Chapter 39-1: Chemical Reactions

[FunkyDung]

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.

[Condor]

WOOOOOOOT!!!!! Thanks KC, this episode was great!!!
I like how all the little devices used by our survivors are "believable": KODI was left by the army, the cameras and the sensors are easy to pull off with off-the-shelf material, every little detail is *credible*. It really shows the work behind it.
Just a question about spelling: is it Radon Labs or Raydon Labs? I'm a radiation physicist so I just want to know if I need to put on my tinfoil hat about radioactive gas theories or not.

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.

Not Sid, but a couple of quick thoughts. I don't think it could be a rate of spread. Both viral load and bacterial culture take longer to test than what Tanya's doing. She could be doing some sort of cell count (white blood cells came to mind), but the numbers don't really make sense to me for that, and I don't hear a counter going either.

When she first said 195, my first thought was wow, they need to get her heart rate down asap before her heart stops, but when she got up to 375 I knew I was dead wrong on that first impression.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but I really couldn't think of many tests with those numbers that could be done quickly at the bedside. Glucose can be done quickly, and you could see those sorts of numbers in somebody headed into a diabetic crisis, but that doesn't really make any sense in this situation.

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.

Who would have thought that the redshirt noob would survive the episode?

So why does the red shirt have a TNG style phaser?

[MattRHale]

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.

I agree with everything you said. Especially the piano part. String quartets are overrated. The new theme sounds weak compared to the original.

[Arch_Will]

So why does the red shirt have a TNG style phaser?

Q Continuum...

[ShadowSentinel]

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.

[7oddisdead]

alrighty then, here we go.

[7oddisdead]

--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.

[scbubba]

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!

[scbubba]

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....

[Grognaurd]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddddddd.. .................yup



so im thinking we should let this line of thinking go for the time being, id hate to predict what happens next with our bumbling crackpottery!!

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. 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...