Phase Three

Not To Be Confused With -

 - a prequel to the film 'Phase IV', the sci-fi horror blend directed by Saul Bass and starring Nigel Davenport and the under-rated Michael Murphy, which yes I have seen and it's a corker - Art!

     'IV' being the Roman numerals for '4' and you're welcome.

     ANYWAY if we're not talking about intelligent ant colonies threatening Hom. Sap. what are we yarking on about?  O I thought you'd never ask.  Art!

     You see, in John's novel the alien arrival is Phase One, their abortive campaign against land-based Hom. Sap. is Phase Two, and Phase Three is their long, slow, melting of the icecaps and raising of sea levels.  This leads to absolute and utter catastrophe across the globe, especially for island nations like This Sceptred Isle, and coastal communities.  It takes years, mind, so Conrad is unsure how his miniseries adaptation is going to manage.  Phyllis could put on a bit of middle-aged spread and Phil could grow a beard?

     ANYWAY AGAIN I want to salute John for identifying a few key elements of an apocalypse, even if it comes without zombie spice.  For This Sceptred Isle is - you may be ahead of me here - an island, with limited ability to sustain it's population from native resources.  Come an apocalypse, how would we cope?  Art!

    Not very well.  We could sustain about 40 million people, rather than our current 70 million total, which means people eating people a drastic change in diet.  Even in 1953, when TKW was written, the population was 50 million.  Without allowing for low-lying farmland being submerged.  Allow me to explicate. 

     "But later on the way is going to be the other way round: finding out where the chaps who do have some left are hiding it - and that's going to be nasty." 

     Art!

     A film you definitely need to see, and here because it illustrates John's next point: "There are fearful tales about the guerilla warfare between starving bands that goes on in Devon, Somerset and Dorset-" as IHH has a couple of scenes portraying just what John describes.

     For Lo! are we not returning to the 'How Not To Die' vlog about "Everything Zombie Movies Get Wrong About Survival"?  Yes we are.  The following heading is one they associate with the walking dead, but, as above, it applies to all post-apocalypse scenarios.  Art!

I may have cheated a tad in not using a scenario where there are alien scavengers, too.  Work with me on this one.

     HTND over-egg the pudding on this one, claiming that in countless zombie films and television series, the protagonists blithely allow an armed stranger into their camp, failing to take any precautions, whilst they treat a single rotting zombie on the horizon as WE ARE ALL DOOMED DOOMED DOOMED I TELL YOU AND DID YOU BOLT THE STABLE GATE PROPERLY BUT WE'RE STILL DOOMED EVEN IF YOU DID.  

     Art!

     Conrad unsure what symbolism the birds have.  'The muskels of Petrovy' perhaps?

     ANYWAY ANYWAY their allusion is to human survivors being all too trusting of other human survivors, leading to treachery, malfeasance and the failure to return library books on time, which is universally recognised as the single greatest factor in retarding human civilisation.  Art!

     THEY FINALLY QUOTE SOURCES!  FINALLY! O I'm so hap-hap-happy.  Yes, their example is from the 2010 Haitian earthquake disaster, where the breakdown of civil society led to armed robbery, turf warfare and gangs ambushing supply convoys.  If there had been any port, it would doubtlessly have been passed to the right.

       Then, to underline human differentiation, they also explain that the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake disaster in 2011 saw NO increase in violent crime or a shortage of library books returned on time.  Nippon communities pulled together to look under other books and papers to seriously locate those overdue books, and also avoid becoming anarchic barbarians.  Art!

     But not Fukuyama!

     As per HTND, the sheer unpredictability of humans makes for woefully unpredictable reactions in any societal collapse, with the majority trending more towards the Haitian model than the Japanese.  I beleive this is why one author claimed that the Sinister Union would survive an apocalypse better than South Canada, because the Sinister's general civil population were not armed to the teeth and thus unable to wipe themselves out.

     HTND also mentions that BACK ON TOPIC! a zombie is only dangerous when it gets to within biting distance, but a human with a scoped rifle is an issue out to several hundred PROUD IMPERIAL YARDS.  Yes, well, if you're going to add in countervailing factors, does the human in question have a proper tactical vest load-out?  Art!

     Ngr4odf7fo*rssrrrrrrrr SO MANY BARE FOREARMS.

     ANYWAY AGAIN ANYWAY they asset that hostile humans will eventually become a bigger problem than zombies, as the walking dead rot apart and disintegrate whilst the Port Au Prince militia remain standing.  Fair enough.

     Time to move onto other, differently-wholesome things.

Do You Want Skynet?

BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET SKYNET!  And, lest ye be unaware of what that means, let me refresh your memory.  Art!

     Global thermonuclear armageddon is what.  Bit of a buzzkill, nicht wahr?  

     Why do I bring this up right now?  O I thought you'd never ask.  Art!

    That, ladies, gentlemen and those unsure, is Evan Hubinger of Anthropic, a chap whose job description includes 'AI' and 'safety' and if he looks tense or jittery then it's time to pay attention to him.  He is the latest in a long series of talking heads who have warned about the dangers of AI.  In this instance he doesn't provide a model for how all of you - I mean we - get wiped out, merely that his fear is of AI developing itself, yes, working on itself to get better and better, and finding Hom. Sap. rather a nuisance, and then ending us.  

     Evan qualifies this by rating the possibility or probability as low - BUT NOT ZERO.  

     What is even more chilling is that the news article quoting Evan also got an insight from Dame Wendy Hall, whom I had never heard of.  Her job description involves 'AI' and 'advising the UN'.  That is an indication of how potentially devastating a rogue AI could be.  Art!

     O NO IT'S NOT!

     Be careful.

A Little Gentle Shoeing Again

Here's a terrible photo of Donold Judas Trump for you.  It's not hard to find awful photos of King Piggy as he looks to be rotting from the inside out, as well as putting on - Art!

     I dunno - shoe polish instead of hair dye?  A lesson in how to look 90, perhaps.  Or, the perils of getting ready in the dark.  Whichever or whatever, not a good look.  Nor is this - Art!

     What you see here are the empty upper and middle tiers of seating at the convention centre that the Wizard Lizard Gizzard party are using to host a - you may be ahead of me here - convention in Dallas.  Donold is the star turn, making the event all about him, which is why the venue is only two-thirds full, and why the promoters were desperately pimping free tickets to anyone with a pulse and even partial mobility.  Donnie Dorko claimed that all the empty seats are because folks went to the bathroom, and then that he was going to give everyone $5,000 if his party did well at the elections.  If, very much against the run of play, they do well, he will deny ever having said it, call it fake news and then run away to cheat at golf.

     I may come back to this, Chris Cilliza did an excellent breakdown of the event and what it's supposed to promote.

Hold That Thought

Look what I found on the hell-platform Twitter.  If this gains traction I want royalties.  Art!

Bring On The Brucie!

Pennington, that is, from the channel 'Sci-Fi Art', which promotes art in sci-fi, you may be surprised to hear.  I keep bringing up their name to ensure they don't sue me for plagiarism, aren't I a caution.  Art!

     Conrad is pretty certain this one is a Brian Aldiss cover picture, I shall check in a minute.  Note that the old gent featured on the cover is exhibiting sub-optimal survival behaviour; the correct response to a smouldering volcano is to move away from, not towards it.  He's a bit close to the not-very-hale edge of that outcrop, too.  Nor are those birds.  Conrad isn't sure what they are, except once again Ol' Brucie has flying objects tailing back to the horizon.  Let me dig a little.   Aha - Art!

     Told you so.