Okay, I Lied
I had completely forgotten about another famous cinematic burial, that presented in "Kill Bill", where The Bride manages to escape from being entombed alive in a coffin. There is an episode of "Mythbusters" that deals with this, except I'm not covering that in this Intro. Art!
Still gives me an in to show this picture and bait the clicks.
ANYWAY it took a good 30 minutes to track down the episode I was after, which was about people being buried alive and how long they might survive for. Adam put the proposition to Jamie, who thought it feasible but questioned how long a person would live, interred in a pine box. Art!
This is Brother Cleary, who said he had never heard of anyone being buried alive in real life, and cast aspersions upon "Gothic writers" - Edgar Allan Poe we're all looking at you - for maintaining a legend. He also - as we here on the blog have also pointed out - mentioned that once a body arrives at a funeral home, the blood is drained out, to be replaced by embalming fluid. That will ensure you're not alive any further.
When they consulted a physician, he informed them that there are 5 standard tests that contemporary doctors perform on a supposed cadaver to ensure it really is dead. Response to a painful stimulus; pupillary response; pulse; heartbeat; respiration. If none of these are happening then you're either dead or a zombie.
Here a slight tangent. Did people ever get buried alive? Unquestionably so. The thing is, how do you assess this statistically? because you'd have to disinter coffins by the hundred, open them up and assay the coffin lid's interior for the supposed tell-tale scratchings of those still breathing when buried. The surviving relatives might not be too happy about such behavious. Art!
Being busters of myth, Adam and Jamie set out to do this scientifically, the first step being to check out modern coffins. None of your pine box nonsense here, because Jamie had volunteered to be the one buried alive, and he wanted a coffin that was sturdy, sound and made of steel. Art!
Ol' Kel explained that once the coffin lid is closed, the casket is secured by exterior locks and pinions. She echoed Jamie's comment that, once you're in, you're not getting out. Art!
<insert hilarious caption here>
Because these chaps approach things with an analytical and engineering bent, they did a 'dry' test run in the workshop, with paramedics in attendance. Jamie snuggled in with an emergency bottle of oxygen, his two-way radio and meters to read for blood oxygen level and carbon dioxide saturation. Art!
This is the infra-red camera transmitting from inside the coffin, because it was pitch black for Jamie. Also hot. There's no way for his body heat to escape because of all the insulating fabric liner. He lasted for 50 minutes before the metrics began to pitch towards 'Not Good' and the coffin was unsealed and opened up, which is a good 49 minutes longer than Your Cowardly Artisan would have managed. Art!
The real thing begins
Note all the metres and the paramedic in attendance, and the two-way radio. Note also the soil level to starboard, because by this point they'd added a couple of tons of soil to the plastic containment unit and the coffin was completely covered.
After 30 minutes they pulled the plug, or rather cut the ropes, releasing one side of the containment unit, because the coffin had begun to deform under pressure. Jamie couldn't see anything, but he could certainly hear as it squealed and began to buckle. Art!
You could argue that this is unusual, because the soil was added a couple of hundred pounds at a time from a Bobcat mini-excavator, rather than a group of gravediggers. Moot point, yet the total tonnage would be the same in the latter case, the crushing would just take longer to occur. Remember, this is 20-guage steel, not a pine coffin, which would have crumpled a lot sooner.
What can we take away from this? That if you were buried alive in a modern coffin, it would be a toss-up whether you died from asphyxiation, heatstroke or being crushed. Art!
Right, motley, let's see what happens if we put you in a binbag and bury you in the backyard.He's alive!
Crunching The Numbers
Because I am a hair-splitting pedant par excellence, it was only natural that I do a little speculative maths on the matter of that "Thunderbirds" fighter jet, the AL4, that can travel at the speed of accelerated light. Art!
Possibly the AL4. Or not.
For the purposes of this item, we'll just imagine that the AL4 can only travel at c, which as we all know is 186,000 miles per second. Art!
Planet Earth. For comparison, it takes the Space Shuttle 90 minutes to transit over the Pacific Ocean. The AL4 could circumnavigate the whole globe in 0.13 seconds. It could make it to the Moon and back in 2.5 seconds, or so fast that the pilot (if it has a pilot and isn't an AI-controlled bird) wouldn't need oxygen. Art!
Less than 6 minutes for a round trip to the Red Planet.
Ain't maths great?
"City In The Sky"
The Doctor has just liberated three Lithoi prisoners, whom had fallen foul of their repellent leader caste.
The Doctor looked on as the recipient of
his glucose surprise underwent a metabolism acceleration. Several orders of magnitude, too. When the question came, it was delivered in a
matter-of-fact tone, easily understandable to the attuned ear.
‘Not really. Say more a temporary energy enhancer. I need to communicate easily with you.’
The Lithoi’s beady eyes regarded the
Doctor.
‘So I guessed. For what, I wonder. Also, could you spare a booster for my loyal
minions here?’
Their tale was soon told. The trio were prisoners after the fact, a
living explanation of why the Lithoi had undergone such tribulations in
achieving their Contract. Scapegoats, in
other words. Orskan 94 strongly
suspected that once their critical construction work had been completed, all
three would be marched outside to be left to the mercy of the elements. Death by atmospheric precipitation. Or, more likely still, they would be
arraigned and executed to establish that the ruling caste were superior and
wrathful and not to be crossed.
‘So your options are: stay in prison and
be executed. Escape from prison and be
hunted by both your fellow aliens and the humans of the littoral communities,
not to mention intelligent dingoes with a long race-memory of Lithoi
mistreatment. Or – hmmm. There is
a third way.’
‘Which is?’ asked one of the anonymous
prisoners
That would be telling. Tune in tomorrow for the answer.
More Starship Pin-Ups
This one is titled "Dragonfly", and thank you Interstellar Research Centre. Art!
Thanks to mention of a 'laser sail' I am guessing that this is one of those probes that are propelled by a battery of lasers in space. There's no explanation on the Gallery of what it is, so a little digging is in order. Art!
That gives a date window. Aha! So this is "Project Dragonfly" and the artwork above was commissioned from David A. Hardy, who is (it says here) a renowned space artist.
The idea was indeed for a laser-propelled space probe, able to reach Alpha Centauri in a century or so, using technology available in 2015 or the next 10 years. Dog Buns! That 'My Grandchildren May See It Succeed' factor again.
"The Great War In Europe"
As you ought to be aware, Conrad has carefully stuck all the counters in place with new Blu-tak and has been reading the Rulebook and Playbook. Art!
Now we come to "Events". These are counters that are drawn at the beginning of a turn, IF you are willing to pay a Resource Point for them. The combatant nations have a limited number of RPs per turn, and you also need to expend them to replace destroyed units. Also, two "Non-Event" counters are included in the mix, so you cannot guarantee getting a real, genuine event. Art!
Here they are Event face-up. Art!
The aircraft Event has some effect on things aerial, I can't say more than that without have actually played a game. The "Paris Gun" has a VP indicator, meaning that it counts towards Victory Points.
What was the Paris Gun? A titanic yet ultimately futile triumph of Teuton engineering: an artillery piece large enough that it could hit Paris, well behind Allied lines, from well behind Teuton lines. Art!
With puny human for scale
With a range of 80 miles it could only hit city-sized targets and the shells were relatively small (234 pounds), meaning it was effective only as a variety of terror weapon. It's other name was the "Kaiser Wilhem Kanone" and the Teutons worried so about them falling into Allied hands when they were retreating that they destroyed all three. So in a way they did Kill Bill.
Which is where we came in.
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