Pandemic diary: Year 3

It's now been three years since my first pandemic diary entry on this blog. My previous one was a year ago, when I noted that our government had pretty much abandoned trying to contain the pandemic at all. The official death toll on 1.1.2022 was 1 564. As I write this, the WHO Covid dashboard has our total deaths at about 8 900. In my previous post, I said we'd need to triple our death toll from what was then about 3 000 to reach per capita numbers like Sweden. Well, we've done it.

So what happened? I'll show you. I no longer have screenshotted graphics from our government broadcaster, because they've quit publishing covid statistics. These are from Our World in Data.

The graph below shows the story of our pandemic. For the first year or so, we were very successful at suppressing the pandemic. Deaths were well below the world average, let alone the EU average. We were on par with Asia. Until something changed, and away we went.

In the fall of 2021, our government pretty much decided that we're going to stop suppressing the pandemic. The next graph is from about a week ago, and it shows the consequences of that decision.

Over the past year, covid deaths in Finland have been way higher, per capita, than in the UK or the US. We're also way above the EU average, let alone the world. We simply decided that actually, we're just going to let people die.

The one thing I associate this with, more than anything, is a cheerful media appearance by our very cinematic prime minister. On September 24, she was on the cover of one of our major afternoon papers, with the huge headline: It is time to live!

Obviously it wasn't just one interview: rather, it coincided with a general lifting of restrictions. Masks and distancing are no longer recommended, and in general, people are being encouraged to behave as if there was no pandemic at all. Below you can see the results.

It's actually really interesting to look at all the Nordic countries. First of all, this is the only real frame of reference for assessing Sweden's performance. People in English-speaking countries occasionally make very misleading arguments about Sweden, because they compare Swedish policy outcomes to their own. Surely the comparison point has to be very similar societies, with very different pandemic policies. Below is what it looks like. Frankly, if you think pandemic mortality in Sweden wasn't high, your baseline is wrong.

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So here we are. On New Year's Day 2022, 1 500 people in Finland had died of Covid. Now the number is 9 000. We were doing a world-class job of suppressing the pandemic - until we decided to quit. Almost ten thousand people died, and we're still pretending it isn't happening. Get on the subway today, and there's barely a mask in sight. We're doling out record amounts of sick pay, but even that can't sway the government into doing anything. It is time to live. Except, of course, for the 7 500 people who died after we lifted restrictions.

What's horrible about all this is that this pretence that there's no pandemic is empowering all the worst people. We now have folks who were grumbling about the restrictions claiming that they were never necessary in the first place. It's honestly kind of terrifying that hundreds of thousands of people get sick, thousands die, and there are actual people out here saying that the greatest atrocity was that they weren't allowed to go to the gym or the karaoke bar. It's certainly now easier to understand why the 1918 pandemic seems to have vanished from the historical record.

First it was hoarding pasta and toilet paper, then it was "time to live", i.e. "I don't give a shit who dies, it won't be me". The necropolitics of Covid suggest that we're in for an unbelievably grim time with the climate crisis.

The facts in the disappearance of flight MH370

I'm going to do another of these posts where I've watched a stupid Netflix documentary and it's left me profoundly unsatisfied. This time it was MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, on Malaysia Airlines flight 370, the Boeing 777 that vanished in 2014 on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and inexplicably ended up crashing in the Indian Ocean.

What's annoying about the three-part documentary series is that it does such a bad job of presenting the actual facts of the case. What's downright irresponsible, in fact unethical, is that they give huge amounts of screen time to fantasists hawking ridiculous conspiracy theories. So, just to register my protests, I want to go over what we actually know about the MH370 incident, and then say a few words about the so-called "theories" presented on the show.

**

Let's start with the facts. Sadly, the official report released by the Malaysian government doesn't seem to be online any more, or at least I couldn't access it. So I'll be doing this based on secondary sources, with the help of Wikipedia.

Here's a useful map from Wikimedia Commons, which shows the known flight path of MH370.

Here are the facts of the matter.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a Boeing 777 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, took off at 12:41 MYT (UTC+8). At 01:19, the flight was approaching the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese airspace, and Kuala Lumpur air traffic control instructed them to get in touch with Ho Chi Minh ATC. The captain of MH370 acknowledged the message.

However, MH370 never got in touch with Vietnamese air traffic control. Instead, as it passed navigational waypoint IGARI, the plane's transponder stopped transmitting.

A short digression is in order, as aviation people apparently say "radar" to mean two different things, which is confusing for a layperson, and terribly confusing for someone who knows a little about military aviation. What I believe most of us think of as radar, i.e. an electronic transmitter that detects objects based on their radar reflection, is apparently known in aviatiom as primary radar. When popular accounts of MH370 say that the aircraft "disappeared from radar", they mean secondary radar, which isn't actually a radar system at all in the sense I understand it, but rather a system similar to military IFF, which communicates with transponders on aircraft. When MH370's transponder stopped transmitting, air traffic control could no longer see it on secondary radar.

Military radar data would later show that the plane then made a sharp (at least for a passenger plane) turn left, onto a southwesterly heading. The official investigation would later determine that the turn could not have been done by autopilot, and therefore must have been made by hand. So either some frankly unbelievable sequence of events occurred on board, or someone deliberately turned the aircraft using the flight controls.

After flying to a point very near the island of Penang, the aircraft made a right turn and flew up the Strait of Malacca, along an established air route, passing several waypoints, until it flew out of the range of Malaysian military radar at 02:22. Thai military radar also detected an aircraft believed to be MH370, and as it passed Penang at 01:52 MYT, the first officer's cellphone briefly registered with a nearby cell tower.

After the plane's transponder stopped transmitting, the satellite communication system on the aircraft rebooted and established contact with an Inmarsat satellite. Using the satellite communication data, it was later determined that MH370 kept flying west, and then turned south, into the southern Indian Ocean. As the aircraft had limited fuel, there were no possible landing sites in the vicinity, and pieces of debris confirmed as coming from that specific Boeing 777 were later found, it seems that flight MH370 eventually crashed into the ocean. Because the specific crash site is not known and the conditions and size of the area make searching extremely difficult, the wreck has not been found as of this writing.

As I understand it, while the initial hard turn off the plane's expected flight path must have been made by hand, the subsequent turns could have been flown by autopilot, but in that case, someone must have programmed the autopilot to do so. Again, it seems almost impossible to conceive of any other explanation. Based on the evidence that exists, it is a fact that MH370 flew into the Indian Ocean and crashed there. It seems very difficult to believe that it was not flown there intentionally by someone.

**

Unfortunately, the Netflix program does not make these basic facts at all clear, and indeed omits some of them. It's probably not a coincidence that some of the absolutely bizarre conspiracy theories peddled on the show require this omission of facts.

Something that genuinely annoys me is when people ask rhetorical questions that they absolutely should be asking as real questions. A particularly egregious example on the Netflix show is the French reporter, who points out that MH370 "supposedly" flew right over Malaysia, in fact almost directly over a Malaysian airbase. She then asks, rhetorically, whether it's supposed to be possible that no-one would have noticed this and attempted to intercept the plane.

In my capacity as a military historian, let me assure you that the answer to any question that starts "could a military organization be so incompetent" is yes. This is almost certainly true of all human organizations, but the ones I've studied happen to be military. In this case, as can be read online (ironically, in French!), the air base MH370 overflew was not in operation at night. Even if someone had wanted to intercept the unknown radar contact, it would have taken two hours to get a plane in the air. Is this believable? In my opinion, absolutely. It also explains much of the delay in publishing the radar data, as no nation will want to advertise the fact that they don't, or even worse, can't effectively police their own airspace.

If you still think it's unbelievable that an unidentified aircraft could fly through air defenses without being intercepted, well, by coincidence I gave a lecture on the Soviet Union and the Cold War earlier this year, where I discussed the extraordinary flight of Mathias Rust.

**

Sadly, instead of concentrating on the facts and some sensible attempts to explain what happened, two of three Netflix episodes are dedicated to totally ridiculous conspiracy theories.

The first is peddled by an American journalist, who has been inexplicably elevated to the position of Will Buxton in the program. His version of events is that Russia hijacked the aircraft, flew it to Kazakhstan, and... something. Ostensibly to distract everyone from their invasion of the Crimea. The story is childish nonsense. Obviously it would make sense for the Russians to risk a catastrophic breach in their relations with China as they're embarking on a military operation in Europe. Murdering over a hundred Chinese civilians for a stupid media distraction is completely insane.

The hijack theory is foreshadowed by linking it to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 by Russian-controlled "separatists" in Ukraine. But no link between the two is actually ever made, except that apparently the shootdown of MH17 gave the American journalist vibes.

A far more serious objection to the Russia/Kazakhstan theory is that there's simply no way the plane could have been flown there without anyone noticing. It would have had to cross vast swathes of Indian and Chinese airspace, either completely undetected by anyone, or with the inexplicable complicity of at least those nations. There's simply no excuse for taking drivel like this seriously.

However, it gets so much worse. In the first episode, we already encountered a lady from Florida who participated in a volunteer satellite imagery interpretation operation called Tomnod. Apparently it was an effort to crowdsource looking for things in publicly available satellite pictures.

As this article in the Guardian makes clear, Tomnod volunteers have no training in satellite image interpretation. So when the Florida lady cheerfully explains to us that she found aircraft wreckage in some of the pictures, this is frankly nonsense. She can't tell a crashed aircraft from a wave or a flock of seagulls. This is never explained on the show, and we're simply left with this woman insisting she has "evidence" MH370 crashed in the South China Sea. Apparently she couldn't get Tomnod or indeed anyone else to take her "evidence" seriously, to their credit.

Sadly, she is taken very seriously by a French journalist, whose idiotic conspiracy theory takes up almost all of the third episode. With the help of a man who tragically lost his partner and child on the flight, she spins a moronic story that is totally implausible from start to finish, which must have been obvious to anyone with even a cursory understanding of, say, military aviation.

The French story is that MH370 was carrying some kind of super secret Chinese cargo, which the Americans were determined to stop from reaching Beijing. Supposedly, two E-3 AWACS planes intercepted MH370, jammed its communications and ordered it to divert somewhere. When the flight crew refused, the Americans shot the plane down. Everything we've been told about the plane turning west and so on is a deliberate lie to conceal this.

It's hard to know where to even start with this. AWACS planes have no radio jamming capability. If somehow they'd made enough noise to stop MH370 from communicating and mask its transponder signal, this would have been very obvious to everyone around. The AWACS planes are also completely unarmed, so then some other aircraft would have shot down the plane. This would all have been clearly visible on Malaysian and Vietnamese radar screens.

Also, by the way, all the debris from the shootdown inexplicably vanished, with none of it washing up anywhere on the nearby coasts. When small amounts of debris are recovered from the actual crash, that "proves" it didn't really happen. When a made-up crash produces no debris whatsoever, somehow this isn't a problem.

This "theory" also requires all of the evidence to the contrary to have been faked. The Inmarsat data is just completely made up, as is the Malaysian, Vietnamese and Thai radar data, and the cellphone tower ping at Penang. Instead of saying the plane crashed or disappeared, supposedly a massive Malaysian-Vietnamese-Thai-UK deception operation was set into action, telling an almost unbelievable fake story that captures interest and imagination a decade later. Some coverup!

The hawkers of this idiocy make it amply clear on the program that they have no idea what they're talking about. They don't seem to know what an AWACS plane even is, let alone what electronic jamming is. They have literally zero evidence for anything. They can't tell us what cargo could even in theory have been so important that the US armed forces would deliberately shoot down a passenger airliner to stop it getting to China. The whole thing is raving madness, and none of the glaring holes in the supposed logic, none of the ludicrously false statements, are in any way challenged. It amounts to pure disinformation.

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Speaking as a historian, the most fundamental problem with these crackpot theories is not how stupid they are. It's that they're asking us to believe in incredibly elaborate deception operations, and discount factual evidence, in favor of a "theory", or rather an entirely baseless conjecture, that even if you accept its premises, still doesn't do a better job of explaining what happened.

In history terms, none of the alternate explanations for what happened to flight MH370 have better explanatory power than the ones based on what we believe are the facts. To put it crudely, we're being asked to discard facts and official investigative findings, and we're not being offered anything better in exchange.Why should I believe that the Inmarsat data is faked, or that the Malaysian air force is lying about their radar data? What better understanding of the case do I arrive at if I do that? None whatsoever.

That's the most elementary test that all of these conjectures fail, and it's why I consider them nonsense conspiracy theories. They're disinformation: deliberate lies cooked up to sell books and media appearances, at the expense of real people who lost loved ones in the tragedy. It's beyond repulsive that Netflix collaborates with these ghouls.

**

There are some theories of how the otherwise inexplicable flight of MH370 could have been caused by an accident. Two are dealt with quite well in this blogpost, even if I don't quite agree with its conclusions. The problem with all accident theories, in my opinion, is that the accident would have to have happened at such an incredibly convenient time, at the exact handover point between two air traffic control stations. Of course it's entirely possible that this is what happened, but it's a hell of a coincidence.

Where I disagree with the blog I linked just now is that I also find the most popular theory, that the captain of the aircraft deliberately crashed the plane into the ocean, equally difficult to believe. There's been so much nonsense talked about the captain that it's quite hard to figure out what the truth is. As far as I know, no-one has been able to explain why he would have done it, and my understanding is that the significance of the recovered flight simulator data is unclear. It certainly doesn't prove anything, and I think the blog I linked is wildly incorrect in maintaining that other explanations have been eliminated. They certainly have not been.

Even though I clearly know more about military aviation than some of the people involved in that risible television program, that's an indictment of them and Netflix, not a sign that I'm any kind of expert on anything related to this case. Still, since this is my blog, I can offer up my two cents on the whole thing.

My starting point is that someone selected the route that MH370 flew from the point where the transponder was switched off. If someone wanted to make the flight disappear, that handover point between two ATC areas has to be the best possible place to do it. This is the contention at the heart of the popular theory that the pilot did it, for which there is still no actual evidence whatsoever.

It would also be the best possible place to hijack the aircraft, especially if you wanted to fly it to some completely different destination and wanted to get a head start on the authorities. I think this theory has been unfairly discounted.

The specific objection I want to make is to the idea that hijacking can be discounted because the various authorities have checked up on all the passengers and crew, and found no-one to suspect. I maintain that with the information we have now, no-one can possibly know whether there were people on board MH370 who should not have been there.

People do stow away on planes, often in wheel wells, and it mostly ends badly for them. But only last year, someone survived an 11-hour flight from South Africa (or at least Nairobi) to Amsterdam (BBC). If someone wanted to hijack a plane, one way it could be done would be by stowing away on board.

This may sound implausibly far-fetched, but something like this has happened at least once: in 1986, a man snuck on board an airplane at Eugene, Oregon and hijacked it when it was in flight (UPI).

The same arguments that are made in favor of the pilot hypothesis also support the hijack hypothesis, for example, the choice of a flight path down the middle of the Strait of Malacca, along the border of different national airspaces. If I remember correctly, when only the military radar data was available, it was calculated that there were hundreds of airfields that the plane could have flown to after it left Malaysian radar coverage.

What if someone, one or more people, did secretly board the plane, hijack it over the South China Sea, and order the pilots to fly the route the plane flew? I'm not aware of any evidence that contradicts this. It's a somewhat far-fetched scenario, sure - but so are all of the other explanations.

By a startling coincidence, the first ever fatal crash suffered by Malaysia Airlines happened in 1977, when it was still called Malaysian Airline Systems. Flight MH653, a Boeing 737 from Penang to Kuala Lumpur, was hijacked and diverted to Singapore. The hijackers were told that the plane didn't have enough fuel to reach Singapore, and they then apparently shot the pilots, and the plane crashed. Everyone on board died. As I understand it, nobody ever really found out who was responsible, and why they did it.

In the case of MH370, if it was hijacked, I would assume the hijackers had some kind of plan, but it went badly wrong, and the plane ends up crashing into the ocean. Or there was no plan, or it was a stupid one, as seems to have been the case with MH653. I didn't know about MH653 before I started looking into this, but I think it's a powerful reminder that sometimes hijackings don't seem to make sense, and can remain unsolved.

I have no idea who could have wanted to hijack a Malaysia Airlines flight to Beijing or why, or where they might have been trying to fly the plane. I also have no idea whether something went wrong that led to the aircraft ending up in the Indian Ocean, or if that was actually the plan all along. It would be an exceptional sequence of events. However, none of the people advocating for the theory that the pilot flew the plane into the ocean deliberately can explain why he did it, or why he chose that particular flight path.

I would be willing to go so far as to say that the theory that the plane was hijacked is actually a better explanation than the pilot being responsible, for one reason only: the hijacking theory does not require any known person to suddenly behave inexplicably. Again, none of the people blaming the pilot can explain why he would have done it.

To sum up, I think the theory that what happened to MH370 was a hijacking gone wrong, or a really weird hijacking, by people who were neither part of the crew nor on the passenger manifest, cannot be discounted. I would even go so far as to say that I think it is one of the most likely explanations for what happened, but that's just a layman's opinion. At the very least I maintain that this hijacking theory is much less stupid than the one Netflix dedicated an entire damn episode to.

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I suppose the odds are that we'll never find out what really happened to flight MH370. Maybe the wreckage will eventually be found, but I don't know if there's really the slightest chance that any meaningful information could be gleaned from it after all this time, or what other evidence could possibly emerge.

I can't imagine what it's like to have a partner, family member or other loved one disappear like this, with no explanation and not even any real certainty that they're dead. That's why I think it's all the more despicable that there are people willing to use this tragedy as fodder for childish conspiracy theories, and to make money exploiting the suffering of the people affected by it.

I think the ethics of Netflix participating in this are absolutely deplorable. To air this kind of Ancient Aliens-level garbage about the deaths of real people is disgusting commodification of human suffering for our leering consumption. I freely admit that I'm fascinated by unsolved mysteries, and in that sense I, too, am partly culpable in this. But I don't see why we can't discuss things like this without platforming profiteering liars and irresponsible conspiracy theorists. Companies like Netflix simply must do better.

Let's Build Modiphius Terrain

Earlier, I had ordered a couple of Fallout figures from Mōdiphiüs for my Renegades and Heretics, and I found them to be good quality, but the range as a whole was kind of uninspiring. However, I did order some Nuka-Cola machines for my Imperial Knight's base:

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I thought it made for a fun addition to the model, and the resin terrain pieces were all fairly good quality. This made me take the plunge and order their Skyrim Word Wall.

The whole thing came in one piece, and the cast quality is really excellent. It's even got all the little Nord runes on it and everything, and I'm delighted to report it's the Unrelenting Force wall: the best shout in Skyrim because it has by far the greatest comedy potential.

I covered the whole thing in Basalt Grey, and gave the words and the darker bits a Black Ink wash.

The non-dark stone then got light drybrushes in Neutral Grey and Medium Sea Grey, and I did the FUS runes in Deep Sky Blue and Fluorescent Blue.

I was lazy and did the same greys on the back.

Here it is! Armiger and Arch-Militant for scale.

It's a simple paintjob, but I'm very happy with it.

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Soon after I finished my word wall, Modiphius dropped the price of their Red Rocket station, and I felt like I had to get it. I'd looked at it earlier, but frankly it was way too expensive.

It's a very hefty box! Most of the weight is the 3'×3' neoprene mat, which is all right, I guess. Not really something I was interested in. It doesn't look bad, and although it's quite creased from being folded in the box, I'm pretty sure it'll even out.

What we're really here for is the Red Rocket building. It's made out of fairly strong, good quality card, with plastic connectors holding it together. There are also two resin coolant pumps and a resin Red Rocket.

You start by building the ground floor of the station. Two things struck me. First, there's no assembly instructions in the box: you have to get them off the Modiphius website. It's not a big deal, but it's annoying scrolling around a PDF on your phone. The instructions are also shoddy. You have to squint quite a bit to make out what goes where, and ludicrously, all the card pieces are named on the sheet you punch them out of - but the instructions don't use the names. This is just silly.

Secondly, there doesn't seem to be any way to attach the building to its base. With the card as light as it is, it'll never stay put, and I could see this becoming very annoying.

The card is quite nice, though, and I'm almost surprised how good it looks despite the plastic connectors. I actually googled to check if there really was no way to mount the building, and finding none, I grabbed my trusty Finnish equivalent of PVA glue and stuck the walls on the base.

This worked quite nicely, and I decided to reinforce my building by supergluing in a couple of scenery items, like this GW barrel:

And an appropriate Fallout container.

With that done, I moved on to the next phase: the canopy. 

After I moved from the canopy to the roof, I realized that the assembly instructions were even worse than I thought. You use the same piece for both the roof and the floor of the building - or so I thought. In fact, the two pieces are mirrored, and if you pick the wrong one for the floor, you can't mount the Red Rocket signs on the roof. The instructions don't tell you this, of course. Guess which piece I already glued.

So that's annoying, but I can work with it: I just need to glue the signs onto the roof edge the old-fashioned way. That's not the end of it, though. The roof isn't really attached to anything either, but I get that, because then you can lift it off and use the building interior. However, this does mean that the roof will shift around a lot, which isn't great. What's worse is that the whole canopy is only attached to the building with a single plastic connector. It's just hopelessly flimsy: even assuming the resin rocket, the whole thing shudders and shifts if you so much as look at it.

If this was for a diorama or something, it wouldn't be ideal; for a piece of miniature wargaming terrain, it's inexcusable. People are going to be placing models and templates around it, poking about with tape measures, bumping the table and so on. Terrain can't be this flimsy. In my opinion, this whole thing is going to need a proper base, and it should have come with one. Since it doesn't, I'll build one.

Before I do, I really have to say that I'm a bit disappointed with this kit. The instructions are garbage and the end result is flimsy. If I'd paid the frankly outrageous original price for this thing, I'd be pissed.

**

Sadly, adding the resin rocket doesn't help much. The four pylons are meant to fit into slots in the rocket's base. They don't.

While I had the rocket on there, the pylons did stay more or less still, but I'm still really uneasy about the whole canopy resting on just one plastic connector. Especially since the rocket won't actually stay on, as the slots are just too small for the card pylons.

So, it was basing time. I optimistically started with some thick card.

Then I cut down the tabs on the pylons to a size that actually fits the rocket, and after a lot of frustrating wrangling, managed to superglue the rocket on.

If you ask me, there's no way that thing stays up there without glue. But with superglue for the rocket and to make the pylons stick to the base, it sticks together and makes the whole canopy much less wobbly. I then painted the resin coolant pumps, cut a little base for them out of some of the leftover card, and stuck them on.

Next up, a Nuka-Cola machine.

At this point, I decided the walls looked a little bare, and got my flatmate to print me a selection of tiny weathered posters.

I mean is it really a garage without an explicit calendar in the office area?

I also added a poster to the garage area, and I have to say, I think it looks great.

In the public-facing area: Torquemada is watching! Behave!

Finally, I added a poster for a lecture course I taught last fall:

And my favorite touch: wanted posters from my Rogue Trader tabletop campaign.

I have to say, these little posters made me very happy indeed. All that was left to do after this was glue sand to the base.

And paint it Neutral Grey to go with the rest of my scenery.

**

So, this was a mixed experience. The word wall is lovely, and the Red Rocket station was a disappointment. To sum up: if you buy the Red Rocket kit thinking you're getting an easy to assemble, ready to go piece of wargaming terrain, well, you're not. If you buy it as a starting point for a terrain piece you're going to spend a bit of time and effort building, then I think it's not a bad purchase. But that is to say that it doesn't exactly do what it's sold as.

Having said that, I might well be persuaded to buy more card terrain, as long as the price is right. The resin word wall, on the other hand, is absolutely fantastic, and I'm delighted I bought it. In general, Modiphius's resin terrain pieces have been really good, from the small bits to the big stuff.

Anyway, now I have some terrain, for better photo backdrops if nothing else!

Warhammer 40,000: Let's Build Munitorum Containers

I've been on a terrain-building kick lately, and now it's time to continue it with some containers.

**

A while ago, I found some money on the street. Literally, there was a wad of banknotes. I turned it in to the proper authorities, but when no-one showed up to claim it, the amount was deposited into my account. It wasn't a huge sum, but since it was almost literally a windfall, I decided to spend it on something stupid that I couldn't possibly justify buying otherwise. Because I'd been looking at Kill Team terrain at the time, that stupid thing ended up being this Munitorum Munitions Hub box.

This is just a wonderful, huge box of terrain, with ten armored containers, piles of crates and barrels, and even cranes and vehicles. My second full-time job ever was at the Helsinki harbor, specifically at the now-vanished container terminal in the Western Harbor, and I suppose as a legacy of that, I kind of have a thing for containers? So I sort of really wanted this terrain box, but I could never have justified spending this much money. But it came down to either this box or the Armada Super Star Destroyer, and I'm pretty sure this will spark more joy.

Then, of course, the pandemic happened, and we never did get to play any Kill Team, or, indeed, anything else that couldn't be done over email, so terrain dropped pretty far down my list of priorities, and the munitions hub gathered dust on a high shelf.

Now that we're playing 40k again, though, it's time to get started. Here's my first new piece of terrain: a container.

Bearing the livery of an obscure trading house, this container was an absolutely lovely model to assemble. Each sprue in the box has one container as well as several crates and barrels, and it's been a joy to tinker with them. On that note, here's another container.

**

For my first slightly bigger project, I'm going to stick some containers together. But first, I want to build an interior for one of them. Any Imperial settlement is going to have innumerable places for people to hide away, either for a little nap during their work shift, or as a whole illicit residence of their own. So I made this little bedroll out of green stuff:

Here's the whole thing painted, with a Fallout crate and some boxes from the container sprue added.

I then seem to have entirely neglected to take any pictures of the rest of the build! Anyway, now it's done:

I know grimdark is very much the thing, but I've found I have a certain nostalgia for the bright corporate colors of the 1980's, and wanted to bring some of that into my 40k as well. The top container follows my Epic terrain theme. Next, I gave my containers a cardboard base.

Then I glued on some sand, painted and varnished it, and it was time for the next components.

Meanwhile, a whole bunch of Necromunda terrain got released, including the lovely Underhive Market set. The large market stall was simply perfect for what I had in mind, so I built one and painted it orange.

I also have some Fallout workbenches from Mōdiphiüs, and I thought the armorer's workbench would look cute here.

I glued in the workbench and one of the Munitorum crates, and added sand.

And then it's time for the market stall.

Obviously I couldn't resist adding a Nuka-Cola machine and a crate or two, and then it was just a question of more PVA glue and sand until the whole thing was done!

**

This was a fun little project. I'm very happy I got the Munitorum box, and I've barely gotten started: there's still all kinds of stuff in there...