Zombie Cliche Lookout: Clarification
Even, or perhaps especially, in the zombie apocalypse, you’ve got to be careful about what you agree to. I recently watched a great documentary called Terms and Conditions May Apply that examined all those creepy little things we agree to when we sign end-user licensing agreements (affectionately known as EULAs). You know, those dense little documents you have to sign before you upgrade iTunes or sign up for Facebook. The ones that no one reads because they’re pretty much inscrutable. Well it turns out those things are forcing you to sign away some of your rights, and that’s pretty uncool.
What’s this have to do with zombies? Well, I’ll admit it’s a stretch. However, I think you can still glean the lesson that you need to know exactly what you’re getting into before you commit to something. That can come up in all sorts of different ways when surviving a zombie epidemic. Perhaps you have to disarms before entering a survivors’ camp. That’s fine and good, but is that temporary, or permanent. When you leave, do you get your stuff back? Does anyone else use it while you don’t have access to it? If there’s an emergency, can you get to it to help with general defense? Those are all pertinent questions.
About this Episode:
In this episode, I decided to take the advice from the comments. I was originally going to go back and forth on my shots, with the camera facing the character speaking each time. Joy, Michael, and Stewart would simply back up for some woods. I had the woods built (easy enough, since I could just rearrange previous sets), but figured I’d take a stab at what you guys suggested, and not worry about showing the face of the speaking character now that we all know who they are.
So, what do you think?
Discussion Question: Addiction in a Survival Scenario
BrickVoid posted another interesting question that I’m going to shamelessly steal here: how do you deal with people like alcoholics and drug addicts in a survival situation? Are you able to trust them in any capacity? For instance, could you trust an alcoholic to keep watch if there’s a chance he or she could find a way to get access to booze while they’re responsible for keeping the rest of the group safe?
Typo alert, Zombie Cliche Lookout, second paragraph, third sentence: “need t know” change to “need to know”. 😀
Same section, same paragraph, fourth sentence, third word from the end of the sentence, counting backwards: and–>any OR maybe ‘a’, up to you Dave.
Hah, another typo this week I actually noticed and got confused with: ”Addition in the Zombie Apocalypse”. Mathematics is somewhat irrelevant in such a disaster.
Hah, that’s a funny one. Got it.
Mathematics is not useless if you use it within physics to determine what the right angle is before you take a shot! 😛
Hah, very true. Math is extremely useful stuff.
The wording I used is incorrect. It should be “Correct angle”, not “right angle” as a right angle is 90 degrees.
Hah, I think it was clear from the context.
Fixed! Thanks BV.
I looked at the About This Episode section, and in the fourth sentence you said “had the woods build” did you mean “had the woods built”? I didn’t flag that one first up because it’s really iffy. Up to Dave if he even wants to correct that one or not! 😀
I meant “built” That’s another one that I’ll fix now.
Another issue for the possible recovering addicts is treating them when they get injured. As the supplies that would be needed after an injury are not likely acsessable (certain pain meds), you would have to use what you have. Even for alcoholics pain meds can cause relapses and if one was to give the addict in the group an extra dosage of the meds, the mentality that they had when they were taking in other drugs before could once again kick in and make them unreliable after the relapse.
Excellent point, and something I hadn’t really considered.
Something I’ve been thinking about is profiling people and if it would be effective in the apocalypse. I can’t seem to make up a good discussion, though, and I was wondering if you could piece together some sort of question, Dave?
I’d imagine it would have its uses, although you’d run a huge risk of judging incorrectly. Trusting someone too much or too little based on how you profile them could be disastrous.
It sounds like an excellent question, nonetheless. You might want to start with what questions would you expect to use in profiling someone? There are sites on the internet out there that can give profiling questions for a particular purpose, so I’m pretty sure it’d be easy to make one that’s relatively tough if you knew what you were doing. 😉
I would further add that it’s something we’re doing constantly already, albeit on an unconscious level.
I’ve been with this series for a while and I have two questions, first of all, have you ever considered using greenscreens with your sets? And also, what advice would you give to someone wanting to do a similar thing that you’re doing?
Green screens seem like more trouble than they’re worth to me. I like having a brick-build background.
As far as advice goes, I would say have a plan. A good, well developed plan. Know what you want to do and how you’re going to do it, and stick to it. It’s easy to start, it’s hard to keep going.
5 till episode 500! It better be a biggy!
Hah! Isn’t that crazy?
This question is very general. There are alot of addicts out there. Less than 3% of alcoholics are skid row bums, the vast majority are “working alcoholics”. I personally know someone who has been a serious alcoholic for thirty years and has a Top Secret security clearance.
Now the question is Alcohol in zed apocalypse is no longer a luxury but a needed resource. It has alot of uses besides getting drunk. If you have someone who will abuse that resource then you have a problem you need to deal with and it may not be pretty.
Oh and thinking during zed times you will have alot more people abusing recreational substances to cope with the new stress.
Oh and you left out the Washington and Colorado people smoking it up while on guard since its legal.
Excellent points here. I’ve known a lot of functioning alcoholics in my day.
One thing that I wonder about is how they would cope with a survival situation when alcohol was simply not available. Most of the people I know – functional or otherwise – would have a hell of a time.
Sign up for pictophile, it is an app about strange pictures, just make sure you read the terms.
“I know what I’m doing for the-” anyone that watches horror flicks.
Define “strange” in this case. Creepy? Uncanny?