but we don’t seem to be seeing any more COVID than we have been seeing for the past year, at least not in my hospital. It’s just a constant background now. I have had it twice, and I don’t even bother to wear a mask when I treat COVID patients any more. The CDC is not really reporting a high number of COVID cases right now.

I don’t think that there is anything to make a big deal out of right now. That may change, but for now I don’t think it’s anything to get in a lather over.

By Divemedic, ago

Clean Getaway

The following states mail a ballot to every single registered voter: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Washington, DC. Most other states have voting by mail, but they are absentee ballots and require that the voter request the ballot.

Picture that you are a nurse’s aid working in a nursing home. You are responsible for the care of 200 patients with dementia. You have access to their names, dates of birth, and social security numbers. You register them to vote on the state website, and list the nursing home’s address as their home. You know, to help your residents vote. It’s their right, after all.

The ballots arrive by mail. You fill them out and mail them in. They all voted a straight Democrat ticket.

In the unlikely event that it is ever investigated, there isn’t a single one of them that can testify against you. They won’t remember a thing, at least not well enough to ever prove anything.

This is how the “register online” and “vote by mail” systems are ripe for voter fraud.

By Divemedic, ago

Scary, Indeed. That’s why I am redundant

The Biden administration is openly talking about making people who believe in free speech into enemies of the state by declaring them to be a threat to US security. Jonathan expressed concern that this blog could be shut down by simply revoking my domain name. I have taken steps to make this site more resistant to being cancelled.

  • This blog has multiple domain names that are all registered with different registrars. The different registrars are either known to be friendly to the right, dedicated to free speech, or are located in other countries. The sites are: areaocho.com, sectorocho.com, and divemedic.xyz Each of those web addresses lead to this blog.
  • This site is hosted on servers in Europe and Asia. The servers are owned by overseas companies that are known to be defenders of free speech and in countries that do not support censorship, especially by US authorities.
  • If THOSE fail, I have access to an emergency server that I can point any of those addresses to. If I need that one, we have real issues.

As a SCUBA diver, you learn from the early days of your training that your gear is your life support system. You wear backup gear. You dive with a buddy, who is also a source of backup gear. As I became more experienced, I began to push the limits. As with any dangerous activity that relies on mechanical devices, I experienced equipment failures. I learned to make my gear more robust, less prone to single point failure, and more redundant.

As a firefighter, I saw and did similar things. I saw the people who suffered as a result of Katrina. I know how to make things robust. This blog and site are as robust as I can make them. If I have overlooked anything and we wind up being taken down, that is a message in itself. The message is that the time for talking is over.

The most obvious single failure point is to haul me into jail or put a bullet in me to silence me. As the Soviets used to say, VZYALI. I am a small fish. There are others who are far more visible and more likely to be disappeared than I. For that reason, I watch some of them. If they disappear or are silenced without warning, it will be time to not be where I can be found. Sound paranoid? Maybe not. Five years ago, would you have dreamed that a sitting president would call someone a threat to national security for the crime of owning a social media site?

By Divemedic, ago