Whipped Cream Difficulties

I’ve got survival on my mind.

(That song belongs on the soundtrack to a movie based on one of Joe Lansdale’s books. Just saying.)

From 1961, “Survival Stresses”. I find this interesting: while it contains bits from other survival films, it concentrates less on specific survival techniques, and more on dealing with the stress of being in a situation.

Bonus video: I might post some desert and mountain survival ones later, but this popped up and I couldn’t resist. “Living Off the Land”, from 1944. This is (according to the uploader, “Australian Bushcraft Magazine“) an Australian Army training film about edible plants (“bush tucker”).

I think tomorrow, we’re going to see more bush tucker.

I thought it might be interesting to talk about Nike.

Not the goddess of victory, or the shoe company: the missile system. I’ve always thought that was a cool looking system.

First up, “The United States Army Air Defense Command”. This one is only about 10 minutes.

Bonus video #1, and also short: a vintage AT&T Tech Channel video about the Nike Zeus ABM system.

Nike Zeus was an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system developed by the US Army during the late 1950s and early 1960s that was designed to destroy incoming Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile warheads before they could hit their targets. It was designed by Bell Labs’ Nike team, and was initially based on the earlier Nike Hercules anti-aircraft missile. The original, Zeus A, was designed to intercept warheads in the upper atmosphere, mounting a 25 kiloton W31 nuclear warhead. During development, the concept changed to protect a much larger area and intercept the warheads at higher altitudes. This required the missile to be greatly enlarged into the totally new design, Zeus B, given the tri-service identifier XLIM-49, mounting a 400 kiloton W50 warhead. In several successful tests, the B model proved itself able to intercept warheads, and even satellites.

Bonus video #2, which is a bit longer: “The Nike Hercules Missie System” from the US Army.

List of Nike missile sites from Wikipedia.

San Vicente Park in California. Part of the park was an old Nike-Ajax missile site, which has been preserved and is accessible to the public. I’d like to visit there one of these days.

There were two Nike-Hercules sites in Austin: according to the Wikipedia list, one is in Elroy (which is kind of near the airport and the Formula 1 track, and is the home of Wild Bubba’s Wild Game Grill), and the other “is now the location of the University of Texas System Police Academy”.

(I had no idea UTPD had their own academy. I figured they shared space with the Austin PD’s academy. You learn something new every day.)

I know I’m running a little long (again) but in my defense, this is in color, and I think better quality than usual.

“Survival”. The YouTube notes say this dates to the 1980s, but the opening says 1978. I’m kind of wondering if at least one person on my blogroll saw this when they were serving.

At mark 01:00, a platoon of soldiers is caught in an enemy attack, and their armored personnel carrier destroyed. Separated from their unit, they must now survive in the field with limited equipment — and survival is a matter of life over death.

The other thing that makes this interesting to me is that the setting looks more like Europe (or some areas of the US) rather than the general run of “survival at sea” films I see a lot of on the ‘Tube. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, but I’m far more likely to be lost in the woods than to be bailing out of an aircraft at sea.

Bonus video: “Land and Live in the Jungle”. From 1944 and featuring Van Heflin.