This is a quiet night for a Mong Kok market.

The past weekend marked the 12th anniversary of a pretty nasty bug attack in the Mong Kok area of Hong Kong.

Mong Kok is the most densely populated place in the world.  Located on the Kowloon Peninsula on the island of Hong Kong, just off the coast of China, the area boasts a population density of about 130,000 people per square kilometer.  By comparison, Manhattan only has about 26,000 people per square kilometer.

Only a handful of months after the People’s Republic of China took Hong Kong back over, a Chinese government vampire hunting group ran into a few bugs in a tunnel under the Ladies Market of Mong Kok.  Had the bugs stayed underground the problem may have been small, but unfortunately, the bugs got startled and ran to the surface.

It was Saturday, October 11th, at about 9pm at night.  At that time of night, Tung Choi street is a mob scene.  The bugs burst into perhaps the most densely-packed crowd on Earth that night, and ravaged brutal swaths through the shoppers as they fled.  Since bugs tend to be much faster and stronger than regular people, they tore their way through the panicked crowds, creating even more damage as people trampled each other in fear.

An estimated 7 people were killed by the bugs due to trauma, with an additional 34 succumbing to trauma from trampling.

To make matters worse, there was a H5N1 bird flu scare in Hong Kong at that time.  Due to fears the new Chinese government would simply euthanize anyone afflicted with a contagious disease, many of the people injured in the attack that night stayed at home and didn’t report their injuries.  And, as one would guess, many of these injured people developed all different types of infections.  As many people in Mong Kok tend to live in incredibly overcrowded apartments, these diseases and infections spread rapidly, and within days a huge outbreak of bug attacks hit.

And, like the Chinese government tends to do, it attempted to hide the whole thing.

Needless to say, the area was finally locked down, with hundreds of people treated by military field hospitals.  Countless others were removed from the area and transported to “special hospitals,” though none of them were ever seen again.

Of course, the Chinese government denies all of this to this day.

A common RFID "chip."

A guy wrote to me recently asking how we can walk into a town, potentially make quite a big mess, and then leave without leaving a thing behind.  It’s a great question.  I answered with four simple letters:

RFID.

Radio Frequency IDentification is a technology that uses little metallic stickers to keep track of things.  You see a watered-down version of RFID technology more commonly these days in stores as security devices, where an alarm goes off if you try to leave the store without having the sticker or tag neutralized.

Real RFID technology involves a receiver keeping track of all the RFID stickers in the area.  So, for example, you could put RFID stickers on all of your DVD or Blu-Ray discs.  When someone takes one out of your house, the receiver notices the disc is missing, and can alert you.  Likewise, when your friend returns it, the system will let you know the disc is back in your house.

We put RFID tags on all of our equipment.  In addition to the sticker-type tags, we’ve got some pretty tough plastic ones that we have sewn into our gear.  We then have receivers built into all of our trucks.  If I accidentally leave a glove somewhere, my truck lets me know that I left it behind, and keeps bugging me until I go back and get it.

Sure, it’s a smart technology, but it’s not space age by any means.  Ford announced at the beginning of last year it was going to put RFID tracking technology into its trucks, and stores across the country have been using it for years.

So no, we’re not invisible nor are we ghosts.  We’re just meticulous about staying out of the public eye, and picking up after ourselves.

God bless the girls of the IDF. Yes, these are real soldiers that walk the streets of Israel!

A few of us are enjoying being back in the sand this week to look at a wall.   You heard that right, we were flown over in this late-night rush like the world was on fire to look at… a wall.

Archaeologists have discovered this ancient, massive wall under the City of David here in Jerusalem.  They’re all impressed because this 25-foot-high wall is made of huge stone blocks and suggests there was a giant fortress and blah blah blah.

They called us over because vampirism is as old as dirt, and since nobody is quite sure if vampires actually die of anything but a blow to the brain, we’re brought in just in case one of the old and crusty piles of bones starts walking again.  Well, they don’t quite walk.  They don’t really do much of anything, really.  But when one is clearly moving, even though it’s just a little bit, it’s bad for business.

Needless to say we’re getting paid big bucks to be on hand should something pop up.  We’re staying at a pretty swanky hotel checking out some of the hottest women in the world (think Bar Refaeli, as this is her home country), all in case a skull chatters a little bit and they need someone to come in and step on its head.

Sometimes I love my job.

Before he became Homer Hickam's hero, Wernher von Braun was a major in the Waffen-SS.

As World War II was wrapping up in Europe, some of the big wigs at the War Department felt that the U.S. should take active steps to bring German intelligence and research to the U.S.

They were more worried that German scientists and intelligence would fall into Russian hands, and wanted to get them on U.S. soil before the Russians got them.

So on July 6, 1945 the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved Operation Overcast.  The original official logic was these minds would help save the lives of U.S. soldiers still fighting in the Pacific.  The program, however, went on for many years long after VJ Day.

When the security of the operation was compromised, the name of it was changed to Operation Paperclip.  The new name came from the practice in the War Department of adding “new” backgrounds and histories to the folders of Nazis.  You see, President Roosevelt initially said he didn’t want any Nazis or war criminals allowed in the program.  To get around this, the War Department would change, or “bleach,” the files of potential participants to remove any information proving them to be Nazis or war criminals.

These new fradulent documents were paperclipped onto the file folders, hence the new name for the operation.

I bring this whole topic up because not that long ago we had to deal with one of these Paperclip Nazis.  He had been “rescued” at the end of World War II because of his extensive knowledge of vampirism.  Unfortunately for a few guys, he was always a Nazi first, and even 60 years later, he chose Hitler over humanity.

Eugene Schueller - lipstick genius and Nazi-lover.

Leading up to WWII, there were a bunch of people around the world who hated Jews, and to be fair, really hated everyone that didn’t consider themselves of a superior race.  Very similar to hate groups of today, such as the KKK in the U.S., Kach in Israel, and ALIR/ex-FAR of Rwanda, these people loved fascism, and hated Jewish folk.

So it was no surprise that there were pro-fascist groups in France leading up to, and during, the second world war.  Plenty of French people during the Vichy years marched Jews onto trains knowing full-well they were going to extermination camps.

What most people don’t know is that Eugene Schueller, the founder of French cosmetics company L’Oreal, was one of these people.

That’s right, the guy who founded the biggest cosmetics company in the world also founded the biggest pro-fascism, anti-Semitic group in France leading into WWII - The Cagoulards.  He supported terrorism, and actively funded efforts that included blowing up synagogues, and supplying explosives and guns for French terrorists.

Why do I mention this?  Well some of these same guys also funded a French research group that experimented with using “vampirism.”  By that I mean they infected and killed countless innocent people to learn more about the virus; with every intention of exploring the use of it as a weapon.

These guys supported the Nazis, terror, hate, and genocide.  They’ve also recently screwed with my team.  Think about that the next time you put on your lipstick.

The .500 Smith & Wesson is a beast!

A whole bunch of fans wrote to us, mostly in disbelief, about our .500 Smith & Wesson revolver.  Yes, it is our backup gun.

Why is such a powerful beast a backup, and not a primary gun?  Well, there are a few simple reasons:

1. It doesn’t hold enough cartridges.  We often need to fire a lot more than once, so having a gun that can only fire five is a bit of a turnoff.
2. It is far too powerful to shoot repeatedly as a primary sidearm.  If we miss, we’ve got to be able to fire again and again, and the gun is too powerful for accurate fast-repeat shots at a distance.  This alone means it absolutely can’t be used as our primary sidearm.  But, seeing as how a bug is probably going to be crawling on you by the time you need your backup gun, the .500 is perfect in a backup role.
3. Your backup gun absolutely, positively has to fire when you pull the trigger.  That means your backup gun has to be a revolver, which the .500 is.

We commonly refer to our .500 Smith as “The Staplegun,” because when its been used we’ve held it directly up to the bug’s head and pulled the trigger, like using a staplegun.  Only our gun is custom made by Smith & Wesson with a 1″ barrel (and we’re not telling if they made us buy 500 or not).

Also, some people couldn’t tell by the previously-posted photo how big the bullets for the .500 are, so here’s a bigger one below that hopefully demonstrates the sheer size and power of this cartridge!

From left to right: a standard-issue U.S. quarter, 9mm, .40 Smith & Wesson, .45 Auto, Dirty Harry's .44 magnum, and our .500 Smith & Wesson

A robot that eats people? Does that make it a vampire robot?

There’s an interesting story going around the Internet that a company has recently built a robot that powers itself by “eating” the dead.

The Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) project, developed by Robotic Technology Inc, is a real invention produced for the US military under DARPA.  It is simply a robot that can use organic fuel sources to power itself.

This is important because it means the robot can be sent on long-range missions without worry of running out of fuel.  By being able to pick up and “digest” twigs, leaves, and other organic matter the robot can sustain operations indefinitely.

According to the PR folks over at RTI, the EATR robot is a vegetarian and won’t eat dead people.  But really, if you made a robot that could eat dead people, would you tell the public you did?

Dr. James Polidori -- the man who made vampires foofy.

Vampire legends and tales date back to the Bible and before, sure.  But on April 10th, 1815, Mount Tambora on one of the Sunda islands in Indonesia erupted with a violence that hadn’t been seen in almost 1600 years.

The eruption was so powerful that it demolished villages all around, and sent up a global ash cloud that screwed up Earth’s climate so much that people in the northern hemisphere referred to the year 1816 as the year without summer.

In places like Geneva, for example, the summer was cold and rainy.  And people like Mary Wollstoncraft Shelley, her husband Percy Shelley, and their other friends had their Switzerland vacation dampened by the rain.  Bored one day, they decided to hold a horror story competition.  Mary wrote a story that eventually became known as Frankenstein.

What most people don’t know is that one of the guys there, Lord Byron, wrote a short story about a vampire.  He forgot about it, but his personal physician, Dr. John Polidori, picked it up and eventually published it as “The Vampyre” in 1819.

So what it breaks down to is that a bunch of bored Europeans couldn’t go swimming in 1816 because of the terrible weather induced by a volcanic eruption on the other side of the Earth, so they wrote the tales that became the classic backbones of modern horror fiction.

Not the non-fiction that is gruesome, dirty bugs, but the common Twilight, Anne Rice-type frilly fiction.  Where vampires wear medallions and know wine like James Bond.

And that, my friends, is how a volcano erupted vampires.

Yes, BOTH types of "bug" bites respond well to garlic paste.

Yes, this is going to be one of those posts where the term “bug” means both a vampire and some kind of insect.

When someone is suffering from a bug (vampire) wound, they experience discomfort for many reasons.  They feel an incredible itching sensation, and are compelled to scratch it.

One traditional remedy that helps a lot is to apply garlic paste to the wound.  No, this doesn’t mean garlic powder.  You have to slice the garlic very thin, and then squish every bit of garlic into a mash, much like the consistency of mayonaisse.

Garlic in any form will not repel vampires, no matter what the movies teach you.  The reason why garlic is tied with vampire bug bites is that garlic has some properties that relieve the pain victims feel after attacks.

And yes, if you apply garlic paste to a mosquito bite, it does help!  I’m sure some of the readers here could explain why better than I can, but let’s just say that if you’re bitten by *any* kind of bug, odds are garlic paste will help alleviate some of the irritating symptoms.

The Codex Sinaiticus

I’ve been all excited that the Codex Sinaiticus has finally gone online.  I’ve been waiting for this for months now.

And wouldn’t you know it?  The whole part about Othniel, the judge I was named after, isn’t online (Judges 3:7-11).  I don’t know yet if it’s part of the Codex that just wasn’t scanned, but it looks like that section has deteriorated to the point where it just doesn’t exist anymore.

The Codex is considered to be the oldest Christian Bible in existence.  I know for a fact there are earlier versions sitting in the Vatican, but for the rest of us regular folks, the Codex Sinaiticus works just fine.

I was really hoping there’d be some edited passages about me or something in there.  Maybe that Othniel was the baddest bug killer of all time.  Instead, I got mugatz.