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.

Doomsday Shelters

It's been awhile since the Daily Mail had a photospread of disaster shelters, but they have come through--and just in time for December 21--with a variety of nuclear bomb shelters from around the world.

The BioLite Stove

Here is an interesting product--the BioLite stove which converts the heat from a small wood fire (which you can use for cooking) to electricity to run a small fan (to force air into the fire) and recharge cell phones, GPS devices, etc.

Here is the link to the manufacturer's website.

Review of the Zombies, Run! App

From ZD Net:

Many who follow shows like Walking Dead, or imagined themselves in the superlative storytelling found in World War Z and Feed (The Newsflesh Trilogy) think that if they were in the same place as the characters, they'd perform better under pressure. But if push came to shove and you really had to run from zombies, would you be able to?

That's where the app Zombies, Run! becomes intriguing - for me, anyway. The app (available for Apple iOS, Windows and Android) has cleverly combined well-written serialized storytelling and an app for prompting and tracking running to create a task-oriented zombie apocalypse adventure that will actually get you to run.

You can also walk the chapters, but when you hear the moans of zombies in your headphones... You'll probably feel like you should really run.

The product of a very successful Kickstarter campaign, Zombies, Run! (Twitter) uses your Android or iPhone and a set of headphones to put you in the midst of a zombie apocalypse scenario. The app is from Six To Start, and the chapters/storyline is written by award-winning novelist and Naomi Alderman (currently co-writing with Margaret Atwood).

You are a runner. A township community needs you to go after supplies, weapons, get recon, find missing people, chase 'traitors' and more.

You're given missions to complete . . .  and you're given instructions - or warnings of zombie hoardes around the corner - as you run missions on the streets of your own town.

Each mission lasts 30-40 minutes, and you can play music from your own playlist in the background. . .

Zombies, Run! has a gameplay layer (and semi-MMPORG element) if you want to engage further with the app. Users can create a Zombielink account and track their stats. Zombielink syncs your running data; users can view their run logs and stats, calories burned, how fast you ran from zombies at a given moment, and recaps of your run activity with events in the storyline.

Zombies vs. SEALS

From Forbes:

The Taliban IED exploding in the faces of the U.S. soldiers wasn’t the surprise. It was the zombie assault that came afterwards.

The War on Terror and the Zombie War on Humanity met Halloween night as an American patrol confronted IEDs, wounded civilians and waves of zombies. The setting was the parking lot of the HALO Corporation’s counter-terrorism conference in San Diego, and the soldiers and zombies came from Strategic Operations, a private company that uses Hollywood special effects and actors to train U.S. soldiers.

But as you can see from the video, this wasn’t training Marines how to make friends with Afghan villagers. The scenario starts with an American VIP – the dude in the black shirt and sunglasses – visiting a village (Strategic Operations describes it as a Third World village, but the keffiyeh/shemagh scarf worn by the village elder suggests Iraq or Afghanistan). He is escorted by a Personal Security Detail of American soldiers. As the team prepares to leave the village, they are attacked by insurgents driving a truck carrying an IED. The soldiers destroy the vehicle and detonate the IED. That’s when the zombies strike. The soldiers pick off the undead while an armored vehicle arrives to extract the team. Then a Quick Reaction Force of soldiers deploys to rescue the villagers and put everyone through a decontamination station.

Another article about the exercise can be found here.

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.