Hey Babe--You Wanna Go Eat Some Brains?

 

A gallery of sexy zombies.

Mountains of Madness

From Wired Magazine:

What might lurk beneath Antarctica’s 5 million square miles of ice was the subject of speculation by sci-fi writers in the 1930s. One of the icy products this subgenre of Antarctic Gothic horror spawned is HP Lovecraft’s novella, At the Mountains of Madness, in which scientists drill beneath Antarctica’s ice — only to discover horrid things preserved there. Now, scientists are finally enacting Lovecraft’s scenario: Over the next several weeks they are drilling into three subglacial lakes hidden beneath thousands of feet of ice in Antarctica.

What they will find as they sample the lakes and send cameras into their bellies remains to be seen. But one thing is already clear: Lovecraft was actually right about far more than his readers could have realized.

In Lovecraft’s story, a team of researchers from Miskatonic University flies into an unexplored region of Antarctica and bores through the ice. They discover fossil dinosaur bones with disturbing puncture and hacking wounds that cannot be attributed to any predators known to science. Soon after, they uncover the source of some of those wounds: fossils of a leathery-skinned beast with a “five-ridged barrel torso … around the equator, one at [the] central apex of each of the five vertical, stave-like ridges are five … flexible arms or tentacles.” The beast’s body is topped by a “five-pointed starfish-shaped” head.

The fossils aren’t quite dead.

As they thaw in the sun, the beasts reawaken. They slaughter 12 members of the expedition, carefully dissecting one of them and carting away another as a brown-bag lunch.

Two surviving members of the expedition find an ancient city entombed in the Antarctic ice sheet which once belonged to the beasts. There, they discover a disturbing truth: This race of five-armed Elder Ones had arrived from space over 600 million years ago. They spawned all life on Earth, including that destined to evolve into humans … in order to provide a source of food.

... Not all of the deep-time holdovers are dead, though. Antarctica’s cold coastal waters preserve an ecosystem like no other Earth. Scientists call it Paleozoic, reminiscent of between 250 and 540 million years ago. It is dominated by echinoderms, the ancient phylum of animals including starfish, sea urchins, sand dollars, and lily-armed crinoids, whose bodies have five-fold symmetry — which brings us back to Lovecraft’s race of five-tentacled Elder Ones mummified beneath the ice.

“They sound like echinoderms to me,” said Richard Aronson, a veteran Antarctic marine biologist at Florida Institute of Technology. “Hilarious.”

Lovecraft points out that his Elder Ones inhabited the deep sea before emerging onto land. He goes to great lengths to describe the holes at the top of their heads, analogous to the water circulation pores in starfish. The author may have been more correct than he ever knew.

... A combination of ice-penetrating radar, seismic sensing, and laser altimetry has revealed well over 100 subglacial lakes hidden beneath Antarctic’s ice. Between now and the end of January, teams from the United States, Russia, and Britain are drilling into three of them.

The British team is preparing to drill into Lake Ellsworth, which sits beneath 10,000 feet of ice and has not seen the light of day for millions of years. (Update: The British team has ceased drilling this season due to technical issues.)

This week, a convoy of tractors will depart from the American-run base McMurdo Station. Those 13 tractors, towing 24 massive sleds of equipment and fuel exceeding half a million pounds, will cross 600 miles of ice before stopping at a nondescript spot 370 miles from the South Pole. There, almost in sight of Lovecraft’s “mountains of madness,” beneath 2,500 feet of ice, sits Lake Whillans, which has not seen daylight for 500,000 to a million years. Two kerosene-fueled generators, totaling nearly half a megawatt, will power a hot-water drill. Once activated in mid-January, that drill could bore an 18-inch-diameter hole into the lake within as little as one day.

At the same time, the Russians are drilling just above Lake Vostok, which sits under 12,350 feet of ice and has remained isolated from the outside world for up to 30 million years. The drillers at Vostok will extract fresh bits of ice, frozen lake water that gushed into the bottom of the borehole when the lake was first punctured last February.

The light that these explorations shed on Antarctica’s sunless waters will drive the monsters further underground.

The subglacial lakes will probably be found to harbor microbes, but not much more. Finding those organisms will reveal plenty about life’s limits, particularly, about the ability of ecosystems to survive in places with minimal nutrients and without sunlight as an energy source. This will provide clues to what life, if any, could survive in liquid oceans that lurk beneath many miles of ice in other parts of the solar system, on Jupiter’s moon Europa or Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

The teams are sterilizing drill equipment to avoid contaminating the pristine subglacial ecosystems, using a combination of ultraviolet light, hydrogen peroxide, and water filtration. But their work is still bound to have impacts on the ecosystem of fictitious monsters.

Aspiring sci-fi horror writers needn’t necessarily forsake Antarctica altogether, says Reed Scherer, a paleontologist from Northern Illinois University, who is part of the team drilling into Lake Whillans. But monsters capable of ripping heads off or chasing down frightened geologists as they flee on snowmobiles will require more carefully though-out habitats. That kind of stuff requires a speedy metabolism. “In order for something to have a high enough metabolic rate that it would be scary to us, it would have to have heat,” says Scherer. Volcanoes sealed under the ice sheet could provide one possible niche, he says. “There’s lots of water and a heat source for things to have a high metabolic rate.” Aerial surveys of irregularities in the Earth’s gravitational and magnetic fields have revealed a handful of possible volcanoes beneath the ice of West Antarctica.

Monsters of the Lovecraft variety — the kind that will butcher a tenured university professor and take him along as camping provisions — might also find credible habitats on Europa or Enceladus, at least until space probes can disprove their existence.

Zombie Bikini Calendar

A South African ad agency has come out with a "zombie" bikini calendar to promote the "Walking Dead" program. It might have been more interesting if they had actually been "zombiefied" but they just have done a little makeup here and there to look like scrapes and scabs. Anyway, story (with a link to a behind the scenes video) here, and you can download the calender as a PDF here.

The Twinkie Zombie Apocalypse Has Begun

When I heard that Hostess was shutting down, my first thought was the nearly fruitless quest of "Tallahassee" in Zombieland to track down the world's last Twinkies. I was not the only one.

Scientist Claims to Have Found Evidence of Yeti

A Russian scientist claims to have found hair samples and other evidence of the existence of a human-like mammal unknown to man. The hair has allegedly been tested and found to contain non-human DNA.

"Walking Dead" FX Guru Offers Tips on Zombie Costumes

For those of you dressing up as a zombie for Halloween this year, here are some makeup tips:

One of the biggest makeup mistakes Nicotero sees is a lack of color when creating a "dead" look. "When someone is doing a zombie makeup they tend to only use two colors: they use white pale and black around the eyes," explains Nicotero. "It looks a little skull-like but it doesn’t look realistic. When you look at your hand or your arm and you can see all the little blotches of red and yellow and brown – your skin is made up of a variety of different colors."

Shading, he says, is the key. "What we do on the show is to paint the shadows first with something like a dark burgundy and then go over the whole thing with a color we call dead – which is a yellowish, jaundice color. When you are able to use a bunch a different colors it looks more authentic. If you have a bruise there are all those colors around it – purple and red – so I try to get people to look at reality and use colors that exist in nature."

He recommends that you use powdered food coloring instead of liquid food coloring (which can stain) when making fake blood; and use lots of blood and spattering. 

Keep the dirt coming advises Nicotero, and not just for the tattered clothing and ghoulish makeup. "For the zombies on our show the inside of the mouth is all dark because a pink mouth signifies that something is alive. So we use a mixture of food coloring and black cake icing and we swish it around in every zombie mouth before they get a close up."

To give hair a matted, dull look, he recommends putting conditioner into your hair and letting it dry.

"Nowadays you can go to any Halloween store and there is a lot of basic makeup supplies," adds Nicotero. "And one way you can get mummified skin is to use liquid latex. Get Kleenex or cotton and put a little bit of latex on your hand or on your face, then you put the tissue in there and model it into wrinkles. Then you take a hair dryer and dry it. Add another layer of latex and build it up to two or three layers. It is going to look dried out and weathered looking. Then thing to do is rip the tissue paper up and paint the wound red inside so it looks really nasty."

Back to Basics

Although modern zombies have more in common with the Medieval "reverent," the modern interest in zombies originally derived from voodoo. So, I thought this article on a voodoo "congregation" in New York was interesting:

Photographer Shannon Taggart's lifelong fascination with the mysterious Haitian religion of voodoo has taken her to a basement apartment in Brooklyn, where she came face to face with people being possessed by mysterious spirits.

What resulted from Taggart's experience inside the Flatbush temple run by female priest known as Mambo Rose Marie Pierre is a series of captivating photos called Basement Voodoo, which show the members of her small congregation being taken over by the Loa - powerful spirits that mediate between humans and the voodoo deity, Bondye.

Communicating with the Loa requires elaborate preparations specific to each spirit. While some of the Loa are harmless, others are considered wicked or belligerent.

In order to call on any given spirit, a voodoo practitioner has to draw a symbol associated with that particular Loa in cornmeal on the floor, Time LightBox reported.

What follows next is a series of ritual dances and songs performed to summon the Loa. When the spirit finally possesses the worshiper, the scene turns wild and frenzied. It is commonplace to see people thrashing on the floor, screaming or running around the room in confusion.

Other congregants assist the possessed during the intensely physical experience and stand at the ready in case the worshiper collapses.

"Why We Love Zombies"

Op-ed from the San Jose Mercury News explains why we like zombies:

Simply put, the rise of zombies in pop culture reflects our creeping sense of anxiety about the state of the world. On the most basic level, horror movies are an outlet to express our unspoken fears. We live vicariously through the characters in these stories, experiencing their desperation and their capacity to endure. When they triumph over all odds, so do we -- and that's quite a thrill. When they get gobbled, we confront our own mortality. The squeamish ones, like me, also look away. Briefly. Until we can't bear the suspense.

Let's face it, there is a lot of scary news out there these days. From the economy to the environment, it can seem like the end of the world as we know it, and it's hard to feel fine about it.

British Explorer Closes in on Lost Treasure

Pirates. Sailing ships. Marooned on a mysterious island. Over $200 million in gold buried somewhere on the island. It makes for a great story. From Business Insider:

Shaun Whitehead is leading an archaeological expedition to Cocos Island, the supposed hiding place of the “Treasure of Lima” – one of the world’s most fabled missing treasures.

The haul – said to be worth £160 million – was stolen by a British trader, Captain William Thompson, in 1820 after he was entrusted to transport it from Peru to Mexico.

He is said to have been stashed his plunder on the Pacific island, from where it has never been recovered.

An original inventory showed 113 gold religious statues, one a life-size Virgin Mary, 200 chests of jewels, 273 swords with jewelled hilts, 1,000 diamonds, solid gold crowns, 150 chalices and hundreds of gold and silver bars.

The site, credited by some as the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, is uninhabited and around 350 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, of which it is a part.

* * *

Mr Whitehead, who has previously led a project to explore uncharted shafts inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, said: “Given the amount of treasure, it would have been too heavy to carry far from sea level and stories suggest the use of caves. We can also rule out where others have looked, dug up and detected – like on the beaches.

“If it is there, it will be in a natural cave which was hidden by one of the many landslides that occur on the island.

"It is not a case of following a map and “X” marking the spot. It is about using a bit of logic to establish the likelihood of some areas where it could be.”

The team’s research will concentrate on the areas around three of the island’s four bays, which have been most used by visitors.

The team plan to use a small, unmanned helicopter, fitted with specialist cameras, to fly above the nine mile square island, which will enable them to make a computer-generated 3D map of the landscape.

They will then use a snakelike robot that can be dragged across the parts of island and, using ground penetrating radar, detect voids and cavities up to a depth of around 60ft. This data will be added to the 3D map to identify any likely concealed caves.

After this, a team will use a specialist “keyhole” drill, which can reach more than 100ft, to dig down into the cave. A probe camera can be sent down through the 1in diameter.

The 10-day expedition will also involve extensive archaeological, geological and ecological research and Mr Whitehead is at pains to stress they are not simply going there on a treasure hunt.

* * *

The treasure could be worth at least £160 million. If any of it is found, the team plans to pass it on to the Costa Rican authorities, which would be expected to pay a fee for its salvage.

The treasure had been amassed by the Spanish authorities in Lima, in what is now Peru, but facing a revolt, the city’s viceroy, José de la Serna, entrusted the riches to Captain Thompson for transport to Mexico, also a Spanish colony, and it was transferred to his ship, the Mary Dear.

After leaving the port of Callao, near Lima, Thompson and his crew killed the Viceroy’s six men and sailed to Cocos, where they buried the treasure.

Shortly afterwards, they were apprehended by a Spanish warship. All of the crew – bar Thompson and his first mate – were executed for piracy.

The two said they would show the Spaniards where they had hidden the treasure in return for their lives, but after landing on Cocos, they escaped into the forest.

They are said to have been picked up by a passing ship a year later, but without the treasure.

The Door to Hell

"Welcome to Derweze in Turkmenistan - or, as the locals have called it, 'The Door to Hell'."

Soviet geologists were drilling at the site in 1971 and tapped into a cavern filled with natural gas.

But the ground beneath the drilling rig collapsed, leaving a hole with a diameter of 70 metres.

Fearing that the hole would lead to the release of poisonous gases, the team decided to burn it off.

It was hoped that the fire would use all the fuel within days, but the gas is still burning today.

The flames generate a golden glow which can be seen for miles around Derweze, a village with a population of about 350.

The site is about 260 kilometres north of Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan.

More photos and a video at the link.

Why Is America Hooked on Zombies?

From Fox Business News:

Cliff Courtney, EVP and chief strategy officer for Zimmerman Advertising, said America as a society loves to “resurrect the dead.” Not in the zombie sense, per se, but as far as trends go, Zimmerman said we need to only look to the past to see what will be popular again the future.

The zombie and vampire craze that has been sweeping the country for the past several years now is just one example.

“Zombies were movie staples in the 1950s and 1960s, and basically everything old is new again,” he said. “We milk something to death and move on.”

Advanced CGI technology has only made the trend even more popular, Zimmerman said, because today’s zombies look even more real and terrifying, making the representations we see on television and in movies even more fun to watch.

And, as far as participating zombie races and the subculture that is seriously preparing for the zombie apocalypse? Zimmerman said this is all about making things more interesting for consumers. Take running, for example, which can be mundane and repetitive. Throw some zombies and obstacles into a 5K race and you will attract even more runners than you would for a standard race.

“It’s all about how can we make it more interesting,” Zimmerman said.

Last Chance to Check for DNSChanger

Technology Review reminds us that, as of Monday, if your computer is infected with DNSChanger, you will not be able to connect to the Internet.

Hundreds of thousands of people are likely to be confused on Monday when they fire up their home or office computers and can't connect to the Internet. Their network connections will be fine, but attempts to visit their favorite domains will be fruitless.

These people will be the unfortunate leftover victims of the DNSChanger botnet. Between 2007 and October of last year, the DNSChanger virus infected four million computers in 100 countries, according to the FBI. Often without the victims' knowledge, the computers were turned into drones that were instructed by rogue servers to visit websites and click on ads in a scheme to generate fraudulent advertising revenue.

You can check your computer by going here.  If your computer is infected, this site has information on fixing it.

Zombie Theme Park in Detroit?

Those of you that have followed my blog for a while have seen me post pictures of modern ruins, and know what horrible shape Detroit is in. Somebody wants to turn the "wastelands" of Detroit to good use as a zombie theme park.

Derelict areas of Detroit face being taken over by hordes of 'flesh and brain-eating zombies' if an ambitious business plan takes off.

Entrepreneur Mark Siwak wants to create live-action terror theme park 'Z World' on Motor City's run-down and abandoned streets.

Customers would pay to be chased by professional actors and try to seek shelter in ghostly homes, factories and businesses.

* * *

Detroit has become known in recent years for pioneering 'creative solutions' like urban farming and pedestrian-friendly greenway trials.

Soaring budget deficits and a declining population has forced businesses and the authorities to 'think outside the box'.

And Siwak, who has raised $2,200 of the $140,000 needed through fundraising website IndieGoGo, said his theme park could be the perfect solution.

He told CBS Detroit: 'The city can only have so many urban farms or similar uses for vacant plots.'

And he revealed he is already receiving CVs from hundreds of residents keen to work at the tourist attraction.

He added: 'While zombies are great, the real neat thing about this project is the potential to inject some life into a forgotten neighbourhood - with the opportunity to work with neighbourhood groups and organisation'.

The project would follow in the footsteps of Atlanta Zombie Apocalypse, where thrill-seekers wield paint ball guns to play hide-and-seek with undead zombies in a formerly abandoned truck stop.

Man Builds Motorcycle from Car, While Stranded in Desert

Although this is from a recent post at the Auto Blog, it apparently refers to an incident in 2003. From the post:

... a Frenchman named Emile who reportedly found himself stranded in the deserts of Northwest Africa after breaking a frame rail and a suspension swingarm underneath his Citroën 2CV.

What to do? Why, disassemble the broken hulk and build yourself a motorcycle from its pile of parts, of course! As the story goes, Emile was able to use the inventive machine to escape the desert, though not before convincing the local authorities that he wasn't an insurgent and paying a fine for importing a non-conforming vehicle...

Since Emile was the only soul in the area, nobody has been able to confirm the veracity of the events that led to the little French runabout's conversion into a makeshift motorcycle. That said, judging by the images you can see here (apparently from the March 2003 issue of 2CV Magazine), this Citroën-bred two-wheeler does indeed exist, and it was definitely fashioned from parts scavenged from an old 2CV.

Now that is a true "Mad Max" machine.

Vampire Attack in San Diego

A local NBC affiliate reports:

When San Diego police sent out an alert for a beating suspect early Monday, they included a witness description: the suspect was said to have “vampire teeth.”

A homeless man was attacked and threatened outside a pharmacy in the 8800-block of Villa La Jolla Drive just before 6 a.m. Monday according to officials.

Police say the victim, a 55-year-old man, was kicked in the head and the ribs and left bleeding.

When officers arrived, the victim told them that his attacker also threatened to kill him.

Officers arrested the suspect a short time later and booked him on felony assault charges.

They say the suspect also appears to be a transient.

We don't care if the suspect was a transient. We want to know if he actually had vampire teeth!!!

Why Do Zombies Like to Eat Us?

So why do zombies like to chomp into people? It might be because of the flavor. According to this Daily Mail article, people taste like veal:

They are the gruesome crimes that have appalled - and intrigued - the world.

First came so-called Miami 'zombie', Rudy Eugene, who stripped his victim before savaging his face by the side of the road.

Then, gay porn star Luka Magnotta allegedly murdered his former lover with an ice pick before dismembering him and devouring some of his flesh. As if this was not horrifying enough, he then apparently posted footage of the killing online.

The pair are just the latest in a long and infamous line of cannibals whose exploits have broken one of the last taboos.But back in the 1920s, one man set out to provide a detailed record of the societies that devour human flesh - and went so far as to taste it himself.

American adventurer William Buehler Seabrook wrote of his experiences in his book Jungle Ways, published in 1931. He noted that human flesh actually tastes 'just like veal'.

The account follows his travels in West Africa, where he spent time with the Guero people, and joined them as they feasted on human meat.

The author observed that the raw flesh looked like beef but less red and with pale yellow fat.

Once cooked it turned grey and smelled like beef.

As for the taste, he wrote: 'It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal.'

Seabrook's account is regarded as unreliable by many, because he later confessed Guero tribesmen refused to let him take part in their tradition - bizarrely claiming he made up for the disappointment by obtaining the body of a dead hospital patient in France and cooking it on a spit.

But experts regard his description as the most useful - because most commentaries on cannibalism come from the criminally insane and are often contradictory.

German killer Armin Meiwes,insisted human flesh tastes like pork, 'but a little bit more bitter, stronger.'

While Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa described it as 'tender and soft' like tuna.

The survivors of the 1970 Andes plane crash, portrayed in the movie Alive, were forced to eat their fellow passengers to survive - but insist in their accounts the frozen flesh was flavourless.

In the book Hunter, by J.A. Hunter, the author--a big game hunter and guide in pre-WWII Africa--inadvertently partook of human flesh while in the Congo. He described the flavor as similar to pork, only saltier.  There is probably a reason that human meat has long been referred to as "long pork."

This topic is getting macabre, so on to something else....

The Tax Implications of Becoming a Zombie

Sure, you are dead. But are dead enough for your estate to pass to your heirs? If you really want to know, here is the link to the article.

Zombie Drug

Another story from the Daily Mail that caught my eye:

A hazardous drug that eliminates free will and can wipe the memory of its victims is currently being dealt on the streets of Colombia.

The drug is called scopolamine, but is colloquially known as ‘The Devil’s Breath,' and is derived from a particular type of tree common to South America.

Stories surrounding the drug are the stuff of urban legends, with some telling horror stories of how people were raped, forced to empty their bank accounts, and even coerced into giving up an organ.

* * *

Demencia Black, a drug dealer in the capital of Bogota, said the drug is frightening for the simplicity in which it can be administered.

He told Vice that Scopolamine can be blown in the face of a passer-by on the street, and within minutes, that person is under the drug’s effect - scopolamine is odourless and tasteless.

‘You can guide them wherever you want,’ he explained. ‘It’s like they’re a child.’

Black said that one gram of Scopolamine is similar to a gram of cocaine, but later called it ‘worse than anthrax.’

In high doses, it is lethal.The drug, he said, turns people into complete zombies and blocks memories from forming. So even after the drug wears off, victims have no recollection as to what happened.

Nine Great Archeological Mysteries

A slide show from Fox News. They have links to further stories and/or news sites. Number 10 is interesting to me: underwater terrain that must have been above the water at one time.

Buried deep beneath the sediment of the North Atlantic Ocean lies an ancient, lost landscape with furrows cut by rivers and peaks that once belonged to mountains. Geologists recently discovered this roughly 56-million-year-old landscape using data gathered for oil companies.

"It looks for all the world like a map of a bit of a country onshore," said Nicky White, the senior researcher. "It is like an ancient fossil landscape preserved 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) beneath the seabed."

So far, the data have revealed a landscape about 3,861 square miles (10,000 square km) west of the Orkney-Shetland Islands that stretched above sea level by almost as much as 0.6 miles (1 km). White and colleagues suspect it is part of a larger region that merged with what is now Scotland and may have extended toward Norway in a hot, prehuman world.

"10 Places to Ride Out the Apocalypse"

A list of 10 places to hold up in to survive the end of the world. In a mostly unrelated note, here is a list of 10 places you can't view on Google Maps. What interests me is the possible link between the two lists. Number 6 in the first list is Mount Yamantau, Mezhgorye, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia. The author states:

While some countries stopped building nuclear shelters at the close of the Cold War, Russia was still putting the finishing touches on at least one of theirs. Most of the Soviet Union's super-secretive closed cities were opened up after the republic's collapse, but a few dozen remain in Russia and Kazakhstan, including Mezhgorye, which services the Mount Yamantau project in the Urals. In the late 1990s, tens of thousands of workers were sent to the area to work on Mount Yamantau, and foreigners were not allowed near the site, prompting fears that the facility housed a missile silo or a nuclear weapons production plant. But US Strategic Air Command has told members of the press that it is actually the wartime relocation facility for Russia's top political leadership. In 2000, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett claimed that the facility was the largest nuclear-secure project in the world, strong enough to resist half a dozen direct nuclear hits. It's also been claimed that it can house 60,000 people, with enough food and water on hand to keep its population alive for months. But if the reports are to be believed, Yamantau does have one small flaw: the mountain's quartz hampers radio transmissions, so the communications systems are outside the facility and could be damaged in an attack. Still, the important thing is, you'll be alive and well fed.

Now, in the second list, Number 5 is a "Mysterious Russian Site. We're not entirely sure why this location in Russia has been blurred out, especially since it's in the Siberian tundra. The closest city is Egvekinot, Russia, which is a neighbor to Alaska across the Bering Strait."

I realize that they are not the same location, but is it the for the same purpose?