Don't Worry, This Is Not A Statistically-Modelled Analysis
Plus, there will be glombies - the slushy, pus-filled walking buboes of "Planet Terror" that I was yarking on about yesteryon. Your Humble Scribe is going to admit that the quality of the photographs I took is not exactly stellar, which is partly down to the film itself, since they were careful to make it look as cheap and nasty as any exploitation flick from the Seventies. Art!
I still haven't seen this series, bar odd clips on Youtube. What they did with this was create a different infection route for a deadly disease agent, having it be in flour. What they also did was vary how quickly a person got infested or infected, because one of the things mitigating against A Deadly Disease is how fast it kills people. If you contract Suppurating Glandular Dismantling Virus and keel over dead five minutes later, said disease isn't going to spread very far. Art!
I believe Morgan Freeman's character makes this point in the above film; the initial, unmutated disease kills people off so rapidly that they cannot transmit it to new victims.
This is what you may get in zombie films, where the timeline from being initially infected to staggering around busy being at room temperature can be wildly variable, depending on the plot. Sometimes people transform within seconds - as in "28 Days Later" - or they may linger on for a couple of hours - see "Shaun Of The Dead". Art!
Guess the film. I'm not telling you*.
In Conrad's own zombie opus, "Revelations" there is a refractory period whilst a person is asymptomatic but infectious, that can be up to a week long.
ANYWAY back to "Planet Terror" and we know that there are insanely strong 'specimens' on the loose, probably not wanting to sit down and chat to people over a Starbucks latté and a muffin. Art!
See what I mean about picture quality? For your information, that's one of the specimens holding up Rose McGowans right left from the knee down. Did they rip it off by main force? Or gnaw it free? The gruesome twosome here were definitely slavering over her legs. Art!
 |
| Ignore the reflection! Ignore the reflection! |
They're green because we're looking at them through a sniperscope, although even in daylight they'd probably look green. You can tell from matey's green bubble-wrap substitute for a face that neither of these are either healthy or human. Art"
Dog Buns! They covered up the gaping wound with a staunching cloth, so we the audience cannot see if there are toothmarks or not. 'I bet there would be in real life' I started to type before feeling foolish, because how many glombie apocalypses have we endured of late? Art!
This is the local hospital, where one doctor describes the patients as 'flooding in', and that whatever this disease is, it's highly contagious. This is mere hours after the three 'specimens' got loose so they've been busy boys indeed. Let's check on Cherry. Art!
More stumpy that cherry, one feels. There was no timeline given, but she's clearly been operated on under general anaesthetic, with sufficient time to come round again.
And nary a trace of raging infection! Despite being in intimate contact with Patient Zero and Patient Zero's Mate. What was that line about being highly contagious again? Perhaps there's more in the script that hints she's naturally immune, or that everyone knows go-go dancers are innately resistant to all kinds of germs.
I dunno. I could be overthinking this .....
Following On From Yesteryon Also
We introduced the concept of 'generation ships', where travel is so far below the speed of light that any journey to a nearby star will take generations. Possibly hundreds of years, where the original crew is long dead by the time they arrive at Barnard's Star. Art!
This is the British Interplanetary Society's 'Worldship', which is a real monster when you realise the dimensions - what you're looking at is over 200 kilometres long, as - Art!
"City In The Sky"
It was actually J. Bernal who came up with the idea of a generation ship, which is quite fitting, as Arcology One is a Bernal sphere that's been successfully de-orbited.
In the space of minutes, airborne
micro-organisms spread throughout the battered hull, infecting Bridge level
first, since that was closest to Biology.
Arskan died amidst his useless bodyguard, barely comprehending what had
doomed him, expiring seconds before Miskan also died. The virus made it’s implacable way downwards,
into Anthropology, then Astronomy, then Physics, slaying all in its path. An out-of-place big blue box on the Stores
level was the only object to escape the deadly progress.
By the time that “Armageddon Cocktail” had worked down to Mechanics, a
few speedy Lithoi had managed to don protective suits of the kind worn to keep
Earth’s sodden, saturated atmosphere at bay.
They might have survived, and the pathogen, too, if it were not for the
Doctor’s fortuitous use of excess thermite in a corner of the Physics
laboratory. Molten thermite cascaded
into interstitial spaces normally non-existent, burning it’s way downwards more
spectacularly than the virus.
Hmmm 'successful' depending on your point of view, I suspect.
A Grim Little Factoid For You
Conrad is happy to let Bruno Pisani do all the mountain climbing and hiking that needs to be done, because it looks dangerous, uncomfortable and frequently very cold, none of which agrees with me. Mountaineers, however - my word again - are determined to risk life and limb climbing them. Given that it's a dangerous sport, there are deaths involved, and bodies may not be recoverable.
Well, the BBC had a new item about this today. Art!
Global warming is now melting glaciers that were previously inviolate. We have touched on this subject years ago, because Italian and Austro-Hungarian artefacts are now being uncovered in their border mountains, as snow and ice retreats.
Two other bodies were recently recovered from this range in Peru, and five more have been disinterred on Mount Everest.
What Do I Keep Telling You?
Those pikers at "The Daily Beast" just cannot help themselves, can they? Just give up and petition for South Canada to re-join the Commonwealth. Art!
AND YOU'RE GIVING IT TO HIM! Dog Buns, it's not rocket science, is it? Well, perhaps it is to them. Thank heavens we got rid of the whole lot in the eighteenth century. AND this is only one of THREE articles about the British monarchy.
Bah!
Finally -
Time to toddle off kitchenwards and see what delicacies there are in the fridge. That egg-fried rice which was two weeks past it's sell by date went down well last night, and I'm still here to talk about it. Sell by dates - a challenge not a warning! Well perhaps I see the attraction of mountain climbing a little more now.
* I know, I know, what a stinker I am. Tee hee!
No comments:
Post a Comment