Fighting and writing workshop, day 5 and 6: military fight scenes

This is the online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.

Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.

Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.

So, here is day five and six.... Day five was merely an assignment. Day six was more interesting.

 Day Five: Putting It Together

 

At this point, you should have an idea of what you're doing. Take assignments three and
four, and put them together. Whether you start from a weapon and go to hand-to-hand, or vice versa, is up to you. This is the assignment.

Like with most writing, practice makes perfect. So don't be discouraged if you're not writing full-scale battle choreography by now.

 

Day Six: Writing For Military Fights

 

Writing a military fight scene is no different from any other, when you get down to it. Do some research on terms, maneuvers, etc., but don't overstress that part. It's mostly just a matter of vocabulary.

But, seriously, there's little difference from warfare fighting.

Character: In describing filming for Lord of the Rings, and the Battle of Helm's Deep, director Peter Jackson discovered a basic law of fight scenes – Jackson had hours upon hours of stuntmen beating

each other to a pulp, but the battle was boring when the camera was not on the primary characters.

The important thing you need to know is, no matter what, you need to focus on the individuals involved. The more modern your setting, the more things are done by groups of individuals, squads and fire teams, and not massive lines of fire, one against another.

However, no matter how many people you have fighting whatever enemy, you need to have individuals the audience can focus on and care about. Writing about a line of tanks is boring. Writing about someone the audience has met, and is invested in, is much, much better.

For great examples of this, read the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell – he has, on average, about six players in any battle that he focuses on, as well as a massive, historical battle taking place.

 

Setting: If you want to focus on a full-scale battle, in whatever age and setting, one thing you'll
want to focus on is the field of battle. You're going to want to focus on the sounds, and the sights, perhaps even the smells. You want to recreate it as though the battlefield is a character. A loud, monstrous, messy, rampaging character, with lots of property damage.

The best I've ever seen of this type of recreation is John Keegan's The Face of Battle, where he recreated the battlefields of Agincourt, Waterloo, and Verdun.

 

Hand-to-hand combat and weapons:
Depending on the scenario, military battles do not start with close combat, unless it's a type of covert infiltration, where getting in close and killing people silently is important. And, let's face it, the use of weapons will vary wildly depending on what time period and setting you're using. For the most part, it boils down to individuals.

Fighting and writing workshop, day 5 and 6: military fight scenes

This is the online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.



Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.



Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.



So, here is day five and six.... Day five was merely an assignment. Day six was more interesting.

 Day Five: Putting It Together

At this point, you
should have an idea of what you're doing. Take assignments three and
four, and put them together. Whether you start from a weapon and go
to hand-to-hand, or vice versa, is up to you. This is the
assignment.

Like with most
writing, practice makes perfect. So don't be discouraged if you're
not writing full-scale battle choreography by now.

Day Six: Writing For Military Fights

Writing a military
fight scene is no different from any other, when you get down to it.
Do some research on terms, maneuvers, etc., but don't overstress that
part. It's mostly just a matter of vocabulary.

But, seriously, there's little
difference from warfare fighting.

Character: In
describing filming for Lord
of the Rings, and the
Battle of Helm's Deep, director Peter Jackson discovered a basic law
of fight scenes – Jackson had hours upon hours of stuntmen beating
each other to a pulp, but the battle was boring when the camera was
not on the primary characters.

The
important thing you need to know is, no matter what, you need to
focus on the individuals involved. The more modern your setting, the
more things are done by groups
of individuals, squads and fire teams, and not massive lines of fire,
one against another.

However, no matter how many people you
have fighting whatever enemy, you need to have individuals the
audience can focus on and care about. Writing about a line of tanks
is boring. Writing about someone the audience has met, and is
invested in, is much, much better.

For great examples
of this, read the Richard Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell – he
has, on average, about six players in any battle that he focuses on,
as well as a massive, historical battle taking place.

Setting: If you want to focus on
a full-scale battle, in whatever age and setting, one thing you'll
want to focus on is the field of battle. You're going to want to
focus on the sounds, and the sights, perhaps even the smells. You
want to recreate it as though the battlefield is a character. A
loud, monstrous, messy, rampaging character, with lots of property
damage.

The best I've ever seen of this type of
recreation is John Keegan's The Face of Battle, where he
recreated the battlefields of Agincourt, Waterloo, and Verdun.

Hand-to-hand
combat and weapons:
Depending on the scenario, military battles do not start with close
combat, unless it's a type of covert infiltration, where getting in
close and killing people silently is important. And, let's face it,
the use of weapons will vary wildly depending on what time period and
setting you're using. For the most part, it boils down to
individuals.

Fighting and writing workshop, Day 4: Guns in Fighting.

This is the online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.



Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.



Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.



So, here is day four.

***

Day 4: Guns in Fighting.

There are more weapons in Heaven and Earth than there are in Thomistic philosophy. However, guns seem to be the magic weapon that everyone uses, and uses badly.

With any weapon you decide to use, make certain that you have a basic
knowledge of these weapons, even if it's merely researching them
online. This day will also assume that you've never even seen a gun
up close and personal – perhaps an erroneous presumption, but I'm
not going to assume everyone knows guns. If you have do know things
about guns, please bring it up.

Weapons are tools. Knives do more than stab people. Lead pipes do more than club people over the head. And guns do more than shoot people. Don't get me

wrong, guns are great. But if you're writing for someplace like New York, guns are not readily available to the general populace. 

 

Remember Day One,writing the rules for the culture on fighting? Now you know why we
bothered.

Everything in a fight has to feel fast-paced, as we said before. But when you introduce a weapon into any scenario, the characters and the writing have to move fast. Or at least intelligently. What do I mean by this? I mean that no one is going to outrun a bullet – the best they can do is be faster than the trigger finger of the person targeting them – but finding cover, providing distractions, and

shooting elements of the setting or other uses of the gun.

In actuality, gunfights are not like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie – if someone is moving in a straight line, a smart gunman will lead the target. However, smart gunmen do not use fully-automatic fire in extended bursts. Firing a full magazine of ammunition on full automatic will not lead to a stream of bullets that come out in a straight line, but will cause the muzzle of the gun to jerk around like a spastic mime having an epileptic fit. In a gun battle, at a distance, even slight deviations of the gun's barrel will cause bullets to go wildly off course.

Then again, stupid things happen with guns. The average shootout with the police takes place at a distance of nine feet, but three out of every four bullets will miss, mainly because everyone is popping in and out of cover, snapping off shots and hoping they'll hit something.

Again, now is not the time for technical terms. If you're writing for a medieval setting, or a fantasy setting, if specific parts of specific weapons are going to come into play, you may want to introduce them before the fight even begins. And, if you're using a technical detail of a gun that only people who field-strip their own weapons would know, don't discuss it in the middle of a fight. A previous example has been the Lee Child model, where his character Jack Reacher describes how a fight will turn out and why, before the first punch was even thrown. You can have such discussion then, but when the bullets start flying, try not to dwell too much on the pieces and parts.

You can, however,  have a technical analysis as the hero/ine is taking cover, and thinking about what to do next. If the pieces of the gun are important to the solution, and you can provide a “lull” in combat (if that's how one can describe taking cover while being shot at),then by all means, make it relevant. However, you do not want to give the vital statistics on a gun in mid-battle. In fact, you mightnot want to go into it at all.

The most anyone needs to know about most guns might include:

Ammunition capacity: Do not use Hollywood forever shooters. You will want to reload – if only because it's more thrilling to have a count of how many bullets your hero/ine doesn't have. (Would the end of Die Hard work at all if John McClane had had a full magazine left, instead of just two bullets?)

Type of ammunition: This only matters for level of impact, and penetration. If it's a .22-caliber from a handbag pistol, you can stop if with a pocket Bible. If it's a .45-caliber, you will stop someone if only from the shock value (no one takes an impact from a .45, rolls into a doorway, and returns fire. It's gonna suck to be that person). If it's a .50-caliber handgun, you can disable engine blocks and amputate limbs. If you're writing science fiction, ammunition type is doubly important. 

Type of gun: Revolvers, pistols, assault weapons, submachine guns, hunting rifles, and machine guns all have different strengths, ranges, weaknesses, and abilities inherent in the type of gun. You will not put a bayonet on a pistol, and no one should try to rob someone with a sniper rifle.

Length of weapon (optional): many handguns make for great blunt-force weapons.
 

Appearance: I'm a very visual reader. There are some guns that are very visually distinct: a FAMAS assault rifle looks nothing like an M-16, which looks nothing like an Uzi, which looks nothing like an H&K G-11, which looks nothing like an AK-47. However, there are a lot of knockoffs that resemble M-16s, AK-47s, and Uzis. You don't need make, model, and serial number; just say “it looked like X, Y, or Z” gun, unless you want to go into more detail.

In essence, you can boil down someone's handgun to “short-barreled .22-caliber revolver,” or “a semi-automatic that looked more like a hand cannon” (for an example of this, look up the image of a “Desert Eagle” .50 caliber.)

 

Note:
Please remember that Kevlar is not a magic shield. At best, it will take that small metal object going at hundreds of feet per second, and redistribute its force so that your character will essentially feel like s/he's being slapped with sheet metal at ten miles an hour.
 

Assignment #4: Choose Your Weapon.

 

Take your setting, hero/ine and the enemy from assignment #3. Pick a weapon and put it into a fight between the two. It does not have to be a gun (for thoughts on weapons, and improvised weapons, check the “How To” article link in the initial documents packet). It doesn't matter if your hero has the weapon, or your villain does. It doesn't matter if the weapon was found at the fight location, or if it was brought.

If your hero does not have a weapon to start with, they will need to disarm the bad guy and/or find their own weapon.

Youcan check the how-to article again to at least get the principles for gun and knife disarms, though the principle is mostly based in common sense – don't get in the way of the weapon.

Remember, you do not need to have anyone killed, even if you're using a gun in the scene. Guns can shoot the environment, make people flinch, duck, or buy the characters time.

Fighting and writing workshop, day 3: Writing Fight Technique

This is my online workshop in writing fight scenes that I did for the Catholic Writer's Conference.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.



Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.



Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.



So, here is day three.

****

 Day Three: Now, Let's Talk About Writing Fight Technique.

There are a lot of basic moves that you
don't need to describe too much. Most kicks and punches are like
that, for example. You don't necessarily require a full description
on a “forward vertical defensive kick” (as seen in the article on
how to throw a stop kick) – you can just write “X kicked Y in the
chest the way a fireman would kick down a door.” It's the same kick, just a less technical way of writing it. 

 Speed of attack: keep in mind that most fights don't even last for five seconds. A kick to the groin, a punch to the throat, and it's game over. Even a fight with a weapon can only last so long. Fighting over a knife will ensure that all sides get cut, and someone will be hurt in short order.

And, keep in mind, fighting is hard work. Even something as simple as punching is going to take a lot out of someone. If you don't believe me, go hit a punching bag for a minute. Punch it, kick it, headbutt it if you like, but do it at full speed, as hard as you can. You're going to find that it is very, very hard work. After the initial burst of energy, you're going to slow down after thirty seconds. Stamina should not be important in a fight, because most fights shouldn't last very long.

Another element to keep in mind: the enemy is also reacting. We don't need three-dimensional chess with hand-to-hand combat, but we also have to remember that (for example) kicking someone between the legs (even if they're feeling no pain), will still force the body to lean forward, and that opens up possibilities. If we punch someone, their head will go back. If we feint, they become defensive, preferably where we don't want them to be

If you're going to have a long fight scene, it should be for a good reason. Either it's a war—in which case it's perfectly understandable—or there are multiple attackers, or both participants are very, very well-trained.

 

Yes, you can have a half-page of description for something that takes only a split second. You can have all of the technical details down cold, but you must at least convey to the audience the speed. And, even if you don't go into exacting, excruciating detail for your audience, you should at least know the mechanics, so you know what you're doing. Don't be insulted – trust me, I used to do that a lot.

If you like, look at the fights scenes of Lee Child's character Jack Reacher. He'll give a half-page dissertation on something like the tactical usefulness of a headbutt, or he will work out a fight, chess-like, before the first punch is thrown. He then does it, writes a few lines of the enemy's reaction, and keeps going.

Note: If you have formal training, or have practical experience in a self-defense system or martial art, realize that high kicks, spin kicks, or any kick that goes above the hip can pose a danger in a real fight. In a real close-combat situation, there are no rules, and there is no tapping out. This may sound patronizing, but trust me, there are plenty of people who try to use fancy moves they learn on a gym mat and try to use the same moves on concrete. It doesn't end well, sometimes.

Assignment
#3: Writing Hand-to-Hand Technique

Look at the various articles assigned here: http://shar.es/giQgA.
Choose at least one technique. Do not worry about plagiarizing; there are only so many ways to describe some moves.  All that I require is that you use one element of one described technique over the course of your fight scene.

 

Step 1: Set up the fight, be it a mugging, or something with a minor villain, what have you. Write out a full technical description of what your character will do – not only with the technique, but most importantly with what comes next. (Continue to fight, to run, et al). How does the other combatant react/reply? 

Step 2: Give reasons for their actions, and how it fits with your character.

Step 3. Repeat step one, only take the entire technique and condense it.  Boil the technique into only a paragraph, at most. Now that you know what your character is doing, there's no reason to belabor the point for your audience. You can go into great detail, if it's an obscure method, or if you have a style similar to Lee Child, described above. You don't have to do one or the other in your writing, but you should at least be able to do both.

Please note: when writing your fight scene, be certain that you, and your readers, can keep track of
what side everyone is on. Even professional writers of military fiction, like Bernard Cornwell, will occasionally leave out details like “Character Y is blocking with the sword and hitting with the empty hand, and kicking someone else …. what direction  are all of these people coming from!!

Fighting and writing workshop, Day 1: fighting, your characters, and your world

As I mentioned, two weeks ago I said I was going to host an online forum workshop in writing fight scenes -- it was loosely based on one of my own blog posts. It just spun out of control.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.



Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.



Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.



So, since this workshop screwed over my blog posts last week, I figure that I should get some use out of it.



This was the first day.

***

Day One:
Fighting, Your Characters, and Your World.

Before one even gets to writing a fight
scene, you have to answer multiple questions, not only about you
character, but about the world s/he inhabits.

For example: if your main character is
a civilian in the modern world, not only do you have laws to contend
with, but a question of training.

Start with a situation. Your character
is mugged. Some strung-out druggie who needs a fix wants your
character's money. This character has a feeling that things are going
to end badly no matter what s/he does. It is time to resist.

But then you have a problem before you
even get to the technical aspects of writing a fight. Why would your
character know how to fight?

Family – is fighting in the family
business? Mercenary, samurai, knight, military family?

Culture – does your world resemble
Sparta 2.0? Are there laws against fighting? For fighting? Is
dueling outlawed or celebrated?

Profession – is your character a
SEAL? An enthusiastic reservist?

Sports: Does your character like MMA?
Wrestling? Target shooting? Hockey? Soccer? Any of these can be
adapted to create the realities of a fight scene.

Hobbies: Your character may be nothing
more than a smart, reasonable person who believes in self defense.
S/he may also be a ballerina who can launch a nasty spin kick because
that's what s/he did in Swan Lake – don't laugh, it works
for actresses Jennifer Gardner and Summer Glau. S/he may have taken
capoeira because s/he thought it was only a dance class. If
s/he likes to fire off a hundred rounds a week at the local shooting
range, why not? Even the basics of handling a gun can be useful.

As an example, you can check outseveral characters from one of my books.

Now, fight scenes do not necessarily
require fisticuffs. Running away is a good, reliable tactical
maneuver. Your character can always run.

Why does this matter? Establishing your
character's own style of fighting is perfectly reasonable, otherwise,
you have fight scenes that you've stolen from action movies … Yes,
I've done that. Then I took a real self defense system, and I'vesince rewritten every last one scene.

Assignment
#1

1) What are the cultural
rules/legalities of your world when it comes to fighting? In modern
settings, these laws vary by country, and even by state. In New
York, if you defend yourself against an armed mugger, laws can be
used to prosecute you. In Texas, if you defend yourself, you get a
medal.

2) If your character had to fight, how
would they do it? What is the style of fighting your character uses?
It can be straight up punching and kicking, or furious punching and
gouging, or something more informal like Krav Maga, or much more
formal, like Tae Kwan Do. Does your character fight with improvised
weapons, or instead use traps and trickery to dispose of the
adversary? Or (also acceptable) do they run away until they can find
a solid position to fight from?

3) Why does your character know that
system of fighting? If you're writing the character of a Navy SEAL,
that's one thing. If it's the civilian offspring of a military
family, that's another. Does a family member teach the fight system?
Was it something they thought was cool when they were twelve? Did
they read too many thrillers growing up? Did they take ballet, or
soccer, or football – something with a lot of kicking?

Fighting and writing workshop, from the Catholic Writer's Conference: Introduction

Two weeks ago, I had mentioned that I was going to be hosting an online forum workshop in writing fight scenes, for the Catholic writer's guild.  Karina Fabian had managed to draft me ... or I volunteered, I'm not entirely certain.  Either way, it was an interesting little experience.



Since most of you folks have been with me for a while, I'm going to give it to you.



Don't worry, I wasn't paid for this, so giving this away for free will hurt no one. And, few to no people wanted to show up and play with my workshop, even though there were over 25 viewers for each post.  But, I've been told few people showed up anyway for the forums, something to do with schedule confusion.



So, since this workshop screwed over my blog posts last week, I figure that I should get some use out of it.



This is how I began.

*****

Introduction: Writing a fight scene –
Who or what is a “John Konecsni,” and why does he get to tell me
about fighting?

It's a good question, and one that
needs to be answered before many of you begin this workshop. I have
been writing fight scenes since I was sixteen. I've written many
novels, most of which fester on my home computer, and that I
constantly revise the more I learn about life, the universe, and how
to better destroy both. I grew up wanting to write thrillers and
science fiction military novels, and I originally thought the best
way to go about having a fast-moving novel was to have as many fight
scenes as often as possible. Then I read them, and spiked more fights
than I can recall.

In short, I'm a person who has studied
many a fight scene, and has learned from his own mistakes. I mention
this because there will be instances where you will read some of this
and wonder, “Why is he telling me this? Does he think I'm stupid?”

The answer is no, but these were
mistakes that I have made repeatedly over time, and sometimes still
make when I don't think.

One of the documents that you will need
can be found at this link here. It is a collection of “how to” articles for self defense and
fighting. It is a compilation of a lot of basic fighting techniques,
as well as things related to fighting. In short, you don't need any
previous knowledge of any fighting technique, martial art, or even
the basics of street fighting for this workshop. I will, however,
recommend right now that you check out the link, and at least give
each article mentioned a passing glance. They will be used over the
course of the workshop.

References for certain techniques:
http://shar.es/giQgA

References for Non-lethal weapons:
http://www.zarc.com/english/non-lethal_weapons/nlt-usaf.html

References for guns:
http://world.guns.ru/main-e.htm

References for army technology:
http://www.army-technology.com/

Recommended reading:

Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series
(for fight scenes on both small and large scale)

Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels (for
hand to hand combat)

David Weber's Honor Harrington series
(for navel warfare)

John Ringo's Posleen War, Ghost
and Princess of Wands
series (mostly for hand-to-hand, infantry, and special warfare)

The Spanish Steps, A Pius Man, and why do I blow up public places?

The new, better graphic provided by Matt. 

Happy New Year, and welcome back everyone. I hope you enjoyed your holidays, your vacation time, and in New York, the twenty inches of snow. I'm still digging out.  And recovering from my Christmas Cold.  Yes, my vacation was spent indoors, coughing up a lung. Fun....



Many people who have visited my pages for A Pius Man may have noticed an odd photo. It has an image of an armored SUV driving down the Spanish Steps, in Rome. Why do I have it there, and what does it have to do with A Pius Man?



Not to belabor the obvious, but the latter question is easy to answer: a scene in my novel has the Knight-XV Fully Armored Vehicle going down said historic landmark.



And why?



Because it's fun.



To give a serious answer: public places are common targets in my novels. I've had two running shootouts that went past the New York Museum of Natural History, and ended in Central Park. One of them ended in Belvedere Castle. I had a scene that started in the Hudson River during the Macy's Fireworks display, and ended with two protagonists falling off of the Statue of Liberty. Another book ended at the Cloisters, another museum in New York cobbled together from dozens of different European monasteries.



One novel, which now needs to be rewritten, is especially egregious in public places being blown up, shot up, and otherwise trashed. I had a shootout on New York's Cross Island Parkway, a firefight outside Brennan's of New Orleans, threw someone out of the John Hancock building in Chicago, had a slow, stalking hunt through New Orleans' Bourbon Street, another shootout in a New Orleans City of the Dead, as well as a running chase throughout Boston's Quincy Market.



I had fun with that book.



I suppose I could blame my reign of havoc in public places on Alfred Hitchcock. I grew up with throwing a Saboteur off the Statue of Liberty, and having a blackmailer chased through the British Museum. I had fond childhood memories of Cary Grant hanging off of Mount Rushmore, and Jimmy Stewart saving a drowning woman underneath the Golden Gate Bridge.



So, yes, Alfred Hitchcock makes a good scapegoat.



However, public places allow for some great opportunities. Bad guys can grab hostages at will. Fugitive protagonists see every average person as a threat.



And, my personal favorite: the ability to walk the scene.



I sometimes get lazy in my writing. I can only create so many settings no one has ever seen before, and then I start muttering to myself, and I want to just get the Darned Scene Written Now. There has even been the odd sequence that I've cobbled together from video games (fans of Sam Fisher, pay attention).



But, in come cases, public areas, and tourist traps, come in handy. Especially when you're doing a walkthrough of Central Park and find places for your running shootout that aren't on any Google picture search. Walking around the Cloisters is the only way to find what the layout looks like near a perfect entry point from the Henry Hudson parkway, after using a bolt cutter on the chain link fence.

And public parks and attractions have a side benefit to them. They're nice and big, and easy to play hide-and-seek in. Granted, in my books, my protagonists hide, and the antagonists are seeking with an RPG.

O Little Town of Bethlehem, A Christmas Story.

Sean A.P. Ryan -- mercenary, madman, and enthusiastic worker of mayhem -- has a rigorous interrogation of an arms dealer in New York.  Information changes hands, and the clock starts ticking down to Christmas Eve.  Bethlehem is about to have a very bad Christmas, unless someone can stop it.



But the terrorists have a bold, creative mastmind behind this plan.  And nobody can stop what he has in mind. 



Thankfully, there are plenty of Nobodies on call.



For the record:  I may have gotten too colorful with the scene breaks -- Scribd can't seem to decide whether or not to show them, so I've tried to fix them. Hopefully, it'll stay fixed.



Enjoy.





O Little Town of Bethlehem

DragonCon, Day 2, Part II, The Day the Con Blew Up.

The rest of DragonCon, day 2.  With the ever quotable Jim Butcher, a history of explosives, EMP bombs, weapons, hardware, writing weaponry, and the day DragonCon became a nuclear power.





DragonCon, 2010, day 2 part II

Scott Murphy's Notebook: Spytech

Scott “Mossad” Murphy hates guns. He can't hit a target with a handgun, and any weapons he can use aren't easily concealed. However, his spycraft is second to none, and he's great with improvised weapons, traps knows enough spy craft to survive when talking very, very fast doesn't cut it. He's the sort of person who takes notes on a tv show called Burn Notice—which looks like one part MacGyver for the dark side and the A-Team.



This is a page from the notebook of Scott Murphy:



#####################



* Ammonium Iodide—take one part ammonium, one part iodine, and stir well. Let it settle overnight, and then, later, strain through coffee filter paper. Be very careful with the resulting little green crystals. Enough crystals to cover your palm will be enough to blow off your leg if you step on them.



* How to bulletproof a car. Yellowpages can stop a non-Armor Piercing bullet; they penetrate an inch into the phonebook, and they stop. If you add steel plate, it will only only penetrate a ¼ inch—line the walls of the car with the phone book: put them and the steel behind the panels of your car, unless you like swimming in phonebooks and yellow confetti. Put foam in the tires to make them bullet resistant, and use dual layer plexiglass for the windows.



* Molotov cocktail: a classic that never goes out of business, mix some high proof alcohol into a glass bottle, slip a rag into the mouth of the bottle... light rag, throw bottle, and you have a nice little firebomb.



* Homemade hand grenades: A New York street gang in the mid twentieth century adopted a science geek. He took a test tube and a stopper, then filled it with some interesting chemicals: glycerin, nitric acid, and sulfuric acid. They separated the chemicals with a layer of parafin wax—basically, you can use melted candle wax on each level of chemicals. Drive a nail through the stopper, and then through the rest of the layers of wax, shake well, and throw away quickly before you blow your hand off: you have just created nitroglycerin.



* Take a metal chain and wrap it around two power lines, and you've created an electrical circuit. It certainly makes sparks fly, and acts as a great distraction. Highly illegal, so you better have a great reson for taking out the power of up to two or three city blocks.



* Wrap a metal wire around the prongs of a plug—a paper clip will do. Plug it back into the wall, watch all of the lights go out when the circuit breakers disagree with the effect.



* Use a cigarette as a time delay switch, and matches as a detonator. If you put multiple aerosol cans in a garbage can, the cigarette burns down to the matchbook, and flares, heats the aerosol cans, which are already under pressure. The effect is like puncturing the oxygen tank in Jaws, only on an obviously smaller scale.



* Security cameras as easily overloaded. Flash the laser into a camera, you've just created your own blind spot.





* An optical bug uses a laser against a window pane to pick up vibrations, enabling the listeners to hear everything in the room. To detect it, take the infrared filter off of a digital camera, and it will pick up a great big red spot on your windows. Your pictures won't be something you want in your photo album, but you can be certain you're not being bugged.... unless you are being bugged, in which case, you wan to give your listeners nothing but noise. With a listening device in your room, you can always turn on a television, a shower, or a radio. With an optical bug, you can put a vibrating back massager against the window; if the laser bug picks up vibrations, the massager will give them pure static.





# In the middle of Queens, New York, a Chicklet's factory exploded. The reason: there were enough dust particles in the air and on the floors to create an issue. A spark went off; that spark ingited a wave of fire that set each individual particle of dust on fire instantaneously. You can recreate the effect with baking powder made into a dust cloud. Or, for something a little simpler, use powdered nondiary creamer powder to cut gunpowder, and you get a fireball full of sound and fury.





# If you must beat someone over the head with sports equipment, use a golf club, not a baseball bat: the golf club has a smaller surface area, and the force isn't as distributed.

Terrorists are stupid.

Yes, the title is exaggerated, but you're reading, aren't you?



I must say, though, for the most part, terrorists are not the brightest lights in the night sky.



Think about it. I can plan a better terrorist attack than any of these bozos. So could you.



For example....You want terror? Screw blowing up the World Trade Center—over fifty thousand people worked there, and the WTC could have upwards of 100,000 visitors per day (the magic notebook sees all and retains all). Infect all of them with the bio-weapon of your choice. A little smallpox, for example, maybe plague in the HVAC system. Have it running all day, and you infect both employees and tourists. They, in turn, infect people while going to lunch, on the subway, the ferry, their families, and when tourists go home, they bring it back with them. Being a smart terrorist, you tell the states friendly to you that they should really restrict travel to and from New York, and possibly all of America, period.



By the time the penny drops at the CDC, most of New York City now needs to be quarantined. The economy starts drying up, slowly. Tourism is dead. Fifty thousand jobs in the two buildings are lost, assuming that the employees are not all simply dead.



And I'm not even thinking hard.



Ironically, despite the Wyle E. Coyote explosive in Times Square, the attack itself was the right idea from their point of view. If terrorists want to inspire terror, then small, but frequent, attacks are the way to go. People are scared, frightened, uncertain about what may come around the next corner.



However, a word to al-Qaeda, et al, upon looking at the Time Square incident: when you're acquiring explosives, avoid the ones marked ACME....



As I was saying—thus far, when terrorists can't come up with ideas that I can in my spare time, they should probably reconsider their career goals.



And they are not necessarily uneducated. Osama bin Laden, last I checked, had a degree in engineering—and if I'm mistaken, his family is fill with engineers so he should have some idea. Mohammed Atta, one of the 9-11 pilots, had an upper middle class education in Egypt.



Though it does make me wonder why, thus far, a lot of the terrorists coming our way seemed to have come out of the Wyle E. Coyote school of home explosives.



The Underwear Bomber whose bomb caught fire without going off.



The Times Square bomber, with a Rube Goldberg timer.



The best answer I can come up with is that we're getting all the cannon fodder, who seem as bright as cannonballs. Not to mention that they have few experienced fighters—when you encourage martyrdom in your ranks, you have few people around who can share hard won combat experience. It didn't work well for the kamikaze, I can tell you that.



If I were going to do a terrorist attack....



Before someone freaks out about giving them ideas, the media looked at the Time Square bomb and pointed out EXACTLY what was wrong with it. I'm not coming up with anything new.



As I was saying...



Let's look at Grand Central Station: use a biological weapon in the building. From there, it starts infecting the east coast with the plague of your choice. Or, suicide bombers in the terminal during rush hour would also be effective.



Look at Grant Central for a moment. No security checks in the main portion of the building. No metal detectors, x-rays, nothing. Even I could make an anti-personnel bomb and bring it inside. Bio weapons and suicide bombers would both leave the station itself virtually intact, and the building would eventually be reopened. But in the meantime, traffic would be shot to hell, and once it's reopened... well, would YOU want to go there? The damage would be done. The terminal would be seen by millions of people as a plague-infected site by the ignorant, or it would be seen as a monument of death. It would be a lingering, lasting monument to an attack that would cost hundreds [suicide bomber] if not thousands, or millions of lives [bio weapon].



Traffic would be crippled, either by a lack of people coming in, or by the level of security now required to fully scan everyone coming on or off a train, into or out of the station. It would be a NIGHTMARE, worse than blowing up the 59th street bridge.... then a smart terrorist would blow that up. They've already tried for the Brooklyn Bridge.



But why haven't they? I can make mustard gas, or a bomb, from my kitchen cabinet. My mother is a medical technologist, and she can make a bio weapon in the kitchen. Is it so impossible for al-Qaeda to find five guys to get an associates degree for medical technology, or chemistry? Anyone can come in through the Mexican-US border, so why hasn't a bio weapon attack happened?



It's easy to say “Because they're stupid.” In those cases of allowing cannon fodder to fire cannons, yes.



However, it's mostly because they're fairly undisciplined. Sure, al-Qaeda has training camps, but have have you seen some of the video footage from them? They come into rooms in a perfect shooting posture... for a firing range. Do a quick glance at Youtube with any footage of Jack Bauer (of 24 fame) moving through a room with a gun—gun is close in, both arms are tucked, feet in what look like a combat stance for MMA. This is called a Weaver Stance. Now look at the after terrorist training video, and note how they square their feet, and hold their guns out at arm's length, practically locking their elbows. Get some good recoil, they could break their arms.



It's not even an “ethnic” problem. Most terrorists are similar. The IRA for example. They've blow up the wrong targets, caught more people in the crossfire than some Palestinian terrorists, and the Palestinians are AIMING for the civilians.



Then there was the Japanese Red Army unit brought in to Israel to aid the Palestinians-- they got cut down in the airport because they didn't know the Israelis had security! Yes, and somewhere along the line, SOMEONE thought it was a good idea for Japanese communist terrorists to invade the Middle East. Maybe they thought everyone would think they were tourists...



And one day, I suspect, we will see an attempted nuclear strike on America. They may even make it happen.



Why do I say that would be stupid?



Because they'd be dead.



Mecca, Medina, gone. Saudi Arabia, gone. Oil fields? Saudi Arabia's population is mostly on the shoreline, away from the oil. Syria? Israel can have them, if they want them. Iran will either disarm, or be destroyed. And God help anyone who gives them a nuke in the first place. The party will be over. War on terror would be finished. And would the world protest?



“The world” would probably be the one doing the nuking. Because they know that using a nuke is crossing the line.



The UN would complain, as would all the usual suspects, but would they really do anything? Nope, why would they? Environmental disasters? Not really, the Middle east is a large sandlot, and the populations that aren't nuked can be transplanted [although the winds won't be able to carry the radiation that far east, and remember that OUR nukes come with very little fallout].



Aren't I being callous about this? A nuclear strike would be on either NY or DC, and the Secretary of agriculture would be the head of the country.



Well, if DC, we have elections, and the bureaucracy is really hard to destroy, not to mention the amount of bunkers floating around the politicians. The Pakistani bomb requires a warhead the size of a volleyball, and MAY destroy midtown Manhattan [US warheads are the size of a bottle of Pepsi and can vaporize the 5 boroughs], and I live in Queens, so I should be relatively safe, because I intend to run like hell after the initial explosion, or at least head East, away from the fallout. Or I'll be dead, and I won't have to worry much about it, now would I?



However, would it really come to that? It might. But given the performance thus far, I am reminded of an old joke ....



Q: How can you tell a Soviet nuclear submariners apart from the other members of the fleet?



A: Because they glow in the dark.



If terrorists were smart about attacking the United States, they'd do it. They'd be sending people across the Mexican border daily for the sole purpose of heading directly to a target. Any target.



My father, a professor in Philosophy, came up with the idea of blowing up the New Orleans dams as a terrorist attack in 2000. Now it's a little late for that. Apparently, a family of academics dickering around with this as a mental exercise can come up with a better plan than bin Laden himself.



Ah, but “What about 9-11?”



The only reason they could get away with 9/11 is that the hostage playbook said be calm, you'll be ransomed for later, just play nice with the hostage takers. Not to mention that planes involved in 9-11 came out of Boston. As comedian Carlos Mencia has noted, before 9-11, someone flying Southwest airlines said he would rush the cockpit. When the plane landed, this guy had already been stomped to death.



Not to Osama: please, fly Southwest.



After 9/11, the playbook was rewritten. Even the passengers of Flight 93 knew better. Sneaker-Bomber Boy was nearly torn apart by the passengers around him, so we know the rules have changed. I want to see some terrorists pull box cutters on board a plane coming out of La Guardia and see how long they last.



The terrorist threat to this country remains, but there are days I think it's just a threat. Looking at the genius exhibited thus far by those to have tried to attack the mainland, I'm just glad that either they're stupid, or we're lucky.



Unfortunately, sometimes idiots can get lucky.