zombie apocalypse – Looking to God

The Enemy Within

Posted on January 18, 2016January 19, 2016 by Jack Flacco

There is a place for everything and everything has a place. Given today is Monday Mayhem, I can attest that if nothing is in its place, there will be mayhem.

Star Wars' Darth Sidious — Star Wars’ Darth Sidious

In the past, I’ve written extensively about zombies, The Walking Dead, aliens, the end of the world and other flavors of destruction you might consider chaos for the choosing. I think one of the most interesting subjects is what would happen to this world if all social boundaries no longer existed. What I’m thinking has to do with human interactions. Although I’ve written about the subject in my book Ranger Martin and the Search for Paradise, the matter keeps popping up. One can only cover so much in a book before the themes spill into other works, such as this post you’re now reading.

One of the themes I wanted to explore with the book, and related to this subject, pertains to the absolute corruption of the human soul. For example, when people turn into zombies, it is easy to see them as enemies—they see their food ahead, they smell it and they want to eat it.

However, when people are not zombies, and they try to kill the hero, that becomes a more fascinating story. I read somewhere that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. I don’t think that is too far from what I’ve learned when dealing with dark characters in my books. Again, I’ll bring up zombies. With zombies, you can see them coming. They are easy to spot. Humans, though, are tougher.

Of course, not everything is easy to understand. In the film, Edge of Tomorrow, the adversary is simple to find. They’re creatures bent on the destruction of humanity. They will not rest until every human is a grease spot.

The tougher challenger is the one you can’t see coming, or even worse, the one who at first is not an enemy at all. A great example of this is Darth Sidious of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. The term wolf in sheep’s clothing comes to mind when I’m thinking about this particular breed of maleficent.

All right, now you may be wondering what I’m talking about, since I’ve completely deviated from the subject matter. Or have I?

It is my opinion that the corruption of the human soul is the key to a good story. And as I said, it is one of the most fascinating aspects of writing. Not only does it provide a great deal of conflict for the reader, but the theme also provides a remarkable sense of accomplishment for the writer—if done right.

I’m wondering aloud. That’s all. I suppose I’m wondering about evil characters. Are they compelling enough to write a story centered only around them. Do we always need a hero?

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What do you think? Do we always need a hero in a story?

Monday Mayhem

Zombie Pranks Revisited

Posted on January 4, 2016January 3, 2016 by Jack Flacco

I tend to ask silly questions, questions people avoid asking because it either may prompt a negative reaction or actually provoke discussion. Now you’re wondering what the question is.

Zombie Experiment NYC - Boy (Photo credit: AMC) — Zombie Experiment NYC – Boy (Photo credit: AMC)

What will it take to horrify people?

In my Monday Mayhem series, I’ve always included something to stir an emotional response. Given I’m writing horror in the context of terror, I wonder many times what horrifies a person.

Alfred Hitchcock was a master of suspense. He once explained how a person simply sitting in a chair could turn into a scene filled with anxiety and breathless moments. Of course, it’s not very suspenseful when someone sits in a chair. It’s actually quite boring. But, as he once said, place a bomb under that chair, and all of a sudden the scene becomes interesting, suspenseful and replete with horror. Will the person remain calm? Will they run? Will they try to defuse the bomb? What will run through their mind during the last seconds of their life? How did it get there? Who put it there? Why did this person have to be the one sitting there?

Once again, I ask, what will it take to horrify people?

I’m an avid YouTube watcher. I have several set-top devices that can stream video directly to my TV or display device. Most of my viewing, though, happens on my computer. I enjoy searching for fascinating videos I feel no one else has seen before.

The other day, I came across a genre of videos I first found funny but under later analysis found equally shocking. They are zombie pranks. You can search for it yourself and you will see a multitude of content specifically geared toward humor.

The very first video I saw Zombie Experiment NYC deals with zombies roaming the streets of New York City. If you’re thinking actors in zombie suits and makeup, you must’ve seen it before. The video quality and presentation is top-notch. I later found AMC produced it as their answer to Dish Network’s removal of its network.

Zombie Experiment NYC - Mailman (Photo credit: AMC) — Zombie Experiment NYC – Mailman (Photo credit: AMC)

Zombie Experiment NYC - Girl 1 (Photo credit: AMC) — Zombie Experiment NYC – Girl 1 (Photo credit: AMC)

Zombie Experiment NYC - Girl 2 (Photo credit: AMC) — Zombie Experiment NYC – Girl 2 (Photo credit: AMC)

Zombie Experiment NYC - Girl 3 (Photo credit: AMC) — Zombie Experiment NYC – Girl 3 (Photo credit: AMC)

Zombie Experiment NYC - Bench 1 (Photo credit: AMC) — Zombie Experiment NYC – Bench 1 (Photo credit: AMC)

Zombie Experiment NYC - Bench 2 (Photo credit: AMC) — Zombie Experiment NYC – Bench 2 (Photo credit: AMC)

Zombie Experiment NYC - Walker (Photo credit: AMC) — Zombie Experiment NYC – Walker (Photo credit: AMC)

What I find utterly fascinating is the reaction of people on the streets to these zombies. Some are dressed in city worker clothes, much of their costumes authentic, dripping in blood, skin in pieces, yet some folk do not react at all to the zombie invasion. Seriously—I write about zombies, and if one of these actors approaches me with death in its eyes and hunger in its jaw, I’d run for the hills!

Another video I found is London Zombie Prank. It’s one guy in London dressed as one of the undead, blood and all, horrifying the British in their parks, streets and historical sites. Funny stuff. But, again, what if the guy was real? I saw folks laughing at the thing. One fellow ran after the zombie. No fear.

The last video, which I will not link to, had a guy in a zombie outfit crawling into the middle of dimly lit road from a cemetery. You read that right. Cars passed, yet no one hit him. He should be thankful.

I’m not sure what to make of the reactions of the people in the videos. Perhaps laughter is the body’s mechanism to cope with shock and disbelief. Perhaps standing around doing nothing in a horrifying situation is the mind’s way of shutting down to other gruesome acts. Not sure. Or is it we’ve become so desensitized that we recognize truth from fiction? Your guess is as good as mine.

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What will it take to horrify people? Have you ever played a prank on someone?

Monday Mayhem

Rise of the Zombies

Posted on December 28, 2015December 27, 2015 by Jack Flacco

Zombies are everywhere nowadays. You can’t turn around without bumping into one. They’re all over. What would my Monday Mayhem series be without them?

In 2013, hackers in Great Falls, Montana infiltrated KRTV’s Emergency Alert System (EAS) and broadcasted a dire warning to viewers—the zombie apocalypse had begun. A pulsating noise followed by a voice had drowned the audio to the regularly scheduled program. “Dead bodies are rising from their graves.” A blue bar at the top of TV screens ran the names of counties and areas affected by the event.

The announcement continued: “Follow the messages onscreen that will be updated as information becomes available. Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are considered extremely dangerous.”

Local police reported viewers had called the station requesting information. What type of firearm can the citizens use against the roamers? Of course, the police took every call seriously even though folks had placed them in jest.

But has anyone ever asked if this scenario is actually possible? It’s all very well and fine that we know this whole thing was a hoax. Who in their right mind would take something like this and act on it is beyond me. However, several things stand out.

How did the hackers gain access to the EAS? Aren’t there security checks in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening? Who performs the yearly audit of the system? Shouldn’t someone have caught this vulnerability in deployment testing? If I were the affiliate station, I would certainly place a very concerned call to the FCC demanding a revamp of the system. Then again, I am Canadian, so my ramblings really don’t count.

More importantly, I’ll ask again, has anyone yet asked if a scenario such as this is possible?

My answer? No. A resounding no! Dead bodies rising from their graves makes for a cool horror flick but looking at it from the perspective of science can prove informative.

There’s this thing called Primary Flaccidity that occurs soon after death whereby every muscle in the body relaxes. Following this condition is Rigor Mortis, which takes place about three hours after death causing muscles in the body to stiffen. During this stiffening process, blood pools into larger veins discoloring the body giving it a pale look. This is called Livor Mortis or what embalmers call Postmortem Stain, for the bruise-like appearance of where the blood settles. The sequence by which the body stiffens tends to differ due to the variance with lactic acid levels in the muscles and glycogen levels in the different types of muscle fibers. Suffice it to say the process may begin with eyelids, neck and jaw. During the course of Rigor Mortis, the body cools in another process called Algor Mortis.

Within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, the body’s muscles relax again in Secondary Flaccidity. Within a week, the abdomen swells with gas produced by bacteria in the body. Skin blisters appear. Within two weeks, abdomen tightens and swells further. Within three weeks, organs and cavities burst. Nails fall off. Within a month, skin liquefies making the body unrecognizable.

It’s pretty morbid but fascinating nonetheless.

Anyway, getting back to the scenario of dead bodies rising from their graves in a maelstrom invasion of sorts—impossible. That is, impossible if the bodies hadn’t gone through decomposition. It would mean every body rising in every grave had to have died within minutes of each other and rise just before Rigor Mortis stiffened the muscles, Livor Mortis pooled the blood, Algor Mortis cooled the flesh, and Secondary Flaccidity prepped the abdomen for exploding organs.

Doesn’t make sense to me. If the reports from Montana were true, they’d of had skeletons roaming the streets and not bodies.

What does make sense, though, is an invasion born of the living, much like the post Zombie Apocalypse: Revisited I’d written regarding the origins of such an event.

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What do you think? Is a Zombie Apocalypse possible from bodies rising from the graves? Where does science fit in all this?

Monday Mayhem

What If Zombies Knock?

Posted on December 21, 2015December 20, 2015 by Jack Flacco

It’s Monday Mayhem and you know what that means—yep, zombies running amok making life miserable for all humanity.

If you’ve read my Zombie Apocalypse: Revisited post last week, I wrote how I believed if a zombie apocalypse were to take place it would happen in a large urban area. Some have mentioned to me later that it would be more difficult to detect the event in a rural area instead, thus a challenge to contain.

Regardless of where it happens, we’d still have to find ways to defend ourselves. In my post Zombie Kill of the Week II, I wrote a detailed list of how I’d like to see zombies killed. As amusing as it was writing that post, some truth remains: If a zombie were to enter our house, what would we do? It’s fun saying we’d love to jam an ice pick in the soft part of its temple but if we didn’t have an ice pick, it ain’t goin’ die by lookin’ at the thing and screamin’. That’s a fact.

So, what are we to do? What would you do?

Here are a few tips you can use in the event the world collapses and the zombies begin knocking on your door.

Doorway

Do not open the door. Simple, right? Wrong. Those resilient maggot bags will stop at nothing if they hear life creaking inside your house. Don’t assume they’ll show up in the middle of the day either. Expect the unexpected. They can appear anytime. If you have a snorer in the house, lock ‘em in a windowless room in the basement. You don’t need those miserable gut suckers chomping on anyone in your household at three in the morning. Bar all the doors with deadbolts and chairs. Board up your windows and make only one door your access point. Dictate which door they can use.

Keep weapons handy. If zombies make it into the house, let their first greeting be a bullet to the head. Nothing says hello like a .357 Magnum. Be careful though, a gunshot will alert the others and instead of fending off one, you’ll have to deal with a whole neighborhood full of scab festerers. That’s why it would be a good idea to keep an assortment of garden tools interspersed throughout the house. A shovel can perform the duel role of cracking skulls and burying the remains. A hoe can function in a similar manner. Again, always think of the multiple uses for these tools. Now let’s say one of these brain eaters chases you around the house. What are you going to do? Sporting equipment works good too. Wouldn’t it be a relief to know at the end of a hall you can grab a baseball bat and beat the living tar out of these zombies? There’s nothing like hearing the crack of a Louisville Slugger upside the head of an undead.

Plan an escape route. If worse comes to worse and the whole house gets overrun with those walking fly heaps, the next and best course of action is to—RUN! Don’t stick around. Don’t even look back. You cannot afford to stay in the house any longer. Take what you can carry and head for the hills. Your life depends on it. If you’d planned ahead, you would have left a loose bottom board to one of the ground floor windows to make it easy for you to kick in and crawl through. Better still, you could have rigged the whole house to explode with you and your family safely halfway to the woods. This would ensure the zombies would remain in the house and you wouldn’t have to worry about stragglers chasing you.

Prepare a secondary home. As with any plan there should always be a Plan B. If something should happen to your primary residence, it would be beneficial to have a secondary residence in mind to act as your temporary home. This could be anything from a barn, a tent in the woods to a shed. Anything that will function as a place where you can lay your head without worrying if you’ll still have a head by morning.

These are only a few tips to keep those vermin beasts at bay while you plan your escape for the coast and hop on a boat for the nearest island away from it all.

Get the Ranger Martin trilogy now!

What are your plans for the zombie apocalypse? Have you figured out an escape route? Will you be heading to an island somewhere in the Caribbean?

Monday Mayhem

Zombie Apocalypse: Revisited

Posted on December 14, 2015December 13, 2015 by Jack Flacco

I’ve always wondered if a zombie apocalypse were to take place now, where would it hit first?

You know, I’ve thought about this question. It’s not one of those precious topics floating around lunchrooms across America. Like, how many Twitter followers does Lady Gaga have? Does Justin Bieber like chocolate chip ice cream? What will Katy Perry choose as her next hair color? Or some other mind-numbing question like that. No, since I began my study into zombie propagation methods, I’ve pondered on possible contagion locations.

According to zombie folklore, zombies become zombies when a virus infects and kills a victim. The victim rises from the dead as a zombie and carries on the cycle of infection by biting other victims. That is, if there’s anything left of the victims after the zombie attacks. Zombies are known to have a voracious appetite for human flesh and will do anything to consume as much of it as possible.

Which begs the question I asked earlier: Where in the world would a zombie apocalypse have a greater chance of beginning?

Let’s use some logic and think about this for a moment. It would be fair to assume a typical zombie virus falls under the category of designer viruses engineered to deliver its payload to as many victims as possible. Obviously, no one in their right mind would volunteer to release such a virus into the population, therefore, should it happen, it would happen by accident.

Okay, how about location? For a virus of this magnitude to cause such devastation, the lab would have to be located near a huge population. Like a city. I did a quick search on Google for labs located near large populations and found one just outside a metropolis in a quaint suburb. Located across the street is a hotel.

Forgive me if I’m naïve, because sometimes I don’t get things right away. But if this lab should ever have a breach, isn’t it reasonable to say the hotel across the street would fall victim to the contagion first? Don’t hotels contain travelers? Travelers need airports. Aren’t airports in cities? If a whole city gets infected by these busy travelers, wouldn’t the likelihood of the contagion spreading to surrounding communities increase? And let’s not forget the infected flying out of the city. Where are they heading? Europe? Africa? China?

Now, let’s say, for the sake of argument, I’m wrong. Let’s say a zombie apocalypse starts in a rural community first. What are the chances of it stretching its legs beyond the borders of a small town? Do you think the military would allow it? I don’t know. Seems unlikely. The military’s response is quick when it comes to these types of situations. They’d have the location secured once they see zombies running around town trying to make meals of its residents. They’d then execute a containment protocol to prevent the spread from affecting outlining regions.

No, a zombie apocalypse wouldn’t survive in those conditions. The military would make sure of that. If it does happen, it’ll happen in a large urban area. As for my research, I’m not silly enough to reveal what I found online, although if you’re smart, you probably already figured out my Google search. You also know to which lab I’m referring.

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What do you think? Big city or small town? Do you have any other locations where a zombie apocalypse could start?

Monday Mayhem

The Survivors

Posted on November 23, 2015November 22, 2015 by Jack Flacco

I’ve talked a lot about zombies in the past, lending credence to an apocalypse of unfathomable proportions. The thing that sticks out in my mind as the number one reason I wouldn’t want the apocalypse happening, is not because of the roaming undead seeking of whom they may devour, but because of the survivors who are in it for themselves. The thought is nothing short of a Monday Mayhem post.

Zombies don’t scare me. The undead are rather benign when separated from the crowd. A quick spike to the head and they are no more. As part of the horde, they are a fearsome bunch consuming everyone in their path. Nothing alive can stand in their way. However, take them out of their element and place them in water, they’re useless.

On the other hand, people, those who have survived the end of days, are the ones who I fear the most. They are the ones who, if for nothing else, will hunt their victims down and put an end to their lives all for the benefit of themselves.

Is that an exaggeration?

Let’s have a look at what humanity has done in times of peace.

The U.S. Navy has taken flack lately for its missile testing it has conducted a few weeks ago near San Diego, on a Saturday night no less. Witnesses stated they thought they saw UFO’s hovering in the skies.

The lights didn’t reveal the military’s intention.

That’s for starters. How about this? In a little while, Black Friday will be upon us. In the past, crowds have gone from restless to stampeding, taking human lives along the way. All for what? a toy that will end up in a junk heap a year from now? Have we lost our minds?

Okay, that may seem trivial to some, but can you imagine what humanity is capable of in times of a future societal breakdown? It won’t be pretty. The first to go will be the weak. If the zombies don’t take them, the strong among us will. They will dictate our future and run our lives. Then there are the ones who society has discarded. The dregs of society who ended up in our jails and prisons. What will happen with them? You can be sure, the jails and prisons won’t hold them. The first thing on their mind will be getting out of their cage so they can roam free among us.

What do you think?

As wonderful and as great humanity thinks it is, nothing can stand in the way of human nature. Human nature dictates an attitude of one-for-one, all-for-one. It drives humans to do the most deplorable things to each other, all in the name of survival. And the worst part about it? I just don’t understand the human compulsion to self-terminate. When things get hard, too difficult, a gun is there, not for protection, but to make a quick exit.

I know it sounds pessimistic, yet if history has anything to do with it, I don’t want to survive an apocalypse. I’d rather be one of its first victims.

Although, I still hold hope that one day, if the roof does cave in on society, humanity will do the right thing and think of the weak and unfortunate among us, giving them the aid they need to survive with dignity.

That, at least, is my hope.

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What scares you most about surviving a zombie apocalypse? The question is, would you like to survive a zombie apocalypse?

Monday Mayhem

Zombie Theories

Posted on November 16, 2015November 15, 2015 by Jack Flacco

Sometimes I wonder where these zombie theories come from in this age of scientific advancement. Humanity is not an idiot, but some of the lesser-known theories deserve to die a quiet death with little to no fanfare whatsoever. These Monday Mayhem posts have been a staple around here at JackFlacco.com, so why not talk about them, giving them the proper respect they ought to have? Perhaps there is something to learn for everyone involved.

Witch Doctor [Photo Credit: Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.]

The very first theory is that voodoo will bring back the dead. For that to happen, there would have to be a witch doctor willing to bring back the dead. Unbelievably, such a case in Haiti existed where a man had died and a voodoo doctor had brought the corpse back to life. What is now known is the good doctor had poisoned the victim to deceive the family into believing the man had perished of an aliment of some sort. When the family had buried the victim, the voodoo doctor had exhumed the body, fed it another cocktail of hallucinogens and made the man a servant keeping him drugged for decades until the doctor’s death. The case was nothing more than a charlatan taking advantage of the poor in order to gain free labor from its intended victim.

Going further with the case, should zombies truly rise from voodoo, civilization would be in a quandary. Who would administer the drugs? What will be the effect of these victims on the economy? Should it really happen, where would it take place? Certainly, it couldn’t happen in the developed countries of North America.

The other theory, which far surpasses reality, has to do with aliens. This theory is so farfetched that it isn’t even worth documenting. However, an element of fun exists in this theory that no one can really resist not documenting it.

Consider an alien race that has come to Earth as a means of populating it with its kind. The aliens utilize ray beams to change the masses into obedient servants, thereby rendering the population vulnerable to conquest. Sounds ridiculous, yet George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead has a variation of the theme where an accident from space changes a quiet town into a zombie feeding ground. Gone is the audience’s sense of intellect, replaced only by the acceptance of sheer fiction in a situation that is as likely to happen as the earth standing still for forty-eight hours.

Lastly, no zombie apocalypse would be complete without the dreaded virus that turns humanity into bags of roaming nut jobs. Who can dispute that above all the outlandish theories, this is the one that has remained in the forefront as the one-and-only that makes the most sense. However, the reality is far from perfect. For this theory to work, the virus’ victims would have to succumb to yielding their inhibitions to consuming human meat, not only from an individual standpoint but also from a community perspective. Unless plied with a crate of dopamine, it would appear that such an event would fall in the realm of “hardly unlikely”.

With that, the forum is open for discussion. What do you think of zombie apocalypse theories?

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What other theories are so outrageous that they aren’t worth the time reading?

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