Walsingham

Personally I think it would be a lot more interesting to view the doomsday scenario as not a nuclear bomb per se, but Mao Tse-tung. Imagine the havoc he could cause in your average knights and eleves setting. Politics, not bombs, although obviously he would encourage the development of guns as a means for making illiterate yokels a match for knights and the bourgeouise (if that's how you spell it) magic guilds. Throw in him making pacts with demons against the gods (who I'm sure would like his revolutionary ideals) and bingo!

Or in Vampire: C'est magnifique, mais c'est ne pas la garou.

I don't get it. I like it but I don't get it.

'Friends' - The Doug Anthony All Stars

It's funny, but I was about to say the same thing. I stopped because I still reckon you'd have some crotchety old buffer strolling through the quarantine zone to exercise his jack russel.

Hey! Why are you poking me?

Jet Set Willy. Gawd, that takes me back.

I agree that warfare is now the best I've ever seen anywhere (in games terms, obviously not in realistic terms). I'm in a game at present whith two large continents. Needless to say I have been slowly nibbling my way along my continent, but on the other one jstinian has been building himself a huge and technologically superior one. Given he possessed riflemen and airships while I was still getting my spurs untangled I had been about to give up on it as a bad job. It was then that I started looking at him from a non-attritional perspective and fell in love with this game. He was reliant for all his oil on a small island (heavily fortified), and ddi not appear to have got refining yet. I therefore threw EVERYTHING into refining and managed to get there first. My superior navy then isolated the island, and slughtered the waves of galleons, caravels, and frigates while I used massive numbers of cannons and ballistas to pummel his machineguns and modern riflemen down to a level my grenadiers could storm. It was extremely bloody, but eventually worked. As an adjunct I dispatched a second operational group to raze some of his vassal's cities, splitting him away from them, and bringing them into my own camp. This in itslef would just transfer more worries about my didgy allies, but I used the liberate function to turn over cities captured from him and them, thus sweetening them up, alongside massive gifts of every kind of resource. In addition I shipped them quantities of cavalry and riflemen. It's working so far. He's pretty pissed off though. The point is really that in this game you can take a system view of an enemy and go for the stiletto to the heart rather than pummeling him in the field.

There certainly is. Be sure to add in a pipe.

Really pushing the running. No-one more startled than me to discover I am actually getting faster. Although it's only at the expense of looking like a Killer Tomato.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6996073.stm Some of you may remember the fouth and mouth disease outbreak a couple of years ago. It caused damage to the UK economy in the region of billions of pounds, and threatened the entire UK farming community with Armageddon. There was another recent outbreak of the disease near some testing labs. It seems that members of the Great British Public in their infinite wisdom have been ignoring the exclusion zone warnings to go rambling across the land. I found this absolutely staggering. There really isn't any way the authorities could have made it more clear that this was a serious incident, or that the public should be responsible. But Mr and Mrs Jones feel their god-given right to do whatever they like, and rather than walk around, they walk across anyway. For me this absolutely typical of the average member of the British public who will not budge an iota or give the slightest consideration to others in their driving, personal behaviour, even - in this case - where their selfishness could endanger the livelihoods of millions of people.

Quite so. *puff puff*

That seems logical. What happened to your avatar, btw? No pipe?

Now that's a different thing entirely. You don't actually see in full colour until you've seen Africa. The people are tremendously vibrant, and the food and fruit (bushmeat notwithstanding) are bursting with flavour. It's a true adventure. You should consider yourself unfortunate if you DON'T go.

Lax Russian security at weapons stores is felt to underpin the greatest threat of a terrorist nuke.

Roll on the Butlerian jihad!

You are not wrong. The lyrics essentially are a very plaintive "God, you seem to have wandered off. Come back to Africa. We're in quite a bit of pain." Good lord! I just started crying. How peculiar.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6992670.stm Good heavens, how handy. The BBC have written an article on this subject. Enjoy.

I'm all in favour of giving weapons proper names again. I mean what kind of name is FRES anyway? On your left you can see CHALLENGER, great big tank. Next to it is WARRIOR, nippy bastardmobile. Then we have FRES, er.... Anyway. More Putin-related news: Two Russian activists from the Yabloko opposition party set themselves on fire in protest of what they call "Operation Successor," the Russian practice of allowing the president to appoint his successor, as President Vladimir Putin seems likely to do. The protesters, Ilya Yashin and Aleksandr Shurshev, were driven to a Moscow hospital by ambulances stationed at the demonstration. They suffered minor carbon dioxide poisoning, according to Ekho Moskvy radio. Aramil, I hope you can shed some light on all this.

Outbreak, but they found a cure! And mocked Hoffman's nose, which he clearly permitted with a gun to his head. I thought Donald Sutherland was great in that movie.

I believe you simply need a certain effect on the fissile material. We've come a long way since the days of putting sub-critical masses in a pith helmet and giving them a shake. You can achieve a lot with high yield non-plastic explosives. The thermobaric (and mysoginistic) FOAB weapon strikes me as a little excessive. Thermobarics are almost exclusively for busting bunkers, caves, and urban rubble. A use the Russians found great utility for in Chechnya. The principle (but obviously not only) effect of a thermobaric is against humans. You have a high overpressure followed by an underpressure. Victims of such a weapon are often found with their lungs on the outside. Which is nice . Fuel air mixes are exploited by the Russians in the RPOA 'Shmel' launcher to great effect in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda franchisees tried to use the same principle recently in the UK. They made a number of mistakes leading to incomplete/improper detonation. Which the press helpfully pointed out to them so their bombs would work next time. I don't think the FOAB signifies anything in particular, besides being a PR exercise to go one up on the Americans.

How does it actually spread in the meat? Wasn't there some film with Dustin Hoffman where Ebola is thought to have become airborne? I do wonder what would happen if someone got it and started sneezing.

Summary: New leaders, new units, new tech, new buildings. these things are welcome but secondary to the re-jigging of the subtler aspects of gameplay, including the civilisation domestics, and combat. Particularly air combat. In addition the expansion includes some kickass mods and scenarios that show the potential of the game. If you enjoy Civ at all you should buy this expansion.

One theory is that Putin is serious about cleaning things up a bit before handing over to the next tenant. Another theory is that he simply wants someone he can trust to be totally compliant if he decides to quit.

I agree. And I say that with the greatest respect for troops. I should say that I mean by this that there are a host of potential sources of courage in the line of fire. Self-protection, rage, fear of punishment, training. I fancy that reaching out to someone dying of ebola must stem pit nothing but empathy against every natural urge to run off shreiking.