Progress Report

I Don't Have Enough For An Intro Singly

So here goes a combination of them.  First of all, I've just finished Episode 4 of 'Zomvivor', the Thai zombie thriller serial.  The episodes deal with two groups of survivors in hiding on a university campus, as well as long, detailed flashbacks that show a shady professor of biology Getting Up To Something.  Art!

     There he is.  Wiroj.  He is carrying out a secret project on ten volunteer subjects that involves - get this - injecting them with a serum derived from 'immortal jellyfish' cells.  'Immortal jellyfish'? you query.  Me too, I'd never heard of it before.  It's a real thing, allow me to copy in a Google quote:

The immortal jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii) has a potentially infinite lifespan because it can reverse its life cycle from adult to juvenile polyp when stressed or injured, a process called transdifferentiation, allowing it to theoretically live forever by restarting its life, though it's still vulnerable to predators, disease, and environmental threats. There's no set "lifespan" because it avoids aging, but most die from outside forces, not old age

     We know things have gone catastrophically wrong - being in the middle of a zombie epidemic kind of proves that - but the details of how and why are yet to be revealed.  Art!

     Forgive me the artefacts created by low light levels.  This duo are alone in the gym, with one scribbling away in a notebook, which is unusual enough to make the onlooker curious.  The yoof of today normally use their phones or a tablet.  Art!

"Information about the zombies"

"So we can keep track of how much we know about them"

     Which is fair enough.  A notebook will not lose signal or run out of power.  Art!

"The Walking Dead was my first zombie show'

     This is very unusual; normally the characters in the zombie apocalypse exist in a universe where there have never been zombie films or television shows.  Not only does this serial mention 'The Last Of Us', we now have a reference to TWD.  But wait! there's more.  Art!

"Started with Night Of The Living Dead -"

     This character is taking it to the next level.  He gushes on enthusiastically about his obsession with zombie films and television serials, getting rather carried away with himself.  His compatriot gets increasingly uncomfortable.  Art!

Now regretting having ever asked

     The second group of survivors are holed up in what looks like the university's agricultural section, with one of them who'd been bitten becoming one of the walking dead herself.  They are clued-up enough to restrain her before she turns, so props for that.  Art!

     There she is, secured firmly to a chair.  Not going anywhere.  For a reason that escapes me, they force her to eat a big bunch of psilocybin mushrooms, which seems to mellow her out.  Art!

     Remember him?  He was the one who got dangerously close to his zombie girlfriend, which Conrad cavilled at yesteryon.  Well, it turns out that he was off his meds at the time, which explains his erratic behaviour.  Good plot twist.  Art!

     Conrad vaguely remembers the film's ending, which involved Molly the dog being sacrificed in order to defeat trans-dimensional evil or some such shizzle.  In the novel SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT! the climax takes place in a huge Las Vegas ballroom, with hundreds of attendees, all there for Dr. Marconi's mass seance.  There is a giant angel ice sculpture, fourteen feet high with piped water keeping it cool.  There's an attack by hundreds of what Dave describes as 'wig-monsters', the attendees are all split apart by demonic forces, Dr. Marconi makes the angel flood holy water -

     

     One can see why the film never bothered with all that - it would have been incredibly expensive.

     Conrad was also rather puzzled that we hit the climax half-way through the novel, which became clear when I moved on to 'Book 2: Korrok'.  So the film of 'John Dies At The End' is only the first book, not the whole novel.  Art!

 

     I've just completed the second chapter, about 'Supply Depots' which were crucial in supplying the army and which developed over time into enormous enterprises, especially at French ports.  What I like about Ol' Jan is that she sticks in bits of trivia to leaven all the numbers and statistics.  For example, shunting.  Art!

     Shunting engines were used in yards and stations to move wagons around, and inbound trains normally had their different freight wagons arranged in blocks, enabling efficient shunting.  As an experiment, one train was trialled with all the wagons split up, meaning it took thirty shunts to sort it out instead of five or six.
     It was also discovered that heavy loads needed to be spread evenly across the wagon floor.  If they were piled up at either end, they tended to flatten the suspension, leading to wheels being exposed to friction, which meant a risk of fire.  

     I was going to harp on more about STBAITFWW but we're well over the normal Intro length so you'll get to hear more of it later.  I bet you can hardly wait.

Danger!  Corrosive!  Under Pressure!  LOTS Of Pressure!

Another Darwin Award winner.  If you travel up and down the motorways, you witness a lot of tanker trucks, some of which have an alarming array of warning signs on them, thanks to the dangerous nature of their cargo.  Art!

     In this tale an idiot decided he was going to steal some horribly toxic, corrosive liquid from a tanker truck, as it was a precursor agent for making a particular drug.  Probably crystal meth.

     The next morning the driver found a depressurised tanker, a screwdriver, a Styrofoam cup and an acre of dissolved gore that was the thief.  I bet sweeping him up was an unpleasant chore.

How Very Embarrassing

There has recently been a leaked memo, dating back to June of 2025, where the Department For Counterintelligence of the FSB set out a list of issues they had with China.  Art!

     Let us be clear here, China is not an ally of Mordorvia's.  They fought a border war in 1969, and in 1972 the Sinisters tried approaching the South Canadians to see if they'd co-operate with a nuclear strike on China.  What they have in common is that they both fear South Canada, and see it as a greater threat.

     So, the FSB accuses The Populous Dictatorship of trying to poach Ruffian scientists, and recruit Ruffian experts, officials, journalists and business owners.   They are also constantly trying to steal any advanced Ruffian military technology.  Beijing has also been spying on the Ruffians in Ukraine to obtain information about Western military systems, the better to understand how to counter them.

     What frightened the FSB most of all was, to quote:

Russian intelligence is concerned that Chinese academics were laying the groundwork for future territorial claims on land that was formerly Chinese, revealing a deep mistrust of China and its future geopolitical goals. 

Art!

     As well they might, because China is already encroaching into Ruffian territory in Siberia.  Which they want back.

O Delicious Schadendfreude

Various orc milbloggers on Telegram are complaining about how the Venezuelan military didn't lift a finger to fight the South Canadians during Saturday's kidnapping of Five Dinners Maduro.  They especially seethe about Mordorvia giving the Venezuelans $20 billion in loans and military hardware, neither of which they are going to see again.  Art!

     Actually there is evidence of one Venny soldier firing an Igla MANPAD at South  Canadian helicopters, which went off-course and missed by several county miles.  That's it.

This Item Keeps Cropping Up

On my news feed.  Is the algorithm aware of BOOUM! discussing the monstrous Teuton project 'Ratte', an example of gigantomania if ever there was one?  Art!

     Nobody has ever explained how a 1,000 ton monster like this crossed a river as it would destroy any bridge it attempted to cross.