Backfire

With all the advancements in the area of automobiles that have come out since "our" time, why, in 2035, hasn't someone come up with a substitute for gasoline? I know, I know, not this again. The reason I ask is that, besides an autoduellist, I am also a drive-hard, die-fast hot-rodder. I miss that "low rumble to loud roar" stuff. Why hasn't some boy in Tennessee or Kentucky "raided Pappy's still to race the ol' Dodge"? With all the high-performance stuff like superchargers, turbos, nitrous oxide, high-rise manifolds, four-barrel carbs, and Murray four-speeds available in our time, how can anyone be happy with an electric "toaster on wheels"? When I hear "electric" I think of a golf cart, not of a heavily-armed freeway fighter. The thrill is gone with the exhaust... America fell in love with the automobile, and its noisy, fuel-burning, horse-power producing engine, not with "toasters on wheels."

Now, I'm not asking for a complete revision of Car Wars, but how about a "rules variant" or option to allow for "gasahol" (or whatever you want to call it) powered vehicles?...
- Thomas "Wrong-Way" Wright, Ft. Hood, TX

You want it, Thomas, you got it! It's called "Dueltrack," and it has everything you asked for. Look for it in late spring or early summer.
- SDH

In response to John Nowak's comment in ADQ Vol. 3, No. 3 that my ejector set solution was "...uh, unlikely," all I can say is, "Oops!" I did forget to account for the necessary deceleration of the chair, which makes my solution void. As a result, my teammates have strapped me to an ejector seat to do first hand studies of acceleration and deceleration rates (both with and without parachutes...).

And speaking of "unlikely" solutions, take this familiar example. Let's say you're heading due north at 50 mph. You then decide to do a tight bend (D6). You make your control roll, and now you're doing 50 mph due east. Now all this happens in one-tenth of a second...

So in one-tenth of a second, your velocity north went from 50 mph to 0 mph. Using a=(Vf-Vi)/t (where a is acceleration, Vf is final velocity, Vi is initial velocity, and t is time), we get a = 733 ft/(sec*sec), or 22.8 Gs!!!

Therefore, you'll be subjected to a 22.8 G deceleration in the north/south direction, while at the same time you'll face a 22.8 G acceleration in the east/west direction. And no, these two forces won't cancel out (they're at right angles to each other).

Now, I'm no doctor, but even with the best G-suits, safety harnesses, etc., etc., I think 22.8 Gs will squish your insides like a bug on a windshield...

So what does all this mean? It means forget about the mathematics! As Scott Haring says, "It's only a game!" More importantly, it's playable, it works and it's fun! (I know I wouldn't want to be bogged down calculating G-forces and skid ratios and friction factors, etc., etc., with each maneuver.) Actually, I guess it doesn't matter that much anyway. Every time I try a tight bend at 50 mph I crash and burn. Oh, well...

This thing is rambling on too long, so I think I'll wrap it up by saying I received Vol. 3, No. 4 today, and as usual it's excellent. I especially like the armored wheel hubs. Good job to whoever designed them!

I'm so glad to see Autoduel, the computer game, has been released. Now tell the folks at Origin to make a version for us Commodore 64 owners!

Okay, enough babbling. Time for me to tune up the old death-cycle...
- Mike Emrick, West Palm Beach, FL

Herb Helzer made a point in ADQ 3/3 that the cycle gangs of America should be dead. he said that the various militias, law enforcement groups, and armies should have cleaned them out long ago. He is right. the bikers should be dead. But they are not. Why? I'll tell you why.

After impersonating a biker (no mean trick) and infiltrating a gang ( a harrowing experience, I must say), for approximately three months, I feel qualified to reveal the following details to Mr. Helzer:

1. Not all "civilized" auto shop owners and weaponry dealers are as civilized as one would like. The gang I was in, the Avalanche, had a game rigged with a local gunnery store wherein the mark (a stranger, a drifter maybe, possibly a small-cargo hauler) would be sold fake, harmless ammo. he would then call us up and tell us which way the drifter was going. We'd catch him fifty miles or so out of town and blast him. Usually there'd be a fancy piece of electronics we could sell at a discount to the dealer and still end up with a grand or three.
2. Similarly, not all civilized police officers, soldiers, and such are all that civilized. With the centralized government weakened as it is, what is to stop old police chief Shanko from taking a grand or two from the local gang as long as they don't shoot up any of his townies? Who would know?
3. The bikers who did die, and do at the hand of the well-armed gangbusters you find out and about these days, are the older ones riding Shoguns and Outlanders, rarely with any armor worth the name. Modern bikes are three times as well-armored and twice as well-armed as their 2010s and 20s ancestors. The bike I rode had a front armor weight of 180 pounds; it could stop two blasts from twin Vulcans, and often did. My bike had a Vulcan mounted front and a smokescreen rear; this was about average for my gang. The boss, George, had a sidecar with a mine-dropper and a Vulcan with a cyberlink he had grabbed from a space jockey we had trashed with the phoney-ammo trick.
4. In cruising around, we would often find a local in a lightly armed car. We would pull up, radio or signal to pull over, and grab a hundred or so in cash or ammo to sell to our dealer friend. This would happen about 10 times a week; the locals complained no end about it to their chief, but as he was an employee, he never did anything. If we caught someone from out of town, we'd end up with 4 tires, all the ammo we needed, and anywhere from 25 to 100 dollars in cash. We made out fairly well... in no way were we living "hand to mouth."
5. According to Mr. Helzer, the gangs "go raping and pillaging where they please." Not so. In my three months as a biker, neither I or my companions raped a single person. Not one. That kind of activity makes enemies of the sort that don't give up. And we surely didn't go where we pleased. We had very well defined areas where we could expect to be relatively safe, and areas where we could get smotzed if we had a death wish. And we kept well clear of those areas. The Brotherhood? they never saw us. As soon as a semi showed on the horizon, we took off for the roughest stretch of terrain we could find. There isn't a semi in the Brotherhood that can follow us on the goat paths we took. But we still had to take off whenever we saw one. A semi is a biker's worst nightmare. George used an old game called "Ogre" to illustrate his point when one of the younger members asked why we turned chicken at the sight of eighteen wheels. he got the idea real quick.
6. As for where we lived, well, that varied. Most times we just camped out about a hundred yards from the road, and made our beds where we could. Every now and again we could find an old farmhouse or something that wasn't being used anymore. We would use that until it became known as our hideout, and we would burn it some and move on. The burnt house would sometimes convince anyone coming out to catch us napping that someone had gotten there first.

   The Galapagos, another gang nearby, were our allies. They had a hole-in-the-wall to end all hole-in-the-walls. It was built in an old overpass on an interstate; it had power from a local stream, water piped in likewise, and a full garage. You had to turn off all the lights to use the lift, but it was better than nothing. They would let us use the plac from time to time, and we would let them trade with us (they didn't have a "legitimate" business contact, as we did).

So you see, Mr. Helzer, until the day I broke the gang, they were doing very well for themselves, bringing in about $500 a week gross apiece, and with very few expenses. I'm sure that by now some other gang, perhaps the Galapagos, has taken over the territory I helped to clear. Another gang may have sprung up; with local unemployment at 20%, this is quite attractive. In any case it should be obvious that the superiority of the car over the motorcycle in general, alone, will not exterminate the bikers. The only way to do this is to recentralize our government, and too many powerful people have interests in the status quo. I am sure that the battle against barbarism will continue on as long as the present state of politics exists.
- Fred Wolke, Bethel, CT

Issue 4/1 Index