Three episodes into âSalvationâ and I canât believe how stupid the characters are. The premise of the show is there is a planet killing asteroid on a collision course with the Earth. It has a 97 percent chance of colliding with our planet creating and extinction level event. The U.S. government has known about it for three months, and ordered a rocket from the Tanz company to send up a gravity tractor. The rocket has to retrofitted to work for what the government wants, and in testing, the retrofits donât work right and the rocket blows up. The gravity tractor is out as far as the government is concerned.
In the meantime, a college studentâs algorithm found the
asteroid. The student informs his professor, who disappears. The student gets
close to Darius Tanz, head of the Tanz company, and tells him whatâs going on.
Tanz contacts the Department of Defense. Both the student and Tanz get added to
the secret group that is trying to find ways to deal with the asteroid. With
the gravity tractor out, one of the men has proposed running the IO satellite
into the asteroid to knock it off course.
The student and Tanz point out that doing so wonât move the
asteroid. It would instead create a lot of meteorites that would rain down on
Earth with no telling where they would land. The man, who proposed the idea,
concedes the point and asks if Tanz has a better idea. Tanz proposes the
invention of an electromagnetic engine which doesnât exist. They agree on that
solution for the moment.
Flash forward to the next meeting because the president is
getting nervous and wants an update. The man, who proposed the ramming of the
asteroid, comes back with the same proposal, but this time, heâs done the
calculations: the created meteors would rain down on Russia, China and Korea
killing an estimated 1.4 billion people. They have two windows. The first is in
seven days, the next is in 60 days. Rather than give Tanz and his team 60 days
to build and perfect their EM engine, they decide to go with the first window
because it gives them two chances to get it right.
What? The false logic here is that they have two chances.
Unless they have two satellites in orbit around IO, they have only one chance.
Waiting for the second window wouldnât change anything. If they didnât get it
right the first time, there is no second chance. The IO satellite would be
careening into space, and thereâs no backup. You have one satellite and one
chance. Wait for the second window.
However, thereâs a larger problem. Russia and China have
active space programs. Chances are theyâre going to find out about this asteroid
and what the U.S. did. If they do, thereâs a good chance, theyâll see the
destruction of the asteroid as an act of war and decide to use their missiles
to blow the U.S. up. The political wonks and military people should understand
thatâs the natural reaction of any person in power and that this secret
asteroid information is going to get out. At the very least, some spy is going
to find out. More likely someoneâs going to let something slip.
If colliding with the asteroid is the only choice, this
group needs to make sure it has a plan to evacuate the countries that are going
to be affected before it decides on this plan of action. That means the
information about the asteroid needs to be brought before the United Nations
and nations need to know whatâs coming. Even more importantly, the U.S. doesnât
have a monopoly on âsmartâ people or space. In fact, with the defunding of
NASA, the U.S. isnât the leader in space exploration any more. The asteroid could
be used to bring countries together; instead of as a way to fill the American
ego.
In “the Mummy” (2017), Tom Cruise is a rogue army officer looking for ancient artifacts to sell on the black market. He gets caught in a tough spot, calls in an air strike, and blows a hole in the street of an insurgent occupied town that reveals a screaming face. His commanding officer gets there along with a woman who specializes in protecting antiquities. They discover a giant screaming bust, which she recognizes as Egyptian. Cruise, his partner and the woman go into the hole.
There the woman narrates what she sees: A rope with
hieroglyphs to warn against evil spirit submerged in a pool of mercury being
used to weaken its power, watchers faced inward (rather than outward) guarding
against the pool, a set of chains (not for bringing the object up but instead,
for keeping it down). We find out later that she knows monsters exist, and this
is one of the most ancient. Even with all of these warnings and the knowledge
of why the cavern looks the way it does, Cruise shoots the rope, activates the
lifting mechanism and reveals the sarcophagus, which is taken aboard a military
aircraft as a sandstorm threatens to engulf the plane.
Many of the other Mummy movies that came before involve a
team seeking treasure in the desert and continuing to proceed despite warnings
of natives, tribes put in place to guard against the release of the evil, and
bad things happening to the team before they even enter the chamber.
There is a popular myth about the curse of Tutankhamun. Many
people believe there was a curse written on his tomb and Howard Carter went in
anyway. Even though there has been no curse inscribed on the tomb, itâs
representative of what people will do for knowledge, history, fortune and
glory. The truths exposed in these films and this legend include people are
curious and people are greedy. And these are the reasons why burying nuclear
waste wonât work.
Nuclear waste is deadly for 250,000 years. Thatâs longer
than any languages will survive. Burying it with statues and pictograms
detailing its deadliness may be treated as superstition from a less developed
society. Or it may not be readable to explorers who have no context for the
depictions. Worse, it may entice the future explorers to learn more about the
inhabitants who lived amongst the strange drawings. At that point, the horror
and joke will be on them. Assuming the mummy of nuclear waste isnât unwrapped
by natural disasters or our own people with malevolent intent.
As the manager for a larger organization in Alaska, I would
sometimes get a strange call. For my team, I didnât have problems if someone
needed a day off or had to come in late as long as it wasnât a habit. My
employees never took advantage of this, probably because they were part-time
and needed the money. They were also a good group. When I got this call,
however, I did a double take.
âUm, hello, Shad.â I could tell who it was though he identified
himself anyway. âYeah, Iâm going to be late coming into work. Thereâs a moose
in my driveway.â
What could I say? Having a moose or bear in the driveway was a good reason not to come into work. Moose are unpredictable, and no one wants to antagonize a bear. So, I said the only thing I could, âOkay, well, when the moose is gone, come on in. Iâll leave an evening shift spot open for you.â
âGreat. Thanks.â He couldnât tell me when the moose would
leave. I knew he needed his hours. This seemed like a good compromise. More importantly,
no one was put in any danger in order to get to work.
It wasnât the first time I had heard someone use a wildlife
excuse. In fact, when I was an employee at a different organization, I had
faced off with a moose in my yard and decided to call into work instead of hope
the moose didnât kick me or my car. I was new to Alaska, so when I talked to my
boss, he told me it was better to stay at home rather than risk agitating the
moose. I should stay home until the moose was gone. That was one of the best
things about Alaska. People tried to take care of each other.
Fortunately, I never had to worry about facing a penguin in my driveway because there are no penguins in Alaska. I should know; I wrote the book. You can preorder the eBook from Amazon, or get a hard copy coloring book here on penguinate.com. If you want more stories, check out “Tales at an Alaskan Cabin” on Amazon.
Netflixâ âIoâ is a minimalistic, quasi-science fiction movie about the end of the world. The CGI and backgrounds are questionable, and the two main characters have a hard time holding viewers’ attention, which is too bad because I like Anthony Mackie. However, what drives me to write this review is the anger I felt at the main character Sam, played by Margaret Qualley, at the end of the film. (Spoilers ahead.)
The Earth is contaminated by ammonia vapors and the entire
population has fled to Io, Jupiterâs moon, to find a new planet and build a new
life. The entire movie takes place on Earth, so the movie name is a bit of a
misnomer, but not so much that it creates cognitive dissonance. Sam, the daughter
of a scientist who has claimed that people can adapt to the new atmosphere and
urged people not to leave the planet, is the only one left alive as far as she
knows. She self-administers some sort of inoculation against the toxic
atmosphere.
Her human connection is a man who is already at the Io
station. She meets Mackieâs Micah when he lands at her place in a helium balloon.
Micah is looking for Samâs father and headed for the last shuttle off the
planet.
In no particular order, she dumps the man on Io, thereâs a
flashback of her father telling her that the human connection is more important
than science, and Micah reinforces that idea when he says people arenât meant
to be alone. Sam acknowledges all of this and agrees to go with Micah to the
shuttle. Before that happens though, she seduces Micah overcoming his
objections with âwe have to.â
And hereâs where I get angry. Sam goes to a museum and then
tells Micah, sheâs not going with him. She sees life on Earth where everyone
else sees death. She rips off her mask and survives the toxic atmosphere. Micah
leaves the planet. She gives birth to a child, and they go visit the sea. What?
Seriously? Sheâs a scientist working in biology. She should know that women donât
necessarily get pregnant after one session of intercourse. But it can happen,
so letâs go ahead and give that to the movie.
Hereâs where the movie doesnât make any sense. When Micah
tells Sam that sheâs coming with him, she has already gone through the process
of convincing herself thatâs the only logical plan. Sheâs lost the bees. She
needed help with the windmill. Most importantly, she knows she needs the human
connection. Sheâs accepted that. She says, âOkay,â and that should be that.
There is no indication that she has changed her mind about human connection in
the rest of the film or that she understands she is pregnant.
There is no sense to her decision, and if she knows sheâs
pregnant, she makes the most selfish decision available. First, the treatments
didnât work for her father, and administering them to a child would be
different. She doesnât have the expertise or data necessary to insure the
survival of the child.
Second, that child is going to grow up, sheâs going to die,
and the child is going to be alone with no chance for human connection. She is
basically sentencing her child to solitary confinement for much of its life â
at best, and sheâs doing it for no other reason than because she still believes
the human species can adapt. Except, the child will not be able to reproduce.
He or she (according to the credits, the child is a boy) will be the last
person on Earth with no chance to find the human connection beyond the
mother-child one. Which brings us to the last point, she cannot on her own
establish a new species or a human adaptation to the ammonia with just her
child, which begs the question of incest and menopause, if they both survive to
his sexual maturity.
I was willing to deal with the long, slow parts of the movie,
but to have it conclude so illogically and against the character of the only
real characters in the film, was more than disappointing. It was disturbing and
enraging.
When I first moved to Alaska, it was summer, and summers in
Alaska are glorious â absolutely beautiful. However, I was warned. Winter is
coming. If you want to survive Alaska and remain a resident for longer than a
season or two, you need to find an activity that you can do during the winter
months. This meant not only having the right clothing to go outside, but having
the right clothing that would be good for staying outside for prolonged
periods. The other important piece of information I was given about living in
Alaska is that it usually isnât the first mistake that kills you; itâs the
mistakes that follow through poor decision making.
There are a lot of winter activities that people can engage
in: skiing, cross country skiing, skijoring, snowshoeing, ice skating, and
more. Trekking through the winter wonderland that Alaska becomes is amazing in its
own right, as long as you can stay warm. Fortunately, I had a friend who introduced
me to geocaching.
Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt. Geocachers hide ammo cans or Tupperware, mark the coordinates and publish those at geocaching.com. Other cachers seek those boxes. They sign the log book, trade items, and enjoy the wonderful outdoors.
My friend and I had one rule about winter geocaching. If the
temperature was lower than 10 degrees Fahrenheit, we stayed at home. Living in
Anchorage the weather was relatively temperate, so those 10-degree days were
fewer and farther between than some places inland.
One Saturday, early in winter, the temperature pushed up to 10 degrees, and we got our gear together. We chose our destination, got our warm clothes on and headed out to the car. I wore plastic pants to keep melting snow from making my pants wet. They had buttons so that I could reach into my pants pockets if I had to.
We went into the park hiked around and came to a stream. It wasnât
completely frozen over. There was ice on top, but the stream moved beneath. We
could walk to the bridge, but it was far away and I was cold. More importantly,
the arrow pointed right across the stream. I convinced my friend that we could
cross using the branch that hung below the water. It would just be a short jump.
He made it. I didnât.
I fell through the ice. The stream ran into my plastic pants
and into my shoes. I had wool on, so I thought I should be okay. My friend knew
better. With the cache just feet away, I thought we should go get it. He said
no. We were going to go get a pizza and go home. It wouldnât look good for a
director of health and safety (my job title at the time) to get hypothermia or
frostbite because he was too dumb not to make the second mistake.
He was right. Getting wet wasnât really an immediate issue.
Staying out there wouldâve created a bigger problem. So, we went back home. I
took a warm shower and changed into dry clothes and then we ate pizza. Geocaching
was one of two activities that I engaged in to make it through the winter.
Subscribe to this blog and donât miss when I post about the next one.
In Alaska, you may have to know how to protect yourself against long, dark winters and cold weather, but you do not have to know how to protect yourself against penguins, because there are no penguins in Alaska. I know because I wrote the book. Preorder the eBook on Amazon or preorder a hard copy coloring book here at penguinate.com. If you want more stories, check out “Tales at an Alaskan Cabin” on Amazon.
Why let reality get in the way of your enjoyment of good
entertainment? If you donât want to read anything about what âStranger Things
3â should be like, move on to another article. Otherwise, here are some things
that probably resulted from âStranger Things 2â that will need to be explored
in the threequel.
Economics â Hawkins has to be a dried-up ghost town or the ruins of a small town when the lab closes up. The small shops and restaurants could survive while the shutdown was in progress because of the influx of military and moving people. After that though, thereâs no way to replace all of the revenue lost from government workers who rented or bought homes, went grocery shopping or stopped at the local diner. An economist will trace the downfall of the economy to the failure of several crops in the area, most notably the pumpkins in every pumpkin patch. But the closure of the lab will be the true economic downfall. Some people might point out that all those dead government workers wouldâve had the same effect. However, had the U.S. government kept the lab open, it would have brought in more workers. The poverty rate is going to climb unlessâŠ
This is the middle of Reaganâs presidency. Maybe he deregulates and sells off the property, which is bought by a weapons manufacturer. Employees flood into the area again, but is this a good business and will they find 11?
Ninja Kids â Steveâs been beat up twice now. He really needs to learn how to fight. He is supposed to be the number one jock in the school when we first meet him. He shows his athleticism swinging a bat. Heâs got the physical talents, he just needs to develop them. The âKarate Kidâ was released in the summer of 1984 before the events of âStranger Things 2.â
Steveâs not the only one that needs to develop fighting
skills. The nerds need to develop their real-life fighting skills. After the
first incident, everyone leaves thinking, âWell, thatâs over. Thank God,â and
they go back to their relatively normal lives as was evidenced in one of the
first scenes with Nancy and Mike. Mike steals Nancyâs quarters and doesnât tell
her why. They promised no more secrets after the first season; they were back
to fighting and leaving each other in the dark in the second. Itâs human nature
to ignore one bad thing. However, when after a second incident occurs, itâs
time to find someone who can teach you how to fight. The best fighters know
when theyâre overmatched; the best teams learn to fight as a team. They also play
to each otherâs strengths. âThe A-Teamâ came on the air in 1983; âThe Stranger
Thingsâ kids have a group to pattern themselves after. They canât just go back
to playing D&D; itâs just a game.
Science Kids and Preppers â Maybe the nerds canât become the best fighters. They can learn to shoot more effective weapons than the wrist rocket. Bows and arrows would be in their wheelhouse as something they could get excited about because they play D&D. Nancy already knows how to shoot a gun; she could teach the rest of them.
If those arenât their thing, they could work on their science skills. Knowing which chemicals create toxic reactions and which could be explosive would be useful. Survival skills like setting traps would also be good to know. Again, they have role models in âthe A-Team.â And they’re already pretty good with Morse code. (Does anyone know that anymore?)
Relationships â Letâs leave out the whole relationship thing. Theyâre kids. It wouldnât last longer than 6 months for any of them. Maybe the teens have a shot. The way these relationships work or donât work is going to come down to the writing and who the show appeals, too. Eleven and Mike are 12 when they meet. Theyâre 13 when they go to the Snow Ball. We donât live in the age of Romeo and Juliet, so their romance really isnât okay. The same holds true for any of the pre-teens. Dating might be a part of growing up, but it doesnât have to define the show. Yet, with the interracial dating of Max and Lucas and the clear hatred of her brother for Lucasâ “kind” of people, it could wind up playing a big and important part.
Emotional Connection – Is anger the strongest emotion? Thatâs how El moves a train car. Itâs how she closes the gate, but it feels empty and hollow. If anger is really the strongest emotion, then Billy should be the star of the show. There are a lot of angry characters. Max and Hopper both admit to their anger issues. Still, if this is the message of the series, then maybe we all just need to be a little angrier to attain our true power. I donât happen to believe that, but Iâm not sure what other message is currently being sent by “Stranger Things 2.” Thereâs a work together theme. Thereâs a take action theme. Thereâs a friendship theme⊠It just seems that anger has won out in the finale of the show, even with the love of the Snow Ball playing a small role in the denouement and teaser.
All of these thoughts were ones that occurred immediately
after watching the last episode of âStranger Things 2.â I enjoyed the series
while watching it, but there are far too many questions if you try to throw a
little reality at it. Yes, I know itâs sci-fi. However, it uses the real world
as its basis for reality. No one will believe in the monsters. Atariâs the big
gift. He-Man loves Barbie. Science fiction and fantasy set up there rules and
have to play by them; otherwise Superhero Bob could come back to life with
superpowers from the radioactive bite of a Demodog or really anything else
could happen and the viewer (or reader) would have no way of being able to
suspend disbelief. I guess the other question is whether or not they will
explore 8âs character more. That whole sequence really seemed like a toss off,
but it did develop Elâs character, gave her a choice, and allowed her to come
back to the real story.
Feel free to leave your comments about âStranger Things 2.â Try to keep them nice. Check out my other blog posts on penguinate.com. If you want to meet a member of the Stranger Things cast, get your tickets for Lilac City Comicon 2019. The science teacher/AV advisor Mr. Clarke, Randy Havens is scheduled to be in Spokane. You can read more about Lilac City Comicon here.
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