In West Texas where I grew up, there was a large section of the university museum that was devoted to the history of barbed wire. Now there's a museum in MacLean, TX devoted to it. (Look for The Devil's Rope Museum ). Doing a Google search to find the Lubbock information I came across another museum dedicated to barbed wire located in Kansas!  The Kansas Barbed Wire Museum can also be found on the internet.

Given the range wars that raged across the west in the late 1800s, it's not surprising that westerners would have an interest in this piece of equipment. The history of barbed wire shows why more people have become aware of it. The first barbed wire *patent* was issued in 1867 to Lucien Smith from Ohio. Apparently there were designs that existed prior to the Civil War. Imagine the difference this would have made at places like Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg or Petersburg. In these situations, wire would have fallen into the category of a "combat multiplier."¹

Here's one Soviet soldier's experience with wire from Tank Rider by Evgeni Bessonov:

The assault began well until we reached a barbed wire entanglement and the company had to lie down in front of it. How could we overcome the obstacle? We did not have wirecutters. lt might well be that several soldiers could sneak under the entanglement together with me. But what about the rest? Would they follow? It was impossible to see in the darkness. Would they help me or would I help them....

Barbed wire in the SOTR1949 world will be seen in a lot of scenarios. That's a great thing about zombies, they ain't high-steppers or hurdlers! The product reviewed here will provide you with a fairly rapid way to add "Devil's Wire" to your gaming.

Pegasus Hobbies produces a barbed wire plastic kit that will provide the gamer/modeller with around 29 inches of spikey barbed wire. There are 30 posts that are about one and a half inch tall. I got my set free from a friend as he could not use it with his (primarily) 15 mm collection. Retial price on this is $9 USD but you can generally get it for 10-15 % off if you shop around. The good thing about the kit is that two or three will be more than sufficient for your needs. The pieces are made from a grey plastic that is able to be cut by a standard hobby knife and the wire can be bent (gently) to angles of 90 degrees or more so as to be able to go around corners. Superglue works fine on it and I assume that the welding glues such as Tenax will work as well.

I decided to make mine into several 2 by six inch sections. This size is able to be combined into a number of different configurations and so is easier to use in a wider variety of situations. It's easier to take pictures of smaller sections, and, just as important, I had some basing samples I wanted to try out.

Actually, I had picked up some shingle samples from Home Depot many months ago and had not had a chance to use them, so here's what I did. The pieces I received were cut to some degree and so I had enough pieces to make a single and a double strand section. I was able to use regular scissors to cut the shingles so that was a nice plus. Unfortunately, after I had the pieces glued as shown here (with the double wires glued on the piece to the right) we ended up with a minor water leak in the kitchen that dripped down to the basement and flodded my work desk. The paper backing on the shingles came off so I don't know how durable these will be over the long haul. (We caught the leak early and so did not suffer any other damage other than time lost from cleaning it up - my guessis that the roll of paper towels I had on the desktop soaked up a large part of the water that came down initially. The leak was caused by the spritzer fitting on the kitchen sink not being tight.)

Once I got the wires on, I trimmed them with some flush cutters and spray painted them black. The shiny part on one of the sections was caused by paint that had been in stoarge due to our move.

I used a mixture of paints to drybrush pieces. The nice thing about the shingles is that they provide a good surface for that. I used a drak brown, medium brown, bleached bone, and medium green before adding the flock. The wire I brushed a gunmetal followed by silver and then chestnut ink. I used the GF9 flock for the final step. You can see the effect below. The gun crew picture is not set up tactically (as when you emplace obstacles you put them where they can be covered by fire, preferably near the effective range of the weapon, but this gives you an idea of the size you can produce. There is a third rung on the poles so you could conceivably produce a larger fence like set.

All in all, this is a good set to have on hand. It goes together fairly easily, paints up easily, and looks good on the table!

¹ Supporting and subsidiary means that significantly increase the relative combat strength (power) of a force while actual force ratios remain constant.