We're Alive #100!!!!! AKA Chapter 34-2 It Only Takes One

[7oddisdead]

Wait a damn minute!..you may be on to something there...think of the smell of the "zombies" as Saul described them...smelling like....well....shit. Hmmm....

[Leedo2502]

Damn it, Mr Wayland, you have gone too far. You killed off a Nobel Prize Winner:

David J. Wineland

Did he find out too much about Mr Whiskers a.k.a. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat?

By the way, congrats to you, Mr Wineland.

HA! I say and Ha! again! Pretty sure that dudes wicked Mustache saved his life... Matter of fact I think that it blocked 60-70% of the fallout and saved the lives of Pegs and Kelley. That Mustache not only serves as a means of radiological protection but as a source of nourishment with bits of soup and beverage residue that are in there.

[Leedo2502]

Otherwise, I like it. And if it's true.....Kimmet's a dick.

Or is he?? I picture Kimmet like Col. Jessup in A Few Good Men

Michael: Colonel Kimmet! Did you order the Nuking of Boulder?!!
Carl: You don't have to answer that question sir!
Kimmet: I'll answer the question. You want answers?
Michael: I think I'm entitled to them.
Kimmet: You want answers?!
Michael: I want the truth!
Kimmet: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls and Sat Phones, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns and who use those Sat Phones. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Sgt. Cross? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Boulder, and you curse my Sat Phone. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know -- that Boulder’s demise , while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties at the tower, you want me on that wall… you need me on that phone.
We use words like "honor," "code," "loyalty” and “PX Credit." We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.
I would rather that you just said "thank you" and went on your way… writing in your Diary. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand the post. Either way, I don't give a DAMN what you think you're entitled to!
Michael: Did you order the Nuking of Boulder?
Kimmet: I did the job I was --
Michael: -- Did you order the Nuking of Boulder?!
Kimmet: You're god damn right I did!!!

[dontkillburt]

Or is he?? I picture Kimmet like Col. Jessup in A Few Good Men

Well, I'm still picturing Kimmet as General Jack D. Ripper, from Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (played by Sterling Hayden)...

General Jack Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don't think I do, sir, no.
General Jack Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

I wish we could have heard the logic that convinced Kimmet and the other idiot in charge of Boulder that the final solution to a zombie invasion was to detonate nuclear devices in one (or both) of the last remaining safe havens for humans on earth. When all is lost, just push the doomsday button on your iPhone I guess. Was Kimmet afraid that 100,000 newly turned zombies IN COLORADO is some sort of threat to Los Angeles, now home to 13 million zombies?

It will be interesting to see how radiation affects the horde of super undead. Our heros at least will be able to see them glowing in the dark (except, of course, Hope). And the first thing she's going to see after getting her bandages off is most likely Datu's fist if she doesn't stop the whining.

Jez, I hope Peyton Manning and the Broncos were playing an away game this weekend.

[LiamKerrington]

Hi there,

@dontkillburt:
Based on your assumptions I agree with you.
And yet there are plenty of uncertainties:
- Was Boulder and is Fort Irwin the only save heavens on earth? I have some doubts; the only thing we know for certain is that Kc has limited the landscape to watch at; thus there is at least the possibility that other safe places exist at some other places as well - even maybe on the territories of the US.
- If L.A. ever had 13 Millionen Zombies, wouldn't chapter #1 have ended completley different? It would. Them zombies mostly killed people and did not turn their victims in huge numbers of zombies. Any time we had huge numbers of zombies in a picture, it was like "hundreads" or "hundreds, maybe thousands" or "an army", at least not numbers supporting the "millions of zombies".

Glowing zombies => kind of trash and that's cool, but pretty unlikely in WA-verse.

@gas-/fuel-discussion: Wouldn't different types of gas flocculate in case it is not used for a while? How long this would take, or under what circumstances this would happen?

@Detail about "french girl" - I totally missed that. Maybe Riley was able to get aboard on the last flight to Boulder? How unlikely is that?
Or something like this: Maybe Riley had something important to tell about Tanya and/ or about #2 to Michael! What, if Tanya has found the weak spot of the Little Ones (a certain chemical or biological agent of whatever kind capable of stoping them) before Kimmet announced the Big Bang Theory to become practical and Riley wanted to inform Michael about that? Spinning around that idea I wonder if something like this would be able to establish quite a decent confrontation between Michael and Kimmet, because Michael would have been able to stop the nuke and safe some more lives?

All the best!
Liam

[zombeh-kitteh]

...They nuked Boulder.

Well, not surprised, but I still have to say that I'm sad. Sad that after all the time they struggled to find a safer, better place that it had to be nuked.

Hope and Datu...I think they will be safe. Definitely not right now, considering that they may be buried in an avalanche or at least experiencing some discomfort from being "close" to the explosion. Hope's window is obliterated, even running the heat in the car won't keep out the cold for very long...and deplete fuel and battery power quicker. They need to either meet up with someone not shady, or tough it out until they reach their next destination.

Pegs, Kelly, and Lady...If Pegs was alerted immediately about evacuating, considering she was a pilot who could help out with flying people out, then it's safe to assume (I know what they say about assuming, I promise) that they are safe. Even Lady...I can't see them just leaving her there to die knowing that they were being evacuated. I also don't think that KC would let them die without letting us know. That being said, it could very well be that the next chapter will be "their" side of the story and what happens to them. If they die, well then...so be it. I mean, no one is unkillable in this story. Angel is proof enough of that...he was there from day one as well as Pegs.

My theory: Since we've learned that the coup at the colony and the blasting of Boulder happens on the same day...any survivors from Boulder are headed to Ft. Irwin...which doesn't have the space or resources to keep any of these survivors. Guess who's headed down South to the Colony? The prisoners, led by Scratch are a broken group fighting amongst themselves, the original Colony members either fled back to their houses or are helping Saul and C.J. break in. If Saul and C.J. are successful, it's perfectly possible that they and the armed and motivated Colonites could shift the balance of power and retake the Colony; they get the Sat. phone fixed & call up Ft. Irwin; Oh, you mean you have survivors with no place to go? well see, we have this big colony with only a few people here now and we need help to repopulate and oversee this here colony! That's the best case scenario though...

It would be horrific if the zombies get any more special then they already have. I would hate to see that irradiated zombies being impossible to kill. There's no more story if that happens...it would just be a countdown until they are all dead or turned.
Nuclear zombies...please no. Even the "Little Ones" can still be dropped if you shoot them in the head...their only weakness...if they are able to survive a nuclear blast then I don't think there's any hope for the world.

[Bullethead]

...They nuked Boulder.
...
I would hate to see that irradiated zombies being impossible to kill. There's no more story if that happens...it would just be a countdown until they are all dead or turned.
Nuclear zombies...please no. Even the "Little Ones" can still be dropped if you shoot them in the head...their only weakness...if they are able to survive a nuclear blast then I don't think there's any hope for the world.

I don't think they will have survived the blast. The more this story goes on the more human these zombies are starting to appear to me. By that I mean they bleed out, they freeze, they die from a strike to the throat (albeit a possible spinal nerve disruption). Bottom line is that unlike most StorieZ where the only thing to kill a Zombie is separating the head, there are other options in our story.

[nikvoodoo]

I am not one to put a stop to theorizing, but can we take a moment to talk about the idea of Glowing Zombies...Remember what Tanya said about them during the autopsy: They're not that dissimilar to us. They have some extra "padding" as it were against physical trauma. You do have to remember that what kills humans, kills them too.

If there are zombies outside the red circle, they are just as likely to suffer from radiation poisoning as regular people are. If they are in the blast zone, they are not coming out glowing like Blight from Batman Beyond.

[Adventureless_Hero]

I don't think they will have survived the blast. The more this story goes on the more human these zombies are starting to appear to me. By that I mean they bleed out, they freeze, they die from a strike to the throat (albeit a possible spinal nerve disruption). Bottom line is that unlike most StorieZ where the only thing to kill a Zombie is separating the head, there are other options in our story.

Yeah, in WND 47 KC mentioned the basic definition of a zombie being an animated body not under it's own control (I'm paraphrasing what he said, not directly quoting). So even though they are moving humanoid bodies, they aren't behaving as their previous consciousness would have them behave. I guess it's some kind of infection, but whether it's human made or naturally occurring, who knows?

Also, I wonder if we could surmise that perhaps the "controlling" factor at work in these zombies brains is not the infection itself, but also partly some lead zombie, a.k.a. Pinstripes.

[LiamKerrington]

If there are zombies outside the red circle, they are just as likely to suffer from radiation poisoning as regular people are. If they are in the blast zone, they are not coming out glowing like Blight from Batman Beyond.

The zombies next to the explosion most likely just die - and that pretty likely instantly. So within the inner red circle the chance of Little Ones surviving is pretty low.
But I guess the farther away they are from the explosion, the more likely they might be able to live on with the radiation poisoning - and if it is only for a short period of time that they live on. Edit: Boulder is huge, especially with 150k of survivors having lived there; so the nuke won't be able to kill everything in this area - remember Kimmet describing the chance of survival in different areas like survivability 2% up to 1.7 mi from the blastside, 60% 2.7 mi, 4.7 mi 95% (I just translated the death-rates of 98%, 40% and 5%). which would cover the whole city?

First and foremost: Their toughened skin and muscle structure might absorb a good portion of the radiation (not the gamma stuff naturally) before it may harm the inner organs hard enough to stop them.
Additionally: If the rules for Regulars apply and Little Ones are not slowed down by stress and pain, some of the effects of radiation poisoning won't stop or slow them down either.
Finally: I guess it makes big difference for Little Ones if they are directly affected by the nuke or if they are in buildings/ behind concrete during the explosion. Sure, after the explosion they still have to deal with the fall-out and contaminated area, but that won't kill instantly; this being the minus to the initial effects of the nuke might be a joker to their life-span as well.

I don't say: They will sustain it and simply go on like people with a sunburn or as if nothing has happened at all; but I hold it as at least not unlikely that the surviving Little Ones may last a little longer then humans in the same situation - maybe even long enough to infect other survivors. Thus as the source of infection they'll be still a threat - especially if they move on and maybe even follow the survivors in the south ...

I would not support any seriously meant theory about radioactive zombies splattering the West of the US ... That won't happen, especially in relation to what Kc has described on the special interview in the latest WND episode and what he has provided so far in the WA-verse ...

Those wiki-articles might be interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_bombs_and_health

All the best!
Liam