Posts Tagged ‘Zombie Apocalypse’

Luxury or Necessity

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

If you are thinking in terms of disaster planning, figuring out how to do things without electricity is a better use of your time and money than figuring out how to generate a lot of electrical power in the event the power grid fails long term. That said, there are a few things you will not wish to go without that are going to need electricity. One of those is communication. Sneakernet might be fine and dandy to get the town gossip in the PAW, but a radio is a lot better.

Claire and I made the switch to rechargeable batteries in 2005, a couple of years before I got the small solar array set up. We have never looked back. Right now, I have 120 volt wall chargers running off the deep cycle batteries that are, in turn, connected to the solar panels. If we lose grid power, all that will still work as it does today. In case the house solar is not working or if we need to charge some AA or AAA batteries away from the house, I have a couple of alternatives. One is a dedicated solar battery charger. It will take a 2400 mA NiMH AA battery from discharge to full charge in 8 hours of direct sunlight, and it charges 6 batteries at a time. Our GMRS walkie-talkies take 3 AAs each and run for a couple of days on a set, so that works out nicely. We also have a couple of very inexpensive two-way radios that operate on the same frequencies, but they use AAA batteries and don’t last as long.

In a pinch, I have harvested the solar panels and circuitry from a half dozen old decorative solar yard lights and can use them to take a 600 mA NiCad AA to full charge in a day. I had thought about using little sidewalk lights as indoor task lighting, say over the sink, but they produce so little illumination from the on-board LED that it is hardly worth the effort of taking them outside every day to charge up.

For light, we keep a variety of LED flashlights, headlamps and lanterns, all use the AA and AAA batteries that we can recharge using the sun. There are any number of solar or hand-crank powered gadgets that might be handy (or fun) to have in an emergency, so look around and see what appeals to you.

Here’s a solar battery charger for under $30. LINK

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“It was the best of times…

Friday, August 21st, 2009

…it was the worst of times.” Screw that! It’s will just be the worst of times.

Theory of International Politics and Zombies

Alex Massie alerts us to this BBC story about modeling who would win if the dead actually did rise from the grave:

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.

They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures….

To give the living a fighting chance, the researchers chose “classic” slow-moving zombies as our opponents rather than the nimble, intelligent creatures portrayed in some recent films….

[T]heir analysis revealed that a strategy of capturing or curing the zombies would only put off the inevitable.

In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity’s only hope is to “hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often”.

They added: “It’s imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else… we are all in a great deal of trouble.”

Now, one could argue that this finding represents a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious. On the other hand, the report has clear freaked out Alex Massie:

[The researchers] are cheating. It’s like something out of Dad’s Army: You can’t fight like that, it’s not in the rules… Then again, if we can be destroyed by Zombie 1.0, just think how powerless we’d be when confronted by Next Generation Zombies…

Under no circumstances is it OK to fail to read that entire article.

Theory of International Politics and Zombies

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Posted in Media & Entertainment, Politics | No Comments »

Science of the Living Dead

Thursday, June 11th, 2009
A Harvard Psychiatrist Explains Zombie Neurobiology
In Night of the Living Dead, zombies are brought back from the dead by a “mysterious force” that allows their brains to continue functioning. But how exactly does a zombie brain function? Finally, a Harvard psychiatrist has the answers.Through education Dr. Steven C. Schlozman is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a lecturer at the Harvard School of Education. He is also an avid sci-fi and horror fan – and, apparently, the world’s leading authority on the neurobiology of the living dead. He has even drafted a fake medical journal article on the zombie plague, which he calls Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome, or ANSD (the article has five authors: one living, three “deceased” and one “humanoid infected”).

Schlozman’s foray into necro-diagnostics began when he volunteered to give a talk for the “Science on Screen” lecture series at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA. He conducted extensive research by talking with George Romero and immersing himself in genre literature and memorabilia – which is why the alternate title for his lecture is “A Way Cool Tax Deduction for a Bunch of Cool Books, Action Figures and a Movie.”

So yes, Schlozman’s lecture is actually quite funny, and liberally sprinkled with other pop culture references including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. But the underlying science is serious. His lecture is a tour of the human brain, using the living dead as a narrative theme. <continued>

As a wise man once said, “Knowing is half the battle. The other half  is overwhelming violence and brute force.”

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Posted in Medical | No Comments »

World Health Disorganization

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

The Vice-President Biden addresses the possibilities of a flu pandemic and what you can do to protect yourself from it. Oh, also the Zombie Apocalypse.

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Posted in Media & Entertainment, Medical, Politics | No Comments »

Disappointment Postponed

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

There has been a great disturbance in The Force of late, so I am blaming the lack of response to our formation of a charitable service organization to the tough social and economic forces our friends and co-workers have been enduring. I will give it a few more months before I get desperate. Be forewarned: there are signs & portents afoot.

word_puzzle

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Posted in General Rambling | 2 Comments »

Interesting and Important Stuff

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

The ongoing quest for a worthwhile project that is not farm related has new & exciting material. I have started a thread on the private forum which you can get to by clickee clickee HERE. That assumes you have registered and been approved.

Oh, while I’m on that subject I got a curious email requesting a username but I didn’t recognize the address nor have I gotten a response to my reply asking for the person’s real name. If you have a spouse or friend trying to sign up, please just shoot me a message with some personal details so I know who it is. If it was a spam bot it was a very crafty one.

The other thing I have rattling around in my skull is a desire to go back to school or at least improve my skill set. Some of you may know that for several years I was a certified Emergeny Medical Technician, or an EMT. After I complete the basic course, I continued the clinical time and course material to expand my capabilities first to EMT Intermediate (EMT-I) then added the Wilderness module which encompassed backcountry Search & Rescue and care for patients who were more than an hour away from a hospital or other definative medical care. That was pretty cool by my standards.

Now there is coming a new EMT training module, the EMT Tactical. This marries two things I am pretty good at, practicing emergency medicine in unusual places with unusual complications and shooting.  EMT-T addresses the problems facing medics in dangerous mass casualty situations such as Active Shooters. Instead if waiting outside the perimeter until the area is secure an EMT-T can go into a threat area with the law enforcement or security entry teams because that specific training  allows them to defend themselves or others, address threats directly and attend to casualties. Could that be more tailor made for me?

As long as there is no stringent physical fitness requirement I should be good for it. My strength and mobility are very limited, but since my serious health issues seem under control I may attempt some exercise to build my strength and endurance. Still, even in the shape I am now I think I can out run or out fight quite a few EMTs I’ve seen around.

It is moot anyway since I’m not going to be applying to work in law enforcement ever again, and I am still struggling with reading, spatial orientation and short term memory, but it is a damned attractive skill set that I must acquire. It’s just one of my many personality quirks that make me the hit of every high society function.

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Posted in General Rambling, Medical, shooting | 2 Comments »