Flamethrower Friday Part 2: How to deal with the Ramblers Association
Now the reason for the title of this post is that I thought we would celebrate that we should celebrate the flamethrower in its many & glorious forms. Over the last few weeks we have been pondering the best way to dispose of thieving pikies & rooms full of auditors. Tonight dear readers we turn our attention to the other countryside pest & take for our inspiration this story about a typical whinging rambler who is complaining about a what a farmer is planting on his own land. In the past, such problems were easily dealt with as crosshairs show up beautifully on an orange Kagool . However, two things have happened to change this
Firstly, the Laws of Natural Selection kicked in like a Sunday morning hangover – those ramblers that wore orange Kagool’s showed up beautifully in our scopes & before you could say pass me the quicklime, you would be entering another one in the game book - so they became slightly less obvious over time. Secondly, farmers started planted crops like miscanthus & it’s not easy to see the little blighters or their sandals in 12 foot high elephant grass
So our little teaser to take us towards the weekend is this:
You suddenly realise that the local chapter of the Ramblers are in the aforementioned crop & you need to dispose of them quickly. The only issue about this vermin control is that it will be done at point blank range. Beyond that, there are no other rules
Now to my mind, dispatching them in a single blinding sheet of flame could well be a quite efficient way of also getting rid of most of the local morris dancers at the same time – rambling & morris dancing being pretty much interchangeable hobbies
Admittedly there might not be much left of your crop by the time the flames dry down but effective vermin control always comes at a price. Anyway, I have no doubt that you lot might be able to come up with a better & possibly even more permanent solution...
Comments
The occasional mine, some punji sticks, and one or two Predator style swinging tree trunks should do the job nicely.
Posted by: Conrad | August 27, 2009 11:37 PM
Lewisite, the "Dew of Death". Flamethowers work best against bunkers and the sort, as they do most of their work due to suffication by consuming the available oxygen.
Posted by: Hughjimbissel | August 28, 2009 12:11 AM
How do combine harvesters and ramblers get on in close action, would the sandals get hung up in the mechanism?
Posted by: chris Edwards | August 28, 2009 12:28 AM
The problem with flamethrowers is that you might get the first rambler or two who are brave enough to venture down those overgrown paths, but the inevitable loss of the plants and the clearing of the path means that more ramblers will be attracted to the now cleared area.
Instead, I'd recommend stocking the fields with hungry lions or tigers. This way, the ramblers would get eaten and the plants would remain.
Bodies would be disposed of in an eco friendly manner, the plants suitably fertilized, and the paths could remain overgrown.
Any other minor problems can be left as an exercise to the reader to solve.
Posted by: pdwalker | August 28, 2009 1:41 AM
Well you might not have to go to the expense of using real tigers. A motion detector activated sound system could give the rambler a real thrill. Especially if he ran off the path and into the grass to escape the approaching tiger and got tangled up in the barbed wire. What is the barbed wire for, to keep the tigers off the path.
Posted by: toad | August 28, 2009 5:12 AM
No no no no. None of the above are worth a damn. Let's get serious, here.
I think we should consider the excellent Matilda Scorpion instead.
1.) Tracked vehicle -- suitable for all kinds of terrain and weather conditions.
2.) In high grass (such as pictured in Mr. FM's article), the ramblers would hear you coming, but not see you until it was too late.
3.) Ramblers are always whining about having a "clear path" -- well, the Scorpion would clear the path, all right.
4.) The "rambler residue" would provide excellent bait for crows, badgers, foxes etc., hence shooting fun afterwards.
5.) The Matilda got about 3 miles to the gallon of fuel, which would piss off the Greenies even more.
6.) Replace the Matilda's silly 4-pounder gun with a decent Vickers machine gun, and runaways could be brought down as well.
7.) When not in use in the country on ramblers, the Scorpion could be employed in London for errrr crowd control when next the Perpetually Indignant have a protest march. Multi-use efficiency.
Frankly, this is such an excellent choice that I'm amazed that no-one's thought of it before.
By the way: I don't want to be an American booster, but the only problem with the Matilda was its crap engine, which, in the finest British tradition, was always breaking down. Under a modern Lend-Lease agreement, we could always supply Britain with a few Sherman flail tanks.
Flails across the water, as it were.
Posted by: Kim du Toit | August 28, 2009 3:36 PM
There are police robots in the size range you're looking for available on the market. Fitted with IR vision and a 12 ga with flechette rounds for better penetration in the tall grass, you could probably order one with innocuous fittings and quickly adapt it to the more lethal accouterments.
The local geeks would likely find this sort of thing interesting enough to help you with the software for free, turning it into an autonomous patrolman.
Lovely videos for your private collection, too.
Posted by: Billll | August 30, 2009 5:07 AM