Kickstarter Friday: The Kings of the Wastelands

In the first of an exciting, new, semi-regular feature, we want to tell you all about  The Kings of the Wastelands.

 Our new feature is Kickstarter Friday, where we feature post-apocalypticish kickstarters and interview the creators. Semi-regular, because it very much depends on the willingness of creators to speak to us.

KingsofWastelandThe Kings of The Wastelands is an online webcomic by Delbert Hewitt featuring the adventures of a group of talking animals in a post-apocalyptic world.  With a clean, cartoony art style and a classic revenge adventure story, it’s a lot of fun. Delbert has recently taken to kickstarter in order to fund the print-run of the first volume.

 Let’s let speak for himself – we interviewed him while we secretly injected him with mind-control chips. Ha, don’t say you’re alright with living under our dictatorship unless you mean it, fella.

Can you tell us a little bit about The Kings of The Wastelands?

Sure, One of the last living dogs in a post apocalyptic wasteland where his kind are seen as a delicacy, Jacob is driven to seek vengeance for the violent death of his family at the hands (or paws) of a Tiger named Hunter and his gang of zoo escapees. Jacob must now journey  cross country to find these twisted animals and bring them to heel, no matter what it takes or who stands in his way. Jacob befriends different animals along the way. Millie the cat and Gib the turtle who become his travel buddies! In this world all the animals have evolved and can do everything we can do. Each section or habitat is controlled by a “King” and each “King” was invovled in the death of his family. Jacob has to put the clues together and figure out who done it? Issue his brand of justice.

I like that it’s animals instead of people. It’s a more unusual choice in this sort of narrative. Can you tell us a little bit about the reasoning behind that?

 I’m a huge anime fan and for those living under a rock, anime is japanese animation. I’ve been hooked on the action,stories and the thinking outside the box. I wanted to create something that could make the easy transition from comics to anime. There is nothing more simplistic than a cartoony animals running around fighting. I’m also a huge movie buff and I love post apac movies and the mesh seemed pretty easy to me. Rango (2011)with Johnny Depp meets The book of Eli with Denzel Washington is the simple way to spin what i was thinking. I can totally see this comic becoming an anime.

You took it to kickstarter to fund the first print run of issue one. What has your experience been?

Well this isn’t my first rodeo. I did a kickstarter last nov called Ebony Kiss and even though funding failed. I was able to gain lots of encouragement from fellow kickstarter peers and sign a publishing deal with Hound Comics! I’m a huge fan of kickstarter and i’ve backed almost 30 projects myself. I think its a great way to get your projects a jumpstart. Like most people i don’t have one thousand dollars lieing around to print a comic. The hardest part is getting your name out there and get a fan base of people who want your product. If you already have a fan base your on easy street. I want the world to know what I have created because it’s different and there are people like me who want something different. How many ways can you spin the superhero genre? That’s why I loved the Watchmen graphic novel because it was different. The walking dead is different and well done! I feel if it’s good it’s good period. I just wanted to create something outside the box and I think I did. I hope the world enjoys it as much as I do.

These are the questions we ask everyone:

What do you think is the most likely apocalypse? What will happen?

It will be bio explosion for sure! something will blow up and release a toxic gas and turn everyone in zombies! Something along those lines lol. Or we are all killed and the animals take over!

Can you offer some survival advice to our readers?

Yeah. Get a bunker and keep it stocked! Make sure you have food, water and weapons in order to survive. People turn crazy when there is no order so you have to create it.

Would you mind living under the benevolent dictatorship of myself or the other two ICoS ladies?

ICoS ladies can rule over me anytime! I thought I was in the benevolent dictatorship of ICoS ladies?  Did I miss the monday memo?

And tell us anything you want about anything you want.

I want to say thank you so much for the chance to share my love and my heart with the world! This is just the tip of the Iceberg. I have many more comics in the works as we speak. Just for the ICoS ladies here are some future titles in the works. Kollectas, Noted Winds, Analog, Ebony Kiss and much more of the Kings of the Wastelands to come! Check out all my links and please share this kickstarter with everyone you know! you’ll be amazed by what a post will do or a tweet! Just pledge and share because we are seven days in and we are already at 50% of the way to my goal! A special thank you to Caitlin because your awesome!

 Thanks very much, Delbert.

If you are interested in the Kings of the Wastelands comic, check it out. If you would like to see it as a print comic, back it.

If you have a Kickstarter you’d like us to feature, please CONTACT US.

 

Disruptive Innovation: BOLT: Portable USB Battery Backup

Launched earlier this this month on kickstarter, the BOLT: Portable USB Battery Backup is something we need to have in our future.

The BOLT works like a regular wall to USB to phone charger—except after you unplug the phone and the BOLT from the wall, the BOLT can still function as a charger without the wall.

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It charges itself while plugged in and can then recharge your phone later if you’re away from an outlet.

The BOLT is perfect for everyday survival.

Whether you find yourself stuck in traffic or bugging out, you’ll be the one still able to call for delivery or GSP your way to safety.

With 18 days still remaining [at time of writing] fluxmob’s BOLT has already reached its $44k goal. I’m sure this is because we humans would like a brighter more portable future and know good, disruptive innovation when we see it.

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And speaking of seeing, the BOLT is a sexy little thing.

The wall prongs can be conveniently folded into the body when not in use

I like that fluxmob seems to be tech jargony enough that I feel they know what they’re talking about.

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Unfortunately, their actual website doesn’t contain much more information than the kickstarter and, most concerning: no names.

Suspicions aside, I’m geeked to live in a world where the masses want the BOLT and have the power to make it happen.

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Notice the $44,000 USD goal was reached so now they’re going for a stretch goal of $88,000 so they can make international adapters for the BOLT

Under the Dome: Creepiness and…a dome

Under_the_Dome_title_screen
Source: Wikipedia

Okay, it’s summer (well, summer in TV Land, anyway), which means that there’s nothing on TV except reruns and reality shows. Let’s face it, TV’s basically boring as hell until the season starts again in the fall.

But! This summer, we get a treat — a summer series based on Stephen King’s novel Under the Dome, also called…Under the Dome. And I, your intrepid sci-fi geek, will recap the series for you (and possibly with you) weekly. The premiere episode aired on Monday, June 24, in the U.S. and Canada. Which means that if you haven’t yet watched the series premiere, you may want to skip this post until after you’ve seen it. Because there will be spoilers. You’ve been warned.

Overall, this show is creepy as hell. I’m not really sure why I’m surprised, because it’s based on a book by Stephen King. You know, the guy who wrote Carrie. And The Shining. And The Stand. But, creepy not withstanding, the first episode was really quite fascinating. (Maybe because I haven’t read the book? I should get on that…)

The episode opens with some guy — who we later learn goes by the name Barbie (seriously, what?) — digging a grave in the woods somewhere. I was immediately drawn in, because some dude digging a perfectly formed, rectangular grave by himself with his bare hands and a shovel deserves to be noticed. I’m just saying. We get a flash of the dead guy’s face before the tarp gets dropped into the grave. Which, I don’t know about you, made me ask a bunch of questions (which kind of annoyed my husband, come to think of it): Who is the dead guy? Why did Barbie kill him? What does Barbie do, exactly, that requires killing people in the middle of the woods outside of tiny towns? And why does Barbie go by the name Barbie and not by his first name, the perfectly respectable name of Dale?

Anyway. We’re then introduced to some other town residents, none of whom I could really keep straight in my head. (Honestly, in my notes I have “Who are these people?!“)

And THEN. There’s this earthquake thing and then the dome drops over the town, making a noise like someone dropping a glass into a bowl of water. Or possibly the sound of a wet-dry vacuum sucking up that container of juice your kids knocked over because they were running around the kitchen when they weren’t supposed to. Ahem.

And then we see the cow. The poor, harmless, bisected cow. We’re treated to a few closeups of it — possibly a few too many — which was gross and yet strangely fascinating at the same time. Also, why didn’t the cow have bones? (Or at least, I didn’t see any; maybe I just wasn’t paying attention since I was looking at the INSIDE OF A COW.

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A cow that happened to be in TWO PIECES.

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)

The centerpieces/antagonist of this show is The Dome. So what do we know about it?

  • It’s high: A plane crashes into it and and explodes, leaving only a purse and a leg as evidence that it had people on board. (The purse would’ve sufficed when making that point, really.)
  • It’s soundproof. Firefighters and Chester’s Mill police are trying to talk to each other through the dome but end up looking like mimes in uniform. The miming reporters are even more entertaining.
  • It’s electrified and sends off electrical signals that disrupt things that rely on electricity. But it might not be electrified and may not injure/maim/kill you if you keep touching it and/or throwing yourselves at it. (Go on, keep trying. I dare you.) Or, if you’re the police chief, you keep touching the dome over and over and over, even though you know it fucks up your pacemaker. And then your pacemaker launches out of your chest like something out of Aliens. (Can pacemakers do that?) BUT KEEP TOUCHING IT.
  • It’s strong like transparent titanium. We see a plane crash into it. We also see a truck smash into it head-on; afterward, the truck only had a cargo section left since the cab was completely obliterated. It can cut buildings in half. It can cut people in half. And, as we so plainly see, it can cut cows in half. Basically, this is not a thing you want to hit under any circumstances.
  • You can’t see it from the inside, but (based on the closing shot), you can actually see it from the outside. Well, you can see the outline of it, at least.

Now that the dome is in place, it’s like a giant fishbowl (so says Angie, one of the characters). Only the fish are human. So what do we know about the residents of Chester’s Mill?

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  • For a small town, there are a lot of residents I can’t keep track of.
  • The councilman (Big Jim) looks sort of like the dude off The Commish, but actually turns out to be the dude off Breaking Bad.
  • Big Jim has Weird Tension with the police chief (he of the launching pacemaker). What IS the story behind the propane? Hmm…
  • The vampire lady off Twilight is now a reporter/editor. She is married to a doctor, who seems to have disappeared. Only he really hasn’t, because remember the dead guy in the opening scene? Yeah. (And the plot thickens…)
  • Big Jim’s son is Junior (Angie’s boyfriend/bed buddy), who seems like a total psychopath. So basically, this family’s just completely fucked up. In a really creepy way.

The show sounds interesting already, right? I mean, just the characters alone are pretty compelling. Throw in a giant, see-through, electrified dome and I am hooked. What was even more interesting (to me, anyway) was that whenever someone had a seizure (and it’s not established if these characters have a history of seizures), they would say, “The stars are falling in lines.” The stars are falling in lines? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Maybe this guy was right all along, and it all comes back to aliens!

Or, I don’t know. It’s based on a Stephen King novel, after all.

So, I have to say, this show looks interesting. I mean, it’s creepy to begin with, and with everyone cut off from the outside world, people are bound to get creepier.

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Or Junior will completely lose his shit and kill everyone in town. I don’t know, it’s hard to say.

Is Under the Dome a science fiction-y show? No, not really. Honestly, it almost seems like a character study to me.

But on the other hand, it also strikes me as a great (albeit fictional) case study for a post-apocalyptic situation. Okay, so a giant dome isn’t really an apocalypse, but for the people of Chester’s Mill, it could be. They’re cut off from the rest of the world, they can’t get in or out, they can’t get supplies into the town, people will start panicking pretty soon (probably), a psychopath is running around the same town as a guy named Barbie (who kills people in the woods)… Sounds pretty post-apocalyptic to me.

Personally, I’m curious to see where this will go.

Stay tuned for next week’s recap!

The Legend of Oz: The Wicked West (BDI)

Have you ever heard of BDI (big dog ink) the comic publisher? What about The Legend of Oz: The Wicked West? I hadn’t heard of either of them. I feel like I’ve seen the BDI logo before but can’t say I remembered it or them or what they make.

Not their fault, there are a lot of publishers out there and hundreds more comics.

Lucky for BDI, I’m a shelf appeal kind of girl. Also lucky for them, Free Comic Book Day was made for people like me. People who just can’t go into a local shop and take free stuff then not buy anything at all.

This is how I came to own a copy of BDI‘s The Legend of Oz: The Wicked West. There on the shelf, right with in reach of my short little arms (I’ve been known to not buy something rather than ask for help getting it down– what if they take it down and I don’t like it? Panic!) was a bad ass looking cowgirl with ruby pistols on her hip claiming to be Dorothy Gale in Oz of all places.

[Note: This review was previously published here]

Well this didn’t look like any Oz I’d ever seen and this Dorothy was no dainty farm girl desperate to go home an iron the wrinkles from her dress. No, the Dorothy in The Legend of Oz: The Wicked West is a hardened, take charge, no nonsense kind of cowgirl who still just wants to get to Oz.wickedwestannouncement

The story introduces savvy but worn out cowgirl, Dorothy, and her loyal steed, Toto, trudging their way down what’s left of the yellow brick road. Most of the golden bricks that made up the road have been stolen over the years and the path to The Emerald City is hard to follow both mentally and physically.

This version of Oz reminds me a lot of the Scissor Sisters song Return To Oz. “Where The grass is dead, the gold is brown, and the sky has claws. There’s a wind-up man walking round and round. What once was Emerald City’s now a crystal town.”

Hoping to take a breather and considering calling it quits on her search for Oz, Dorthy quickly lands herself on the radar of some shape-shifting brutes in the form or drunks and then winged gorillas. Quick on the draw with her of ruby-encrusted pistols, Dorothy and her whip-fast reflexes make quick work of the gorillas, an ally, and a few enemies in the process.

If you’re not into buxom ladies in the tightest of clothes, BDI‘s take on L. Frank Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz might rub you wrong. But then again, so would most comics…

I didn’t feel her fanservice figure detracted from the story or the character. On the contrary, I felt the illustration by  Alisson Borges and Kate Finnegan (colors) were fantastic and added great levels of depth to the world Tom Hutchenson was building through the story.

It’s a glossy little number. Well illustrated and well written. However, the issue felt way short (28 pages) for a $3.50 comic. I wish it was available digitally and at a lower price point or with longer issues.

I was intrigued by The Legend of Oz: The Wicked West and I’d buy another issue –but with caution.

SPAWN goes with you without covering you in necroplasm!

Image Comics/TMP just announced that the SPAWN universe is going digital with the release of five titles on ComiXology.com.

hauntvol4_cov

Image Comics and Todd McFarlane Productions (TMP) have announced the digital release of five TMP titles on comiXology. CURSE OF THE SPAWN, HAUNT VOLUME 4, HELLSPAWN: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION, SAM AND TWITCH: THE WRITER, and SPAWN: THE UNDEAD (as well as the collected edition) are all available for purchase now on the digital comics platform, and more titles will be released weekly in the coming months.

While reading about all sorts of alien and supernatural creatures is vital to your survival, carrying around all these books just isn’t practical—unless you go digital!

I’m most excited about CURSE OF THE SPAWN. Why? Because it’s set in a futuristic world in the throes of apocalypse, when Evil stands at the threshold of victory.

I’ve been a fan of digital comics for a while now. It’d be nice if there was a bit more options, but luckily ComiXology prices competitively as they’re still competing with stores and sentimentality. But once you realize the power of portability and having books, comics, writing drafts, movies and more all in a purse-sized viewer you’ll never survive without it.

So, if you have or plan to have an eReader, start your collection off on the right foot.

Checkout all five newly digital SPAWN series:

samandtwitch_writer_cov

CURSE OF THE SPAWN

HAUNT VOLUME FOUR – Continues the saga of the Kilgore brothers — one of them living, one of them dead, both of them united as the superhero Haunt

HELLSPAWNre-defined McFarlane’s SPAWN mythos with stories by Brian Michael Bendis and Steve Niles (CHIN MUSIC), drawn by Ashley Wood and Ben Templesmith

SAM AND TWITCH: THE WRITER – The SPAWN universe’s favorite flat-foots, detectives Sam Burke and Twitch Williams, take on a serial killer with a literary bent as fear and snow alike descend on the city.

SPAWN: THE UNDEADfocuses on the HellSpawn once known as Al Simmons, with a self-contained story about the individuals who encounter him in the SPAWN world of urban horror in each issue.

Coming Soon:

SPAWN: GODSLAYER one-shot, available on July 10

SPAWN: THE DARK AGES, which will roll out new issues weekly starting on July 10.

Check out the Image/TMP section on ComiXology.com for all your SPAWN needs.

 

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Corpses Everywhere: What to do with The Dead.

When it all goes to shit, the corpses will be everywhere. No, not the zombies, but the dead. The regular dead. The bodies of people who didn’t make it. You think I’m kidding? Take a look on the news about what happens to regions after a natural disaster hits. In places without a unified emergency services, the corpses just lie around decomposing until volunteers and citizens can get to burying them. Post-Apocalypse, there won’t be emergency services, or groups of volunteers, and citizens are going to be too busy fleeing for their lives to dig out the corpses and lay them to rest.

 

Initally, you’ll be among those fleeing citizens, and that’s fine. But when you start settling down, building your community, you are going to need to do something about all those corpses lying around. Why? Two reasons – 1. Health, 2. Morale.

 

Lets get down to the nitty-gritty here. Not wanting to be indelicate, but a decomposing corpse is a health hazard. Bacteria, rot, rats, to mention only the most obvious. Several hundred or thousand corpses are worse. You don’t want to do all the dreadful things needed in order to survive just to end up dying because you didn’t clear out the houses, do you? Plus, the knowledge that all those dead people are there, behind their locked doors, just rotting into oblivion, is bound to be too much for some of your community.

 

So what do you do? In Stephen King’s The Stand, the survivors who massed in Boulder set up a house-clearing team, who went from house to house, removing corpses and planting them in a mass grave. It sounds harsh and cold, but it’s a good idea. You don’t have time to bury everyone individually, and while a funeral pyre seems like a nice idea you probably have more important things to do with the wood.

 

Make sure your burial pit is well outside of town, far enough that your farmers won’t accidentally dig into it in ten or twenty years. Set your team up – ensure they all wear masks and protective suits – and have them go from house to house, clearing out the bodies. If you have any religious leaders in your compound, this is a good time to have them bless the pit. You can’t have them buried individually, but such a guesture will make you look good and make the more faith-inclined among you more comfortable with the idea.

 

Plague pit sign, council estate, Pitfield St, ...
Plague pit sign, council estate, Pitfield St, Hackney, London, UK (Photo credit: gruntzooki)

If you feel guilty, remember it’s a perfectly legitimate choice. During the Black Death, the victims were interred in Plague Pits. These places are now remembered by stone markers. The survivors of the plague- an apocalyptic event if there ever was one, in which around 60% of the population of Europe died – didn’t have time to find out the names of the dead or give them a proper burial, and neither do you.

 

It’s best to do this task sooner rather than later, especially if the apocalypse happens in the warmer months. It should be one of the first thigns you do, in fact, just after building your barriacdes and setting up your government. The volunteers who do the task should be well rewarded, with extra rations or luxury goods. When all the dead have been removed, and the pit has been filled, apply some consideration to the feelings of your people and put some kind of memorial there. Maybe plant a tree, or some flowers. It’ll grow good and strong.

 

In 500 years, when it’s all long gone and a new society has arisen, the archaeologists of the future will find your mass grave and make assumptions based on it. Here is a good chance to put an explanation in with the corpses, if you care about that sort of thing.

 

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Calgary flood: Practicing for the apocalypse

A shot of downtown Calgary. source: CTV.ca
A shot of downtown Calgary. Source: ctvnews.ca. Click on image to get to original post.

So yeah, this picture? That’s downtown Calgary. Thankfully, I don’t live in downtown Calgary (or in any of the areas that got evacuated), but I do live in Calgary.

For those not in the loop (or those not in Canada), Southern Alberta has gotten a ridiculous amount of rain over the last week. When Mr. Char asked me if I’d built my ark earlier this week, I thought he was joking.

He wasn’t.

To put it another way, I’ve seen more rain in Calgary in the last week than I did the entire time I lived in Texas. In a town along the Gulf Coast — one that was decimated by Hurricane Ike back in 2008.

Yeah. It’s a lot of rain.

In fact, as I write this post, it is STILL raining. One of the city’s rivers has already crested (one of the actual rivers, not one of the makeshift street-rivers), and I would imagine the second has as well — or if it hasn’t it will shortly, and the local dam/reservoir has, to my knowledge, overflowed.

Too bad God wasn’t speaking to me earlier this week. (Or, um, ever, actually.) Also, it’s too bad I have no idea what the hell a cubit is.

Starting yesterday, huge swaths of the city were given mandatory flood evacuation orders. Those orders kept coming, and ended (I believe) sometime this morning. As of this point, at least 75,000 people in Calgary alone were booted from their homes. Some of the small towns surrounding the city have ended up under water. Some towns were evacuated in their entirety (for example, the town of Bragg Creek, about 44 km — please don’t ask me what that is in miles — west of Calgary, was completely evacuated and power to the town was shut off). Most of the town of High River is under water; enough water has collected to completely submerge vehicles. Boats are going around to rescue people stranded on rooftops.

There are only a few evacuation centres (only about 4, I think); the rest of the evacuees are being put up by friends, family, and random strangers who have opened up their homes.

It is, in a way, reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina. Only not, because we didn’t have gale force winds and mass destruction or anything like that. But as far as rainfall in a landlocked province goes, this is pretty much classified as “torrential rains.”

The mayor of Calgary is urging everyone to stay home unless it’s absolutely necessary to leave. I have NOT been evacuated. Mr. Char’s office was closed for the day, and everyone was sent home. So, for the time being, my family is at home, taking a movie (and writing) day. (I have never been happier to live at the top of the hill.)

But! For those who were evacuated — and for anyone who could possibly be evacuated for anything in the future — what do you pack? What do you take with you?

There are loads and loads of articles about this online. Any prepper worth their salt will have a Go Bag prepped and ready to go. If, however, you’re not a prepper, and you find yourself being evacuated, what do you do? Here’s a quick list (and note that it is NOT definitive):

  • Don’t panic. (Well, okay, maybe you can, but only a little bit and only in the beginning. Afterward, you’re really going to have to get your ass in gear because you’ve just lost valuable prepping time.)
  • Pack enough clothes for the length of the evacuation, plus a few days extra. For example, Calgary’s evac order is for 72 hours. So, pack clothes for a week, just in case.
  • Bring ALL prescription and necessary medication with you. This is pretty self-explanatory.
  • Take all important documents. Passports, health/immunization records, driver’s license, SIN/SSN, birth certificates, blah blah blah. You never know when you’re going to need them.
  • Bring a first aid kit. Just in case.
  • Pack supplies (ie. food and water). Because you never know when  you’re going to need them. And it’s always good to have supplies on you, especially when you’re evacuating and you don’t know when you’re going to be home.
  • Tell your neighbors you’re evacuating. That way someone knows. Also, officials here in Calgary told people to mark their doors with a giant “X” so that rescue personnel know your house is empty. That’s a good idea, too. (But that might leave your house open to looters/robbers if it gets to that point, so that’s a toss-up.)

Obviously, the above is not a complete list. If you’re being evacuated because of a flood, get important documents, pictures, etc out of the basement, or at least put them in waterproof containers. You never know what you’re going to come home to, and it might very well be a flooded basement.

To everyone in Calgary and Southern Alberta, stay safe!

And now for some pictures! (Note, I obviously didn’t take these pictures — every picture is credit to a source, usually to a news outlet. Click on the images to get to the original posts.)

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Stampede Park, Calgary, where the Calgary Stampede is held every year — this year’s starts in under two weeks. Source: nationalpost.com. Click on image to get to original post.
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Elbow River, one of the two rivers crossing Calgary. Source: nationalpost.com. Click on image to get to original post.
cougar creek
Cougar Creek in Canmore, a town in the Canadian Rockies about 100km west of Calgary. Source: ctvnews.ca. Click on the image to get to the original post.
bow river3
The Bow River (the second — and bigger — of Calgary’s two rivers) bursts its banks. Source: calgaryherald.com. Click on image to get to original post.

 

 

Resource Roundup [6/21]

America

Are you fat enough to survive the zombie apocalypse?

Howard Schneider takes an odd look at politicians to determine if they’re fat enough to survive the apocalypse…

Governor of New Jersey at a town hall in Hills...
Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, at a town hall in Hillsborough, NJ 3/2/11 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If they’re super-fit and fat-free, are they better off when the dead rise?

Or would New Jersey’s Republican governor, Chris Christie — the self-proclaimed “healthiest fat guy you’ve ever seen” — fare better in a food-deprived environment with his stored surplus energy?

Might our female politicians — say, a comfortable-in-the-wild Sarah Palin or Iraq veteran Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) — tap their survival skills, as well as women’s generally higher body-fat percentages, and take control?

What about President Obama? Thin, yes, but not in that amped-up way that makes you think he’d fall apart if he had to hunker down for a couple of days without a GNC JackedPack.

[via The Washington Post]

 

Canada

Flooding hits Alberta province, forces 75,000 people from their homes in Calgary

Oh no. Pray for Char and the moose and the other Canadians — even Chad and Avril–, it looks like the earth is rearing up to wash away the plague that is humanity (specifically Canadians)…

[via CNN.com]

 

Great Britain

Official Trailer for Cockneys vs Zombies (Coming to the US August 2nd 2013)

Who’d win in a fight, a zombie or your granddad? What about a race? These are the deep questions that will be answered in the upcoming Cockneys vs Zombies.

COCKNEY
A native of the East End of London, born within hearing of the ringing of the Bow Bells

ZOMBIE
A supernatural power or spell that according to voodoo belief can enter into and reanimate a corpse

SYNOPSIS
The Bow Bells Care Home is under threat and the McGuire’s – Andy, Terry, and Katy – need to find some way to keep their grandfather and his friends in the East End, where they belong. But, when you’re robbing a bank, zombie invasions makes things a lot harder. And let’s face it, they need all the help they can get when their bank-robbing experts turn out to be Mental Mickey and Davey Tuppance. As contractors to an East London building site unlock a 350-year old vault full of seriously hungry zombies, the East End has suddenly gone to hell and the Cockney way of life is under threat. Equipped with all the guns and ammo they can carry, it’s up to the gang to save the hostages, their grandfather, and East London from zombie Armageddon.

[via Hulu]

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Quick Survival Tip: Stand up for Yourself

Survival, in a pre- or post-apocalyptic world, requires compromise and self-reliance. We often see apocalyptic fiction where there is one leader and it’s his way or no way and everyone just gets dragged along with wide eyes and gaping jaws.

That didn’t work out for Rick Grimes or any of Alice‘s (Resident Evil) friends. Why? Because everyone else had thoughts and ideas and didn’t stand up for them or the value of their lives.

Sometimes people try to speak loudly and use tactics to assert dominance and get you to go with their flow.

Often, we think, this isn’t right. But rarely do we vocalize that thought and even less often do we stand up and fight for it.

Standing up for yourself can be seen as more hassle than it’s worth. However, at the end of the world, with a leader making decisions you’re not 100% for, standing up for yourself could be the only thing between survival and death.

When Rick Grimes is telling you you’re storming Woodbury or Alice is shoving a gun in your hand and leaving you with a child to protect, you’ll wish you had more practice standing up for yourself.

I’m terrible at speaking up for myself, but recently I had the opportunity, and I took it!

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I had an insurance claim for my phone recently and they tried to replace my phone with what they were calling an equivalent phone. It wasn’t and everyone knew it.

I called the service line and was asked at least four times in a three minute call if I wanted to complete the claim (read: shut the fuck up and take the offer).

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I tried to explain to the woman on the phone that I’ve done my research and I— She just started spewing facts about this lesser phone (it has a calculator too!) at me like an eight-year-old with their fingers in their ears saying, “la la la, I can’t hear you.”

That was neither helpful nor respectful. I still refused to close the claim.

It was clear that they weren’t being fair and my expected role in this scenario was to be quiet, stupid, and compliant.

Instead I took to tweeting (not rudely, mind you) as it’s the loudest place on the internet, citing my research, and refusing to drop or close the claim. I pointed out that what they were doing was quite clear and very offensive.

So, after I stood up for myself, the called me and offered a much more reasonable solution with little to no pain or suffering involved.

Because I stood up for myself, I had a new, actually equivalent phone three days after the incident.

I won’t get into the mechanics of customer service but shit that was frustrating. I wish it had been that easy from Jump Street.

Unfortunately, making things fair and easy isn’t in everyone’s best interest. Most people will feel that frustration and give in to the stat-spewing call rep or finger-pointing ex-sheriff.

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If you realize you’re getting a raw deal, don’t stand for it. Channel my mom (who I use to call to deal with things like this), or your demanding aunt, or your picky friend and speak up.

When it comes to the division of food for survival and someone tries to tell you that you don’t deserve an equal share, you’ll be better prepared from practice and you’ll develop the confidence to know you deserve better.

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Cannibal Ettiquette

Cannibalism which took place in Russia and Lit...
Cannibalism which took place in Russia and Lithuania during the famine of 1571 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) This is you. This is your future.

Being A Polite Person When Eating A Person.

Does being a cannibal have to mean rudeness?

At some point in your post-apocalyptic future, you may be required to resort to cannabalism. Please be aware, there is no shame in this choice. You did what you had to do to ensure the survival of yourself and your community. You are still a good person, even if you’re a cannibal. Let go of the guilt.

It’ll probably help with the guilt if you at least display some basic ettiquette about the situation. Just because you’re chowing down on your friends leg is no reason to be rude about it.

But isn’t eating a person inherently rude? No! Not necessarily. I will be your guide to the complex and distrubing world of Cannibal Ettiquette.

Continue reading “Cannibal Ettiquette”