She was so fracking hot in Boulevard with Kari Wuhrer.
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They went belly up in 2010. We're good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon_Labs
That's because Michael and Randy were secret lovers before the outbreak. When they met Again at the Waterworks, and Randy was turning (which he of course did slowly - that's why he's so intelligent) he hugged Michael a bit too tight when they said their last farewell to each other, breaking Michael's arm.
This explains why Michael just tells everyone that he got his arm crushed in a door. He's afraid of getting out of the closet.
And here's another thing that backs up this theory of mine: Raydon Labs is an anagram. Two letters are missing though, but you can still spell "O, Randy Bals"
I think Storm is try to cover up for Rayden. They seem to be working together.:squint:
They have some new blood tests that can detect a heart attack is less than an hour. Some of the new Biodefense sensors can detect Anthrax and small pox in less than two minutes.
What Tanya did was wicked fast. My guess is she was pushing the test as fast as she possibly could just to see what would happen and then she can repeat the test more accurately. She could easily draw a few milliliters of blood and the blood test might only consume 0.1ml of the sample to run the assay. If she got a "hit" she could run the test more accurately with longer incubation times and better washing steps.
Can't believe no one made this connection yet!!! Jay is totally boinking Pegs. After all, he got stuck in a flower bed!
Too tin foily?
Loved it! I kept waiting to hear who was this chick who got herself bit expecting Riley, or Pegs...maybe Kelly.... Nope. No one we really even knew. At least she got Dr. Kevorkian all jazzed up about something.
Sure, I didn't mean to totally exclude all infectious causes. There's any number of new tests out there, but guessing at what Tanya was likely to have easy access to in a presumably still resource strapped hospital/clinic, I wasn't coming up with any immediate likely candidates. And you basically described something along the same lines as what is commonly done with HIV testing-there's a quick and dirty, but high sensitivity test done, and then if that's positive there's a more specific test done. Not trying to lecture, I don't know what your background is. I had not heard of the anthrax and smallpox rapid tests before, so that is interesting news. I could be wrong (again) but I think most tests of that nature really just yield a positive or negative, not an exact number....?
Again, I don't have any really solid guesses as to what exactly she was testing, I was just trying to throw some more info out there. And I'm happy to allow for poetic license-didn't mean to imply that I wanted to be waiting for cultures to grow either. :-)
Kc...
But exactly when 2010?
Chapter 39 - Part 1 of 3...6:13 into the podcast, Michael provides a journal entry...
Michael: "March 1st, 2010, our first big break..."
Wtf?
That is an odd coincidence...
We already had Christmas, yes... But that's Christmas 2009, not 10. What I don't get though is that Michael says 4 months at the end of C38, but when that chapter ends we're around the 23.rd of December 09... Four months later would then be at the end of April, not even close to where C39 starts.
Unfortunately, I cannot find the video . . .
But at least 4 of you are old enough to get the reference:
Gene Wilder. Haunted Honeymoon.
+rep to the one who gets it first.
found this from that movie and i keep thinking this is what Michael will be like when he meets TOWTM..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIcCaMcIZXc
but i digress.. 10 pages of catch ups and come backs....grr..
Excellent episode KC!! now we're adding a bit of spice to this lovely casserole that is We're Alive..... (dawned on me.. KC's double meanings... what if the apostrophe was taken out... it becomes Were Alive..... past tense... everyone dies?... shares Grognaurd's scbubba's Osiris' and nik's Tin Hats)
Love the soldiers rapport here and their berating the new red shirt... and Randy is here... hi Randy.. :)
he drops chemicals beginning with Fo.. i see the theory for Formic acid and also that excellent post on formaldehyde and granted they are fantastic deductions.. there's another one which is a derivative of formic acid called Formamide which, according to online sources, is used to stabalise denatured strands of DNA... perhaps being used as the Z's own tests on a cure? or perhaps to further enhance their mutations? only time and KC's brain will tell.
and just thinking... Formic Acid... derived from "Formica" meaning Ant in Latin.... does this then mean that as it is an "Ant-acid" we should chug down this formic acid to cure heartburn? ... Call dibs!!.. Patent pending.. points fingers at everyone and stares till it's uncomfortable!
This I found interesting. We were told he had two bottles in the bag.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18363119/
?
The first thing I thought of after listening to the bit about Tanya's blood tests was my own experiences with them. I wonder if the value Tanya is recording is a concentration (such as of sodium, chloride, glucose, or cholesterol), or a count (such as of platelets, neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocyctes, eosinophils, or basophils).
Awesome episode. Great to finally get some details. Fun dialog. I'm happy with where all but two characters are.
1. I freaking hate CJ. The sooner she's gone, the happier I'll be. I have zero emotional attachment to her, and I find her personality repellent.
2. What's with Michael? Yeah, we've know for quite a while that's he's damaged goods, but he's really falling a part now. Each new episode seems to lead him farther down the path of being a wuss/moron. I'm really not a fan of him willingly submitting to the leadership of CJ. See #1.
P.S. I don't like the strings in the intro. I want the piano back. :(
It sounded to me like the cameras were some kind of homemade set-up when they could use hunting game cameras. Then again I guess LA probably doesn't have as many deer hunters as there are where I'm at.
As I was reading your comment about heart rate, I thought about glucose too. Quick test and the numbers are high, but plausible.
As for making sense, if they don't know much about the infection any information, no matter how minor, might be useful.
So why does the red shirt have a TNG style phaser?
Puck should be in charge!
Yes! we are finally going to start seeing and hopefully finding out more about Randy. But, stupid Michael, of course it was a trap. Why is Puck the only sensible one?
However, I wonder if it was a trap set especially for Michael or if it was just a trap for anyone. Something tells me that PinStripe has been studying all of the humans that are left and knows what happened to Michael when he first met Randy. I think it was deliberately set for Michael.
alrighty then, here we go.
--tanya and her lab--
so in taynas lab, perhaps the most noticeable of information we got was the tests she ran on that hot girl. the numbers we are given are 195 at zero minutes, 375 at 20 minutes. so an increase of nine per minute. the figure we did not hear that probly would have been important was test number 3 at 22 minutes. at that rate typical reaction would be for this number to be 393. personally, I bet its more like 465. why? exponential growth... without getting all technical about my job, chemical reactions(seewhatididthere) in the dairy industry, primarily in the production of sour cream see that type of growth of cultures and "good bacteria" once the cultures reach a point where they have control,they essentially explode...its crazy looking in a tank of sour cream at eleven hours...then looking at twelve, hell you could probly stand there and watch it grow. want to try it at home? pour red bull in 2% milk...give it awhile//scary shit.
but the idea of tanyas unknown tests, along with my obsession with the ant thing led me down a road to find this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anion_gap
which leads to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketoacid
which, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboxylic_acid
and so on....seeing a trend here yet?
im not 100% on any of this just yet. right now I don't feel like we have quite enough info to fully jump down this rabbithole. but im willing to hang my feet over the edge.
--lone wolfs---
anybody else get the feeling the Michael and co might be missing something? since when do the biters carry things around? on my fourth relisten(yea, im THAT into this episode) it struck me "cans"..."bottles of water"...can a can not be used to carry water? what earthly purpose could the biters have for water? also, if we will remember...hand dexterity was an issue for pinstripes when he broke into the tower(our tower) as he had some issues typing the code in...but later on he(at least we think it was him) caught one of riley arrows out of the air..coming at him..and now regulars are carrying things? "something strange.....in the neighborhood". also, I personally love the use of the lone wolf term. in most cases, it feels very apt.
--randy's escape--
so a few(namely grognaurd) have brought this up already, but yea..that was pretty well executed by macho man. it also just goes to show in what way Michael felt "foolish" as he said at the end of last chapter. that has to be one of the most basic of traps that could have been laid, and he did kinda walk right into it..and left puck there to deal with it. I like this scene quite a bit just because of all the implications you could pull from it.
--randy showed Michael that they could lay basic traps
--randy made "contact" without being caught
--randy left Michael a clue
--randy gave them a line to follow
--randy himself--
so at this point I have to think that michael's contact with randy was post turning. we are unsure what his intentions are as far as capture, kill, question, hug it out, etc..but the way he seems to lose his shit when it comes to randy indicates to me that his experience at the waterworks was way more involved than "so my arm was in this door and...."
I also question just what randy's motives are. at one point, he was trying to capture Tanya, now we have him gathering chemicals that could be used to either help preserve himself, or help the biters keep their food fresher, depending on what was in the bag. I feel like its a very real possibility that randy dropped that bag on purpose. to...
A: give mike and co a place to go search
B: give mike and co a clue as to what the virus is
C: give mike and co a clue as to what could feasibly cure/fight the virus(or whatever)
--whats in the bag_
so I believe most should know by now that im on team "formic acid". (got a nice ring to it, don't it?) and theres a few reasons why, ive mentioned most of them already but id like to pull a few quotes while im actually at a pc and not on my mobile.
--uses in agriculture--
"Agriculture accounts for a very high percentage of formic acid use worldwide. Because of its natural antibacterial properties, formic acid has achieved very high use as both an antibacterial preservative and pesticide. In this industry, it is most commonly used as a food additive, and is frequently added to animal feed and silage. When it is used in silage, it serves a dual function. In addition to providing a certain level of antibacterial support, formic acid actually allows silage to begin fermentation at a lower temperature, greatly reducing the overall time that it takes to produce while increasing the nutritional value of the finished product."
--possible link to formic acid in gas form at ground zero--
"Depending on how concentrated it is, formic acid can either be unnoticeable or very dangerous. Through the course of our typical interaction with this chemical, we are exposed only to very low concentrations. Because of this, there is very little to fear. If exposed at high concentrations, however, there are many dangerous side effects that can occur. The most dangerous aspect of the formic acid is its highly corrosive nature when in a concentrated form. Because it is so corrosive, highly concentrated amounts of formic acid can lead to serious injury if it is inhaled, swallowed or touched directly. This includes ulcers, nausea, burns, blisters and extreme discomfort around the affected area. Although it is not likely except under special situations, high concentrations of formic acid should be avoided altogether."
--as a weapon--
"CASE REPORT:
A 26-year-old man committed suicide by mixing 2.5 L of formic acid and 2.5 L of sulfuric acid in three beakers and staying in a closed room. The 53-year-old father performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on his son but soon lost consciousness. In hospital, he initially manifested coma, hypoxemia, metabolic acidosis, and a carboxyhemoglobin level of 45.8%. He was treated with hyperbaric oxygen but developed acute respiratory distress syndrome on day four despite an early improvement. He was successfully weaned from the ventilator on day 8. The 53-year-old mother felt dizziness, headache and had a carboxyhemoglobin level of 23.0%. Her symptoms improved after oxygen therapy."
--as a cause--
"Formic acid has low toxicity (hence its use as a food additive), with an LD50 of 1.8 g/kg (oral, mice). The concentrated acid is, however, corrosive to the skin.[4]
Formic acid is readily metabolized and eliminated by the body. Nonetheless, it has specific toxic effects; the formic acid and formaldehyde produced as metabolites of methanol are responsible for the optic nerve damage, causing blindness seen in methanol poisoning.[28] Some chronic effects of formic acid exposure have been documented. Some experiments on bacterial species have demonstrated it to be a mutagen.[29] Chronic exposure to humans may cause kidney damage.[29] Another effect of chronic exposure is development of a skin allergy that manifests upon re-exposure to the chemical."
well, I think that's all I have for this evening. im probly missing a few other little things I found today, but nothing that jumped out at me quite as much as this stuff....
todd out.
Awesome post 7odd! Distilled a lot of good stuff there.
A few more of my thoughts.....
I listed out characters who were out of the Colony at the time of this episode and said everyone from the original Tower and Ft Irwin was out with the exception of Pegs. I stand corrected - I forgot about Datu and Hope (shame on me). I assume that those 2 are also still at the Colony. Even so, it still presents a tempting target for Scratch if she has a way to recon the place......
More on characters, after a couple of listens I picked up that all of the mortuary scene at the beginning (delivering the turner through the cutaway to Michael's voice over) is from Robbins' perspective. Made me try to recall when we had any journal entries from Tanya herself. I can't think of any attributed to her. That seems ominous.
With the tie in to Michael's voice over a the end of 38-3 saying they were "foolish", I've got a strong lean to the encounters in this episode being deliberate. From the dead behemoth and random biter that got hot red shirt girl into Dr Demento's hands to Randy sauntering by the cameras right before they get checked..... Hmmm.
Yes, these could be coincidental and compressed for story purposes and we did go months with nothing really happening. But I'm thinking that it's planned.
If we got some smart zombies, which I think is pretty much a given here, that are capable of organizing and controlling Z's and executing plans involving them then it's not such a stretch to think that Michael's crew may have been under some serious surveillance for all those months. And people being people, they have probably fallen into patterns in that amount of time - patrol, check cameras, patrol, move cameras, lather, rinse, repeat... Wouldn't be too hard to predict what would happen if you baited the humans out and let them see you wandering by.
Once Michael and Puck have contact with Randy, he bolts. Since Randy had at least a 15 minute lead on them, it seems like he was just hanging out there (with his bag). He takes off when he is discovered but the other Z's don't immediately attack. They seem to jump out once Michael is over the fence and Puck is by himself. They may or may not have been waiting on them to separate, but it really looks like they were meant to attack after Randy bounced. Classic, simple baited ambush....
Maybe that was all the trap was meant to be. And maybe it's more than that. Is the tie to Raydon Labs accidental (Randy didn't mean to drop the bag) or intentional (Randy dropped it to bait them on )? Following the whole "this encounter was a setup to ambush the soldiers" then I've got to lean towards Randy having the bag intentionally for this encounter. He meant to leave "evidence" about Raydon Labs or he was intending to use the contents of the bottles during or after the ambush. If this whole thing was a chance encounter, then the bottles are a happy accidental clue....
Trap or no trap, Michael's reaction to seeing Randy in person was crazy. And I mean, like psycho-crazy. He lost all sense of being intelligent. But it wasn't necessarily a "oh, there's my buddy" reaction. Right after Randy's growl and run, who is shooting at him? Puck or Michael or both? Might not matter but if Michael was shooting at him, it definitely doesn't seem like he's expecting to talk.
I couldn't be sure, but did the guys in the truck get jumped too? I thought I heard the .50 firing as Michael was racing back to the truck after leaving Puck. And then someone yelling "Contact! Contact!" Was that Puck fighting regulars or Muldoon/Carl fighting some outside?
Oh, and more on Z planning, Kc drives the point home that they have seen nothing but loners out and about when they see anything at all. Sounds like a good way to avoid notice since, as Michael deduced in Ch36, being in large groups draws bad attention. The zombies may have realized the same thing would happen to them. Michael even talks about not using KODI on anything but groups.
I'll say it again, I loved this episode! If the rest of Ch39 is as good as this one, well... We are in for a helluva ride!
And thank you, Kc, for putting more of the Ft Irwin Kings of Comedy in here. Although I got very, very nervous when I thought Puck was about to check out on us and either turn zombie or turn dead.
Comedy Gold:
Robbins - "Hear that, Muldoon? Someone strong. Like a man. Like man muscles. Something you wouldn't know anything about."
Muldoon - "I'd be strong too if I had to carry around all that extra fat. What, do you deadlift 400 pounds every time you getting up outta bed in the morning?"
Puck - "Hey, uh, newbie."
Jay - "Yeah? It's Jay."
Puck - "Yeah, I don't care."
Keep it coming!
Another thought just popped into my head re: "foolish" stuff on the part of Michael and Co.
They sure are making a ton of noise outside in this episode. First there is the flatbed with the behemoth on it and the indication that Tanya and friends will be doing work on it out there. If she follows the work she did on the Little One autopsy at Ft Irwin, that will include firing up a saw too.
The encounter with Randy and his buddies involved lots of gunshots and then a ton of noise from the stuck truck.
In the past, sound was an immediate attractor for Z's - even if they weren't that close initially. It also usually triggered calls from the Z's that heard it to more distant zombies.
But in 39-1 we don't have any indication that it attracts extra attention OR that the characters are concerned about the noise (meaning no dialog about how much noise there is or how it might attract something).
I bring all this up to point out that Michael and Co (and Michael the most?) are being much more lax and/or careless about wander the streets of post Z day LA. Kind of reinforced by Puck's rant about Michael rushing in after Randy and getting separated.
Well, that's what registered with me after listening again this morning....
You know what they say about cracked pottery? You break it, you bought it. And, in the zombocolypse, buying the ( ant ) farm is a whole new of level of sucks to be you.
Next stop, Ingelwood. :tinfoil: it would not surprise me if Burt lived there. Saul's place was the ritz compared to where Burt lived. If Burt had cool survival stuff at his store, I bet he had a lot at his home. I would love a flashback from Burt with a blow by blow of him fighting out of ground zero.
Don't forget, his store was looted before he got there, something had to delay his progress there, the chaos of ground zero would do it nicely and who trapped him in the bathroom of Locked and Loaded? A dude from Raydon Labs...
And another comment:
I really, really, really like the picture for chapter #39. It really frightens the shit out of me - not only because of the beast (maybe) under the cloth, but also because of the deadly cold atmosphere.
In connection with #39-1 it reveals the dark sides of the human survivors. I mean: Hello? The woman was not turned yet, but only in the process of turning. And what, if a medication like the one Saul received months ago would have made the difference? And then, although the red-shirted woman was neither a zombie (yet) nor dead (!!!), Tanya cut her open in order to check the shit out of her ... Holy shit ... What's going to happen next? Frankenstein is a kindergarden-cop compared with Tanya ...
Or in simpler words: Have the survivors or at least Tanya turned into a monster? Or do scientific causes justify any means?
Best wishes!
Liam
I agree on the artwork. I actually didn't see it until this morning. Chilling!
I like your take on the dark side of Team Human (or at least Dr Doom over there). Someone else mentioned how quickly she went for the euthanasia on Amy (and maybe the slow turner back at the Colony) and how fast she jumped on slicing and dicing here. She even flat out says she wasn't trying to save the girl. Everyone else seems to be in the "kill for survival" mode, so it's tough to say that they are turning to the Dark Side. And Tanya (and maybe some others around her) probably feels that the (hoped for) ends justify the potentially deplorable means, but Evil has a way of creeping in like that. Baby steps to the Dark Side....
As I mentioned above, I'm not sure we have any Tanya journal entries at all in the show so far. No voice overs for sure. No times where she was the only one there. No flashbacks to her time in the Colony before breaking out to the Tower. No discussion of her isolation at Ft Irwin other than interactions with Michael. What other "main" character doesn't have any journal entries?
I feel like Tanya has a major role to play in this story. Perhaps one of the biggest behind #1 hero vs #1 villain (whoever they turn out to be....)
So, Tanya and Saul may end like this?
http://nowiknow.com/wp-content/uploa...ur_father.jpeg
Tanya: "I am your mother."
Saul: "Noooooo!"
"Normally its protocol just to shoot her too"
Jesus no decency anymore...at least wait until she turns Michael.
Humanity is stagnating, not degenerating in WA. Tanya started by conduiting a Biopsy which turned (pun!) into an autopsy. It worries me that there already exists a so-called "procedure coding system" concering biopsies:
ICD-10-PCS 0?D???X (without force),
0?B???X (with force)
And that is what scares me.
I've lost track of all the sub-threads here, so hopefully nobody's already said this:
I'm starting to agree with the folks getting creeped out by Tanya. I didn't think much of it while listening, because I know what it's like to get a rush out of experimental progress in science. Now I'm wondering if perhaps she knows more about Z-day that she's said.
What we know:
1. She's a vet.
2. She's been bitten.
3. She's either turning slowly or not at all.
4. She gave drugs to Saul that were supposedly potent antibiotics.
5. She has iffy bedside manner.
6. She's getting a rush from her autopsies and experiments.
What if she worked for Raydon, or some associated or subsidiary company? What if she was doing animal experiments that somehow precipitated Z-day? What if she didn't just give antibiotics to Saul? What if she has some idea of how to stop or reverse the transformation/mutation effects of the "zombifying" vector (be it gas, virus, bacteria, whatever) because she helped develop (or at least test) it?
Did Tanya work for Weyland-Yutani Corporation? :squint:
So, forgive me if I parsed out your post a bit incorrectly. Here's my take: The anion gap is not what is being reported because the numbers are just so dang high. But, ketoacids are produced in large quantities in diabetic ketoacidosis resulting from....a hyperglycemic state.
Also, 3 notes about formic acid. One, it is the byproduct of methanol (moonshine/wood alcohol) metabolism that causes blindness. But, you wouldn't see the cloudiness in the eyes from the way formic acid causes blindness, unlike cataracts. Two, I think in the cases of poisoning, one of the key ingredients is a confined space, which we don't see with the turning zombies since they're usually out in the open. Three, I can't find confirmation quickly, but if what we're seeing is methanol or formic acid poisoning, neither of those would result in a hyperglycemic state, they would actually go in the opposite direction.
I guess my feet are dangling over this ledge too, but we'll see how the next couple of chapters play out.
To be fair, Tanya euthanized Amy after Michael was ready to shoot her. I interpreted that as her trying to take a more humane route for a required end, especially with someone who was still mostly human. Personally, I wonder if she didn't euthanize this girl off-screen. Unless she's gone really far over to the dark side, I think it would be difficult for a vet to intentionally cause unnecessary pain to any living/semi-living/not totally dead creature.
So my "jump to" conclusion is: this all (zombie disaster) happened because of either some disaster / intentional plan of one person at Raydon labs. Surprise me writers!
From Liam's poll: I like the idea of Randy using humans to do his dirty work.
I'mma just leave this here for you Mikey. Now figure out a cure. Probably not the case, but I love the idea.