Benjamin Dancer's Blog, page 8

Can The Sun Really Hurt Us?

I recently read an NPR article by Marcelo Gleiser about one of the themes in my novel Patriarch Run. My story explores what would happen if our vulnerable power grid were to go down hard. Gleiser's piece marks a growing awareness of this issue among the citizenry and among public officials. In summary, there are three types of events that have the potential to trigger an apocalyptic scenario like the one outlined in my book: a cyberattack, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, and a coronal...

http://fpesa.net/fpesa-research-paper......

http://fpesa.net/fpesa-research-paper...

Farm sizes in land-constrained African countries are shrinking rapidly, while farm sizes in land-abundant African countries are not growing over time.

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Crop intensification is taking place without greater use of fertilizers and irrigation, and will therefore be unsustainable.

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Rural non-farm employment is growing slowly and not responding systematically to greater land constraints...

When Writing About Guns

International Thriller Writers just published a piece I wrote about the importance of accuracy when writing about guns. You can find a link to the piece below.

When Writing About Guns

The post When Writing About Guns appeared first on The Old Man.

When The Sun Brings Darkness And Chaos

PATRIARCH RUN explores what would happen to us if a massive electrical surge like a solar flare took down the power grid. It’s not a pretty reality. The expert mentioned in this NPR story, John Kappenman, helped me with the research for my novel. He’s a good guy.

You can check out the  NPR story by Marcelo Gleiser here.

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/04/06/473238503/when-the-sun-brings-darkness-and-chaos

 

 

The post When The Sun Brings Darkness And Chaos appeared first on The Old Man.

How To Write Realistically About Guns: Safeties

Almost every author I’ve read feels compelled to have their gun wielding characters switch off the safety after the weapon has been introduced into the scene. The gesture is irresistible to writers because it increases dramatic tension. It’s often the last bit of narration before the trigger is pulled. However, few authors seem to be aware of the fact that many of the guns they have unholstered in their writing are manufactured without external safeties.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s Endorsement of PATRIARCH RUN

This installment in the series of How To Write Realistically About Guns will focus on the thumb safety, the mechanism the vast majority of authors intend to refer to when they have a character switch off a gun’s safety. Below is an image of a 1911 handgun beside a close-up image of its thumb safety.

1911 with thumb safety

thumb safety

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s called a thumb safety because the operator uses their thumb to push it down (off) or up (on). With this particular weapon, the current fashion is to grip the gun and ride your thumb on top of the safety. To take off the safety, the operator pushes their thumb down.

Although there are many different types of thumb safeties, the action described above is an approximation of what most writers intend when they have a character switch off a safety in preparation to fire a handgun.

Here’s the Problem

Some of the most popular handguns being manufactured today have no thumb safety. As a matter of fact, they have no external safeties at all. There’s a good reason for this. The human stress response is such that manipulating a thumb safety in a gunfight can be difficult, so difficult that it can get you killed.

If that fact seems bizarre it’s because you haven’t yet been in a situation in which your body has involuntarily reacted to that type of stress. I’ll address those physiological and psychological realities in a later post.

Before I go any further, I should address the grip safety on the 1911. The image below is of a grip safety.

grip safety

Whereas, the thumb safety is actively disengaged by the user, the grip safety is passively disengaged. It is disengaged when the user grips the gun. In other words, a proper grip on the handgun will switch off the grip safety, and the operator switches off the thumb safety in a separate action by pushing it down.

Although some of the most popular handguns have no external safeties to be manipulated by the user, they do employ a variety of passive safeties–the mechanical descriptions of which are beyond the scope of this article. It should be noted, however, that it would be incorrect to write that a character switched off one of these passive safeties, as the intention of these devices is to operate on a level beneath the user’s awareness.

Don’t ever have a character switch off a safety on a gun unless you’re certain that the gun is manufactured with an external safety (such as a thumb safety).

Revolvers and Glocks

There are two egregious gun-writing errors involving the safety that are so common they deserve explicit attention. The first of which is writing a thumb safety into a revolver. Don’t do that. Revolvers are not manufactured with thumb safeties. In a later post I’ll define a revolver for those in need of that type of information. The second error is to write a thumb safety into a Glock (a very popular brand of firearm). Don’t do that, either. Glocks are quite well-known for being manufactured without thumb safeties. For many shooters, especially those who carry a gun for a living, that is one of their main appeals.

By now, I’m sure you’ve already come to this conclusion: if one of your characters switches off the safety on a gun manufactured without such safeties, you will ruin your credibility with knowledgeable readers.

If you’d like to learn more about how to write realistically about guns, you can find other installments of this series on my blog.

The post How To Write Realistically About Guns: Safeties appeared first on The Old Man.

How To Write Realistically About Guns: Clip vs Magazine

Clip vs Magazine

If you know anything about guns, that knowledge has likely ruined the best books you’ve read. It’s hard to think of an author who gets it right. Even my favorite authors make glaring mistakes when it comes to factual information about guns. No matter how gripping a story is when I read about a safety on a Glock (a gun well-known for being manufactured without any external safeties), all the credibility the author has built up in the narrative is immediately lost. In a good book, factual errors like that are heart wrenching.

So I thought I’d post a blog series about how to write realistically about guns.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s Endorsement of PATRIARCH RUN

In this first installment of the series, I’ll cover one of the most common errors writers make. DON’T USE THE WORD CLIP!

Not unless you’re referring to one of these:

Magazines look like these:

Glock Magazine

PMAG

So what’s the difference?

Simply put, a clip feeds magazines. A magazine feeds the weapon.

If we’d like to add more detail, we could say that a clip makes it easier to charge a magazine. Moreover, some magazines require a clip to function. One of the differences between a clip and a magazine is that a magazine functions with a spring. It uses that spring to help feed cartridges into a weapon. The image to the right shows two disassembled magazines. 

There are variety of magazine types: box, drum, tubular, rotary, etc. Most of the magazines being written about these days are detachable, but some magazines are fixed: such as most tubular magazines. A tubular magazine is commonly used with pump and lever action guns.

Unless you’re writing about a vintage weapon (think M1 Garand, the United States Armed Forces service rifle during WWII), the weapon you’re writing about probably doesn’t use a clip. It probably uses a detachable magazine.

M1 Garand with En Bloc Clip Being Loaded into the Magazine

Where did the term “clip” come from?

The word clip is widely misused. Some speculate that this error in language was introduced by veterans after World War II. The M1 Garand uses an en bloc clip to charge its fixed magazine. The speculation is that troops familiar with the Garand adopted the term clip after the war when referring to the magazines in their civilian guns.

If you’d like to learn more about how to write realistically about guns, you can find other installments of this series on my blog.

The post How To Write Realistically About Guns: Clip vs Magazine appeared first on The Old Man.

Little Brown Dog

I was walking up Green Mountain this evening to check on a deer herd and the state of the any-day-now birth of their fawns when a woman with an empty leash in her hand jogged down the trail and asked if I had seen a little brown dog.

I hadn’t.

I reached the summit of the mountain and found fourteen of my deer friends eating dinner in a valley on the other side. No fawns or births that I could see.

On my way back down, a large doe stotted across the trail, going at about half speed, fifteen yards in front of me. Her yearling daughter was right behind her. Right behind the yearling was a little brown dog about as happy as I imagine a dog can be. She was galloping at full speed, which was about the speed of my walk.

The yearling bolted up the left side of the valley, the doe up the right.

That little brown dog had a red collar on and, of course, no leash. She must have been an hour into that chase. Her tongue was lolling, she was panting, and I think she was near death from exhaustion. Perhaps that only added to her joy because she galloped heavily and slowly after that large doe.

The sun was setting as they disappeared, one after the other, over the top of the ridge, going in the opposite direction of the parking lot and the jogger with the leash.

The post Little Brown Dog appeared first on The Old Man.

Radio Interview

I did an interview for It Matters Radio about PATRIARCH RUN. I had a great time. Ken is a gifted radio host. You can listen to the radio interview here:

Radio Interview

 

 

 

The post Radio Interview appeared first on The Old Man.

For transgender teens, the question of what to wear can be a tough one

Colorado Public Radio interviewed me about piece I wrote for BITCH MAGAZINE. You can listen to the interview here:

 

 

 

 

 

The post For transgender teens, the question of what to wear can be a tough one appeared first on The Old Man.

Radio Interview

I just had a wonderful interview at It Matters Radio. You can listen to it at the link below.

Ken is a gifted host. I really enjoyed myself on the show.

http://www.spreecast.com/events/rites...