Zombies Again! Part 1

I've come to realize something very important, and I feel it should be shared. It's a simple point, but one that is so very often overlooked in this day and age of popcorn-horrors and summer blockbusters. Plainly stated, a zombie apocalypse, as we've seen them portrayed, is impossible.

"But Jesse," you say, "surely someone's put forth a plausible zombie scenario! There have been so many! What about-" and then you can fill in the blank with the apocalypse of your choice. 28 Days Later, World War Z, Dawn of the Dead, whatever. I call shenanigans on all of them, at least the ones I've had the pleasure of being familiar with. And that's a decent number. "But why? What's flawed about their premises?" Well, let me lay it out for you.

First, the "disease" itself. For the purposes of this essay, I'm discounting the magic-based zombies. Let's stay at least somewhat rooted in realism when dealing with our fictions. So that essentially leaves the zombie-plague as a disease, be it engineered by humans, naturally-occurring, or somehow alien. For most zombie situations, they have a couple core principles; either the dead are re-animated and hunger for human flesh, or the living are infected with something that causes them to lose their humanity and become violent, erratic monsters. Okay. For the most part, the disease is spread by the transferral of bodily fluids, such as blood or saliva. Sure. Infection is typically endemic to humans, but that's more a Hollywood necessity (I've already discussed how infected mosquitoes could destroy humanity entirely), but it also makes some sense when you think about how few diseases really affect multiple species (at least in the same way). All of that understood? Wonderful. Makes perfect sense, right?

Well, there are some problems. First off, it's not supremely difficult to keep someone from biting you, especially if you have any clue that they're about to. In this age of the internet, we'd know about the first zombie attacks in America within a matter of hours, so even if enough people are infected quickly to take hold of a small area, you'd have quarantines going up within days. People are notoriously paranoid, too, especially in the post-9/11 era. The outbreak would have difficulty getting going on a wide scale, and even if it did most people have at least a dozen things in their home that could be fashioned into self-defense weapons with the most minimal effort. But let's assume for a moment that everyone is a moron and they swap needles with their local undead.

For a zombie outbreak to really take hold, you're assuming that almost every military force in the world is comprised of under-armed, incompetent, neglectful skeptics, who look at these reports of rampant looting and barbarism as a local issue that happens to be going on everywhere, or something that they simply can't do anything about. After all, that's a civilian eating his grandmother! No honest American boy is going to shoot his neighbor! Some of this can be contributed to the ick factor of seeing zombies doing their business, but that would take hold of most soldiers (bear in mind that we train our armies pretty decently) for maybe fifteen seconds before the lead would start flying. Most outbreaks could be contained, or at least effectively localized and quarantined, in a matter of days, if not weeks. Yes, you'd have a couple hold-outs and isolated incidents, but these would be rare and hardly pandemic-starting. But what if people are idiots and the militaries of the world fail?

In the event of an absolute cock-up of human logic and survival skills, please bear in mind that most of us are separated by vast distances, and, in many cases, nearly-impassable geographical features such as oceans. What this means is that victim #1 is going to have to be pretty darn ingenuitive to get to any other continent than the one he's on. If the infection starts in China, America's got a good chance of surviving. If it starts in America, Europe and Asia and Africa are probably going to be fine. The global pandemic is supremely unlikely unless zombies get really good at flying planes or piloting ocean liners.

So what's my point? Basically, unless a series of absolutely stupid and catastrophic mistakes are made on a global scale (i.e., ignoring the corpses/ crazed cannibals running around destroying things) humanity could handle a zombie apocalypse. At least one like Hollywood keeps showing us.

Tune in next time, when I tell you how I'd set up a (fictional, let's hope!) zombie apocalypse!

DISCLAIMER: I know almost nothing about the Resident Evil movies, and there might be other films I've not heard of. If I'm off on something, or someone has averted these pitfalls, don't hesitate to let me know. I'll check it out!

Gliese 581 is all the proof I need.

Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star in the constellation Libra that's been getting some press lately because a planet was found in the "Goldilocks Zone," a small ring of habitable temperatures where liquid water might be found on solid planets. The star is 20.5 light years away, making it relatively close as far as astronomy goes. A lot of people are claiming this discovery as humanity's next destination, the second earth we've been searching for and dreaming about for years.

Well, I've done some math to figure out exactly how far this planet is, in terms that are more easily understood. Warning: I am not an astronomer or mathematician. These numbers came from sources online, and might not be accurate.

A light-year is a massive distance, we understand that. 20.5 light years, in terms of miles, comes out to around 120,439,334,310,000 miles. That's one-hundred-and-twenty trillion, four-hundred-and-thirty-nine billion, three-hundred-and-thirty-four million, three-hundred-and-ten thousand miles, or 24,641,915,694.5 round trips from New York to Los Angeles. In other words, Gliese 581 is really far away.

Now take into account the speeds of the space shuttle. In orbit, this technological marvel goes a blazing 17580 miles per hour in orbit. Pretty fast, but not nearly fast enough. At that speed, the trip to Gliese 581 would take 781,534 years. That's longer than humans have been throwing pointy sticks at each other by about six hundred millenniums. Now, in theory, we could use the gravity of the sun to slingshot a spacecraft at speeds of about 100,000 miles per hour, though a conventional ship would not survive the g-forces, or be able to escape the sun's gravity well. But, let's say for a second that we achieve that herculean feat. We get a ship going 100,000 miles an hour. We still have to go the 20.5 light years. At that speed, the trip is cut to a much more manageable 137,393.719 years. That's less time than humans have already existed, at least. Only 4580 generations! Unfortunately that's enough that whatever settlers happened to be sent would probably be only mostly-recognizable as humans.

However, all this math and these big bleak numbers prove to me one thing: We need to work on our tech. Humanity is going to need to expand eventually, and we're going to need some serious ships to do so. I'm not naive enough to think that humans will achieve faster-than-light speeds, but we should be able to approach light speed before too terribly long. Hell, if we could get to Gliese in 200 years it would be worth it. If we had a viable chance at making the trip in 1000, I'd sign up. But right now, when you can measure the travel time in thousands of generations, it's not worth speculating. We need to up the ante and make it viable.

That is all.

I guess I'm blogging again.

Aw oh aw oh aw aw ah aw aw oh JUICY

Needed: Three other Hitlers to dance down a street for about four minutes, someone to film, camera to film with, five Hitler outfits, five Hitler mustaches, a free afternoon that's decently sunny and a few days before to organize and choreograph.

IO: Get the gang together. We're making this happen soon.

Google Wave looks pretty neat.

I'm not entirely sure what all Google Wave is, or what it's supposed to be used for, but I want it. It looks like I could run group projects and meetings in real time from the comfort of my own room with multiple people, which would be fantastic with the coldness of winter right on top of us. That said, if anyone has any invites that they don't know what to do with, hit me up! I'm at jcvetters@gmail.com

Out of time, unfortunately, but I should be blogging more! I've been super busy lately. Agh!

I Made My Brain Cry.

I realized about five minutes ago that there are people alive now who could have a conversation on a decently intelligent level who were not even born when the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were hit by hijacked planes. There are millions and millions of Americans who don't remember the world pre-9/11. That got me thinking, and I further realized that in my relatively short life, I've seen a lot of things happen. I watched OJ Simpson's trials on TV, saw the rise and fall of Power Rangers and Pokemon, was online when YouTube launched, watched the Towers fall, listened unknowingly to Clinton's impeachment hearings. I was around when Google became a verb, when computers became not only commercially viable but nearly standard, and when TV started going HD. I read Harry Potter when it first came out, before anyone realized it was going to be one of the highest-grossing books of all time. I listened to pop stars and boy bands and then smiled as they faded, and now I'm seeing some of those same stars come back. I was alive during the Rwandan genocide but didn't know about it. I remember hearing about Dolly the Sheep and wondering what the big deal was with cloning. I remember the Hubble telescope, not the launch but a lot of the pictures that came back, and how amazing it was to look at space. I remember Microsoft's rise, and Pentium processors, and a time before the iPod. I remember the battle between Nintendo and Sega before Sony put out the PlayStation, and I remember telling people to get out of my light when I was playing my Game Boy. I don't remember a time before color TV, before cable, or before a telephone in every house. I do remember a time before terrorism, international relations, and World of Warcraft. I look back to the movies I grew up with and I see Toy Story, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and The Sandlot. I remember when the Disney Channel showed Mickey Mouse cartoons and MTV showed music videos, though I don't remember the latter as well. I remember the premiere of Survivor, and dial-up internet, and Napster.

There are people out there with entirely different experiences. Every person who reads this will have a different take, different experiences. I am young to some, and old to others. And it's all just a part of the human experience.

My day

I went to a pet store today because I was in the area and a friend said they had puppies. Now, for those out there that know me, I am incredibly fond of dogs of nearly every breed and puppies make me happy more easily than most things I can think of off the top of my head. Needless to say, I wanted to play with some puppy dogs.

Well, I think I've matured in a way that I was not entirely prepared for.

As I walked into the store (which will remain unnamed here and in the comments, please) one of the first things I noticed was the location of the animals. Now, this is a store I had been to before and I have to say that they changed the layout. Instead of the somewhat-out-of-the-way condo-style crates along one wall, there were six moderately-sized crates sitting in the middle of the store. Each of these had a shelter dog in it, and only one was of adequate size. The breeds I remember clearly were Golden Retriever, Yellow Lab mix, and Shar Pei mix, but there were a few others and they were all big dogs, all under three years old. Two of them were INCREDIBLY wary of strangers and barked at just about everyone that walked by. Three had problems with other animals, and none of them seemed particularly happy to be there. This also seems like a good time to mention that about ten feet away from the last crate was a pen with four 10-week-old male puppies and another ten beyond that were two large cages full of not-quite-healthy cats.

One dog in particular, Jake, was the first I really noticed. As I walked in, a woman was kneeling by his crate. He barked at her, an angry bark that seemed to point to some abuse or aggression in his former life, and she backed away frightened. One of the employees started shouting at him and he turned to growl at the newcomer. I approached the cage cautiously, looked at the name on the top of it, and said, "Hey Jake. Hey buddy, what's the matter?" He looked at me and moved to the door of the crate, so I knelt down in front of it. He growled and I held out my hand, knuckles just barely inside the bars. He sniffed them, calmed down, and sat, looking at me. The employee who had shouted was still there, certainly looking to avoid some sort of lawsuit if I was bitten, but his presence wasn't quite helpful. Jake didn't seem to like him. I put some of my fingers in the cage and, after looking back at what was probably one of the only consistent human pieces of his day (the employee, of course) he licked my hand. He was calm for a while, which I used to look at the other animals. The cats were in bad shape and honestly the only happy animals were the puppies who looked like they had been brought in by a breeder. They had also been freshly neutered, but that's a completely different story (and I fully support spaying and neutering your pets).

I returned to the shelter dogs after a while and spent the rest of my time with one, a beautiful Lab mix named Daisy. Daisy was eight months old and a little skinnier than she probably should have been, but she was growing well and was full of that unbridled puppy energy. She pushed herself against one side of the cage and I started to pet her. She liked the attention and was wonderfully calm in moments. Another employee (not the kind of scary guy who yelled at Jake) approached me and indicated a few leashes and said, "You can get her out if you want. That's the calmest I've seen her all day." I thanked her and did something that I now regret: I opened up the crate and got Daisy out.

She was, of course, rambunctious upon release, but once I got the leash on her and got her into the large play area she was a happy camper. Now, as far as dogs go, Daisy was not the prettiest or the healthiest or the anything-iest. She was a shelter dog, and a young one at that. She would probably end up making some family very happy. She made me pretty happy for the five minutes I spent playing with her, watching her sniff and explore. The time came, though, when I had to take her back to the crate. Of course, she didn't want to go back in and it took another minute or so just to maneuver her inside. I was probably a little to gentle, and it ended up being Yelling Employee who grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and pushing her in. I gave her one last look before thanking the employees and leaving the store.

Now, on to why I said I regret doing that. Seeing those six dogs in that situation, being stuck in that big cold space in those stark, industrial crates, crammed in with animals that were unhealthy and people who didn't know what to do with them, I made a decision that I think I will try to honor more than any other I've ever made. I will never personally get a puppy from a breeder. I will never buy a puppy from a pet store. I might take a puppy from someone who didn't spay his dog and has no clue what to do with the litter, but I am pretty much only going to have shelter dogs. I will also likely have a dog any time I can financially support it and live in a place that allows pets. There are too many dogs out there who don't have good homes, and they deserve a happy life with good people to care for them.

I love my puppies at home and wouldn't trade them for the world, but getting puppies seems like a futile exercise to me at this point in my life. Puppies are great for little kids who can grow up with them and if you want to get one and train it that's wonderful. But, please, if you're thinking about getting a dog, go to the Humane Society, check out your local shelter or pound, and consider bringing home one of the millions of dogs that don't have another chance.

This is the Humane Society's national site, and here is a site that has adoption listings. I wanted to provide those, just in case...

Just a tiny post.

So I don't have a lot to say at the mo', but I felt like posting something anyway. I know, I know, quality over quantity, but that's not really the point of a blog, now, is it?

I wonder what it's like to dance on the moon. Who wants to go to the moon with me? We shall tango and salsa and watlz and do the Mashed Potato.

That's all.