L.C. Champlin's Blog, page 2

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The world is changing. Groups and governments are jockeying for control. These links explore real-world examples of dystopian ideas.

Hawaii Says No Missile Threat After Emergency Alert Mistakenly Sent

“After an emergency alert of a ballistic missile threat left people “crying and screaming” in Hawaii on Saturday, emergency officials confirmed that the message was sent in error and that no missile was headed for the island state.”

Testing for the real thing to see how people react? Or just a malcontent who “pushed the wrong button” twice?

What would you do if you saw this alert on your phone?

How China Infiltrated U.S. Classrooms

“Confucius Institutes teach a very particular, Beijing-approved version of Chinese culture and history: one that ignores concerns over human rights, for example, and teaches that Taiwan and Tibet indisputably belong to Mainland China. Take it from the aforementioned Li, who also said in 2009 that Confucius Institutes are an “important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.” Critics also charge that the centers have led to a climate of self-censorship on campuses that play host to them.”

The powerhouse that is China continues its slow march toward dominating its competitors and enemies. Our love of political correctness could be our downfall.

What happens if China succeeds in their bid to install communism across the globe?

Welcome to the neighbourhood. Have you read the terms of service?

“It’s being imagined as the sort of place where garbage cans and recycling bins can keep track of when and how often they’re used, environmental probes can measure noise and pollution over time and cameras can collect data to model and improve the flow of cars, people, buses and bikes throughout the day.”

This goes well beyond traffic cameras. The info can be used to improve, but knowing human nature, how likely is that to happen?

How comfortable would you be living in a word that monitors your every move?

Is buying a house just a pipe dream? Concrete tubes just over eight feet wide, with a bench that turns into a bed, could be your solution

The OPod Tube Housing system aims to re-purpose concrete tubes measuring just over eight feet in diameter, and turn them into ‘micro-homes’ with 100 square feet of living space.

A novel way of solving the housing-space crisis? Or a nudge toward creating a 1984-type society?

Could you live in a pipe if it had a bed, wifi, desk, fridge, storage, etc.?

 

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The attack is over, but the fight — and the outbreak — is just beginning.

After battle-tried businessman Nathan Serebus and his attorney Albin Conrad narrowly escape death in a series of terrorist attacks, Nathan believes he is God’s chosen conqueror to restore order to a chaotic San Francisco.

The terrorists have unleashed a contagion that turns humans into violent, unreasoning cannibals immune to pain. But thanks to the research snatched from the hands of ruthless mercenaries sent to secure it, Nathan may have a chance at controlling the contagion. The new technology may even provide a way to control the cannibals themselves.

But to decrypt the research, he and his fellow survivors must team up with a Japanese inventor obsessed with the Underworld – and with becoming a dark god.

Worse, the blood-thirsty leader of the mercenaries is hell-bent on retrieving the research and using it to become ruler of the Bay Area.

Nathan forges desperate alliances that will gain him control of an affluent community to help develop the research. But his authority relies on deception and fear.

As Nathan maneuvers, his friends struggle to come to terms with his increasingly ruthless choices. Loyalties once thought unbreakable will be tested. Will friendships survive when wills collide? The fate of the Bay Area — and the world — depends on the answer.

Ways of Darkness will be available on Kindle and in paperback January 15th, 2018.

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Get ready…

Zombies are overrunning the countryside. You’re not a prepper. How screwed are you? Well, that depends. Do you have some basic survival skills? Do you know how to shove rounds in a firearm and make bullets come out the end with the hole? Then you might have a chance, assuming you can get to a gun store and/or a Walmart that hasn’t been cleaned out.

But now you have choices to make. You can only carry so much gear, unlike the guy at the top of the post, who apparently has a cheat code for unlimited carrying capacity. So, what weapons are you going to grab? And no, you don’t have a minigun or grenades or a katana.

To make choosing easier – cuz looters and zombies are about to crash the doors – I’m going to break this down into distance categories: Long, Mid, Short, and Close. And Improvised, since you might have ended up at a Home Depot instead of a Bass Pro Shop.

This is my contribution to the Reanimated Writers Zombie Blog Crawl. Head over to the Facebook group Reanimated Writers to check out all the posts.

Long Range
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Winchester 700 series. .308

Winchester designed its 700 series rifles to be out-of-the-box shooters for people who want to take a dear during hunting season but not do much else. If you check out the Survival Blog article I linked above, you’ll see they actually perform pretty well at distance. Best of all, you can get them and their ammo at Walmart or other sporting-goods stores. They’re not the most accurate or the most comfortable weapon around, but you could easily take down a zombie from across the neighborhood.

Mid Range
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AKM 7.62×39

Contrary to popular belief, not all weapons that look like this are AK-47s. Actually, a true AK-47 is tough to come by. AK variants, however, are plentiful. They’re also just as rugged as the original AK workhorse. You can get them wet or sandy, and they’ll perform well even when they haven’t been oiled or cleaned in ages. Their ammo is common, which is a big plus. In a pinch, you can even use them as long-distance weapons. They’re also one of the simplest rifles to load and shoot. And boy are they fun!

Short Range
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Glock 21 .45

Holding a Glock is like grabbing a 2×4. But it’s every bit as rugged as an AK. You can shoot it dirty. You can shoot it after leaving it on the bottom of a river for weeks. You can shoot after it’s been buried. You can shoot it after it’s been dropped off a building. They also have high capacity with their (bulky) double-stack magazine. Now, I have a .45 up here because that’s my favorite caliber. Big and heavy, a .45 has stopping power. But for zombies, a .9mm might be better. It’s got less recoil, has a larger mag capacity, and the ammo is super easy to find.

Close Range

 

 

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PBK Cutlass Machete.

Walmart doesn’t stock katanas, so you’re gonna have to settle for a machete. These weapons are designed for chopping. Heavy, wide blades put a lot of power behind a strike. I like the PBK because it has a dropped tip, making it decent at stabbing too, unlike most other machetes. And the knuckle duster will come in handy, no doubt.

Improvised Weapon
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Crowbar.

Why not a hammer? you ask. Because a hammer is primarily a blunt-force instrument. A crowbar has that option, and it’s a good option, but you can also shank enemies. If you grab with your little finger toward the curved area and other hand by the straight end, you can punch forward with the short, vertical section. Nobody wants that in the face. Plus, you can pry doors open.

Note: For the cannibals in my book series Wolves of the Apocalypse, don’t use a crowbar. If you get their bodily fluids on you, you’re gonna be joining them soon.

What would you choose if you were at your local Walmart or gun store? Comment!

Then go join Reanimated Writers on Facebook. We’ve got lots of great brains there…

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I’m rich and famous!
Well, maybe not, but I did do a few interviews for the release of my book Behold Darkness .
Aftershock Zombie Series
Prepping-based questions and some info on the book. Lots of other great author interviews on the site.
Mercedes Prunty’s Zombie-a-thon


In-depth questions about my thoughts on zombies, zombie movies, and my book. Zombie-genre author interviews all month here.


BookHorde
Not really an interview, but it is a post. Check out the other great books there too.

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On one of the zombie fan groups that I’m in, someone mentioned the movie Train to Busan. It’s a Korean film about a father and his daughter who are trapped on a train with a horde of incredibly dangerous zombies, and questionable humans who may prove to be worse than the zombies.

I’m normally fairly skeptical of foreign films, and it’s a drag for me to have to plow through subtitles. It’s really hard to be on my phone when I have to read every word. It’s not even like Spanish movies, where I can limp through the dialogue without having to read. But I gave it a shot, because everyone seemed to like it, Rotten Tomatoes gave it a startling 95%, and I know the Pacific Islands are masters at horror.

Interest-Grabbing Factor

We start with a guy in a cargo truck stopped at a biological checkpoint. Men in hazmat suits spray off his vehicle, as he is coming out of bio research area. Since this isn’t a normal occurrence in America, at least, I’m interested.

The man drives off but smacks into a deer. It looks like the deer’s totaled. But after the truck continues down the road, Bambi hops up. We get a close-up of its eyes, which look like they have cataracts. I know people have different opinions about a zombie virus that can jump species to infect animals and vice versa, but I rather like the idea. It’s a good spin on the old human-only zombie, it’s like real-world zombies, and it’s very dangerous for the characters.

Character Interest Factor

We meet a somewhat neglectful father Seok-Woo and his young daughter Soo-An . He spends most of his time at work and makes up for it by giving her poorly thought-out gifts. He gives her a Wii when she already has one. She wants to go to Busan where her mother is, but he says he doesn’t have time. She’s willing to go by herself. It’s not that he’s trying to be a dick; he’s just a workaholic. He leaves her in the care of her grandma most of the time, because I’m sure she totally wants to raise another kid when she’s in her 70s. Already I’m starting to care about these people. They feel real.

We get a little picture of how his life at work is, where he is a fund manager. Apparently his company knows a little bit about what’s going on in the bio research bone, but they think it’s a false report.

Character Development

Normally in horror movies, I really don’t care about the characters. By the way, I don’t consider Zombieland a horror movie, because I really can’t give that label to any movie that turns Bill Murray into a zombie. I do care about the characters in that film, fyi.

The protagonists grow quite a lot throughout the movie. The biggest change is seen in the father, who finally steps up to the plate for his daughter. There is much sacrifice on the characters’ parts, which is always compelling.

Makeup Quality

There is not one instance where I roll my eyes at the quality of the makeup or costumes.

Special-Effects Quality

Special effects quality the special effects are amazing. Particularly impressive is the transformation of human into zombie. The zombies attacks are also well done.

Medical Accuracy

There isn’t a whole lot in regard to medical issues.

Twists

I’ve said before I’m usually pretty good at predicting who dies. This does not hold true for movies that are not American. Especially the Japanese and Korean movies. This one is no different. The ending was a complete twist and had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. I can only hope that I write so effectively in my novels.

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When your last hope of survival becomes your doom. Yes, those are the soldiers who are now zombies.

Logic

The plot was quite logical.  People are trapped in a train. The train and the surrounding cities become infected with the zombie virus or whatever it is,  and the survivors on board must do all they can to protect themselves and each other.

All characters behaved quite logically. You have a good feel for the characters early on, which makes understanding their motives easy.

Monster Danger Factor

The zombies are incredibly dangerous! They are fast, strong, and work in a pack. They do have a weakness, but it’s not one that you can use too easily. When you’re bitten by one of these monsters, you turn into one of them in a matter of seconds.

Zombies

There are very few horror movies that have a monster that I’m actually impressed by, but this pulls it off. It’s even harder to make zombies threatening. We’re all used to The Walking Dead type, which you can basically take out with the sharpened #2 pencil and a brisk walk.

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This movie channels our instinctive fear of being in a confined space with a predator.

Unintentional humor

Zip.

WTF Factor

There really aren’t any moments where you wonder why on Earth such and such a thing happened. If something happens that you wouldn’t have done personally, it’s explained quite well by the fact that that’s how that character behaves. No, really, it makes sense. When a person sacrifices themselves, it is in keeping with their personality. When they act selfishly, it’s not really a surprise.

Facebook Check Index

Since I had to read the subtitles, and since I had to finish the movie on my cell phone because my laptop was screwing up, there was no Facebook involved.

The Villain
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He just wanted to survive. He didn’t care if anyone else did!

Like The Walking Dead, Train to Busan uses a human as one of the main antagonists. In this case, it’s greedy railroad bigwig Yong-Suk, who dominates the train conductor and staff into doing his bidding. He is focused on his survival alone, which is bad news for everyone else.

His villainy starts out small enough as he asks for totally reasonable actions to be taken by the conductor. If it had stopped here, we could have labeled him The Logical One, not the antagonist. Though in horror movies, those are often the same. There’s a fine line between logical efficiency and efficient cruelty. You do what you have to in order to survive, but where do you draw the line?

This escalates, however, costing many their lives. The very actions he thinks will save him actually doom him. We have to be careful to consider the long-term impact of our actions. They can have unintended consequences, which we must try to foresee as much as possible.

Overall, I loved to hate the villain, yet I understood his motives.

 Was it worth watching?

Most definitely! If you like zombie movies even a little, or even if you don’t, this is worth the two hours. Yes, you have to read the subtitles, but there aren’t that many of them, since this is a survival-horror movie. I will warn you, though, you’ll need a box of Kleenex at the end.

Thoughts? Did you watch this? Do you know any other quality zombie movies? Comment!

At long last, the time has come for the apocalypsis! The unveiling, that is.

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And to quote GIR from Invader Zim, “I made it myself!” There isn’t even any bacon in the soap. There was, however, plenty of eye twitching.

Its cover is similar to many other novels in the zombie apocalypse/action/thriller category, but it gets across the story’s concept. The next covers will be in the same vein, with a silhouette and various weapons. The background will be different colors, though. Book 2 will be red and involve a tomahawk.

The Amazon page is up, but it’s for reviews only. It all goes live in October!

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You’ll forgive me if this post is different from my usual stuff. Feel free to skip over it, but you’re missing out!

There’s an interesting tradition here in Central North Carolina. Many of the elementary schools position a boulder beside the highway and allow the kids to paint the rock with their name and birthday on their special day. The kids get to choose what their paint scheme is and what the rock says. There are two that I pass on a regular basis. One is in China Grove and one is outside of Huntersville.

Almost every day, even on non-school days such as in summer, the boulders paint designs are different. I find this to be both poignant depressing and paradoxically encouraging.

These kids wait all year for their chance to paint their name, birthday, and design. All their friends help out. They stand there and admire it, and feel proud of their effort. Yet in a day or so, another kid will step up and do the same, effectively erasing the last kid’s special event.

This isn’t so much what I find depressing, however. What I find depressing is that this is a tradition for the kids, and a sort of anchor for their lives. In this day and age, we have so very few sacred and special acts that we perform. We are told that remembering historic events, honoring our ancestors, and praising our God and His works are passe. Modern people deserve to change traditions, They say, going so far as to make them unrecognizable from the originals. Everyone has their own interpretation of the tradition, and many people don’t even continue the tradition from year to year.

It’s also depressing that these kids will soon have to face the world woefully prepared, unaware of how to go out and find their own rocks to paint, so to speak. They will make their own way, striving against all odds, fighting against a society and a government that squelches one’s creative impulses. If they choose to give in to the pressure, they will live the same life as everyone else. Whether they like it or not. Will they even know they’re conforming to the sheep model? Or a better question, will they care?

I wonder how many people driving by think about the kids whose names and birthdays are on the boulder. Who will these kids turn out to be? What will they do with the life that they have been given? Will the day that they were painting their birthday on the rock be one of their best days, a highlight among a sea of mediocrity? How’s their home life? Will they have strong families when they grow up, or will they perpetuate a trend of crumbling family ties?

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Someday, if the Lord tarries, archaeologists will dig up these painted rocks and wonder what this was about. Perhaps they’ll think these kids were princes and princesses. They’ll wonder why there are so many layers of paint. Or perhaps by this point in the future no one will care about history, because the people will be the outworkings of a society that scorned its origins and tried to rewrite history.

All the world is changing, yet for these kids, and even for us commuters driving by, we take comfort in the tradition of change as is regards birthday boulders. We know that a new name and design will appear. Like the changing of the seasons, it is different yet the same. It is spontaneous yet planned. We look forward to seeing the small burst of creativity every morning. While I look forward to seeing the new designs every day, I feel a pang of longing for those that have gone before.

I think perhaps we should all make a birthday boulder for ourselves. Not just one that commemorates the day of our birth, but one that commemorates our accomplishments and high points. One that encourages us to move forward and achieve more despite the times that it seems we’re pushing a boulder uphill, or burrowing through solid rock, or cowering under a rain of stones from our society.

But more than that, more than the boundary stones that our forefathers erected, or a stone of remembrance, we need the Solid Rock, the Chief Cornerstone that the builders rejected and that was not made with hands, the Rock of Israel, the One who is a stumbling block too many.

Psalm 94:22

“But the LORD has been my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge.”

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The movie the void has been all over the Facebook groups that I’m a part of. One of them is a Lovecraft interest group that focuses on everything from the Cthulhu Mythos. So I decided to devote an hour and a half of my life to this movie.

If you want to know what it’s all about, go watch it on Netflix.

Interest-Grabbing Factor

It starts out with a couple of guys burning a woman after they shoot her in the back. Another guy flees the attackers. There’s also a guy or possibly a girl standing off at the edge of the woods wearing a white outfit reminiscent of the KKK. On the front of the person’s mask is a black triangle. Triangles going to be a motif throughout the movie. This is a rather interesting way to open the movie, because you really don’t know who the good guys or the bad guys are at this point.

Character Interest Factor

There are a lot of characters in this movie. As is common in horror movies, I don’t really get attached to the characters. I watch horror movies for the same reason other people watch NASCAR or hockey: to see the violence. Or why I watch The Walking Dead, which is to see who dies, when, and how.

Our characters are a cop, a doctor, a nurse, some young pregnant chick, an intern, and the guys who were burning people. Oh and there’s the guy who was running from the guys who were burning the chick.

The main character was a cop, whose name I can’t remember because it’s not really important. He is the husband of the nurse. Apparently they lost a child. The doctor, who’s an old man, also lost a child. But that’s really about the only ties.

There are some nice deaths in there, and there’s a lot of blood squirting around, but as is common in modern horror movies, I could really care less if they live or die.

Character Development

I really don’t see a whole lot of it going on. But this is a horror movie, so that’s expected.

Makeup Quality

The makeup is actually really well done.

Special-Effects Quality

The special effects are also well done. The monsters and zombies are quite lifelike, and the tentacles are pretty believable. The gore is at a level that would be believable as well. There’s not a whole lot of CG special effects. The lighting does a lot for the horror ambience. My one complaint though is that some of the bodies that were hanging around and the basement look pretty plastic. One had intestines that were packaged inside the abdomen despite it being sliced open. It looks like one of those models in anatomy and physiology class. In reality those things would be all over the floor like a giant purple worm.

Medical accuracy

Yes, I know I’m really expecting too much to have some medical accuracy in a horror movie. But I can dream, right? It’s okay, but it’s certainly nothing that makes me sit up and say, well they certainly did their research! But I’ve seen way worse.

Twists

I’m pretty good at spotting the twists in horror movies. I pretty much called it that the pregnant chick would play a major role. And once there was a bit revealed about the doctor, it wasn’t hard to tell that was going to a bad place.

But the end was a little bit different from what I expected. It didn’t actually end, which is sort of Lovecraftian, but not quite to the level that I would like.

Logic

This means, was I able to tell what on Earth was going on. With most horror movies, I don’t really care that much if the plot is understandable. That’s because most horror movies exist two make us wince and cringe. Or to make us laugh, which happens sometimes unintentionally.

I’m rather vague on what this was all about. I get that the main antagonist was summoning creatures from some other realm with secret signs and rituals. He was experimenting on people and/or offering them as sacrifices. The rest of it gets a little hazy, except that he was doing all this in order to bring his dead daughter back. How he brought her back was a little bit confusing. But I guess that his brain was warped by extraplanar forces.

Monster Danger Factor

They had tentacles and could poke your eyes out, drag you away into the corner, and squish your head. They could also impregnate you I guess. It was a vague there. They also could stand up to a lot of damage from firearms.

But overall, they were vulnerable to fire and damage with an axe or shotgun. They also were not very fast. As for size, there were a few that were large, but you can still fit them in a room easily.

Zombies

As stated above, they weren’t all that dangerous. But there was a fair number of them in one area of the building. They looked pretty darn impressive.

Unintentional humor

There really wasn’t a lot of humor in this movie. I don’t know how I feel about that. Unintentional humor, such as gallons and gallons of blood from one human, or monsters that just are not convincing, is great in horror movies. Dark humor is also appreciated.

If you’re not going to have these kinds of humor in a movie, then the film has to be very convincing and thought-provoking to come across as compelling. This didn’t make the grade.

WTF Factor

First up, the cop had to bring the survivor of the shooting and burning to a hospital. The nearest hospital is one that has all of four people working in it. This is ostensibly because there was a fire at the hospital. Now, I’ve worked at hospitals. I’ve also heard in great detail about hospitals that have sustained damage from a natural disaster. Normally, if the fire damage is so severe that only a few people can work, they shut the whole place down. So at the time of the movie, we’ve got a hospital that is less efficient and less helpful than an urgent care clinic. There is all of one other patient there as well.

Sometimes they have electricity, and sometimes they’re able to connect with the outside world, but a lot of the time they are not. There’s no real explanation for this.

There’s also no real explanation for why there’s a cult of white-robed people that have triangles on their faces. Oh I forgot to mention that there was a whole pack of those people outside the hospital, keeping everyone inside.

It doesn’t really explain how the main antagonist got the powers that he did, nor what the powers are, where they came from, or what they want. In a Lovecraft story, you know what’s going on even if it is mysterious. You know that the Old Ones or Cthulhu or Nyarlathotep are trying to take over the world. Again. You know that probably the main character, the one who’s narrating the story, is going to go mad at some point. They may die as well. But it’s all very straightforward. I feel that when you know the motivations and intent of the evil forces, the dread you feel is heightened. If I don’t know the stakes that are involved, I really can’t work up much concern for stopping them. Watching this, one would think that the worst that could happen is that we would have a few conglomerations of shambling corpses wandering around. They would last until somebody used a flamethrower, grenade, or .50 cal machine gun on them. There was no mention that they were going to take over the world. Then again, there may have been, but the movie didn’t really grab me, so I was checking Facebook a lot. Part of how I judge how good a show is, is by the…

Facebook Check Index

That’s how often I check Facebook and how long I am on during the movie. Some movies, such as Iron Man, keep me off my phone the whole time. Some series are like that as well, such as Better Call Saul or Breaking Bad or Stranger Things. I stayed off my phone for a good 20 minutes. There was some good gore and some neat little twists that kept me interested. Then things started to get a slow because I didn’t care about the characters. This far into the movie, I should at least care if the main character lives or dies.

I was able to check all my messages, reply, read an article that was linked in another Facebook post, and take a quiz on my preferences about the zombie apocalypse in fiction. I also had time to wander aimlessly around the apartment. I might also mention that I checked Pinterest extensively. I was going to do some research on book marketing on Amazon, but the movie distracted me.

Was this Lovecraftian or not?

Yes, it was quite Lovecraftian in the fact that there were tentacled monsters that the antagonist summoned from a nether region of the Abyss. There were even some nice summoning diagrams in a book.

Was it worth watching?

It was alright as a general distraction movie. There is nothing that really stimulated the imagination. There was nothing to make you think deeper. And there was really that made you scared afterward. This wasn’t like Jaws, which made you afraid to get in the water. Nor was it like Psycho, which made you afraid to take a shower. There wasn’t even much that made you jump. And yes, I did watch this with the lights off. I like to save electricity.

There was a short clip with zombies in it. Like I mentioned above, they were really nice zombies, as far as that style of walking dead goes. They weren’t all that dangerous, even there were a lot of them.

The writing was nothing to write home about. The acting was par for any B or C horror movie. The filming was fairly okay.

If you’re bored and just want to kill some time, and have a little bit of a hankering for some Lovecraft, give us movie a shot, but don’t waste too much ammo on it.

 

Thoughts? Did you watch this? Do you know any other Lovecraftian movies? Comment!