You Want Zombie-Proof? I'll Give You Zombie-Proof!

It Seems To Be A Bit Of A Niche

At least on Youtube, where there are various videos putting forward rhetorical questions about what the best large-scale environment would be for surviving the Zombie Apocalypse.  For example - Art!

Courtesy Zombie Survival Labs

     Are they?  Well, if it's an up-market hotel then your accommodation will be high quality.  If we presume that the power stays on, then you have all the food that would normally feed hundreds of people divided amongst the half-dozen of your surviving group.  No fresh food after a couple of weeks, so lots of tinned, dried and frozen to resort to.  The entrance and lobby would be a weak point; you'd have to barricade it off to severely restrict access.  Art!

Might want to remove a few lightbulbs, too

     Or just block it completely and use a fire exit for ingress and egress.

     It's not just hotels.  The same question has been raised about universities.  Art!

Conrad suspects not.  All the problems of an hotel multiplied by all the buildings on campus, and with a much larger perimeter to secure, maintain and patrol.  The up-side would be that there would be science labs where you could cook up either a cure or an accelerated version of the Zombie Virus that rots them to their bones in a few days.

     Then there is this one.  Art!

     That's a question with elastic boundaries, because it very much depends on the island in question.  The one above has been graced with a Vauban-style nineteenth century fort, which would keep any floaters Zeds at bay.  However, does it have a source of fresh water?  Is there enough land to grow crops or accommodate livestock?  No it doesn't!  So you'd face a dangerous commute to the mainland to try and stock up, say every six months.
     Now we come to what this Intro is really about.  You have doubtless seen photos on teh Interwebz with titles like "World's Loneliest House", such as this.  Art!

     Your first question is probably going to be 'Is it real?' and the answer is most definitely in the affirmative.  However - a word you knew was going to turn up - the photo is usually cropped or Photoshopped, because the whole island is a lot larger than the inevitable shot you see above.  Art!

Do you feel cheated?

     This is the island of Elliday, which is not quite how the Icelanders spell it, but I don't have the correct symbol for the 'd'.  It's part of an archipelago - the Vestmannaeyjar Islands - which are situated to the south of Iceland.  Art!

     It was settled by families in the eighteenth century, who were able to sustain themselves by fishing, raising livestock on the 0.45 hectares of land, and hunting puffins, the only (very) abundant wildlife on the island.  However, life there was extremely hard and the last permanent inhabitants left in 1935.

     Twenty years later the Elliday Hunting Society decided that nothing would do for them but the taste of freshly-roasted puffin, so they constructed the lodge 'Boi' which is the building you see on the island above.  Conrad is pretttttty sure they helicoptered in all the construction materials, because <drum roll> there is no landing place on Elliday.  Those original settlers had to bring everything in by hand by jumping onto coastal rocks from a boat, which remains to this day an insanely dangerous method of access.

     Totally Zombie-Proof, though.  Art!

     This is where you jumps ashore.  There is a steel cable anchored into the rocks to help you climb up, and that's it.  You can't imagine any of the walking dead getting up the cliffs here.

A Pithy Tale 

You know the old saying, 'Blood is thicker than water'?  Rather a silly one, Conrad feels.  OF COURSE - OBVIOUSLY! - blood is thicker than water.  The two bear no resemblance to each other.  Must have been a saying invented by Shakespoke the Barf Of Avon.

     ANYWAY it means that familial links are stronger than anything, including, it seems, common sense, profits, business sustainability and all things legal.  Art!

    Drugs are bad, okay?  And very expensive to boot.

     ANYWAY, over on Quora one Original Poster was telling how they arrived at a small family-run business subsidiary and helped it to move into the black to the tune of $5 million.

     The only buzzing arthropod in the ointment was the manager, who was a coke fiend and no we're not talking processed coal.  He was the son of the owner, which gave him both plausible deniability and access to $$$, seemingly without any audit or accountability oversight.  The example that OP gave was an office desk ordered for $30,000, where $29,000 of that was promptly spent on cocaine.  (See above).  Art!

     OP rang the owner and dropped Mr. Coke Bloke right in it.  Next day the company's lawyer dropped in to see OP, and the next day -

     - he was fired for 'incompetence'.

     Shortly after, Coke Bloke went up in smoke - that is, he was sent to prison.

     The whole business imploded and went toes up shortly afterwards.  But at least they'd shown how much thicker than water they were!

"City In The Sky"

Ace, her ever-present sense of curiosity to the fore in a manner that would put a cat to shame, is conversing with Alex, the young Arcology engineer.

     ‘Does everyone up here speak English?’ she asked, curious about the mix of nationalities.

     ‘Oh yes.  Some of the originals weren’t very good English speakers, but most crew came from Britain.  Now everyone speaks English and the other languages are a bit redundant.’

     ‘And you’ve got people from all over the world?’

     ‘Mostly from Britain but a fair amount – two thousand, I recall – from everywhere else, plus the ones from Eden.  I’ve been asked to take you EVA and inspect Dart Three.  So, we need to hike up to Preston and get suits.  You’re not claustrophobic, are you?’

     Preston - the “North End” in a bad football pun that made her groan - happened to be where the sphere’s interior allowed access to the exterior, where the curving walls met at an apex.  Farmland and structures stopped abruptly fifty metres from the giant well that constituted the sphere’s polar region.  To Ace, it felt as if they were moving downwards into a pit; her feet tingled and her head swam when they moved onto the bare metal decking.  Alex, at her elbow, tapped her on the shoulder.

     ‘You get funny feelings here.  The centripetal force, and speed of rotation.  You adapt after a while.’

      Or suffer the screaming ab-dabs. 

SHUT UP!

Conrad is angrier than usual.  Art!

     I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR IT!

     When I take over, you'd better believe that Shakespeare in the school's curriculum is going to be replaced by both Thomas Pychon and Philip K. Dick.

Talking Of Big Bangs -

The James Webb Space Telescope continues to provide astronomical gold, this latest photograph being that of a supernova in the Magellanic Clouds, a couple of small satellite galaxies abutting the Milky Way galaxy.  Art!

SN1987A

     Don't carp about the resolution; it's 170,000 light years away, so the image is actually very impressive.

     Astronomers are puzzled by this supernova, as the progenitor star was a blue supergiant (about 20 times as big as our Sun), a class of stars that are not, in a properly-regulated Galaxy, supposed to go out as a supernova.  Parts of the 'ring' structures here are also obscure of explanation, as they are so rarely seen in such detail.

     What's hypothesised is that this structure, about 3 light years across, shrouds a tiny neutron star in the very centre, perhaps only 50 kilometres across and thus a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the supernova's remnants.

     Keep watching this space.

Finally -

No photographs for you, but Conrad is wearing a suit for the first time since mid-April.  It is very sombre, though offset somewhat by the Christmas present tie adorned with fountain pens.