Apocalypse Ex-Machina

They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, They’re all together ooky …

fear-walking-dead-teaserAs if Los Angeles doesn’t have enough problems already, THE WALKING DEAD franchise dragged another version of their patented murder and mayhem to the City of soon-to-be Angels in search of ratings.

This spin-off, called FEAR THE WALKING DEAD — in case you weren’t a’scared of them already — is a prequel, set during the initial outbreak, We missed that party because anti-hero Rick Grimes of the parent series was in a coma, happily dreaming of planting corn and pig farming, while the world went to hell in a hand basket.

Longtime viewers were excited when they learned of this new show because the premise hinted that the biggest mystery of the series would finally be solved — and we’d learn WTF happened!

But noooooo ….

Franchise creator Robert Kirkman squashed that hope by repeatedly stating that what caused the outbreak will never be revealed! This is writer speak for “I don’t know”.

Well, I’m sick of these writers not revealing the origin or nature of the Smoke Monster on LOST or how they got KING KONG aboard the Venture and back to New York! Sick of it, I tell you!

So, even though they didn’t ask me, and most assuredly won’t pay me, I’m going to save their butts and tell you, step by step, how the zombie guts hit the fan …

You got some ‘splainin’ to do, Lucy!

break-the-internetTHE WALKING DEAD has done a great job showing what happens when modern man has to resort to sticks and stones to break some bones of an unstoppable enemy. No other show has ever done this better! Not JERICHO … not FALLING SKIES … not REVOLUTION … no, not even ZOMBIELAND!

The lingering, and related, question of “where’d the technology go?” has to be answered! Internet … phones … electricity? All gone! About the only problems solved in this reality is the half-life of gasoline and engineering self-grooming lawns.

I suppose its possible that all the Kardassians simultaneously released nude photos of themselves and they really did break the internet. It could even be a coincidence that it coincided with the release of a zombie virus that infected us all.

I also suppose its also possible that a side effect of harboring the zombie virus is that everyone’s brain is now the equivalent to that of a 90-year-old great grandmother trying to master her first iPhone 6.

I mean … it IS possible, right?

Except Kirkman & his minions have gone to great lengths to present a realistic world — albeit one with animated flesh eating corpses as party crashers.

I’m ruling out a coven placing a curse on FaceBook as the cause. Even if someone raises the possibility that Alyssa Milano and the Power of Three can somehow be involved, I ain’t going that route.

I’m not even swiping Stephen King‘s favorite chestnut about an ancient evil getting paroled from its inescapable prison in the bowels of the earth too early. I figured those prehistoric civilizations have learned their lesson by now. Even the GREEN LANTERN Corps has finally wised up to the fact that you can’t keep a bad man down!

My solution certainly won’t be aliens either. Lawd I hate when its aliens! That allows lazy writers to introduce sentient butterflies and invisible domes. We’ll have none of that, thank you!

Nope. But I have a theory about what really happened. Are you listening Kirkman? Plus I’m laying claim to this scenario right now so I get royalties if anyone swipes my lame brained idea — © Arthur L. Lortie!! And I’m even calling Harlan Ellison for advice on this!!!

Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do? When they come for you, Bad boys, bad boys …

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Its terrorists, of course!

Dastardly types from Laitveria or Slokovia. Or maybe, if I get royalties, from Vlatava or Corto Maltese. But most likely, because an ex-girlfriend used to force me to watch DYNASTY, they’ll be twirling their mustaches and watching the proceedings safely from their castles in Moldavia.

Yup; gotta be terrorists! Because the internet was designed NOT to break. Al Gore swears his brainchild could still deliver porn to high ranking government officials even if the San Fernando Valley is nuked. There’s something called packet-switching (techie gobbledygook that only nerds huddled in their mom’s basement really understand) built in so that the loss of a node here or a server there would simply cause the data to take a New York cab driver’s longer route to its destination.

At least, that was the way it was planned back in the day we all walked two miles to school uphill — both ways! The unruly ‘net has expanded exponentially since then and no garden variety 70’s terrorist had even dreamed of the Dark Web, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, border gateway protocol (BGP) hijacking and plain ol’ computer viruses.

Chris Baraniuk, a science & technology journalist in the UK who’s smarter than the average bear, explains just how this could happen — and it ain’t pretty.

The same methods that brainiac outlines has been shown by Greek researchers to be capable of taking down the cel phone networks. Imagine a world, if you can, where customers can’t check or send a text while standing in line at Starbucks! I know I can’t … its just too horrible to even think about!

Likewise, the power grid is vulnerable to these same attacks! PBSFRONTLINE and a Department of Defense exercise called Eligible Receiver have demonstrated this already! Without the recharging power available, the batteries of the world will quickly deplete and that’ll keep our happy-go-lucky zombie hunters from going all WKRP or breaker-breaker-one-oh to let Alexandrians know “Wolves are near!”.

Now before you panic and buy acreage in Antarctica or set up a survivalist camp in the Everglades, rest assured that a simultaneous attack on all these systems is highly unlikely and in fact damn near impossible. One DOD group studying the problem figures some portions of the infrastructure could be disrupted for up to 6 months, but certainly not all and certainly not 100%. Trained technicians with multiple degrees and capes are standing by as we speak, poised to throw unbreakable code at evil doers when they appear.

But this is fiction were talking here. In fiction, terrorists and Kardassians can go undetected for years, using their unlimited funding to acquire all the latest and greatest toys to compliment their superior knowledge of ALL the scientific disciplines — including, of course, microbiology.

Genetically engineering a zombie pandemic is really the only way to keep all those BOURNE-again saviors, the Double-O and Q branches of HMSS, the men and women of UNCLE, and especially AUSTIN POWERS and INSPECTOR GADGET busy enough to ignore all this activity!

Which ultimately gets out of hand and mutates into something even its creators didn’t expect! Zombie midichlorians on steroids!

Oops.

Are we there yet?

Whew!! That’s a whole mini-series or comic book series all by itself, with enough characters and sub-plots to flesh out and keep me out of debt for decades! I might have to go all George Lucas on this and just do two trilogies before handing it over to Walt Disney to finish!

And next week, as a special bonus, I’ll explain how the zombie virus works. Stay tuned …

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