I think some of us would like to discuss the prepping aspects of the show Jericho to compare Hollywoods version of a dire emergency compared to how we have disscussed being prepared for a dire emergency (specifically pandemic) here on the wiki. However, there are a lot of folks who don’t want to be bogged down with comments on a TV show on the prep thred, so I’m starting a new thread and copying over the links from here that pertain to it.
lohrewok – at 20:15 Nemo @ 19:29 It was partially filmed here in my town, Lawrence Ks. The crew was here about a month ago doing publicity stuff…whoa Nelly! That mushroom cloud is freaky! We’re about 20 mins. from KC.
Jane – at 21:19 On the tv show Jericho, the nuclear blast seen in Kansas was in Denver, then they found out that Atlanta was hit too. Wonder who the calm and resourceful newcomer is? He said he had been a policeman in St. Louis.
The arguments and fighting at the gas station seemed all too plausible.
Why did they have to put in a busload of escaped convicts? This is scary enough.
For those that are wondering, this show is on CBS- Wednesdays- 8:00.
Several of the things I noticed that were dumb: AFTER the power went out to the whole town, they showed a whole crowd of people pumping gas at the gas station and having fights. Duh!!! No power…no pumpy gas!! That’s one of the reasons why you need to have access to some extra gas if you plan on leaving town or have a generator you want to run. A stand alone tank that is gravity fed is best for those in the country, 5 gallon plastic cans for those in the city. Also, they showed people starting to “steal” food from the gas station store, yet the little grocer in town had NO ONE there. I think people think “food” before “gas” when it comes time to panic. Also, in this little country town, they had only one ham radio that the sherriff knew about, and it was owned by a whacked out recluse. The further out in the country, the higher the density of ham radios. There probably would have been quite a few..HOWEVER, even this wacko could not use his ham radio outfit AFTER the power for the whole town went down (which is when they brought him into the story) unless he had a genny. This feature of picking and choosing which electrical items don’t work and which magically do in Hollywood is FRUSTRATING. People watch and don’t think…gee I won’t be able to use the phone, or TV or pump oxygen for granny or…. they just think lights go out. In the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” its basically armegeddon, the power is all out throughout the whole region, they are sitting in a bar with candle light WATCHING TV!!! No one has power to broadcast that signal and that bar sure as shootin’ didn’t have a generator going in the middle of New York!!
This inability to comprehend all the ramifications of something as tangible as a power outage is disturbing. How much more inept are average joes in comprehending the end of the supply chain???
I missed the show … too much stuff to do, too little time. I had thought about using it as a possible fictional scenario to pick info out of as well. Is there a link to the series for a synopsis of the episode?
I enjoyed it. Even if it was a bit “hollywood”…
Yes, there were certainly things they should have been more careful about portraying, but from an entertainment perspective I enjoyed it. Will be interested to see where the story leads, if the show doesn’t get canned. I don’t think the reviews were rave.
-and they always have to throw in the “clueless dumb blonde” into a show like that. Afterall, the rebellious, prodigal son “Jake” needs to be abel to fall in love with someone during the season. -even if she did receive a lethal does of radiation -if she was walking around where the birds were all just falling out of the sky.
anyone notice how there was no “pulse” initially? wouldn’t that have brought everything down sooner? -and the cars were not affected at all by that. -oh yeah, ‘cuz it didn’t happen.
Also suprised that if the gas station was being overrun, that the little grocery store wasn’t suffering the same fate yet.
I’ll keep watching, but mostly because I like to pick apart flicks like that.
Boy, Jake sure is a tough kid…can walk all that way with a broken, protruding thigh bone and probable concussion, also save the kids and drive a bus (must not have been a stick shift afterall) and also carry kids in his arms, as well as move a heavy dead bus driver by himself. That’s pretty impressive. Minimal blood loss too. Though he was getting a little sleepy near the end.
The pitiful teacher hadn’t even moved from her seat the whole show since she “thought she may have” broken her leg. -not to try to help a little girl from her class who was dying. But she did manage to help herself off the bus just fine when it pulled back into town. Noticed that Jake went away first in the 1 ambulance. -not the girl or the teacher.
Earlier in the show, the mother at the police station was in a panic because her 2nd grade daughter was on the missing bus. -So what 2nd grader doesn’t know his left from his right??!!! We laughed hard at that one! That must have been the resource room kid or a kid like Ralphie, the policeman’s son on “the Simpsons”!!! -Either that or they are making commentary on how bad our school systems really are in parts of America!
NEMO – at 10:44 First of all there was no one pumping gas after the lights went out. They were fighting about the gas before and after. Secondly the comment on stealing was incorrect, the kid took it upon himself to put the groceries in the Ice Machines to keep them cold for as long as possible, he wasn’t taking them. The lady did say “please don’t steal from me” though……….All nice helpful hints.
Training for Disaster 101………. I was really looking forward to this show and for all it’s little mistakes I feel it is more of Training for Disaster 101 . Much Needed and it Will help people without them even realize their being taught. Very few like the idea of watching a How To show , this one will do the same without the audience even realizing it. I would bet money it was put in place for just that reason.
There is a poor one on CBS— almost like they haven’t really dedicated many resources to this particular show. I will give one here:
The town of Jericho is somewhere in Kansas, (in a geographically impossible spot)120 miles from Wichita and 360 from Kansas City. A guy comes home to his family wanting his inheritance, but Dad says no cause he’s not mature enough yet (at 32). Dad is the town mayor.
The show gives us a glimpse into small town life in this episode. People going about their day. There is a bus of kids on a field trip that have had to take a detour on a gravel road several hours outside of town, the young guy’s ex is driving to Wichita airport to pick up her fiance, nasty high school girls are whining about not being able to shop in New York while menacing the poor stock boy… During the late afternoon, a 10 year old boy is playing hide and seek with his sister, when he is the first to see the mushroom cloud while standing on top of a low barn roof. Just about the same time, other townspeople are seeing it off in the distance. The young man wanting his inheritance has already left town again, and while he is looking up and an oncoming motorist is looking up, they crash head on.
The town mayor is trying to calm people down as they gather in town to find out what’s going on. As the time of the blast, all cell phone, telephone and radio communication goes out. They assume (because the mayor tells them to) that it is probably an accident in Denver at an military base and they probably aren’t under attack. However, after a couple of hours, the young stock boy returns home to hear a telephone message from his mom— wherein she tells him she’s staying (with her boyfriend?) in the city for a couple more days just as the boy hears them saying “what’s that???” then a huge explosion and then nothing…he knows his mom is dead. He takes the tape to the mayor’s house where a couple dozen people are gathered, discussing the situation in candle light. The mayor’s wife plays the cassette for everyone. She tries to comfort the boy saying, “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know your Mom was in Denver”. He blankly looks at the crowd and remarks, “she wasn’t. She was in Atlanta!” This lets loose the knowledge to everyone there, that it isn’t a one off event, and an attack of some sort has happened. Everyone knows that it is very unlikely that Denver and Atlanta would be the sole targets, so minds start to race as to how many and where are the other blasts. The mayors wife drives to town to tell her husband as he is dealing with a building riot at the gas station (as mentioned above— post power outage). The school bus crashed during the mushroom cloud, one little girl has a collapsed larynx and our hero — the prodigal son— finds the bus, saves the girl, and drives the bus back to town since the bus driver is dead and the teacher (our heroine?) has a broken leg.
There’s a new citizen in town that people are curious about ( a black man, who claims to be have been a police officer from St. Louis formerly) who seems to have some good ideas, but the bubba rednecks aren’t listening to him much, at least at first.
The Ex girlfriend of our hero is driving to Wichita to pick up her fiance in the closing moments of the episode. She hits something and pulls over to see what it is. She is unaware of the blasts at this point. She gets out to see hundreds of dead ravens littering the road in the dark of twilight and wonders what in the world is going on.
So…as you might expect..we don’t know if anyone in town at this point is “prepared”. I am sure those details will be exposed in future episodes. Gerald McRaney plays the mayor, Skeet Ulrich plays the prodigal son/hero. A few other familiar faces fill out other members of the cast. It could be interesting, it could be a big flop. CBS certainly hasn’t promoted it much, nor is there much on their website. They don’t seem very committed to it, so it may be pulled in short order unless it gets a cult following like Lost.
Nemo @ 10:44. Good points about the various power issues. I was trying to remember on 9/11, everyone ran to the gas stations, lines around the block. I’m sure it was like that all over the country. Price gouging etc. But does anyone know, did the grocery store get swamped like that too?
TIG @ 10:50 LOL @ the “dumb blonde” but seeing all the dead birds lying around was kind of chilling.
Hey does anyone have a link for a geiger counter? J/K
One good thing about the show, is that it helps bridge the generation gap. Kids today, even college age kids, have been lucky enough to grow up in an age when annihilation by nukes is not the “inevitable end” many of us grew up to believe it would be. The Cold War was quite real. All too real. It was in every day messages and missle tests. We heard it on the radio and saw it on tv and in movies. “Jericho” reminds me a little of “Red Dawn” minus the foreign troops right now.
I worked with troubled teens and they have no concept at all of any real big threats like that in their lives here. They have no concept of how bigger outside events could shape their outcome. Even though this show may seem a little “late”, it may bring that to light.
had this come out back in the 80′s, it wouldn’t be seen as so fictitious as it is probably viewed today by teens.
Some wonder why the 80′s were such a greedy, yuppy, party, time. Well, imagine if you thought you were actually living just for the day… that tomorrow you may be turned to dust or be in immense struggles that woudl probably end up killing you anyway over… you would likely live for the day that way too.
A Former Lurker:
About the looting, the scene I was referring to is not the older lady grocer and the teen. She thought he was stealing but he was helping her. It’s the scene at the gas station. People are taking things out of the grocery store part and the owner is trying to stop them because they haven’t paid for any of them and don’t seem interested in trying to pay.
I’ll rewatch the part about the gas pumping (just got a TIVO!) and see if they are still pumping gas after the power goes out or not. I know this aspect of needing electricity to pump gas is often overlooked. Have seen it played out many times in real life during extensive power outages in my own town.
I do think the show is very worthwhile in getting people to THINK— what if??? It’s like they say on other chat rooms…be nice to the newbies…which is what these directors/story writers are— no doubt. It does make sense though, if they had contracted with a prepper (certainly easy to find online) as a technical consultant for the most accurate details. Oh well. At least they are trying to bring up things that the rest of Hollywood is ignoring. A for Effort.
Didn’t they set up one of the generators at the gas station? I thought they had. You could hear it in the background and they had a large floodlight at the station (so you could see the action of the riot). I thought that very early on they ordered the tanks to the station to fill up for the generators… that it was an ongoing comment in the background in case they lost electricity… about the time the angry parents stormed in to ask about their kids. Remember there was a lso tof background “noise” going on at the station, but your focus was supposed to be on the approachign parents.
I think one of the best shows I saw about a “what if” that seemed to really hit home and could very well apply here in a bird flu pandemic scenario is “Testament”. That was the creepiest, most nightmare causing drama I ever saw. it was too real. too much like my town. -other than the fallout radiation issue, the other things like lack of supplies and electricity were really well played out. even lack of coffins.
if anyone wants to get a glimpse of what could happen, how some communities pull together and others apart, this may be a good one to watch.
they shoudl make a movie like testament and meld its realities with the pandemic outbreak film that they showed earlier this year.
Treasure Island Gal: as to it being apropos: I believe it is more relevant now than even had it been shown in the 80′s. While we had many close calls (dozens more than most people know), the rumors of nukes being in the US right now bring this home even more so. There are news stories currently circulating (Glenn Beck on Headline News most notably) about muslim clerics telling all muslims to leave New York, Washington DC and Los Angeles IMMEDIATELY. That’s quite chilling! Bin Laden has often claimed we are about to face an American Hiroshima. Now, throw in a pandemic to boot!! I notice that the pandemics seem to occur during major upheavals in society. More stress renders people more prone to infection???
Treasure Island Gal: Never heard of Testament. Thanks for the heads up. I’ll see if Netfllix has it.
For those that missed this show: CBS has available the entire episode on “innertube”? A link to the episodes that have aired (just the first one so far) is here:
I wondered what caused the power to go out… EMP (electromagnetic pulse) from the nuclear blast? If so, all of the vehicles would have been inoperable, radios and phones wouldn’t have worked. As NEMO said, selective displays of what does and doesn’t work after a nuclear blast.
I also found it amazing that people were willing to expend huge amounts of energy to light up the streets afterward (supposedly to help keep people calm). Yeah, right, let’s light up the night even though we know at least two nuclear blasts have occured in our country… use up those now-precious resources quickly!
I also wondered what was freaking out the wild animals in the show (and only the wild animals, various pet dogs on the show didn’t seem perturbed in the least). Shortly after the blast the wild animals were seen running en masse, as if trying to escape a forest fire. Later in the show birds were shown dropping out of the sky, along with other animal carcasses littering one spot in the highway. That spot must have been the proverbial “elephant burial ground” where all the critters congregated to die. How lame.
Despite it’s shortcomings, I’ll give “Jericho” a few more chances. It could turn out to be really good or end as a flop, it’s too early to know. One or two more episodes should tell.
Testament came out in 1983:
The Wetherly family copes with the news that nuclear bombs have been detonated across the country, and it’s only a matter of time before one explodes near their own home. When it does, thousands are killed, and matriarch Carol (Best Actress nominee Jane Alexander) tends to the newly orphaned children while trying to keep her own family together. With a sealed fate, Carol tries to explain the things her kids will never experience on their own. Starring: Jane Alexander, William Devane … Director: Lynne Littman Genre: Drama Format: Widescreen … Language: English Awards: Academy Award® Nominee …
Kathy in fl:
I missed it, also, and found out on yahoo tv listings that it will be replayed Saturday night, at 7 pm central, on cbs. (don’t know if it’s just being replayed locally, so I would still check your local station!)
I watched the movie Testament and will never forget it. It was released in 1983, the same year as The Day After. Great cast,and was nominated for some Oscars. It has much more in depth character development then The Day After. It is avaiable for purchase (DVD) on Amazon. Here is a link to a review by Roger Ebert http://tinyurl.com/mjdyw It is a gut wrenching movie. If Jericho turns out to be anything like Testament, I think it will get people prepping.
Also, what is with poor Lawrence, kansas? I watched a movie, a couple of months ago, on tv, called “the day after” about a nuke going off there.
NEMO - when was the Glenn Beck show that discussed the clerics telling Muslims to leave LA etc? I tried to find the transcript and couldn’t. thanks.
Sam: He discussed on last nights show and on the night before. He have discussed it the night before that also, but I didn’t catch that. I know he said there were links about it on his website. Search for Dawood. That was one of the names of the people involved somehow.
Also, for the person who wanted to know where to buy a geiger counter or anyone wanting to prep better for a nuclear event of any size, please visit: http://www.ki4u.com/
I bought my civil defense geiger counter (exactly like the one in the show— which the town wouldn’t have BTW! They have all been sold at auction to places like KI4U. I also bought dosimeters. These look like test tubes that you can clip to your pocket and they measure your total accumulated dose, not just what’s there at the moment. You can reset them with the charger that comes with them. I can totally vouch for the quality of these products as being as advertised, and excellent customer service. At the very least, everyone should download the FREE copy of Nuclear War Survival Skills— this was written by a very knowledgeable man from the Oakwood National Laboratory (Federal Nuclear Laboratory). I also bought a hard copy to have on hand, but you can download the free copy and print it out if that is easier for you. This is an excellent prep item, even for non-nuclear events. It discusses many ways to purify water, build a impromptu oil lamp, use impromptu toilet facilites, on and on. Very, very helpful info. And you can’t beat FREE!
Yes, I know, I’m a freak. The only gal in my neck of the woods with her own personal geiger counter, but heck, my town can always rely on my know to radio in readings so everyone can benefit since I know my town and surrounding communities have no intention of spending money on something so “useless”.
It was Tuesday, 9–19–2006. I love his show, very up to date and he has even mentioned avian flu once as possible impending disaster.
It was really, really bad.
It’s dificult for me to suspend disbelief THAT much.
Perhaps the SciFi channel will pick it up after CBS cancels it.
I need to get TIVO, way too many commercials too.
I am sorry sam in az, I was responding to your inquiry of the glenn beck show.
Sorry about all the typos above. I usually proofread my posts, but I didn’t this time, and boy does it show.
Concerning the comments about telling all muslims to get out of Los Angeles, etc. immediately:
Please see the transcripts of the shows here: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0609/19/gb.01.html Look for it about half way down.
and here: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0609/20/gb.01.html Look for it here about 3/4 of the way down, converstation with Hamid Mir.
He will probably mention it again in today’s show.
This is a link to an article in the Canada Free Press http://tinyurl.com/mjdyw interview with the reporter about the story mentioned by Glen Beck.
ummmmm… science teacher???? not the right link.
oops, sorry about that! Try this one: http://tinyurl.com/n23ay
sam in az – at 13:24 when was the Glenn Beck show that discussed the clerics telling Muslims to leave LA etc? I tried to find the transcript and couldn’t. thanks.
Glenn Beck had it on both the radio and TV yesterday (9–20). The radio interview with Hamid Mir (someone I have been following very closely, I read every interview that I can find) is far better than what was on CNN. They talked for nearly an hour. Very chilling. And none of it is ‘new’. In 1998 I was browsing thru Congresses web site and found a just filed report on this very thing. It was yanked within hours. It’s why I started prepping 8 years ago. Our enemies are very patient. There are many books on it since. Yossef Bodansky wrote the first one. He also was the author of the report that I read.
NEMO – at 13:54 Yes, I know, I’m a freak. The only gal in my neck of the woods with her own personal geiger counter
I got you beat. I got two! They are cool aren’t they?
Thanks for the info re the Glenn Beck show everyone. Never saw his show before. Will catch it today and will check out previous transcripts.
Have 5 sets of radiation monitoring equipment. (1 for each residence plus vehicles) Each has dosimeters, chargers, batteries, a CD-700, 715 and 717 plus a copy f the manuals for each plus a hard copy of nuclear war survival skills. DW and I each travel with a bottle of KI tablets.
LMWatBullRun: I have a NukAlert in my purse (tied it to the strap so it can’t fall out when I topple my purse over.) It chirps at different rates when it picks up gamma rays. About $150 from KI4U. My husband had one in his computer bag, but the bag was stolen. I hope the thieves saw the nukalert in the bag and Sh** themselves!!
Glad to know I’m not the only one who is aware that a nuclear event could be a real possibility. It gets a little lonely out here in Nutso land.
Just watched it on the tivo tonight. Entertaining enough, hopefully some people will start prepping because of it.
One of the fellas that called in to Glenn Beck’s show today said he watched it with his dad. He said after the show, he and his Dad sat down and started making a list and they are beginning to prep like it’s 1950 all over again! That’s at least one person who it made a difference in their thoughts. Whooo hooo!
TreasureIslandGal – at 10:59 --- anyone notice how there was no “pulse” initially? wouldn’t that have brought everything down sooner? -and the cars were not affected at all by that. -oh yeah, ‘cuz it didn’t happen.
Kim – at 11:32 --- I wondered what caused the power to go out… EMP (electromagnetic pulse) from the nuclear blast? If so, all of the vehicles would have been inoperable, radios and phones wouldn’t have worked.
EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) will only take out electronics for about 10–25 miles if the initial nuke blast were a ground burst (usually, a ground burst could take place up to 1000 feet above the ground). To take out the continental US, an air burst would have to occur somewhere between 100 and 200 miles above the ground.
From the looks of the initial ‘shroom clouds in the show, what occurred were ground bursts, or very low level air bursts. My guess, based on how the show conveyed the sighting of the burst in Denver, Jericho is about 50–75 miles from where the blast occurred. But, Denver is about 175 miles from the Kansas border. Is “Jericho” in Kansas, or Colorado?
More than likely, the power went out in the town because the grid that ran from Denver out to the outlying towns was destroyed.
When much of the Northeast’s power grid went down a couple of years ago, I hit the road immediately (packed and out in 30 minutes) and was on my way to a hotel a couple of hours away that still had power (and A/C, it was August lol!). What struck me the most were the extraordinarily long lines of cars stopped at all the gas stations all along the way. ALL the power was out. No one was pumping - not one. We don’t think about how many travelers move through a gas station in a given hour, but there they were, all lined up - waiting. We were without power for 3 days. I always wondered what all those cars lined up at the gas station ended up doing.
The new Grey’s Anatomy has a hospital overflowing with flu patients. It just began, so I don’t know what kind or anything else. ABC network.
Looks like plague, and somehow the IDC (CDC?) is already there in moonsuits, quarantining the surgeons.
Boy I can’t wait until “LOST” comes back on October 4th.
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/jericho/digital/
I watched Jerico this afternoon. Pretty good. (I don’t know how to do tiny url.)
Adnan el Shukrijumah
Google that name; this guy is being searched for by every LEO under the sun because of his connection with the “American Hiroshima”.
I know the topic has strayed a long way from bird flu, but talk around the water cooler today was about Jericho and Shukrijumah . . . and then I laid the avian flu threat out as well. Things got quiet real fast.
People are starting, ever so slowly, to pay attention.
LMWatBullRun – at 18:10
I envy you! That’s what I wanted to do!
Bronco Bill – at 19:55
I try to explain to people the need for missle defense, (two nukes 500 miles up, end of story), and they look at you like you like you came up with some insane scenerio where a bird disease kills a third of the human population! Silly me!
OK. I promise to use spel ceck an grammmer ceck on alll futuure postinggs!
Jefiner – at 23:24 Adnan el Shukrijumah
Jefiner, I’m wondering why was he the topic of conversation today over any other run of the mill terriorist — had he been spotted or done something new or was he just added to the list today or what?
There has been a lot of buzz about this guy since after 9/11. It may be that there is more concern with:
It is my understanding that the reason the FBI is concerned about him is that he has extensive training in chemistry, physics and bomb making.
Am I losing sleep over this guy? No. But I am thinking of making “Toujours pret” my new motto—always ready. Isn’t that what prepping is all about?
disclaimer: information noted above is not intended to slander or incriminate anyone who is peaceful and law abiding
OK, I get it! Yep, that latest call for all Muslims to leave the U.S…..or at least leave New York….that could work to our advantage….sigh. Ditto your disclaimer.
iwoi-
He’s the same one that Glenn beck, and others, were talking about(the pilot)…re: imminent threat. (see nemo@ 14:27).
Okay….maybe we should get back to the flu….as much interest as I and several others have in this subject, we really shouldn’t get into discussions about nukes and Ramadan and Iran and all that stuff. Takes away from the credibility of FluWiki as a Pandemic Info site. And I’m just as guilty as all…
Here is an article about the 12th imam (note: I am not a muslim and so cannot vouch that this account of the the 12th imam is completely correct… if anyone knows of any part of this article to be untrue, please post and educate me).
He has been on the FBI list for years. He has a 5 million dollar bounty on his head. This guy is more dangerous than Atta. He is a nuclear ‘expert’. He is an American. I can go on and on. Google him. He’s small, 5′ 4″ 135 lbs. I’m been tapping/following his dreams. I know that sounds funny, but I’m getting close! I the love chase…..and he knows it!!
Jericho screened here last night, Australia, but it was up against Two and a Half Men. Saw bits of Jericho in the ad breaks, as I still had the remote if not the ultimate say.
Don’t be too hard on yourself there, BB. After getting a grasp on the potential of pan flu, I’d gladly slide back to the old 60′s 70′s & 80′s mindset of going up in a nuclear flash to drowning in my own lungs from H5N1. Heck, after 1000 REMS, the nervous system shuts down anyhow and you don’t feel anything, just go off like a light switch. Prepping for a nuclear event is easy compared to a pandemic.
Jericho was not bad for mainstream TV (beat the heck out of the ABC Bird Flu movie), but at 8 PM you still have the decency laws limiting what can be shown (kids need to go to bed before it gets real). Oh, and to resolve the gas pumping issue everyone was so freaky about, they were using a hand-operated diaphragm pump like you see on a lot of farm fuel tanks and was used back in WW II to fuel aircraft in the Pacific islands. So, score one reality point. And the EMP observation was correct, closer to the ground it reduces the reach of the wave of pulse exponentially. Now, my question at the end was “are the birds dying from radiation, or avian flu?”
Bronco Bill, you are right. Can the Mods please just erase all non-flu stuff?
Hear ya, BB (I did post disclaimers)
Careful about how much you kill off. Like over-using antibiotics, you may kill some of the useful things too, and create a new mod-resistant strain of anon posts that it will take weeks to eradicate. (humor intended).
Now, my question at the end was “are the birds dying from radiation, or avian flu?”
‘twould add to the suspense now, wouldn’t it? ;-)
WACKO – at 00:41 --- I wasn’t thinking about removing any posts, I thhink they should stay for continuity, but the thread had really deviated from the TV show “Jericho” and observations of prepping, and moved into a subject of, shall we say, opinionative political subject matter. (is that a real phrase?) Ergo, the suggestion to move back to “Jericho” or PanFlu.
PF51 v. 12imam
Commentary at noon.
Back to Jerico.
I was thinking the birds died from the shockwave of the blast, but actually in retrospect it is probably more likely to be radiaton. The thing is, that lady was just standing there, possibly getting a dose herself.
I pretty much liked the show, especially the part about how the the mayor’s son that kept saying different things for where he had been, like the army, navy, and something else I can’t remember, ended up helping the bus of kids. Of course, his father couldn’t say he was proud of him, only that his grandfather would have been proud of him.
I will watch it again.
About those birds. I don’t think they just “dropped straight from the sky”. I couldn’t tell what they were, but if they were ducks or geese, they were probably flying at around 500 to 1000 feet. It’s possible they died some ways back and fell at an angle; it’s also possible that they were blinded by the flash and just kept flying until they crashed into each other. Of course, the show will have us believe they dropped from exactly where they died…
BB thinks the director put them for dramatization, to scare the blonde…
mountainlady, I think Jake is giving various explanations for where he’s been for the last 5 years because he doesn’t want anybody to know that he’s been in prison during that time.
Hmmm, wonder if any of the escaped convicts on the bus are buddies of his????
BB - “couldn’t tell what they were, but if they were ducks or geese, they were probably flying at around 500 to 1000 feet.”
You need to sell your preps and upgrade to HDTV on a big plasma :)
The couple that they did close ups on were all black and looked like crows to me.
nopower – at 08:25 --- Daffy Duck had black feathers…. ;-)
Grey’s Anatomy debut fall season show had a story line of “flu like” illness filling the emergency room, with the hospital shutting down and quarantine of patients and doctors. At first I thought it was going to be about the BF before it went to plague conclusion.
Disappointing ending…they let everyone go home and take some pills and all was well, no mention of prepping.
Did anyone watch Grey’s Anatomy last night on ABC? They had people coming into the ER left and right, caughing etc. Something about the plague.
Bronco Bill – at 02:39 BB thinks the director put them for dramatization, to scare the blonde…
Shame on you Bronco Bill for making such a sexist, stereotypical comment about blondes being more fearful . . . OMG there’s a bug!
HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA!!! ROTFLMAO!!! :-)
I suppose I could have gone on and on and described her as “that woman who might have been Jake’s love interest except that he left town and she got engaged to some other guy” person! :-)
Disappointing ending…they let everyone go home and take some pills and all was well, no mention of prepping.
We gotta remember that these shows are aired for the “entertainment value” (as high or low as that may be) and the producers don’t care whether or not a message is sent out. This “flu patient” influx seemed to come out of nowhere, even surprising the doctors. The show didn’t mention prepping probably because it wouldn’t fit into the storyline…
I’m not sure how that would have played out:
Husband of head-wound patient: “I feel sick. I think I have the flu”
Dr. Bailey: “Sir? SIR? You’re going to be okay. Have you prepped for a flu pandemic yet? NO?!? Well, then you just get your butt outta my ER and go on home!”
TRay 75 “Prepping for a nuclear event is easy compared to a pandemic.”
That’s really funny (ironic) — I just got into an argument with my husband’s psychiatrist over this very question — would I be more scared of a nuclear attack on my city or a deadly pandemic. (I chose pandemic as more scary, but to be honest, I didn’t like either option. Is there a third door?) (-:
NEMO – at 10:31 Why did they have to put in a busload of escaped convicts? This is scary enough.
This is network TV, I think we’re lucky they didn’t have a Swedish Bikini Team bus stranded somewhere to perk up the ratings.
A former Lurker – at 11:03 The lady did say “please don’t steal from me” though
I actually think she said “Please don’t steal for me.”
Y’all are sharp. I didn’t notice alot of the inconsistancy you mentioned. Obviously I will be among the many sounding a thunderous…DOH!
sam in az – at 13:24 Here’s a link to a news story on that. Be sure to go to the bottom of the page and look through those additional links to other related articles. In my mind there are far too many people with the right backgrounds and in the right places saying the same thing to just dismiss this out-of-hand.
Ahh.. it worked, what kind of duck or goose is that BB?
Don’t know. Graphics downloads are blocked here at work. All I see is the little box with a red X. I’ll check it tonite when I get home…
That’s the crow that was in my back yard last week!!! Danged thing was eating the birdseed out of our tray!!
AVERAGE CONCERNED MOM!!!!! Did you have your meeting?? If so, pick up the old thread or start a new one & tell us how things went!!!!!!!
Yup — it’s all there on the Psychiatry and Pandemic thread — I’d put a link but the kids are screaming! It was….. weird! (-:
okey-doke, I’ll go read it!!!
nopower – at 13:59 --- Home now. Yup. That there’s a crow. 3 of ‘em, in fact.
The birds looked pretty big to be crows. I thought they might be buzzards. The interesting fact is that the blonde chickie stopped her car to get out and look when it went thump, thump. The scene showed dead birds in her lane back to the horizon. Did she manage to miss all the others?
And regarding EMP - according to my DH who is an electronics engineer, it has absolutely zero effect on electronic equipment and repair parts that are not in operation at the time of the pulse. If your car is parked or the radio/TV turned off, the pulse won’t get it. If it IS in operation, it takes more than “sittin around” time to recover. You actually have to replace the affected pieces. And in case you are wondering, it won’t drain batteries, either.
I remember Testament too as an extraordinary movie, particularly since it came on right after The Day After - where we were first introduced to the concept of Nuclear Winter. The mother in the story resolved to kill herself and all the little orphan kids by carbon-monoxide poisoning in a car locked in a garage. She changes her mind when one of kids asks her why they are just sitting in the car. Hell - it was 1983 and I can still describe huge parts of both stories. The one that really got me, though, was “World War III.” Every time a jet goes over, my blood chills. I still can’t shake it.
BB 12:27
Just color me blonde!
Just reread the off subject material on thread and visited links…if I get a radiation detector key chain…I think my family and friends will take me, with force, to the nearest nut house!!!
no name – at 00:09 Don’t tell them it’s a radiation detector! Just tell them it’s an alien detector! That’s what I did and they understood and left me alone.
JWB…I thought you were going to bed!!! Yes, I think alien detector would work.
My favorite holiday is Halloween because the aliens get to be themselves. Neptonia from Neptune comes out in me!
A couple comments on the JEricho film-
-The burst seen was a large detonation based on the apparent size of the cloud/fireball. There was no characteristic ‘double flash’ noted. It wasn’t more than 100 miles away to the west, and appeared to be less. With average wind speeds in the central midwest and direction from W to E, I would expect fallout to start arriving 2–4 hours from initial burst. It could be less depending on the weather. There was no apparent fallout within that time. This appeared to be an inconsistency.
- The depiction of the deranged ‘ham operator’ I found to be grossly offensive (as a former ham.) and did not appear to contribute to the story line.
- There was no explanation of or reason why the power would have stayed on so long after the attack. This appeared to be an inconsistency. One of the warning signs for a nuclear event is the power going off in remote areas unexpectedly.
-
Another thing I noticed is that the bus was marked “Elementary” Here in Texas the buses are just marked with the name of the school district. I think in some ways the directors are trying too hard to make us think. Also, the mayor told everybody just to go home and they would sort it all out in the morning. The town’s people nodded and we had the feeling that they were going to do just that. Do you honestly think people would go home and go to bed after all of that?
I saw the first episode. Don’t think the series will make it. And it certainly is no primer for prepping. Now if they could have combined almost documentary “how-to-do” whatever with drama based on historical accounts of survival emergencies, they could have immediately gained a hard-core of devotees. And the base would have been much larger than fluwikians.
It is not too late for them.
Maybe the writers for the show will accidently google us up, and really get lucky.
Does anyone know if the pilot episode will repeat? My computer can’t handle the Innertube version. Thanks.
It’s back on on Sat night.
Tonight
I don’t understand the head-on crash of Jake’s car heading west (he was presumably looking at the mushroom cloud in Denver) and the stationwagon that drifted into his lane (why? what was that driver looking at?). Maybe he lied about going “back to San Diego” and was headed East, but then what was he staring at? Either way, I wonder if there were 2 mushroom clouds visible. Or maybe he was just thinking about the landscape he had missed and was leaving. Or maybe every detail doesn’t have to have meaning.
I hope that the show writers do Google us. It’d be a hoot being a technical consultant for a disaster series…….
Jane – at 20:26 --- I caught the same thing. I couldn’t figure out why they were looking in opposite directions at the same cloud…
More on Hamid Mir and Adnan el Shukrijumah today…from the Northeast Intelligence Network….
23 September 2006: You can’t believe all the news that’s originated from Saudi sources, printed in French newspapers, and broadcast on major news outlets throughout the U. S., Canada, and Europe.
That’s the word from Hamid Mir, Osama bin Laden’s official biographer and the only journalist to interview the elusive al Qaeda emir in the wake of 9/11.
On Saturday, September 23, the French newspaper L’Est Republicain reported that Osama bin Laden had died in Pakistan. The cause of his death, according to the report, was a “very serious case of typhoid” which led to “paralysis of his internal organs.” The newspaper, which claimed to have obtained the news from a credible Saudi source, said that the al Qaeda chieftain, who remains the most wanted man in the world, died on August 23.
In an exclusive release to the Northeast Intelligence Network and Canada Free Press, Mr. Mir called the report “rubbish” and said that it represented “old wine in an new bottle,” an apparent allusion to Congressman Curt Weldon’s statement last March to The Philadelphia Inquirer that bin Laden had died in Iran.
Mir maintains that bin Laden is alive, well, and living the lawless frontier of Pakistan. He says that the al Qaeda leader completed his plans for an “American Hiroshima” - - a nuclear attack on major metropolitan areas throughout the U. S. and has gained the approval of some Muslim scholars to kill millions of American civilians.
The delay of the attack, Mir says, may have been caused by bin Laden’s desire to aid President George W. Bush in his 2004 bid for re-election. The emir, according to the Pakistani reporter, believes that the policies of the current administration serve to increase the political strength of his terrorist organization. Mir maintains that bin Laden’s willingness to bolster the Bush campaign came with his release of a video statement shortly before American voters went to the polls.
Mir says that Adnan el Shukrijumah, the al Qaeda agent who has been singled out by bin Laden to commandeer the American Hiroshima, has been given orders “to increase the level and the scope” of the attack.
Last week, Abu Dawood, the leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, warned U. S. Muslims that they must leave the U. S. without further warning.
I wish this was all just a movie.
Somewhere in the world at some time a crude nuke will be smuggled into some city center or harbor and be detonated. Not one terrorist expert in the world will contravene the previous statement. Only worse news could invalidate that prediction, a viral asteroid.
A crewel joke by the universe would be to hit us with both; just after we realize BF has gone sustained H2H & air travel has spread it to the different continents, we get slammed by the bad guys. Would that be the ultimate in irony or what?
Bad guys would be no more immune than others. Might level the playing field.
RE Jerico: What, these people don’t have battery powered radios? I can see the TV stations being out, and most metropolitan radio stations. But there are plenty of radio stations in small towns that wouldn’t be hit (barring a massive EMP), and AM broadcasts can travel long distances. And even if ALL radio broadcasting in North America somehow was cut out, if you had a shortwave set you could pick up Europe, Asia, South America, and find out what’s going on from them. These people shouldn’t be so in the dark, in every sense of the phrase.
Something funny going on, here…
Regarding Grey’s Anatomy perhaps Americans aren’t aware that Canada got episode two shown by accident rather than the premiere episode. The episode we watched is McDreamy’s wife realizing her marriage is over when she finds the panties in her hubbys tux. Grey is going to decide by that evening if she’s going for McDreamy or the vet. Looks like (can’t think of all their names) “chubby cheeks guy living with Grey” has invited his girlfriend to move in after the Chief finds her living in the hospital basement. Sandra Oh is caught in her underwear on top of her surgeon boyfriend by his parents (his mother is the mother from hell for Sandra). Blondey is busy making hundreds of muffins in her grieve over the death of Dennis(?) and at the end “the nazi” comes to the house to talk to Blondey. There you have it so now you are caught up as well.
Check out Northeast Intelligence Network on Wikepedia, fmi. You may or may not be alarmed at its’ possibly far,far right position and its “reliance on bible prophecies as sources”, etc.. Plus…
JWB - at 12;15 - your post is IMO so much more than our weary souls can/should have to handle right now as we’re trying as best we can to help ourselves, friends, and families, communities, etc… become aware of another threat. You add this into the pot and it all feels hopeless…time to get the old gun out and bid the world adieu. Thanks for the heads up but… please, how can *that* info help us be more energized and effective in communicating re. bf/ai. I truely feel mixed about this as I am always interested in ‘knowing’ what is knowable rather than avoiding an opportunity…even if it is bad news. This ‘news’ is totally out of our control, at least while TPTB are in office (& that *could* mean in the M.E., Asia, the U.S.,or anywhere…). Thanks
And I think we may be vearing a bit too far off the track of a Pandemic Flu preparation board…
BB Thanks. <whew>
Sorry. It’s something I have been following for awhile. I thought that it may come up in a future episode of Jericho. You’re right, it doesn’t belong on a flu board, and we all have plenty to think about as it is. I won’t bring it up or discusss it anymore. Sorry and Thanx.
JWK - & much thanks back to you. ;)
ie. JWB
It’s on here, right now.
Well, after this 2nd episode I think this show is a joke. There is far too much false and misleading information in it for me, it seems to apply to actual survival techniques about as much as the tv show Survivor (which is near zero). And the drama, or attempt at such, is about enough to make you gag. Nope, probably won’t watch it anymore, too much fictionalized Hollywood for me.
The blonde really kicked butt tonight. Score one for my gender!
The blonde who didn’t find it odd that the local sheriff’s deputies didn’t know where to get gas in their own county?? The blonde who lives in a town of a couple thousand and didn’t notice that the two deputies in a department of probably no more than a dozen are complete strangers to her??
Yes, she really kicked butt :)
But then I’ve never lived in a small town, rural area - maybe that is common.
Yeah, I think the blonde and Jake are both at about the same intelligence level… she’s not alarmed that these “cops” have tattoos on the back of their necks, that they don’t know where to get gas, that they aren’t talking on the radio; and Jake bombs shut the entrance to the salt mine where a bunch of residents have taken cover, because he doesn’t want the rain water filling the shaft… excuse me, is there a mine in existance that’s built so that its shaft fills with rainwater??? Okay, well just bury me in the salt mine, or maybe I’ll take refuge in my basement after being sure to put plastic and duct tape over the closed windows… that’ll protect me from radiation. What a hoot!
So are those of us who missed the showing tonight going to be able to view it online, as we did the first episode? Just got home from class and was hoping to get up to speed here.
Meantime, the one glaring thing that most folks are missing is that fallout falls regardless of rain. SInce the show established that they were only about 2 hrs downwind of Denver, they would have been getting fallout overnight. By the time the rainstorm appeared, most of them would be seriously dying anyhow.
The fallout would produce a field intensity of approximately 30,000 rem/hr an hour after the blast. Even if we gave them 7 hours before it fell, the intensity would only have subsided to about 3,000 rem/hr. Since a cumulative dose of about 400 rem would be enough to kill half of those exposed, they would be seriously cooked. It would take 2 days before the intensity fell to about 300 rem/hr, which would only permit MINUTES of exposure, and then only in the direst of emergencies. Another two weeks would bring it down to 30 rem/hr, which would permit short trips between shelters, as long as they decontaminated well before tracking the crap in with them.
The coming atractions seem to show them running around the following moring on wet streets, right after the rain would have brought the mother lode right down on their town and environs. They are losing me quickly.
I do, however think it is a nice touch that they label each episode in code in the intro, but very few of us are able to copy it.
Eccles - I hate code! However, they gave it away when the man was sticking the red push pins in the map. He was marking cities where the bombs hit across the U.S. Of course they didn’t show them all. gina
HARN -
I’ll betcha I’m the only one on FW who heard what he actually was receiving. By the way, nice antique rig they used. The FT-101F is a real classic.
The most factual part of last night’s episode was the state of preparedness of the town. Actually, they probably had more than most towns that size in the U.S. Our town doesn’t even have a library so we won’t even have a copy of “Our Friend the Atom”.
I was wondering who was able to understand the morse code while watching it and if it actually said the cities he was writing down or if it said something like “Congratulations, you know morse code!”
Eccles, what you pointed out about the fallout is the most glaring example of why this show is all hollywood with no substance. I AM glad that we watched it however… as I was laughing about the absurdities of it all, DH made several comments that prove to me that he knows next to nothing about nuclear fallout. Time to have him read the free online book ‘Nuclear War Survival Skills’. I really just assumed that he knew better, but apparently not. I dearly hope that nobody will rely on the things they see in this tv show to protect them in such a situation should it ever arise.
No Power and Kim - you both have a point! I think the producers could have made this show more substantive but instead decided to go for melodrama. Too bad.
From a pepping standpoint, you have to wonder how much food there is in the town grocery store. They seem to be taking large amounts out…
I also wonder what the folks in the salt mine are going to eat, but maybe I missed them bringing food in.
Well I’ll admit that I didn’t see the first show. I had no idea that this show was comedy! I thought that leaving out the canned laughter was a neat trick. I was in stiches over the discussion on the premature baby being left in the incubator as they prepared for the fallout onslaught. “We can leave him here. He’ll be safe in this, and it even has ventilation”. I turned it off at that point.
JWB – at 11:13
You are the kind of person that TV producers hate. I bet you even think “American Idol” and “Survivor” are rigged. :-)
HH
I can’t make a call on either of those shows. My attention span last about 60 seconds with them. I’ve tried watching them with other people, but I just can’t. My in-laws think I’m crazy. If they only really knew. 8-D
f-w
I am more interested in what they are going to be breathing. Any ventilation system would be sucking the fallout in with the air.
But that’s OK. they aren’t going to be needing food, as they are only going to be down there overnight. Watch. You’ll see. The next morning, they’ll all be running around like chipmunks.
In reality world, that would be followed by hair and skin falling off in chunks, but I’ll bet not on this show.
Nopower- I didn’t write it down, so I don’t have it verbatim, but the first string he copied just said Omega alert (or some such alert, I didn’t write it down), two minute warning
(Interesting note, they sent the two as text, not using the much faster morse symbol for the number 2. I think, I didn’t write it down)
The remaining strings were not complete enough to convey a full set of words, but no city names were sent. I would have remembered that. the second string he copied was only a few letters. AAnd the code sending speed was rather slow, only about 12 WPM or so. Not much can be said in that sound bite.
JWB – at 11:31
IMO, your attention span is probably too long to be able to watch those shows. I can’t tolerate them either. I prefer shows that move so quickly that you really have to pay attention or you miss critical details, rather than something that I can follow if I occassionally pass through the room.
I actually find it more fascinating to watch the people that are watching the show. I think to myself, “Wow, they are hypnotised and transfixed that easily! I should have been a T.V. producer. I would be ruling the world by now!”
Hillbilly Bill – at 11:35 Yes. It’s sort of like playing baseball. The only sport I know of that you can participate in and actually have time to take a nap.
Wonder who was able to collect all the info about which dozen or so cities were hit? How would that happen? Also wonder who he really is, that “policeman” from St. Louis? Where did Jake get the gun, anyway? Guess he really didn’t have a compound fracture of the leg. I’m still going to watch to see how they deal with being cut off.
btw, couldn’t they (the writers) just have had an EMP and not so much radiation and still have a ton of problems?
“The Day After” is just now starting on SciFi channel. Waaay more realistic about survival in the aftermath…
“The Day After” is just now starting on SciFi channel. Waaay more realistic about survival in the aftermath…
Nova
Thanks! I haven’t seen that movie since it came out in 1983!
The front of my forehead is much flatter than it was before the show came on. I’ll need to spackle the nice hole in my living room wall also, where I was pounding my head !Arrgggghhhh! I was hoping it would get people thinking and prepping, but there is no way!! Has anyone else noticed these writers are geographically retarded as well? Have never even spoken to a person who lives in a small town? Didn’t even read the most cursory research on fallout?? This show just pisses me off!
NEMO: are you referring to Jericho or The Day After? I always thought The Day After was very realistic. The irony of this whole thing is that I have been following the Bird Flu threat for a long time but not feeling too pressured to finish preps. Then the rumors about the possiblity of a nuclear attack from terrorists during this Ramadan was covered by Glenn Beck and various Internet sites and it got me off my butt. I guess survival is survival is survival…
PS. I am also a woman who carries a Nukalert on her keychain!
“The Day After”, on my list of the top 5 most depressing movies ever screened. After that, I decided living through a nuclear war was the least desirable option and put off having children for over 10 years. Now, 10 years later and looking at a pandemic from human adapted H5N1, I regret changing my mind and having them if they will have to die as the kids in Asia have so far.
I suggest we begin to consider our lives re-compartmentalized to 3 new classifications:
B-TSHTF - before TSHTF, now, and the past 2 years. W-TSHTF - when TSHTF, the period in which sustained efficient H2H infection begins and becomes known to the public via media and governmental publicity spinners - likely beginning a week after the swan goes feet up and the wikians dive for our SIP positions. A-TSHTF - after the calming corporate voices start coughing up blood and dropping dead from Tamiflu-resistant strains of H5N1 and using bogus N95 masks their employers purchased from low-bid off-shore suppliers over the Internet after finding all domestic supplies were already in government vaults. This period will define the next 500 to 800 years of mankind, like the Black Death and the Little Ice Age influenced the prior 800 years. One point, it will likely see the end of human induced global warming.
Now, let’s see VIACOM make a TV show out of that!
Nemo - The one that had my WIFE screaming at the show was when the bad guys kept asking for a gas station. There they were in Kansas for Criminy sake, with farms everywhere, and each one with its own gas supply for the equipment.
Anyone who has ever lived anywhere outside of LaLa land or New Yaork would freakin know that!
I would say these people are ignoramuses, but that would be unfair to the other ignoramuses.
just a silly comment:
i believe that there are no coincidences…I can’t believe that my post on the 21st (7 days ago, exactly) i posted about “the day after” at the same time as science teacher. I noticed it was on tonite and went to mention it here, but of course we are all so quick! i haven’t seen this movie in 20 years and now it’s on twice since this summer and will be replayed again on Oct. 8th. I wonder if tptb are trying to prep us,subtlety, with all of these movies and shows?! Either way, I still wonder why they are all taking place near lawrence, kansas? I live in St. Louis- maybe the coasts aren’t so bad (though toooo expensive, i used to live in new england!). (putting away the tinfoil hat…)
And to stay on topic… I do agree that hollywood has taken a lot of poetic license (and when don’t they… have you ever seen a movie adaptation of a bestseller?) but in my opinion, I am just glad that they are at least trying. ONE person who preps because of this is one less person we’ll have to worry about later.
TRay75: I watched a network TV show recently about all the possible end of the world scenarios. One of the things that truly shocked me was during the segment about the potential comet of doom they asked a variety of people what they would do if they knew a comet was coming and they had a year to live and knew that would be end. Two unrelated people said that even though they knew it was selfish they would have a baby so they could have the experience (one was a man and one was a woman). Yeah, I’d say that’s the ultimate selfishness. But, the truth is that we don’t know for sure if the horrors are coming.
In that entire program only one person…one person…said they would fall to their knees and pray. Most everyone else said they would party, start smoking, stop working, eat all the fattening foods they wanted, not pay their bills. Only one person said they would pray. I found that a very enlightening take on the human condition.
Nova – at 22:12, I saw that show myself, but with a lot of years of human experience and being born during and growing to adulthood during the Cold War I can understand it.
If you put a “heavenly body” (i.e. comet or asteroid - I did my college thesis on that in 77) into the equation you in effect take away the safety and faith of all but the most devoutly practicing religious minds. It becomes subconciously perceived as some form of proof that their deity of worship doesn’t care about or favor them. Pretty quickly, the fabric holding social order and morals erodes.
That is one of my biggest concerns of H5N1 rolling completely to the “Dark Side”. I had decided that after 5 years of no huge collapse following the break up of the Soviet Union, relatively friendly relations between Russia and the US, and about 25,000 nukes being decommissioned, there was reason for hope. A year after my daughter was born, 9/11, and I have had second thoughts ever since.
I can understand why few would drop in prayer. Speaking rhetorical - if everything on which ones world is based is about to go away, then maybe belief in a loving, caring deity may also be in error. It is not a deliberate thought, it is subconscious.
Personally, I pray with my children each night, despite my own doubts and experiences, to give them something I missed in my childhood - as sense of belonging and having a spiritual “parent” on which to base hope during hopelessness. If H5N1 is humanity’s grand finale I think there may be a serious spiritual breakdown before there are huge numbers of dead begining to fill the streets. But in the end most people of any and all or no spiritual background will think something akin to “Why me, God?”
Decades ago a wise man once said that there are no atheist in a foxhole. Duck and cover!
Please understand I am in no way attacking any faith or belief, just expressing an observation I researched back before we were sure what killed the dinosaurs. Now my daughter has even asked me if we had dinosaurs when I was a little boy. I had hoped that she would never have to know the underlying fear my generation grew up with, but over the last 2 years I have come to feel that old familiar fear at the core of my being.
“Jericho” may be dramatized tripe, hopelessly flawed in it’s technical foundation on many levels, and “The Day After” one of the biggest sales tools in the history of Prozac, but how may people remember that after the first screening of “The Day After” there was a follow-up live forum by Peter Jennings that got the world talking about how a nuclear war was not worth surviving? Within a decade the danger of a 30,000 warhead exchange was gone from this planet. If mass entertainment can get people to think, to talk, to wake up, to see the dangers, even if the solutions are not what we know will work, then it has done a service. It creates a “Teachable Moment”.
TRay75: Wow. Impressive observations. Thank you for sharing.
TRay75 - In one sense, the conversion of the horror from a 30,000 warhead exchange to the “American Hiroshima” with half a dozen to a dozen singly targetted detonations is that it makes it more horrible.
In the Great Exchange, pretty no matter how well equipped you are or where you live, the resultant conditions will be virtually unsurvivable in the long run. In the much smaller terrorist attack, a great many people living in most of the land area of the US would have the ability to survive, and conditions would not be assured to be short-term lethal. But the economic and political chaos that would result would create an even bigger collapse of supply and infrastructure than the pandemic we fear.
As for prayer, the one point my wife always brings up when people feel that their rayers aren’t listened to: “God hears all prayers. Sometimes the answer is NO.”
I live in Fort Collins, just north of Denver. My wife has family in Topeka,KS. Most summers we take the drive to visit.
You can’t see the mountains to the west, even on a clear day, in Kansas. You can from Eastern Colorado. I don’t know the exact spot but it is not that far from Denver.
Also the colorado/kansas border is hours of driving from Denver.
It would appear even the simple facts are wrong on the show. It would be impossible to see the mushroom cloud to the west and the mountains.
Doug - That was another badly bungled detail. The mushroom cloud would have had to have been absolutely huge to see it from that distance. Much more likely (and not even shown) would be the bright flash and fireball on the horizon which accompanied actual detonation.
‘Jericho’ is rubbish and I’ll waste no more time watching or discussing it.
As regards the nuclear threat, have the following comments-
For a somewhat dated but still relevant treatise on the problem of “third-party” nuclear proliferation, read “One Point Safe”. When I finished that book I bought 5 complete sets of fallout monitoring equipment and 5 copies of the current version of “Nuclear War Survival Skills” by Cresson Kearney. I don’t think the devices the terrorists use will have to be crude; according to a Washington Post article I read some years back, there are over 80 unaccounted for formerly Soviet backpack nuclear weapons. Given the present ongoing economic meltdown in the former Soviet Union, my expectation is that some of those weapons will be sold to terrorist organizations and employed against the US.
As regards the effects of such a weapon, which has a rated yield of 22 KT, from the bomb effects computer that I got with my copy of “The effects of nuclear weapons” a 22KT surface burst would result in 1 psi overpressure out to just over 2 miles. 0.25 psi out to 5.2 miles. The fireball will be visible for just under a second and be about 0.2 miles in diameter.
Eccles, I am afraid that your intensity calcs are off by at least a factor of 10. The output I get from AirRad, the fallout simulation program that Los Alamos used to use, which I got from the author online, indicates a much lower 1 hour intensity and so does TEONW formulae from which the program was derived. See also TEONW chapter 9 pp 425 and 426. For the 22 KT device in question, intensity depends in large measure upon the area over which the fission products are spread, and this depends on a lot of factors. Those interested in this topic should consult the nearest university library which may have a copy of TEONW; those institutions which are government document repositories should have a copy for sure. I bought mine on Ebay.
TRay75- If I may, a little unsolicited advice- Never give up hope. Nuclear war and panflu are horrible to contemplate, but H. Sap. has been surviving horrible threats for….. all of our existence! We’re still here!
LMW - I yield to your more recent numbers. The numbers I cited were based on calculations remembered from about 30 years ago, and assumed a much larger weapon in ground burst deployment. If the calculator shows I am off, then I stand corrected.
But even if I am off by a factor of 10, the answer is still that they aren’t just going to go scurrying around the following morning without serious (fatal) repercussions.
Nova: The show that had me banging my head against the wall was the second episode of Jericho. I started watching “The Day After” last night and, not wanting to use up the last of the Depends, decided it was getting way too intense (much more so than I remembered it being when I watched it several years back) and started switching back and forth to a nice comforting British murder/cop show!! The Day After is VERY well done, well researched and very frightening!! I think Jericho certainly didn’t need to be that scary, but it could have been done much better without spending one extra cent. The only reason I will keep watching is for comedic relief.
BullRun: Can you give us a bit of a synopsis/review on the “One Point Safe” book you mentioned? Is it fiction/non-fiction? Who was the author?
I’ve been thinking I should pull out my copy of “Nuclear War Survival Skills” but it always makes my family look up numbers for mental health care centers in the yello pages when I break it out for a read. Maybe I’ll need to keep it shoved between the mattress for late night reading like my sons did with a playboy?? Wrap it in plastic and hide it in the toilet tank for a little light reading on the crapper??? (I’m so lady-like!!) I can hardly wait till I see my son has “written me up” in his english journal and his teacher has posted his journal entry onto the web!!! Man, can’t we just be paranoid in private anymore??
Helpful advice that works just as well for a Nuclear attack or pandemic:
The “cop from St. Louis” seems like a bad dude. At first I thought “well that guy is just a prepper with the NBC suit and the storage locker, nothing out of the norm there”. But he seems like a sleeper to me.
Yikes! My understanding is that…no matter what you do…do NOT drink the iodine!!! I’m told you rub it on your skin. Of course, the ideal is to have the potassium idodate pills designed just for that purpose. Dear God, did they do no research whatsoever???
Potassium iodide is the treatment for radiation exposure.
NEMO: LOL! You’re cracking me up! But if you want to product-test the limits of those Depends, rent “28 Days Later” the pandemic flick to end all pandemic flicks. Just don’t clear your throat…aaack aaaack, as Bill the Cat used to say.
Dennis in Colorado: Yep. That is what my bottle says. Gee, I guess I shouldn’t throw stones; didn’t do my own research very well, did I?
Actually, it says Potassium Iodate…is that the same thing as Iodide?
I have never heard of potassium iodate. When I search my online dictionary for it, I get:
“No results found for potassium iodate.
Did you mean potassium iodide?”
However, many such compounds have slightly different names in British English versus American English. Maybe this is one example of an “uncommon” secondary name.
Dennis: it is called Potassium Iodate -K103 85 mg with each pill containing 50 mg of elemental iodine.
If you have only iodine, paint an area on the inside of your forearm approximately 2″ by 3″, if I remember correctly. (Or would it hurt to do 3 x 4″, because I don’t really know.) Anyway, this doesn’t take care of your whole body, just your thyroid gland. It’s especially important for children, because thyroid cancer takes a long time to develop and adults may die of something else in the meantime.
Jericho was on during our dinner, and DH found it too unpleasant, so I missed it. Did someone say something about tanks (Army tanks??) outside the town? Is the “St. Louis cop” looking more suspicious? The first two weeks, he seemed mysterious but one of the good guys.
Oh,yeah, Potassium Iodide is not a treatment for radiation exposure. It is specifically, and only, used to prevent radioacitive Iodine isotopes from being absorbed into the body. Other than that it does nothing to prevent or treat radiation poisoning.
Wait, you’re both right. There are two forms of oral Potassium-iodine that are suitbale for use in radiation releases. One one potassium iodide (KI) this is an ionic salt of iodine, and from all reports is the nastiest tasting thing on the planet. Another compound, potassium iodate (KIO3) is another compound from which your body can obtain iodine when needed. It has much less nastiness of taste. We have both forms in stock. Tincture of iodine is not only unsuitable for the purpose of providing the iodine in the form you need, but is also is fairly toxic if swallowed.
I have lived out in the great plains. I just want to know where the people are from the next town ten miles down the road one way, eight miles down the road the other way, 12 miles down the road the other way, and all of the farmers and ranchers who will be running into town in their pickups to find out what is happening with no power, no phone and no radio.
The language of that TV broadcast sounded like Japanese to me. So Hawkens is obviously either stupid or up to something.
Finally, a Boeing 757 would weigh about 200,000 pounds upon landing (with passengers) and has a landing gear tread of 24 feet. I sure would not like to try to land one on a 2-lane balcktop. the results would be unpredictable, but very different from what was depicted in the show.
There were tanks and crashed airplanes. And, yes, the St. Louis “cop” is definitely something more. I really don’t know why I’m watching it…it is utterly innane. I think it’s because I have become as concerned about the threat of nuclear terrorism as I am about bird flu. I hoped I would learn something useful. But, if somebody chugs out of a bottle of iodine like this show tonight showed I think it would kill them before the radiation even had an opportunity to.
The one thing I did find realistic was—after the townfolk nearly wiped out the stocks of the local store—the shop owner donated everything else to the town for a “party”, and no one even thanked her. As discussed many times on this site, people today just expect to be taken care of.
Eccles, my Potassium Iodide tablets come with a rather lengthy warning and a description of the symptoms of Iodine posioning. The redox reaction converting Iodine to Iodide and back happens easily any your body will convert either to whichever form it wants (or sometimes doesn’t want). If any of the Iodide that is in the tablet of Potassium Iodide or Iodate reaches your stomach before it is absorbed, it will convert to elemental Iodine as soon as it hits your stomach acid.
The key is to get just enough Iodine, in just about any form, into the body to saturate the thyroide gland without getting enough to reach a toxic level. For this reason it is best to keep a written description of the symptoms of Iodine poisoning handy. Also remember to always read lables. The water “purification” tablets that usually say “No Iodine” are almost always made from Potassium Periodate, which is an excellent source of Iodine and will add to the basic load of Iodine the body is receiving. In his book “Life After Doomsday,” Bruce Clayton suggests that someone using the Potassium Periodate tables in his drinking water would probably not need any other source of Iodine.
Well, I should quit rambling now and go get another cup of coffee.
I’m going to give the show a couple more times before I bail. Although the St. Louis “cop” may be a bad guy, he’s still the most interesting person on the show. I don’t know much about treatments for radiation poisoning, but the final scene where the teenager finds the railroad car filled with food was too much. These people live in a rural area. Don’t they farm and keep livestock? I guess the writers included the saving foodstuffs so they can now concentrate on the melodrama.
History: If they did farm and keep livestock, the animals would no longer be safe to use for food…not that the inane writers would know that!
As has been mentioned, the rain washes the radiation out of the atmoshpere and deposits it in concentrated amounts on the surface. It’s not the rain that so awfully bad, it’s the end result when all that radiation is now in the ground, on buildings, cars, everything. That was the MOST dangerous and absurd scene I have ever seen!! The second the rain stopped, the writers had everything “all clear” like it was mysterious acid rain that became inocuous when it hit the ground! The IRS agent was freaking because she touched a building?? Yet everyone one else is walking on the same stuff and they’re not affected?
Most small towns are supplied by trucks not trains!! Trains bring the big stuff to commercial areas, cars, coal, large manufacturing pieces and products. No train is going to stop in Buttsville, USA to unload 1 DAMN car full of food!!!
On the St. Louis cop, I think he “used” to be a St. Louis cop, then probably became Homeland Security. I think he knew something was in the wind, and that’s why he left (or was told to leave to ‘salt’ a knowledgeable person into the countryside— repeated hundreds of times through the country). I think he’s building a safe room in the basement with those concrete blocks so when the hordes come through, he has a place to hide himself and his family. He was all set up in that locked room in the basement last week with that map mounted on a board and those nice red pins waiting to be used. I don’t think our government is organized enough to send people out to safe zones, especially when it included taking his whole family with him.
There are a lot of whispers (in the real world- not the show) from some groups about the gubment knowing more about the American Hiroshima threat than they are telling, but they don’t know exactly when. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, one shoe is pandemic and the other is nuclear terrorism. Who bought these damn shoes anyways!! They’re ugly!!
I will keep watching. We Tivo it, and when my husband gets home on the weekends, I watch it again with him. I am able to “teach” him some facts about fallout and radiation and nuclear safety as we rip it apart and crack up. It makes for a low stress teachable moment.
NEMO:
Thats exactly what we were saying thruout, including the shelter…and we are also waiting for wo different shoes. Of course, they could end up being related! But I still think that something is better than nothing. For those that missed “the day after” it is replaying again, on Sunday afternoon, on Scifi channel. Here’s a link for times:
Drinking Betadine ??
Not just stupid from a dramatic standpoint, but stupid to the point of criminal negligence to air it on national television.
This must have been written by “x generation” writers.
It’s getting to the point where it’s not even entertaining to rip apart their bad writing.
The high point was Gerald McRaney punching out his political rival.
All in all an el-stinko show.
And what’s with all the backpack nuke stuff here ?
NEIN is about as crackpot as they come, as a source of “news”.
Congratulations Fluwikie.. You’ve made it to the prime time where you are now attracting the whacko fringe of the internet.
BTW the ONLY reason I would watch in in the future is to see what the Philly cop is up to.
;−0
Bird Guano – at 14:48 - You are probably right. I looked at this as comic relief from the stress of a real disaster.
Bird Guano, I find it interesting that the children of the Philly cop haven’t been seen and that they were not allowed to go to the party. I could be wrong but I think the cop said something along the lines of the timing was not right yet. It was a strange comment to make.
I kind of like the show simply because I am enjoying the comments on this thread. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the plot line, that Jericho turned out to be some sort of government experiment and that there had been no nuclear disaster at all.
Irene – at 15:00
Bird Guano, I find it interesting that the children of the Philly cop haven’t been seen and that they were not allowed to go to the party. I could be wrong but I think the cop said something along the lines of the timing was not right yet. It was a strange comment to make.
Unless they are handicapped or adopted (perhaps why he knows Mandarin)
Bird Guano - There was no way that was Mandarin. it was Japanese. Now either the producers are ignoramuses, or else they are trying to embed tings for “cult” followers to find.
Ya know, it occured to me that putting it up just before LOST, and creating a Lost-like seting, they are thinking to capture LOST people. It ain’t going to happen. You need to actually have an engrosing story line. I find it hard to get engrossed when I have trouble keeping track of all the CARP they show, and are just plain wrong.
Well, I hope all you more nuclear-knowledgeable folks continue posting, because I’m sure learning a lot from you. I get on right after it airs to see how y’all have ripped on my new favorite doomer show! Jericho makes a grand total of two shows now on TV I’ll watch. And yes, I know it’s terrible! Even I groaned at the boxcar! And the train engineers went… camping?
AVnarts at 9:34: Okay, now you’ve got me concerned. Should I toss the K103 tablets and get those water purification tablets you mentioned. I thought K103 was one of the safer choices.
Bird Guano: I am undecided about NEIN. They obviously have an agenda, but they also have carried news reports before they were picked up by the mainstream media (kinda like this site). NEIN notwithstanding, the American Hiroshima rumor has been covered on both CNN and Fox News as well. And, all that notwithstanding, what about the growing nuclear threats of Iran and N. Korea? I grew up in the duck and cover generation but thought all that was behind me. I’m not so sure anymore. I guess you can’t give man such horrific power and expect there to be no temptation to use it. I think the reason there are so many people of my generation on this site is that we came from the duck and cover generation and lived under the threat of Domocles (sp?) Sword. I think that’s why we’re so receptive to the Bird Flu threat. I don’t think it demeans this site that we are discussing both possible disasters. The knowledge of how to survive both is contained in the wisdom of the group mind this site has created.
I bet all preppers who watched the last episode had a little heart murmur when the kid on the rail road tracks found a whole train full of supplies.
On the fence and hey stop pushing – at 22:42
I bet all preppers who watched the last episode had a little heart murmur when the kid on the rail road tracks found a whole train full of supplies.
---
First thing I thought of was…
Cool, a powerplant for the whole town.
;-)
Eccles – at 17:23
Bird Guano - There was no way that was Mandarin. it was Japanese. Now either the producers are ignoramuses, or else they are trying to embed tings for “cult” followers to find.
I’d have to listen to it again.
I only caught it in passing, and my Japanese is rusty but passable.
Actually sounded Korean to my ear when I caught it while passing through the room.
I’ll have to see if you can zero in on part of the show on their video stream to have another listen.
Oh ya.
Forgot to add to the first post.
Diesel electric locomotive + JP8 fuel from the landed aircraft = community power plant.
If you read the credits it say “Chinese News Man” It caught my attention. We’ll continue to watch as I can use it to help teach my kids That this is something that could occur as We as a Nation tend to P*** people off. As my 18yr old DD would say “True Story” LOL
There’s a novel by Pat Frank about survival in a small community following nuclear attack, titled “Alas Babylon”. It is far from realistic in several areas, dead wrong in a few. But it is well written, and still one of my favorite reads. I believe the term is ‘entertainment’.
I am enjoying ‘Jericho’, in much the same way—although it’s not as well written. Nevertheless, it’s entertaining. I’ll leave it at that.
On the other hand, as someone mentioned earlier, if watching this show prompts a viewer somewhere to ‘do some research’ and ‘learn a bit more’ and they happen to end up at FluWiki learning a thing or two that might get them and their family through the worst . . . well, that’s what we’re all hoping for anyway, isn’t it?
Nemo @ 11:29 - You’re right about the livestock and crops. I didn’t think about that. And that is a good assessment on the St. Louis cop. As I said before, so far he’s the only interesting aspect of the show and probably the only reason I’ll give it a few more chances.
One thing for sure about the St. Louis cop, he doesn’t know how to lay blocks correctly.
Hillbilly Bill - LOL! We live in an old pre-WWII adobe home. Ten years ago we decided to build an addition, a detached bedroom for our then teenaged son. It’s not as easy as you would think to build an adobe room. First, my husband had to travel to the middle of the desert to find a 150-year-old man who made adobe bricks. We then hired two 100-year-old workers (the only ones knowledgeable enough)to properly lay the bricks. It’s a dying art, and the ones who know how to do it correctly will not be around much longer.
HBB -
I didn’t catch that the first time but now that I think about it he wasn’t offsetting them. That’s funny.
nopower – at 11:30
What I noticed was that he was improperly applying the mortar. He put it on the crosspieces only and neglected the outside edges.
Hey what do actors know about mason work.
Most of them are waiters.
LOL
Ya, the St. Louis cop character is the ONLY reason I’ll watch the show again.
I found it interesting the St. Louis cop not only had a map of the U.S. already laid out, but also a radiation suit and mask, a barrel full of what looked like automatic rifles, and the cement and spare cinder blocks to build a false wall to hide the barrel behind.
That level of preparation is extremely suspicious…
Maybe he built the wall incorrectly because he wanted it to be easy to break down when he wanted to get at the rifles. But who are his accomplices? Koreans or Chinese? I missed the show, but it’s hard to see Japan as the attacker. What’s it called, a fifth column, sleepers waiting until called upon by the faction or government to whom they are loyal?
Actually, in a second shot of him building the wall, it did show him laying mortar on the side pieces. I was watching closely at this part too. I’ll keep watching, if for no other reason than to test myself on my powers of observation. Kind of like testing myself on my knowledge of what to do in a nuclear event.
Read the online book: Nuclear War Survival Skills
Google it. It’s available free at many sites.
Interesting additional resource for checking details:
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html
Ok, no one has posted since LAST week’s show and I just tonight watched THIS week’s show…..saw the kids, wife, heard them going over their ‘cover’ story.
Now what do you suppose made Victor go back toward Denver if he’d left with his family? Did I miss something and his family really wasn’t with him or did he turn back to Denver for a reason other than family?
What’s going on anyway? What could anyone want with this little town? I’ve not seen anything strategic about the location or the businesses…….any ideas?
I’ve read some of the comments over at avsforum and the going theories are: that they were involved in the attack and are blending in waiting for the next phase (he made a comment to the guy in the hospital that they were now a man short). Or they worked for the US government (Homeland Security, military, something) and knew an attack was coming so they made plans for their family and the aftermath. On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like it is his family and that they are just a cover.
Homeland Security is showing up next week which will probably be day 5 or 6 after the blasts and will probably make everything all better - since this show is based on reality :)
The good news is - if you are less than two hours away from a city hit by a nuke, you only have to stay in a shelter or mine for a day and then all the radiation and fallout are magically gone. But like someone on another forum said, the show would have been pretty boring if they spent the whole first season in the shelter and starved to death.
nopower – at 20:37…… Homeland Security is showing up next week which will probably be day 5 or 6 after the blasts and will probably make everything all better - since this show is based on reality :)
I think JAKE can make everything alright, after all, he sure made his shattered hip or whatever it was, heal up fast. :-)
I think it IS his family; when the wife contradicted him in the cover-story rehearsal, she said something about her having to do everything because he was never there.
The man with radiation poisoning went back to save a bunch of people that he cared about-maybe he worked with them? The only thing is, he tried to save them too late; they had been poisoned already.
So, these guys knew there would be a bombing. It’s pretty drastic for a coup. They must be working with the Chinese? Kim Il Jung? What can they be getting out of it? The man who died had a designated role, but was he supposed to be in the same town as the St. Louis cop or did he go there to get help for his friends? I wonder if the show will be on long enough to answer the questions. (I have to admit missing Surface and Invasion since they were cancelled.)
Jane – at 20:52 ….. I have to admit missing Surface
I saw a marathon the other day….I told my DH they had to cancel ‘cause they’d created a problem they had no idea how to fix. :-)
Jane -
Jericho has been given the green light for the whole first season by CBS.
IMO I think they are a band of preppers who pre planned to bug out to the small town country side. Victor was coming with his family and other’s he allowed to tag along. They got caught in the rain and he went ahead to seek help.
apparently he was a prepper who didn’t pay full attention
my guess anyway :-)
My guess is a good-guy cell of Delta Force members who had prior intelligence knowledge of the attack, and are now trying to blend in awaiting orders.
Well if they are government, former government they probably need a good cover story as much as if they are a sleeper cell of the group that attacked.
People who find out we are prepped when panflu hits will probably question how we knew about it and think we had something to do with it. :)
The real science fiction aspect of the upcomng show will be when the FEMA people arrive, are organized, efficient, competent and actually make a positive contribution to the situation in the town.
In the meantime, I am still waiting for the slacker writers to either realize that out in those parts many more people live in the farms and ranches around town than actually live IN the towns. So, at some point, either the slacker writers will need to come up with some reason that no one from even like 10 feet out of town has wandered in and asked “WTF is happening?”, or else the townies discover that everyone else in the world bu them is dead.
Tis a puzzlement.
They got briefed at the town BBQ.
Must have smelled the steaks and came into town.
LOL
Missed this week.
Any fan sites up yet with spoilers ?
If your computer is up to it, you can watch all of the previously aired episodes on the CBS website (www.cbs.com/jericho).
Yeah, I was wondering where all the people around the town were, myself. I mean, they keep driving all over and never see much of anyone. You would think that people would be going all over the place if they could, just to find out what has happened. There are MILLIONS here in the US. If only 6 or 7 cities were hit, there would STILL be millions.
But, with fiction you have to suspend disbelief. :-D
Too bad about Surface and Invasion. I liked both of those. That little guy raised by the kid from an egg was cute in Surface.
mountainlady - I agree with you about Surface and Invasion. They both had good story lines and were really well produced. And they were both so “out there” that they didn’t have to bother with too much realism.
I missed last week’s show also so could someone catch me up a bit? Was anything revealed about the cop?
You can watch any episodes you miss on the CBS site here:
Just click on the tab marked “Jericho”.
History Lover, I missed some, but it’s now clear that the “cop” has a cover story that he’s forced his family to learn or else (what, we don’t know). The teenage daughter went to a party, and he scolded her for risking their lives. It seems to me that keeping everybody home all the time is not normal, so his idea of appearing to be an ordinary family, who just happened to move to Jericho, is flawed from the start. It isn’t enough to not do anything suspicious, you have to act like a normal citizen. I suppose he’s the only one who has been undercover, and he doesn’t trust his wife and kids to keep it together under pressure.
Jane - Thanks for the update. Like you, I’m a little perplexed by his actions, but it keeps me tuning in.
Irene - I did try that site, but I couldn’t download the Flash. I guess I wasn’t peddling fast enough. Hopefully some cable channel will have a Jericho marathon, and I can catch up.
Watched it last night. Interesting show. Not realistic but I like to watch it.
The people of the town have been ‘cut off’ from the outside for awhile now and it seems the only place that prepped was the bar. Everyone stops in, orders a beer or other drink and it comes right out. Always crowded.
I digress. Here’s what I wanted to point out. Last night the powere all of a sudden came back on. Then the communication (TV,Phones) kicked on. An automated message then rang in on all phones with a message from Homeland Security. One of the characters, who is an IRS agent from D.C. states that she was told (hinted at a briefing maybe or a friend) that after a disaster, DHS first would restore power, then COM, and then travel. So, is this little bit of drama trivia true? Anyone heard of an ordered plan to restore the country or parts of the country in this specific order? I assume that the writers, although very much over the top, at least did a tiny internet search to base some of this stuff on.
Suddenly, the TPTB turn on the power, and a fire starts in the library or school. And another near some homes. Maybe it was the power surge? Could townspeople have prevented it? Or limited it? (I know fire is extremely dangerous, but I kept thinking, Grab some books!!)
Who was with Jake at the water tower-he asked Jake, how could you know (how to turn it on)? Jake replies, how could you NOT know? Can’t tell if Jake has had lots of training that he doesn’t want to discuss, or he has common sense that the other man hasn’t needed much so far in his life.
About the “cop,” it looks like he has his own backup power for his satellite dish and computer. Wonder if his daughter will notice and bring her new friend to use Dad’s computer, because she wants to help her new friend contact her missing parents. It’s raised the tension level having Jake see the equipment being used in the backyard.
It looks like the reality level is dropping, though. Winter is coming, yet we don’t see anyone working on getting ready or discussing what they should do. Maybe that will come later after more of their time has passed. How long has it been? Looks like the teacher’s broken leg has healed already-that’s six weeks.
Although there are elements about the show that I find interesting, the most annoying thing to me is that the way the people are acting make no sense to me.
For example, planes have made emergency landings on the highway and the passengers have evacuated and disappeared. Wouldn’t it be logical to send out search parties? Instead, everyone just relaxes at the bar.
Another example is that no one is grieving except the young boy. The teenage girl has a big party with her friends at her house a day or two after she finds out her parents may be dead and is also enjoying herself at the town barbeque. It’s also extremely unlikely that none of the townspeople don’t have any friends or relatives in Denver or any of the other places that appear to have been hit. Yet no one appears concerned.
Irene: I agree, some of it can annoy. As I mentioned earlier, it’s funny how now one is running out of anything yet. The bar is serving beer like they are still getting their daily delivery. Granted, it would be boring to see people meet in tents all the time but it looks like a serious “Cheers” episode at times!
I did like how they all acted when the power came on: charge up all the charge items, vacuum while you can, fill up the tubs and take quick showers because you never know how long….. Maybe there was something to take away from that.
Whoa, I almost forgot-what were those streaks in the sky at the end? They were going up, right? Is the US making a retaliatory strike with our own missiles?
Jane – at 17:48
Intercontinental ballistic missles heading somewhere fast. Interestingly, from the orientation of the people on the street standing in front of City Hall (which supposedly faces north), they’re going westward…
I liked the kid who asked if Emily was going to wake up… with super powers. ^__^
well I for one so far am enjoying the show, it has it’s momonts I’ll admit, but that’s TV for ya. This weeks show scared me though. and it’s something that I have heard a lot of yall talk about. How people will just be taking what they want and not think about anyone else. I was absolutely furious while watching tonight and I was scared too. I live alone and have no real close neighbors so sorta like a target . I got a real eye opener of how there is safety in numbers and how it’s lots better if people work together . There is more of a chance of survival. Has me doing some heavy duty thinking anyway, I don’t know what I will do but I guess for now just prep and play it by ear.
Lady Biker-
that’s about all we can do for now. I’m really hoping this will fizzle out. I’m just having a hard time getting my mind wrapped around the disaster, and it will be. I run things through my mind, trying to map out what life will be like for about 2+, and I quickly change my mind’s thought. Just scarey.
lady biker, I like it, too, though hubby and I just bust up sometimes. Tonight’s stinker was the teen girl getting into super-secret Daddy’s safe room (which he just left unlocked -whoops!) and seeing the photo of Jake up on the screen of the laptop (data just left up there — D’oh!) We surmised SSD was sent to Podunk — Jericho — because he kept having security lapses!
I think they are very right about the lawlessness and shortages, though. I’m glad this idea is being subtly brought forward to a mass audience… Jericho is one of the sleeper hits of the season. So much good it could do, just with suggestion.
I like the show but they need a technical advisor for the electronics especially the radio communications: re: police using CB radios to talk to Motorola UHF handhelds and no antenna connected to Ham Radios while communicating, also turning satelite dish on pole mount to get different stations. Morse code is a nice touch.
I find the show interesting, although at times know some of the shortcomings. Oct 25 episode, one of the few things I saw that was totally out of line (and most people would not know it), were the cockroaches on the ground, with the chickens. Cockroaches only come out at night and of course the chickens (I have some), are roosting. They did get it correct though in saying the cockroaches help clean up after the chickens and that is the case. If a cockroach comes within eyesight during the daytime of a chicken,,,,,,,,it is an eaten cockroach. I pick up boards around the chicken coop, and let the chickens eat all they can catch.
Cockroaches clean up after chickens?????
The hidden Indonesian resevoir?
Goju – at 07:53 Yes, if you go out to the chicken coop after dark, when the chickens are roosting off the ground, the ground itself is covered with what I would say thousands of those little creatures. The chickens don’t bother them as they dont get down till about daylight, then the roaches are gone. The roaches eat the “chicken happy meals” and that is not from KFC.
I admit I was yelling at the TV when the daughter walked into the “unlocked” secret room with the metal door.
It is also frustrated me that they emerged from the fallout shelter immediately and then the EMP goes off and it is suddenly “2 weeks later”. I guess nothing of interest would happen for two weeks after witnessing missle launches and an EMP knocking out all the electronics.
On the bright side, it did show that horses are an excellent source of alternative transport assuming you can feed them and keep people from stealing them.
I note the straw bales in Jericho are so firmly packed they can stop shotgun blasts. Very impressive. ^__^
f-w, I was impressed by those hay bales, too!
I wondered if they were sort of “hinting” at pandemic or at least some sort of illness with the man who has the flu and the lack of medical supplies (painkillers for the broken arm).
Also actually perked up my ears to hear about the cockroaches and chickens - but I doubt “Hollywood” knows enough about bird flu to go anywhere with that.
I just watched it on CBS.com/innertube - Why did it take so long for the EMP blast? I always thought THAT would be the first strike…
I just love how the town is coming together after almost coming apart - very realistic - NOT.
I also just finished reading Alas, Babylon… about nuke war taking place in the 50′s. Interesting parellels. Now i am totally disaster focused. Great…. just great!
Closed for length and continued here