ag_145_dec30b

12/30/15 Underground 04

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21 Comments

  1. Panel three, shouldn’t that be “heroine”? I don’t think she wants to be an opioid derivative.

  2. Last panel, “be able TO persevere.”
    And ditto on the opioid thing.

    Funny that Anna is talking about what happens in fiction. So meta, or something.

  3. @Sengkelat

    Exactly.

    “As the titular heroine, I noticed that my sidekicks sure seem to be doing all the work – when do I get to have character development in the action department? Even the comic-relief-bot is more useful than I am.” 😉

  4. I count three typos. Two of which were previously mentioned. The third being “they” before ‘”Cryo-Dodge”‘. If talking about the act of freezing up, it should be ‘the “cryo-dodge”.’

  5. Typo gifts for the hardcore fans to find and correct! Merry Christmas! 🙂

  6. The April 1st strip will be posted entirely in ROT13.

  7. Almost getting eaten by a giant flying lizard is nothing. Getting called out for three typos in one comic is horrifying. Glad you can persevere, Christopher. 😉

  8. All three fixed! Thanks!

    @Sengkelat, well, it does fit into her story. In the beginning she was a bookworm, reading adventure stories rather than living them.

    @Scott_Bieser, hee hee hee. Fortunately, I have a pretty thick skin from all the beatings. 🙂

  9. You never will know how you will react except under pressure. It is the only way to know. Some freeze up, others run, some just give up, still others can step forward and give it a go.

    Adventure stories are more predictable, usually, and not dangerous at at all to the reader and habit forming too.

    The real thing however is messy and that is why it isn’t as fun, and dangerous and fear is felt. The difference between reading about a shoot out and being there.

  10. My troops always got more worried the calmer I got. I had read, and found it out to be true, that those who keep their heads when all others are losing theirs, tend to survive. So I made it a habit to calm myself when things got hairy. I also made it a habit to never be more brave than the situation called for. Take a deep breath and THINK with clarity. The troops notice everything, so when I went calm all of a sudden they knew things were about to become interesting. One PFC remarked that if I got so calm that I went to sleep in a battle, he expected Ragnarok.

    Reading that poem (“If” by Rudyard Kipling) has saved my life and the lives of others on many occasions. Rudyard Kipling knew a thing or two about men in combat.

    However, as for our heroine, freezing is not always a bad option. Sometimes it is the calm, correct option. Instinct is to run, but beasts of prey tend to be attracted by movement. If a mouse refuses to run from a cat the cat may lose interest in it if the cat is not really very hungry. Another seldom used option is to attack, charge. This can greatly confuse and discomfit the opposition. When we were ambushed we usually charged. I have also seen a mouse escape a cat by leaping at it in attack (I’m an old farm boy and there were loads of cats on the farm). This momentarily confuses the cat and can allow the mouse to escape if cover is very near. Same for a rat and a terrier on the farm. When prey does not act as expected, it can confuse a predator.

  11. @Warpig, Prey attacking the predator reminds me of the Mythbusters episode on Never Bring A Knife To A Gun Fight. MB decided that if the attacker is closer than 18ft. then it’s almost certain that the attacker will knife the gunslinger before the gunslinger can draw, cock, aim, and fire the weapon. Notably, they didn’t test the results if the gunslinger’s weapon is locked and loaded, or if the attacker jinks left or right while charging, thus interfering with the gunslinger’s aim.

  12. Also, if you’re going to try this, DO NOT look your opponent in the eyes. Your eyes will give away your intentions.

  13. Well Muzhik you should learn how to feint and bluff with you eyes, which makes sparring sessions really funny. You smack around most opponents and they don’t know why.

  14. @Warpig When in desperate ground, fight. If you fight you may die. If you do night fight you will surely die. Sun-Tzu, “The Art of War”

    In other words, in a hopeless situation, attack. You may win through to escape, you may still end up dead, or you may kill your foe. In any case something different will happen than if you sit/stand/curl up and do nothing but get killed.

    Take action and *do something* Chris Mintz at Umpqua, the men on the train in France, the people on the airplane that Richard Reid tried to blow up and many more understand this, even if they’ve never heard of Sun-Tzu.

  15. @Galane: The old combat maxims go: “When in doubt, attack”; “Anything you do in combat can get you killed, including doing nothing”; “If there is no other choice, be brave” and; “Sometimes the only way out is through the enemy”.

    @Muzhik: I saw that one. They didn’t try that with a fellow with a double action revolver or semi auto, which does not need to be two-hand drawn to cock. For my CC personal weapon, I keep a round in the chamber. I do not know of anyone who does not. All I have to do is draw and pull the trigger on the double-action semi auto. No cocking, just draw and squeeze. That equals one very sad knife wielder, even before he gets halfway to me. Mythbusters, I believe, get things wrong on purpose because their television masters tell them to maintain/advance a certain politically correct agenda. Several of their “busted” myths I know they got wrong, from personal experience.

  16. YUp, War Pig is right. Nobody I know leaves an empty chamber or uses a safety.

  17. Oh, wait. Just remembered a gunsmith I met long ago. His everyday carry is a Colt SAA black powder pistol. Yeah, the 1873 model. No safety, but kept the hammer on an empty chamber and was scary accurate with it.

  18. What some of you are talking about, without knowing that you’re talking about it, is the Tueller Drill:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill

    Basically, it takes 1.5 seconds for the average trained police officer to identify a target, extract his handgun from its holster (which, remember, is required to be a positive retention holster in today’s day and age), bring it to bear on the target, and pull the trigger. The point of the Tueller Drill is that 1.5 seconds is a *long* time when someone’s charging you with a knife. Long enough that an attacker may be able to ventilate you before you can kill him.

    Needless to say, if all you have is a knife, and your opposition has a gun, this only works if the opposition’s gun is located in a positive retention holster at the time you locate your opposition, and if the opposition has not yet located you. Charging someone who has a gun at the ready position when all you have is a knife is just a fancy way of committing suicide, as is proven by the dozens of people shot and killed by U.S. police officers every year who did exactly that.

  19. Yup. Against someone untrained in tactical fast draw you are correct. There is training and techniques for a lot of things.

    http://www.wikihow.com/Do-a-Tactical-Quickdraw-With-a-Pistol

  20. To anyone who “always keeps a round in the chamber” so all you have to do is “draw and pull the trigger”: You are the reason why a gun in the home is more likely to kill you or a friend of family member than to be used against an intruder. http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-person-youre-most-likely-to-kill-with-your-gun-is-you/

  21. And on that note, while we are all still friends, I’ll close comments on this strip. 🙂 -Christopher

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