Book of Eli

Boats said:
Surplus ammo and C&R pistols and rifles of any quality have been stored in cosmoline or under ideal temp and humidity conditions.
Click to expand...

Uh, I'm not talking about guns that have been stored and then brought out in like new condition, but those old wall hangers and beaters tha have been being used all along. There are plenty of those that are still rolling right along shooting.

Boats said:
Most commercial primers are not sealed. Modern primers, containing no hazmat like the mercury in the old style mercury fulminate primers of old begin to chemically deteriorate at the 30-40 year span, rendering them inconsistent or inert.
Click to expand...

I've shot ammo sitting around from 1903 up to 1960's and it shot just fine, with no more special storage than sitting on a shelf.

Boats said:
On an autopistol, both magazine springs and recoil springs are critical to timing to prevent feed jams and extraction failures. It is commonly recommended that one replace a recoil spring at 5000 rounds or sooner and magazine springs as required.
Click to expand...

So, how would you know they have fired more than 5000 rounds in a scarce ammo situation?

Besides that 5000 rounds thing is a long debunked myth, from a US military practice of replacing 1911 recoil springs as a precaution. There have been tests and records kept that have had guns go tens of thousands of rounds on the original springs.
 
lol hey now, watch it, we don't want to start that argument, it will never end, besides we all know glock is the bestest pistol ever
 
A comment on nuclear power.

First of all, I am not anti-nuke, so don't take that from this posting.

That said, if you are living the post apocalyptic high life off of nuclear power, it's going to be a short ride that ends badly if you are down wind.

First of all, yes, a nuke being drawn upon by one guy and his lab is nothing compared to the energy potential.

However, the nuke plant is hooked into a dynamic power grid that communicates by computer. Since electricity cannot be stored it is generated as demanded. When those communications indicate either that the grid is not going to require the current amount of power being generated, or that the grid is in fact down, if no feedback is forthcoming from its human operators, the nuke plant will go into standby "safe" mode.

And then your power fails.

Worse yet, if the humans tending the plant do not show up to restore things or remove the fuel rods, what you have is a time bomb, sooner if the electrical water pumps that supply cooling water to the nuclear pile fail to deliver more water to the pool that the rods are immersed in, later if the rods just eventually decay from being "hot," because eventually, there will be no new water supply.

Even on standby, the rods are going to generate heat that will eventually boil off the cooling water when the pumps fail. When that happens, the rods being on average 700-800 degrees F, will melt their casings over time and combust, creating a fire not unlike the one that happened at Chernobyl. Bad days ahead for anyone under that cloud because with no firefighting effort to put it out, the pile could conceivably burn for about eighteen months continuously before becoming cool enough to be put out by rain and snow over time.
 
Bear Claw Chris Lappe said:
I know, just yanking some chains among the Glock faithful!!!

:D
Click to expand...

I know it's funny when a few people have a short glock vs whoever fuse. I have been through a couple kimbers great pistols, but they have disappeared since I got married, they are on my mid life crisis list lol
 
Spenceds said:
I know it's funny when a few people have a short glock vs whoever fuse. I have been through a couple kimbers great pistols, but they have disappeared since I got married, they are on my mid life crisis list lol
Click to expand...

Glocks are great guns, they are not my person thing, I'm an old school metal and wood guy, but Glocks are tough suckers!!!
 
Oh it took me forever to like them, I HATED them for a long time, but had to learn on one for a job so got used to them, so I got to like them a lot. Nothing like 18 rounds of 9mm to keep me warm, lol
 
Bear Claw Chris Lappe said:
Uh, I'm not talking about guns that have been stored and then brought out in like new condition, but those old wall hangers and beaters tha have been being used all along. There are plenty of those that are still rolling right along shooting.
Click to expand...

You'd have to admit they are being babied relative to how they'd "live" in the world of the movie.

I've shot ammo sitting around from 1903 up to 1960's and it shot just fine, with no more special storage than sitting on a shelf.
Click to expand...

Congratulations, but that is exactly the ammo more likely to work because they use the old-timey mercury fulminate primers, banned from further production since 2002. Modern health and safety concerns have made for a "greener" primer composition, usually potassium chlorate, that will not have anywhere near that type of shelf life. How much of that old timey medicine (mercury fulminate primed ammunition) would be laying around in 2040, after thirty years of anything goes following a cataclysmic war?

So, how would you know they have fired more than 5000 rounds in a scarce ammo situation?
Click to expand...

I don't, and my bet is that the magazines would fail before recoil springs anyways. However, the odds remain long against a bunch of perfectly working guns and ammo all appearing in the same place at the same time. Actually, my biggest beef is the rocket propellant on the RPG-7 warhead. That stuff requires way better storage conditions than ammo does to be banging off and firing true 30+ years after manufacture.

Besides that 5000 rounds thing is a long debunked myth, from a US military practice of replacing 1911 recoil springs as a precaution. There have been tests and records kept that have had guns go tens of thousands of rounds on the original springs.
Click to expand...

I know that springs will last longer than 5000, what I guess I am quibbling with is a combination of environmental factors and use in a harshly more violent world than we face today and seeing those guns that do exist in the movie, ALL perform just like they were made yesterday and ALL firing uniformly perfect ammo, oh, and ALL retaining 95%+ finish.
 
Last edited:
Tripton said:
+1. I find rottentomatoes to be pretty damned good. It is a WHOLE lot better than IMDB.

As an unrelated side note, if a person likes anything by Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich, then it is pretty easy to understand why you wouldnt understand or appreciate critically praised or good movies (which I realize are not the exact same thing)...

:D
Click to expand...

So what is a good movie?
 
I thought the movie was entertaining to watch. Not the best I've ever seen, but certainly worth the time to go watch it. My tickets were free. Knowing what I know now, if I had to pay, I'd wait for DVD.
 
ironmike86 said:
So what is a good movie?
Click to expand...

1978's "The Swarm": an apocalypse movie about--wait for it now---BEES! Killer African bees are slaughtering everybody. Source of the single greatest movie line of all time:
"Oh my God! Bees...bees...millions of BEES!"

If that's not entertainment, I don't know what is. No Blu-Ray special edition yet, but I'm hopeful. :D
 
Boats said:
Congratulations, but that is exactly the ammo more likely to work because they use the old-timey mercury fulminate primers, banned from further production since 2002. Modern health and safety concerns have made for a "greener" primer composition, usually potassium chlorate, that will not have anywhere near that type of shelf life. How much of that old timey medicine (mercury fulminate primed ammunition) would be laying around in 2040, after thirty years of anything goes following a cataclysmic war?
Click to expand...

A long time. Potassium Chlorate has been used for primers since well before the 1920's and plenty of that old ammo is alive and shooting.

Virtually all commercial USA made ammo has been loaded with Lead Styphnate based non-corrosive primers since about 1930.
 
Then I stand corrected. How were the shoot'em-ups in the movie? How many guns? What types?:D
 
I liked the movie a lot. It had a couple of very good twists, which in my opinion outweighed any anachronisms. I would see it again in a heartbeat.
 
Originally Posted by Boats
I haven't enjoyed a post-apocalyptic movie since both The Road Warrior and Max Max--Beyond Thunderdome. They set the standard for a uniform and believable dystopia. It probably helped immensely that Director George Miller also co-wrote both movies as well as the original Mad Max, which was set in time close before the nuclear war that is the backdrop of the sequels.

Most movies in the genre, such as I Am Legend, to take a recent example, simply feature too many anachronisms, like electrical power from nowhere, easy fuel, working automobiles that aren't cobbled together garbage, mountains of ammunition, and elaborate defensive systems that would have never been put together by just one guy.

Other horrible examples have even featured cigarettes--(I'm talking about you Waterworld,) or something else that totally ruins the illusion.

I doubt this one is different. It takes exceptional writers and a visionary director to pull the material out of the present and transport it to the imagined low-tech and barbaric future. The Mad Max movies aren't perfect, (who does Tina Turner's hair every day and with what? Why is S&M leather popular in the desert when it gets cold at night?), but they are the gold standard.

For The Book of Eli I saw non-smoking, mostly unmodified, cars and delivery vans, a chainsaw that fires up on the first go, a perfectly working RPG-7 warhead, and plenty of primer using, magazine spring dependent, recoil spring dependent, lubrication dependent, semi-auto pistols running around a very impoverished world set after a post apocalyptic war--30 years on--just in a trailer, so I am not too encouraged.

Oh yeah, and a slow motion arrow, the wooden shaft of which does not oscillate from point to tail while in flight, the very motion that the fletching has been compensating for going on centuries now.

It is way easier to suspend disbelief when the directors give a damn about the little details that otherwise poke holes in the viewer's efforts to join their world. It's this very reason why the most memorable science fiction has been done by visual detail fanatics who can succeed even in the face of crappy plots and dialogue, (George Lucas, James Cameron among others).
Click to expand...

Watch The Road. All I'm going to say.
That goes for all of you.
 
missin_hobo said:
Watch The Road. All I'm going to say.
That goes for all of you.
Click to expand...

I have been waiting for that to come on dvd, theater is just too expensive and too many disappointing movies to chance it. Anybody know when it comes out on dvd.
 
Yeah you see History of Violence, that was another one I liked with Viggo Mortenson(?)
 
Posted by Spenceds
Yeah you see History of Violence, that was another one I liked with Viggo Mortenson(?)
Click to expand...

I did. Wonderful movie. I'm a fan of the director, David Cronenberg.
If you liked A History of Violence, I would check out Cronenberg's last movie, Eastern Promises. Viggo's in that one too, playing a Russian gangster. Plus, as a bonus for us knuts, the movie contains one of the best knife-fights in movie history.

To elaborate on my last post, The Road is a much more accurate post-apocalyptic film, utterly without niceties and comforts.
Plants and animals are almost all dead. Horrifyingly, the only thing left to eat seems to be other people.
'Cannibalism is now the great fear.'
No one you encounter can be trusted.
There is no power. No medicine. Drinkable water is a scarce luxury. Any man can die in an instant.
There is only one vehicle, a noisy, rusting, smoking truck, and it breaks down within seconds of appearing.
There are many knives but few guns, most of them revolvers. The main character has only two bullets left, and is afraid to use them in case he has to shoot himself and his son.
It's a horrifyingly plausible post-apoc film. Not all the villians, in all the films ever made, are scarier than the silence of god.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top