Army surplus stores. wow

londonTiger

Just discovered army surplus stores. I needed a really hard wearing metal case to store all my salvaged lithium polymer cells from broken macbooks.

Tey are volatile so need a metal canister to store them in.

Got myself an ammo case!!! £20 it's massive and looks really cool with the proper USA/DOD/AYD signs, inert projectile etc.

So what else have you found at the army surplus store that you were just blown away by?

unforeseen

I think with the cuts in the last few years you can probably still pick up the odd battalion of infantry and squadrons of surplus aircraft fairly cheaply

spadoosh

unforeseen wrote: »

I think with the cuts in the last few years you can probably still pick up the odd battalion of infantry and squadrons of surplus aircraft fairly cheaply

I thought G4S bought them all?

unforeseen

spadoosh wrote: »

I thought G4S bought them all?

Yeah but they lost them

unforeseen

I remember the Army surplus stores being inundated with NBC suits after the Able Archer exercise in the early 80's where everybody including TA were involved.

Everybody buying them and thinking that they looked trendy until it rained. Somebody forgot to tell them that they needed to wash them first to get rid of the activated charcoal out of them.

Gave a whole new meaning to being blackballed

londonTiger

unforeseen wrote: »

I remember the Army surplus stores being inundated with NBC suits after the Able Archer exercise in the early 80's where everybody including TA were involved.

Everybody buying them and thinking that they looked trendy until it rained. Somebody forgot to tell them that they needed to wash them first to get rid of the activated charcoal out of them.

Gave a whole new meaning to being blackballed

just googled NBC suit to find out what it is. Is it me or is the idea of a NBC suit just complete BS? Like that's going to do jack all in the event of an anthrax bomb or a nuke. I suspect this is just to calm the nerves of personnel and give them some confidence. just like on the nuclear attack preparedness videos they taught us to hide under tables. like that will do anything.

unforeseen

londonTiger wrote: »

just googled NBC suit to find out what it is. Is it me or is the idea of a NBC suit just complete BS? Like that's going to do jack all in the event of an anthrax bomb or a nuke. I suspect this is just to calm the nerves of personnel and give them some confidence. just like on the nuclear attack preparedness videos they taught us to hide under tables. like that will do anything.

Hiding under tables was to minimise the casualties from falling debris of the building when damaged.


It doesn't do anything in a nuclear attack itself but afterwards in keeping contaminated particles (the short term, short range radiation) off the body. In a Chemical/biological attack the NBC suit will already be worn by service personnel in the conflict area. On first detection of an agent they will have their respirators on in 10 secs and be totally sealed up within a minute.

It is very effective in the biological and chemical attack scenarios as the activated charcoal 'holds' the chemical/biological agent preventing it contacting the skin. Don't forget that a respirator is also worn to prevent breathing it in as well.

With proper decontam processes then people stay safe and can still carry on working during the contamination phase.

I can vouch for the fact that NBC suit and respirator works well in a CS gas environment (the worst environment that is allowed to be used without special licences).

During development the suits were proved to work against chemical/biological agents such as Anthrax, Sarin, Tabun, Mustard Gas etc