Grrl Power #1296 – Assets include… sand
Designated Marksman Rifles are designed to be effective around 800 meters. Plus or minus a bit depending on the actual rifle. “Proper” sniper rifles start at about 800 meters as well, but it can depend on what they’re chambered for. The AWP, or Arctic Warfare Police, popularized (or vilified, depending on your point of view) by Counter Strike lists an effective range of 800m. Back in the day when I played a lot of CS2, I was a AWP whore, big time. My proudest moment was getting kicked from a game for “cheating” after going 30-2. I was playing on a local Shacknews server and had a ping of 12 on my new DSL line, so conditions were favorable.
I’m not actually sure what “effective range” means. I could google it of course, but an educated guess is that a round from a gun can hit reliably within a… 3″ diameter (?) area and can deliver a certain amount of kinetic energy. Okay, let’s google it. Huh. Okay, basically I was right. Not about the 3″ measurement, but essentially it’s a combination of precision and lethality. It also doesn’t seem to be an “official” term, like there’s no math ratios involved or FDA for guns testing each one for nutritional content.
What the hell was I talking about… oh, right, so the M24, the primary USAF sniper rifle also has an “effective range” of 800m, when chambered for 7.62×67, but the M24A3 is a variant chambered for .338 Lapua Magnum, and has an effective range of 1,800m. The .50 cal Barrett M82, is also listed at 1,800, but of course we’ve all heard of sniper kills way further out than that.
So, anyway, that’s why I put “short range” in quotes in the last panel, cause while Peggy appreciates the lighter weight of a DMR, she also appreciates the flatter trajectory of the Lapua and .50 cal rounds. Of course, “short” range to Peggy tends to be medium to long range to a lot of other people, and long range to her most people don’t even think is possible. But being a proper marksman is about more than landing some crazy shot 3,500 meters away, it’s about hitting moving targets, or watching someone dive behind a wall and predicting where their momentum took them and still hitting them because bricks don’t stop anti-materiel ordnance. Peggy’s respected for being a skilled long range sniper, but also for hitting medium range twofers and repeatedly hitting targets after they dove behind cover. She’s got that “the gun is an extension of me” mojo going on, and that “the bullet is an extension of my will” juju. Some people think there are humans that can juuust dip their toes into the Superion Field. They’re not supers, but they’re just a little bit too good at certain things.
The new vote incentive is up!
Dabbler went somewhere tropical, in a very small bikini. As you might guess, it doesn’t stay on for long, which of course, you can see over at Patreon. Also she has an incident with “lotion,” and there’s a bonus comic page as well.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I don’t think .338 or .50 BMG have a significantly flatter trajectory then 7.62, they have approximately the same speed. However .338 and .50 BMG have much higher bullet mass so they would be less affected by crosswinds and much more effect once they arrive at the target. Hitting something that can move at 1800m involves a bit of luck, the bullet needs about 2s to get there, the target can move quite a bit in that time.
Bigger bullets tend to have a higher ballistic coefficient, which means the bullet is less affected by air resistance.
They might have the same velocity at the muzzle, but near the end of their trajectory, they will slow down significantly – and the smaller bullet more so.
That’s the difference between a good sniper and a Peggy*-grade sniper: they don’t shoot where the walking body-bag insert is, but where they will be
or that guy played by Wallburger (who removed a guys arm from a shit-fuck distance, in the snow, on a mountain)
you are incorrect, the bullet drop on a 308/7.62×51 is a LOT larger than the bullet drop on a .338 lapua or a .50 bmg at anything longer than 600 meters or so.
the reason is that muzzle velocity may be pretty close, but balistic coefficient is NOT even remotely close. that means the 308/7.62 is losing speed a lot faster.
for example the 308 will be subsonic at around 1100 meters, but the 338 and 50 bmg will still be well over the speed of sound at that distance.
When you say “Back in the day when you played a lot of CS2”, roughly when was that, exactly? Because CS2 was released only fairly recently. Back in the day probably was either Counter Strike 1.6, Counter Strike: Source or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Most likely 1.6 or Source, since I doubt your DSL line is younger than your webcomic.
You’re missing one, Condition Zero. Which was kinda a CS2, was on a slightly modified engine from 1.6.
I used to play both 1.6 (Well started when the beta was still in the .40s) and CZ, which had a dedicated community as well, if smaller than normal CS.
I’m fairly certain that when talking about the main blades of a helicopter, the term is rotor
indeed, propeller only do one thing: generate thrust
rotors do that too, but also many other things, like rotate the vehicle, tilt, directional movement,etc
calling a rotor “propeller” is like calling a smartphone a calculator, it is kinda true, but very reductionist
There is often a propeller on a helicopter, but it is the one at the end of the tail boom, to help control the direction you are facing on the compass.
That is referred to as the tail rotor, not propeller.
Tail rotor works the same way the main rotor works and is controlled the same way. And it’s unlikely a single broken 1000 lb rotor blade is going to stop an 11,000 pound helicopter from rolling over; especially since most of that rotor blade is composite skin over aluminum stringers.
Yeah, “propeller” describes the function (a propeller propels), “rotor” describes the operation (a rotor rotates). A helicopter’s rotor provides propulsion, but that’s not its only function, it also provides lift. If it only propelled, you wouldn’t have a flying aircraft; you’d just have a very fuel-inefficient car. Whereas if it only lifted, you’d have a free-standing elevator, I guess. (Or a gyroplane.)
In fact, you could more correctly call it a wing, since helicopters are rotary wing aviation. Nobody calls them wings, but you could!
That said, there are copters (at least, copter concepts) with propellers in addition to their rotors, so as to achieve greater airspeed. Like the Sikorsky–Boeing SB-1 Defiant. Or the Fairey Rotodyne, a weird hybrid that took off like a helicopter and then flew like a gyroplane. (It didn’t take off commercially, though.)
And of course, you have tiltrotor aircraft where the rotors do become propellers once they’re tilted horizontally.
Rockets are also described as providing propulsion, and yet a great deal of that is directed upwards. It seems a bit silly to distinguish between ‘lift’ and ‘propulsion’ in this way, as if to suggest that they were exclusive categories, rather than lift as a subset of propulsion.
This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must .. get my hand on it.. stupid trapped leg, i’m just out of reach!
Poor rifle must be feeling lonely and abandoned :(
Rifle needs a hug
As horrifying as it must be to see the rotor blade so close to your neck, it also seems it was what saved her, acting like a kickstand to prevent the fuselage having rolled completely over her. Well, that and the rock.
To be able to hit from extreme range, you have to know that weapon so well that its quirks become your reflexes. This means firing thousands of rounds through that weapon. It doesn’t transfer over to another rifle, you’ve got to retrain the reflexes, not “starting over” but a real setback.
“Effective range” is just “The maximum distance at which a weapon may be expected to be accurate and achieve the desired effect”, and this obviously depends on many things, so there can’t be an official hard value.
Accuracy, for example, is affected by the size of the expected target. (In the late 19th century, infantry rifles were scoped out to 2km, even though they used cartridges similar to 7.62x51mm – because they were expected to shoot at formation consisting of hundreds of men.)
Terminal effects, similarly, depend on the target’s armor. (Warship and tank guns had qualifiers like “can punch through x mm of steel at y m”.)
Yeah, it’s a pet peeve of mine when people say crap like “Why are you taking cover? We’re beyond their effective range.” As if at 301m a 7.62 round is going to bounce off like a bb. Lee likely to hit, doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.
“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this Dist-” – Famous last words of “uncle” John Sedgewick at the battle of Spotsylvania Court House, American Civil War.
“Bullet proof” armor was proofed at a very well defined load of powder, bullet weight and distance. At some historical armor you can see the “proof mark”.
Similar definition from a different viewpoint.
And this is why having a strap on the holster to help retain your pistol is a good idea.
The holster was ripped. You might have missed 5hat detail.
She’s not wearing the standard M12 holster so I’d have to assume it’s the SERPA holster. That has an active retention system, push button to release. Had to hit just right to knock the M9 out of the holster. Wouldn’t have been a strap anyway on plastic but a hood. That’s the configuration for the holster for the new M17, active retention and a rotating hood.
That only works if the pistol in in the holster in the first place. Given the hard case pointed out, I think it’s safe to say it was completely stowed as they weren’t expecting any issues during transport (clearly a mistake).
> because bricks don’t stop anti-materiel ordnance.
Bricks aren’t that good at stopping normal rounds either. Remember most rounds can overpenetrate really easily, and Sydny’s crib notes combat rules shouldn’t have said “assume you will miss and hit that” they should have said “don’t worry about if you will hit, you’ll overpenetrate and hit it anyway.”
Bricks are darned good at stopping most normal rounds, actually. A 7.62 or .308 will almost always be stopped by a brick wall on the first hit. Sustained fire will, obviously, eventually go through, and a lucky hit on a void in the mortar might go through on the first try. But your average brick will stop most normal rounds on at least the first hit.
https://www.atomicdefense.com/blogs/news/can-bullets-go-through-brick
There was a website years ago (might still be around?) called The Box of Truth, or something like that, and they would test claims about bullets of different caliber.
I remember one particular test where they set up multiple “walls” of dry wall with little gaps and slightly larger gaps between the “walls”… and “brick” was their backstop. The only thing that went through all of that was their elephant gun.
it’s coarse and it gets everywhere
“When there was no crawdad, we ate sand.” “You ate sand?” “We ate sand.”
“I’m thinking with sand here!”
You were so lucky to have sand to eat. What would we have given for some good sand!
In Salem, all the sand came with witches. We had Sand Witches!
*groan…* No, just… no.
I’m the one to give the really bad “dad joke/puns” here!
It’s in my contract!!
:P
(Holds up packing list)
SEE? lol.
Hello the-one-to-give-the-really-bad-“dad-joke/puns”-here.
That’s a really long name.
Can I call you ‘Theo’ instead?
“Some people think there are humans that can juuust dip their toes into the Superion Field. They’re not supers, but they’re just a little bit too good at certain things.”
I think you have done a really good job of “showing” this previously as Math is a perfect example.
Yeah, with Math it’s not even ambiguous.
Another example is Goose, who has reflexes good enough to go toe-to-toe in a knife fight with Mach the Knife, an actual speedster.
If it’s true that Peggy is one of those exceptional humans who can just dip their toes into the Superion Field, she most certainly needs to accept the cloned leg – she’s only getting half the effect with just five toes!
(I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist)
Yield to temptation, it may not come your way again.
Heinlein!
This wins an Internet for the day. And before 9am EDT too. Impressive.
FYI, sniper “twofers” at any range are called a Quigley. :-)
Only if they are Down-under :P
Just a note: On a conventional helicopter like the Blackhawk, those are called Rotors, not propellors. That includes the one on the tail (i.e. Main Rotor and Tail Rotor.) With a few specialized models where they might have a pusher prop, then only THAT would be called a propellor, because its sole function is to propel the craft forward (and maybe in reverse.) I believe even the Ospry and its like call the rotating blades Rotors, because they are the primary means of lift to get off the ground/deck before rotating forward for “aerodynamic flight.”
I’m sure nearly everyone here knows that, but it is a bit jarring to hear “propellor” from a skilled helicopter pilot.
Her audience consists of one non-military person and a bunch of assorted space aliens. Maybe she’s intentionally dumbing it down a bit for their sake?
how is calling a rotor “propeller” dumbing it down?
most people might not know the difference, but they sure know both words
so there is no reason to not use the correct word if you know the difference yourself
Well there are a bunch of people in this world who call the thing ships have “Propellers” – Ships don’t have propellers, they have SCREWS.
That makes Harry Chapin’s “Dance Band on the Titanic” make a bit more sense.
Didn’t stop her from rattling off a bunch of terms like “Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk”, “F.O.B.”, or “R.P.G.” that her audience is even less likely to know than “rotor”.
Actually, they’re known as the “big spinny bits”.
“the M24, the primary USAF sniper rifle also has an “effective range” of 800m, when chambered for 7.62×67”
The M24’s most common chambering is 7.62×51mm, though it uses a long action receiver, so it can be chambered up to cartridges the length of .338 Lapua.
7.62x67B is the infrequently used metric designation for .300 Winchester Magnum.
Is it weird that I can barely tell I’m looking at Peggy in this image?
Considering it’s years back, her face is nearly covered in blood, and her hair wasn’t dyed, no it’s not weird. Given the situation, she’s damned lucky to be alive, much less recognizable. My car wreck did a number on me, I lost most of my muscle mass, almost an inch of height, plus the report was I had died. I heard “Is that you?!?” so many times. You have no idea what a false death report does to your credit score, much less your identity. It took so much paperwork, plus I almost had to get a new SS card number and driver license!
Another person with a near-death experience from what can be loosely termed a MVA. In 2001 I was hit by a DUI doing 60 MPH in a “light” pickup. I came to as they were putting me in a body bag, because when they checked me out I was about 100 feet from the point of impact, and my bicycle was about a quarter-mile past my body, and I had no detectable pulse or respiration. When I came to I was complaining about how my body was being handled by loudly stating, “I’ve broken the upper end of my femur repeatedly until I passed out again.
I cam pretty close too, I spent a day in ICU with a ventilator on my left and the crash cart on my right. Just the trip to the hospital by loud bus I went from agony to gasping for air. The spinal damage was causing swelling that was crushing my spinal cord. So my diaphragm was starting to be effected. After the torture of a full-body x-ray and the constant questions of “Can you feel that?” they finally left me alone where I laid there listening to the beeping machines for 16 hours… Kinda slipped in and out of wakefulness…
When an if she gets it the new leg she should tattoo the place so that it looks like it was attached with duct tape.
How about a tattoo of “Frankenstein” stitching? I’m sure it’s going to take a bit of time to get used to feeling and walking on her new leg. Not to mention the whole “little toe on the end-table leg” thing…
In The Deathworlders, characters who lost limbs and had them regrown often opted for cold brands at the attachment point, to serve as a reminder. I always thought that was a neat idea. Tattoos may be more up Peggy’s alley… although going with a different option for that might be appropriate.
I like both of these and think they are good ideas!
And in fact, since Peggy now knows she can get replacement limbs, she should cut off a hand and do one version on her leg and the other on her wrist!
Maybe check that plan with Cora first.
Peggy still came damned close to losing the top half of her head, but now we see where the scars came from. At least some hack didn’t cover her face with bad stitching! Defenseless, trapped, in a possible hostile area, I think this is when she meets Max. As long as Peggy is still pinned her leg won’t be bleeding, so she has that in her favor. I’m sure that contributed to her survival, but the pressure either crushed the leg beyond repair, or the loss of blood flow did it. I had shattered a bone in my foot, the only reason I can use it is I still had 4 more to do the job. Although, even after 42 years, it still causes me pain.
Toxic crush syndrome is a real concern here, especially if she was unconscious for a while. Since she’s slurring her speech and appears to have had time for her blood to dry, I’d guess her concussion is in the moderate range of 15 minutes to 6 hours of unconsciousness. Crush can happen in under an hour, almost certainly has set in by 4 hours.
Keep in mind that it’s the desert, drying time is much shorter there. I’m sure you’re right about the crush time, I’m sure that even if the leg was only pinned, it’s too late to save it. Loose, dry sand is pretty easy to move and mold around a limb. That chopper is most likely being held in place by that rotor, otherwise it might have rolled over her.
I thought she had Compartment Syndrome, where the muscle affected swells so much it crushes itself to death unless the membrane(s) around the muscle are cut open to relieve the pressure in a procedure called a fasciotomy. I went through one of those when I was hit with the truck.
That’s what was happening to my spinal cord, they still can’t figure out how I was able to walk once I healed up. Never mind I was healthy and an athlete. People wonder why I don’t trust doctors…
“Some people think there are humans that can juuust dip their toes into the Superion Field. They’re not supers, but they’re just a little bit too good at certain things.”
I agree with you. I’ve always had that theory about comic characters like Hawkeye, Green Arrow, Merlyn, or Bullseye. Not quite superhuman or “mutants,” but definitely more than “normal.”
So a little aside about short-term memory. It’s been discovered that our brains have an analog, organic version of cache sort of like RAM in a computer. Short-term memory is stored here temporarily until it’s written to our long-term memory. Like writing the contents of RAM to a hard drive. There’s a short period of time between something entering it and it being written that can be interrupted by things like physical trauma. A sudden accident resulting in a head injury can cause this. The short-term just gets flushed out, like pulling the power on a computer and the contents of the RAM just disappear.
I was in a car accident when I was young and had this happen to me. I have zero memory of anything between us getting into the car/starting to pull off and then waking up in the ambulance before falling unconscious again until I woke up in the hospital patched up and in recovery. The time span between pulling out and the crash was probably around 45 seconds to a minute, no more than 2 minutes. So it seems that the short-term stores the memories for at least that long before permanent writing. Later on in life I wondered why people have that happen and researched it and discovered what I just described.
Relatedly, earworms are also the result of a memory cache error. Or a glitch, rather. When we speak we unconsciously scan everything we’re immediately about to say to ensure we’re saying it correctly. If you know about this sometimes you can even catch yourself doing it. And studies have been done to see why earworms happen and the theory is that this same “cache” we use to scan our own words glitches on particularly catchy songs and keeps running it in a loop attempting to process it in the same way we do our own words. So it gets “stuck” in our heads because a part of the brain just keeps trying to process it.
Being an organic computer it’s kind of funny how similar in so many ways our brains are to electronic computers.
If you think about it, the creators of computers no doubt used the instinct of our brains in the design of computers, while being unaware they were. Short term memory also has a shelf-life, as you get older it starts to break down. In my case it’s become noticeable, and my 90 y/o father has dementia. I can safely say I have the memory of a goldfish LOL.
Everything has to be on a list, or I forget it 5 minutes later, and if I sleep, I loose most of what I did the day before. (I’m coming up on the big 65)
It’s been said that the two hard problems in computer science are naming and cache invalidation (knowing which bits of the cache to overwrite and when you can do it).
If the theory about earworms is true you would think that tongue twisters would be more likely to become one. I think it may be more analogous to someone re-reading a book because they liked it so much. In this case, it’s one part of your mind going over the song again.
Oh yeeeah .. The high from getting kicked from genuine, official, well moderated servers for being a cheater when you were just a super crack’d shot was really nice. Never to me, but my older brother kept getting kicked for using the 12-Guage pump shot gun. .. Yeah it was the DSL low ping that helped a lot. And the “effective range” being an undefined is reasonable, even tight variables in ammo quality from a single source just by itself can have major impact on a weapon.
My first “up” was as a high school senior cadet in NJROTC, getting training in unconventional warfare. The training was unconventional as we were sworn in as we gathered for training, and “discharged” as we were getting ready to go home. The weapons I was assigned were unconvent0ional, too. I was issued a M79A2 or maybe it was an A1, anyway, not the same sights as the peep and post of the standard M79, the peep was kept, but the front sight was transparent like the LAW. The other weapon was for targets too close for the grenade to arm from the M79, about 30 meters, and was a .38 Special revolver with a 9″ barrel. That one was fun to qualify with, the M79, not so much.
We mostly used marker rounds in the 79, but I got to fire 2 live grenade rounds at an APC to “qualify”. They had much more recoil than the marker rounds and went much further downrange. The qualifying test was to hit the APC at 400 meters in an area that would disable it if it hadn’t already been disabled before getting placed on the range with at least one of the 2 rounds. I qualified, but I don’t recall what I hit as that happend back in 1976.
As the saying goes, “I have a bad feeling about this”.
This is going to turn into the movie 127 Hours isn’t it? She is going to have to cut her own leg off.
Hey, when did those “chapter” and “character” tags start appearing? I never noticed them before. I’m not particularly observant though. Glad to see you started though. I’m sad you weren’t able to stick with your initial idea of illustrated character tags on the right of the page but this seems more manageable. I hope we see some updates to the character page too!
Lol. I went back a few page and see you have also updated the character tags on the right. Extra happy day!
I had a thought, if it is just sand, she might be able to dig out around her leg enough to get free and drag herself over to her personal gun. But at the same time that might cause her to bleed out too. She did say she was under the copper, just not if she stayed there the whole time. I think it’d be pretty cool if a bad guy walks around, sees Peggy, takes aim, and Max grabs the bullet and the guy and send them both flying in opposite directions. At top speed.
She clearly isn’t the token Batman/Hawkeye/Green Arrow/Etc style “skills as a super power”- she clearly has super not-dying powers! THE WORST FORM OF IMMORTALITY!
Joking, btw.
US DoD defines effective range as “The maximum distance at which a weapon may be expected to be accurate and achieve the desired effect.”
As a result it depends heavily on the target. In fact, multi-target weapons can have widly different “effective ranges”.
Nothing shows that better then the various styles of Anti-Tank weapons:
– The “shoot something very hard really, really fast” variant is primarily limited by remaining speed and thus armor penetration
– While the “shaped charge” variant doesn’t loose Armor Penetration from distance, so it will be limited by Accuracy and the time you give active countermeasures