#and he uses that luck combined with his natural kindness to make allies wherever he goes

[candideangel]

Island Survival Mode: Flexibility and Fish

Continuing for @meepsthemiqo​‘s Castaway AU/Scenario

To say their first night was somewhat of a success would be an apt statement. G’raha Tia, after calming Angelique from her initial anxieties over their missing comrades, friends, and allies, they would get to work on making sure they had a combination of shelter and hopefully find something to eat to get through their first evening on this island. As luck would have it there was plenty of wood from crates and odd parts of driftwood, smaller pieces set aside for a fire, though they would certainly have to fetch more, and frayed ropes that may have fallen from a mast had washed up. As for anything for survivability like food, at best they had managed to scrounge some fruits that survived in a busted crate, but not really much to last more than a few days. Fresh water, that was a whole other story and would have to figure that part out as they went along. Lashing together some fallen leaves from palm trees and the wood tall enough to cover them both for an evening, they would definitely have to work a new place for shelter at one point too. 

After rationing out some of the fruit they shared and had a nice talk before needing to turn in for the evening. Sleep had come difficult, while not unused to camping out, they often had bedrolls and there was the joy of staring up at the stars, but this was unknown territory, with unknown beasts somewhere off in the distance. Even with G’raha’s arm comfortably around her waist and the warmth of his body was a comfort, that didn’t stop Angelique from stirring when she heard a loud roar out in the forest, it was a bit disturbing...but he would gently reach up and pull her down and whispered soft words and shushing sounds before eventually the bard would fall asleep again despite the discomforts of the unknown.

~o~o~

The next morning after another portion of rationing out some semblance of breakfast and something for later in the afternoon. Angelique would go out to gather while G’raha had started to walk the length of the beach, in search of anything that could be of further use, but he also planned on seeing if he could find anyone who had been on the boat and may have washed up on the shore. That gave Angelique some time to explore further inland, this also gave her time to think. Pulling out the dagger from her waist and eyed it curiously, it really was a piece of work, to the point it almost felt gaudy with the hilt covered in shimmering gemstones. “Whoever really did commission this must have had a deep gil pouch.” she muttered to herself and then pulled out the knife from the sheath curiously in the shade. It was a silvery steel for the most part, with the exception of the gold bleeding in from the base, it even included a few engravings. However, despite the craftsmanship, she knew that at the moment she had to concentrate on the use, and while it wasn’t the most conventional, would run her finger along the thin sharp edge. It was brief and she took in a sharp breath feeling a momentary bit of pain and she looked down at her finger seeing a thin line of crimson starting to form on it. “Should be at least sharp enough for foliage at most…” she murmured softly dabbing her finger on her torn up shirt, the cut wasn’t too deep so it should stop bleeding soon enough.

During her search, Angelique would find some fallen branches that were pretty thick and spent a better part of the day using the knife to sharpen any rough ends into a sharp point, making sure that she was making at least two for herself and G’raha Tia, they were a bit...archaic in nature, but without sharp stones and other items, they had to work with wood harpoons to handle their hunting. But her favored find was the vines that were hanging down from a tree. It took her a few attempts, but Angelique would start climbing up the tree, and was soon straddling it as her core muscles would tighten, arms outstretched as she would start to cut down some of the thinner vines with a plan in mind for them.

“Hey there!” G’raha’s voice called up to her a big grin spread across his face as he looked to the bow of her back and the way her body stretched out. “My, had I known you would be this flexible, I would have suggested some more ideas during our...oof!” There had been a snap of the vine and it came and plummeted down on top of him. Angelique stared down at him, crossing her arms absently while she still straddled the trunk of the tree.

“Not exactly the time, Raha.” she scolded him before arms stretched out and she would start cutting away at another vine and used her hand this time to catch it, showing that she had let the first one drop on purpose. That rewarded her with a pout and by the time Angelique would have two other thin vines in her hand she let them fall down to the ground as well as the knife once she sheathed it so she could climb down carefully. “How was your searching, anything of use?” she asked curiously. “Any of our comrades?” 

G’raha shrugged a little, “I found a few useful things, managed to find some clothes from a clothing trunk, hung them up to dry at base camp, but as for our comrades and friends? Sadly, nothing yet. This Island must stretch fairly far, and wherever they are, we are probably all scattered about and could take several days before we fully meet again.” He glanced around the grass and found the wooden harpoons she fashioned but wasn’t sure of the vines. “I see you at least kept yourself busy, but then again it’s not like you to sit on your backside when there is work to be done.” He gave her a wry smirk, leaning over to give her a small kiss on her lips when she moved over to reach up and remove the vine that had fallen on him, flopping over like a limp snake onto his shoulder, “What do you plan on doing with those anyways? They don’t look flexible enough to makeshift a bow.” 

“Well I don’t even have any sharp stones unearthed for it. Plenty of branches, and these aren’t terribly flexible. For now though we’ll work with what we have.” Angelique replied while coiling the vines up and grabbing the two large wooden stakes. 

“Out of curiosity, do you know how to use something like this?” He asked, reaching over to take them from her for the moment to lighten up the load. 

“Not necessarily. Kirishimi knows how to use a lance and I’ve seen her movements...it can’t be that hard since it’s so light weight, can it?” Angelique wasn’t a dragoon, never once taking up anything like Lancing. She preferred her bow and instruments as weapons...and staying at a distance sometimes. G’raha smirked at her and gave a small chuckle, shaking his head.

“It’s fine, I’ll show you how to use it, because I also happened to find a spot where we can get ourselves something a little bit more hearty for dinner.” He was grinning, tail swishing back and forth before he would lead the way out of the forest, the sun starting to set from its zenith.

G’raha Tia would lead her along the beach away from their base camp, as it turned out the Miqo’te had found a reservoir of sea water, where it was at its somewhat shallow, faintly Angelique could see a shimmer of red scales dart around too and fro as they approached. “I don’t often spend time around the ocean, but I can say for certain that they aren’t a poisonous breed.” He informed and would hold out the branch to her and set his own on the side. “Alright, now it will take time to get used to, but…” moving behind her he placed his hands against her sides, making sure her body was sitting in a prime position. “...And if you hold it like so…” He would shift her grip on the stick, “Then it’s all a matter of waiting…” His voice caused a shiver down her back with how close it was to her ear, but his ruby eyes were watching the shallow portion of water, holding her hands for the moment, guiding her movements as they lifted the makeshift spear before he saw the prime opportunity, “Now!” he hissed softly and with a joined thrust down there was a definite hit on something and he would let go to allow Angelique to pull it back and see that the sharp end of the branch had a reddish and orange fish flopping for a moment and had gone still.

“Nophica’s tits…” she muttered softly, not sure how to feel. Angelique had hunted before, typically wild game for meat and furs, but physically digging something into a creature was a bit unnerving. G’raha gave a small smile, knowing it probably wasn’t all that easy to do, but he was proud she seemed to be taking it all in stride.

“Now you know how to do it, so let’s get a good handful to take back to camp.” He smiled a little, setting down a large palm leaf he had carried with them on the way here so he could help Angelique dislodge the fish from the spear and onto the leaf so they could take it back.

There was some silence that passed between them, hours perhaps as they waited for fish and sometimes some were missed. Together they had at least enough to have three each over the fire, “Hey, G’raha...how did you know about that kind of hunting style?” Angelique asked curiously, watching as she watched the red ears twitched in response to the question, he would wrap up the bundle to make sure he had a grip on their fish load.

He was silent for a little bit then glanced back, shrugging as if the topic wasn’t something he cared for, “Being a Tia in the G tribe meant you had to earn your place. If you weren’t female, it was sometimes harder. However, with my defects at the time, a father who disowned and a mother who didn’t give two shits that her own son was around, besides learning about the bow...I had to figure out ways to keep myself fed and healthy as possible.” He glanced down and for once a frown crossed his features, “I would often observe others, watching as they used spears, and after a few rough times...I managed to at least catch a fish or two in rivers nearby.” He shook his head a little, remembering some of the nights when his mother would sometimes make dinner without him in mind even if he shadowed her household. Compared to other Miqo’te males, he was definitely on the smaller side, and he knew some of his upbringing had probably caused it.

“But, I fought tooth and nail to get into Baldesion after I started to realize that life wasn’t for me.” He gave a small smile, “No regret after that. All things considered.” He glanced over his shoulder, a grin starting to form as they would start to walk back to camp. “After all, if I hadn’t defected from the tribal lifestyle, I wouldn’t have gotten to meet you. Not as we did. And despite this situation, I’m happy because I’m with you.” His cheeks turned a soft shade of red and Angelique’s did too, but it was hard to deny that of course...she was happy too. Even if they were stranded on an island and friends so far away at least they were going to get through this together, hopefully find one pair before the end of this.

That evening as they got a new fire going from a small gathering of wood, and Angelique sharpened more sticks with the dagger, so they could skewer their fish once G’raha had prepped them to remove anything they didn’t want to end up eating. As their catch was cooking over the fire, Angelique would braid the vines she had collected earlier and would braid them together, it was a bit strange, but she wanted to make a belt to wrap around the ornate dagger; which was even more out of place with the gilded look. For now she would set it aside once she wrapped and settled down, glancing to the crackling fire while the once red scales of the fish would start to brown and crisp.

“Not too bad for our second night here.” G’raha remarked and looked over at her with a small smile. “We know how to get food, and so far we haven’t run into anything dangerous, but it may happen within the coming days...just hopefully the Gods will give us some time to fully prepare.” But his smile fell when he watched the ghost in her eyes, staring off into space somewhere. “Hey...I told you everything was going to work out. You still trust me on that right?”

“Huh?” Angelique jolted from her daze and looked over at him and nodded a little, “Yeah, I know, sorry.” Shaking her head a little, “I must have hit my head or something because I don’t remember a lot of what happened to cause such a capsize.” She looked thoughtful, remembering faintly hearing Kiri shout something over the rain, but before that she was trying to remember other faces, but names were just as foggy. “Or others for that matter.”

“It’ll come back to you. You just have to be patient, love.” G’raha reassured, he was probably going to need to come back to this every so often. He knew she wouldn’t sit too still, always a woman of action. “So, the clothes, do you think they’ll fit?” He asked curiously as he pulled out one of the skewers to check for doneness while Angelique was looking at the clothes he had put up, it was a simple white top with short sleeves, and a pair of pants she could alter if she had to.

“Yeah, I think I’ll manage.” she chuckled softly and her Miqo’te companion would hold out a skewer to her, a grin that flashed her a slight point of his teeth exposed. Angelique smiled back as he settled down next to her, and for one evening they settled next to each other in the peace of the night, feasting on crispy fish, swapping stories, memories, and gazing at the stars that seemed to fill every ilm like the sea itself floated with glowing crystals.

[fapangel]

The North Korean government is allegedly the largest and most sophisticated international organized crime enterprise in the world, with a focus on smuggling all kinds of shit all over the place. How confident are we in the ability to prevent unconventional delivery methods of assorted WMD in the event of escalation?

That’s a very good point, and speaks directly to the entire looming issue of North Korean asymmetric tactics, infiltration, and special-operations forces. 

There’s two huge things weighing in our favor right now - chemical weapons are very hard to properly distribute, and their nuclear devices are crude, bulky, heavy and easily detectable. 

Chemical weapons present several problems, the main one being distribution. North Korean agents would have to get their hands on a light crop-dusting aircraft (not terribly difficult) but they’d have to get two or three to make a truly sizable impact, and they’d have to overfly dense urban centers at the right altitude for optimal distribution. In this modern day and age, a small flight of crop dusters - or even one - heading into downtown wherever, well below the tops of the skyscrapers (absolutely screamingly verboten to aircraft,) and a damn good ways away from any farmland they’d have business being over, would attract immediate attention - from armed air defense fighters. The lessons of 9/11 haven’t been lost on the world, and this exact scenario has been discussed more than once. Then there’s the difficulty of infiltrating sufficient quantities of the chemical weapon itself. Smuggling it in in pure concentrate form would help greatly, but if they do, then they’ll need to process/prepare it via dilution or whatnot without killing themselves… which would require suits and equipment they’d also have to acquire somehow. Against a modern, wealthy, stable nation with top-notch border security and competent intel agencies like Japan and South Korea, this is no simple task. 

Nukes present their own problems. Things like the W54 warhead and the proposed Special Atomic Demolition Munition (the prototypical “backpack nuke”) represent the peak of American nuclear weapons refinement - the W54 is pretty much the smallest nuke you can possibly make, the very limits of criticality, and that kind of miniaturization is neither easy nor cheap. The consequences of North Korea having that kind of weapon - which they would instantly sell to any asshole with hard cash, as they are wont to do - are dire enough that I can say with confidence that not even the Russians would willingly give them that kind of tech - the city that’d go up in flames might damn well be their own. 

So we can presume the North Koreans will be stuck with their current devices, which are all low yield (20kt or so, since they’ve only just developed the H-bomb, and would have had infiltrated their earlier primitive fission bombs,) bulky, and not very well shielded or “hidden.” The passive radiation that weapons-grade plutonium gives off can be detected by sensors designed for such jobs - and then there’s the size and bulk of the thing. This is also something that gives every security/spy service on Earth nightmares, and it’s absolutely the most closely-watched element of North Korea’s clandestine services and related smuggling. Typically, North Korean smuggling requires the tacit allowance or underhanded co-operation of other states to get away with their smuggling - such as Egypt, which was recently busted before they could take delivery of some 5,000 practice RPG-7 warheads probably destined for their regular army troops - or Syria and Iran, which have done a brisk weapons trade with North Korea. Infiltrating an atomic warhead into someone’s backyard who absolutely doesn’t want you there is no simple task. It can be done - witness the snatch-and-grab abductions of Japanese citizens right off their own shores by North Korean agents - but once you get the bomb in, your agents have to stay hidden, somehow. Maintaining a permanent presence like that is not very easy without some official foothold in the nation (i.e. an embassy,) and North Korea’s embassies are often rented out for parties (one of them even ran a goddamn slaughterhouse) and other things to make money for the cash-strapped regime (or did, until Trump’s pressure saw many of them closed recently.) When you’re using your embassies to host wedding parties because you need cash that badly, using them to support clandestine agents squirreling away atom bombs in-country…? Lets just say that it’s one hell of a stretch to believe that they could get that past the Five Eyes alliance and the vast resources - including personnel - that they can bring to bear on that problem. 

This does, however, raise the specter of special operations forces in more traditional asymmetric applications - i.e. on the Korean peninsula itself. Much hurf has been blurfed over North Korea having the “largest special operations force in the world,” (it’s commonly acknowledged that they probably count every cook and courier as an OPERATOR to puff up that number,) and the dire tales of their mad-villain preparations (like digging TWENTY TUNNELS UNDER THE DMZ) are constantly repeated. 

First, let’s apply a dose of reality. North Korean soldiers are commonly used for manual labor around the nation - they’re as much a civil work force and/or the workforce as they are a military one - and even the armed forces, which receive priority in all things, never get enough to eat. Any picture of a North Korean soldier taken clandestinely shows that they’re malnourished as hell. Assuming the special operations forces get the best treatment of all, then you have a group that’s primarily remarkable because they actually get fed on-par with, oh, everyone else in the civilized world. 

That doesn’t mean we should underestimate North Korea’s special forces, especially considering how completely brainwashed, fanatical and suicidally aggressive they can be - but neither should we fear them or credit them with prowess to the point of refraining from our own offensive action out of fear or apprehension. We must remember that Allied special forces have the three massive benefits of co-operative training, actual combat experience and proper leadership. North Korean commandos brainwashing makes them dangerous, but zealots are rarely fantastic tacticians - a dead martyr might take one MG team with him, but he can’t help his team flank the next one. Plus, the ROK special forces are legendarily terrifying motherfuckers that have fought with NATO forces in wars since Vietnam, and regularly do co-operative training with US/Australian special forces that’ve been fighting in every clime and place pretty much everywhere for decades - to say nothing of the 16 years of counter-terrorism operations worldwide since the Twin Towers fell. All the zealotry and obstacle-course jumping in the world can’t trump that. 

But there’s a final consideration - actually getting them to their objectives. Their current airborne plan is to use Anatov AN-2 biplanes to paradrop units in South Korea, counting on the relatively small RCS of the Anatov to conceal them. Against vaccum-tube radars of eras past, this might’ve worked, but modern radars can pick up even artillery shells in flight - and many of those counter-battery radars are also capable of area air-search, as well. Anyone trying to cross the DMZ in those suicide tugs are as good as dead, and survivors will only get through via dint of luck and limited SAM magazines - to hit the ground scattered and without enough immediate support to avoid being mopped up piecemeal. 

Then there’s the magic tunnels - which I’m calling bullshit on. Some of the claims - including tunnels that go “straight to Seoul” - don’t even pass the laugh test. (The latter tunnel would produce so much waste dirt that it’d make a new mountain.) Also consider that technologies such as ground-sonar (as seen in Jurassic Park) are commonplace and highly refined these days, and that coalition forces have been dealing with insurgents hiding in deeply buried tunnel networks for almost two decades now - not counting our experiences in Vietnam - and I’d say the myth of twenty undiscovered tunnels that can move hojillions of troops under the DMZ in hours that we haven’t found is bullshit at worst and deliberate misinfo aimed at the Norks at best. 

The biggest threat - and the one the Norks have the most practice with - is infiltration via watercraft, an especially attractive option given the peninsular nature of Korea and the shallow seas on either side. It’s estimated that they can sealift up to five thousand troops behind the DMZ via various means. A great number of North Korean spec-ops insertion craft have been observed or discovered, including semi-submersible vehicles carrying defensive torpedoes, mock fishing boats with opening stern-ramps to let out landing craft, and conventional insertion from subs or mini-subs. Most troubling is the high number - dozens - of small coastal naval bases the North Koreans maintain for launching light craft like these (including their usual small gunboats and missile boats.) 

While coalition air and sea supremacy will be largely unquestioned, DPRK forces will try to challenge them long enough to let the “small fry” slip through in numbers sufficient to be effective. Fortunately, there’s a way to put those small bases out of action - mines.  

The United States has long operated “Quickstrike” mines; just (another) strap-on kit to convert normak Mk-8X dumb bombs into sea mines. Recently however, they added GPS capability to them - combined with the glide-bomb wings of the Australian JDAM-ER, it turns the Quickstrike mine family into precision standoff munitions. This vastly increases the efficiency of the mines, as you can lay them out in any pattern desired, rather than having to drop X number in Y area to achieve roughly the desired density. It also makes them standoff munitions, allowing a single B-52 sortie to mine waters from up to 80 kilometers away, keeping the big bomber safely away from hostiles (at least, not RIGHT OVER them.) It also helps that the enemies won’t know they’ve been visited by aircraft at all. With a CEP on the bottom of only six meters or so, this’ll allow optimal distribution of mines to take out anything that sorties - Quickstrikes are some of the best available and have all the nasty fuzing features to customize what you kill. A few B-52s can demonstratively shut down these DPRK sea bases (and their underground sub and missile boat bases, for that matter.) We’ll have to come back and hit them later, of course, but in the initial hours it’s enough to neutralize the threat while most of our airpower is going after much more crucial targets (WMD and SRBMs.) Even better, the accuracy trivializes after-the-fact minesweeping (since you know where each mine landed to an accuracy of just six meters.) 

Which brings us to the last consideration - special forces in reverse, ours used against the DPRK. Not for nothing is the ROK publicly bragging about forming a “decapitation unit” to hunt down Rocket Man, and showing off their spec-ops transports at every opportunity (one was in the air during the recent B-1B jaunt over the Northern Limit Line, for example.) This serves two purposes. One, it exploits Rocket Man’s well-known (and sensible) fear of being assassinated, both pressuring him more and (hopefully) influencing him to keep more of his vaunted special-forces troops back for defense of himself and his cronies, rather than out conducting offensive ops against us. 

And two, it serves to distract him - and any troops he might retain for defense - from the real goal of these special forces. It won’t be assassinating Rocket Man, that’s for sure. In 2015 a truly massive special-forces exercise called Jade Helm was held in the US, and though it made headlines at the time for panicking all the compound-dwelling militia types, the really noteworthy thing was the sheer scale, which even SOCOM admitted to at the time. Obviously there’s not much information out there about Jade Helm (that isn’t full of shit and being spouted by retards hawking their pet conspiracy theory) but there’s enough (attributable) pictures and comments to make it clear that at least one or two sizeable helicopter-borne insertions were done, in addition to the usual cross-border infiltrations on foot. Some have suggested that the training areas involved - rural areas in arid, hilly places that are lousy with abandoned hard-rock mineshafts - point to preparation for a massive special forces assault against North Korea. 

Well, maybe. And maybe not. But do know this - the United States and its regional allies have been worried about North Korea for a long, long time, as well as Iran. These are the kinds of dire times that the military anticipates and trains endlessly for. Things like the Massive Ordinance Penetrator, which is a bomb originally destined for North Korean bunkers, upgraded to take out Iran’s deeply-buried nuclear centrifuges, and now aimed at North Korea again, demonstrate this - we’ve entire expensive weapon programs prepared for these remote but devastating eventualities. It’d be insane to think we wouldn’t prepare our ground forces in the same fashion. 

And when it comes to the unique challenges of a heavily dug-in North Korean military, well, thinking outside of the box is mandatory. Much is made of our ability (or inability) to seal up the underground tunnel-hangars they hide their SRBM TELs in… but nothing will close one of those exists off as conclusively as a platoon of Green Berets with a Carl Gustav or two.