A logistical nightmare

Dear Santa,

I have been a very good boy this year. Mostly. Well, I haven't done anything that bad. Okay, I haven't broken any laws. Okay, no-one died. That I know of. Anyway, as it's that time of year again, I have a few requests.

1. A roadster with a Ferrari V8 and the sequential gearbox from a BMW M3.
2. Friendlier voices in my head.
3. A pet tiger.
4. Potassium nitrate.
5. Charcoal.
6. Sulphur.
7. Audrey Tautou covered in honey.

You'll have noticed that the list is considerably shorter than it was last year. Trying to be a bit less materialistic. Well, that's it for this year. Have a safe trip and, as ever, thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Arun.

Dear Arun,

Before I get started, the legal department have asked me to inform everyone asking for presents that there are now certain conditions to be met, after far too many delays and near-misses last year, and that failure to meet these conditions will result in non-delivery of presents.

• Your roof must be no steeper than 37 degrees.
• Your chimney pot must protrude no more than 1200 millimetres from the roof and must not be less than 200 millimetres in diameter.
• The roof must be free of decorations.
• All reasonable effort must be made to keep the roof free of ice.
• The roof must not have broken or missing tiles.
• Santa reserves the right not to deliver if it is dangerous to do so.

Moving on to your list, I'm afraid I can't deliver any of it. I'm aware of the roadster you're referring to, but it is a concept car, there's only one in existence and I'm fairly confident they'd notice it missing. Friendlier voices in your head are surely a matter for your doctor. A pet tiger would be much too dangerous, as well as ridiculous. Even if I could deliver a french actress to your home, I really don't know if Ms Tautou would be willing to allow herself to be covered in honey. And as for items 4,5 and 6, if you're planning to make your own gunpowder, I want nothing to do with it. Let's be honest, you don't have the best track record; you're not allowed to own fish any more and that microwave explosion brought the kitchen ceiling down. Sorry about your presents, and best wishes for the future.

Yours sincerely,

Santa Claus

P.S: You're 29. Stop writing to Santa.

Dear Santa,

You make some good points, but in my defence, that explosion was an accident. To this day, I have no idea what was in that bowl at the back of the fridge, but apparently it was very unstable. Regarding my list, what if I were to cut it down to one item? The item I have in mind wasn't on the original list. A PS3; surely you can deliver those?

Yours sincerely,

Arun

Dear Arun,

No. Like I said, you're 29.

Yours sincerely,

Santa Claus

Dear Santa,

I didn't want to have to play it this way, but need I remind you of what happened in Kyoto in 2005? Get back to me.

Yours sincerely,

Arun

Dear Arun,

Please accept my sincerest apologies for my earlier letters. I don't know what came over me. A PS3 and some games will be under your tree on Christmas morning. I'll even throw in a Blu-ray. Thank you for your support over the years and for your help in dealing with the Kyoto incident, which you were instrumental in keeping out of the papers.

Yours sincerely,

Santa Claus

More Power

If you're not already sitting down, I suggest you do so immediately, because the following may shock you. So, are you sitting comfortably? No laptops, tablets or smartphones in danger of being dropped? Okay, here goes: women do more housework than men. I know, staggering, isn't it? I almost dropped the remote when I read that. According to the Office for National Statistics, people spent less time on housework in 2005 than in 2000, but women still do more, spending an average of 2 hours 31 minutes per day on housework, compared with men, who spend 1 hour 53 minutes per day trying to earn enough brownie points to get away with a couple of hours of FIFA later on. Doesn't that seem a little odd? Stay-at-home dads have become socially acceptable, when a mere thirty years ago, the idea would have been laughable, at best. There is now no job (with the odd exception, such as male model) that a woman cannot do. The sexes are now more evenly matched, in more ways, than they have ever been, and yet women still do a full 25% more housework per average day. Most people have their own idea why this is, and their own idea is almost invariably due to their own gender, but consider this; your average household appliance isn't what you'd call masculine, is it? I'll elaborate.

A while ago, I noticed that some vacuum cleaners have a dial that allows the user to choose just how much suction they want, anything from 'Min' to 'Max'. There's your first clue that this machine wasn't designed with a man in mind; no numbers. Men like to quantify things. There's no point in knowing that 'Max' gives more suction that 'Min', when you have no idea how much more. You need numbers, preferably percentages, so that the minimum is expressed as a pitifully small percentage of the motor's available power and the maximum is, obviously, 100%. In fact, the range should not be anything so effete as from 'Min' to 'Max', it should start at 'Max' and go up to 'Are you sure about this?'.

What I'm suggesting, here, is not simply that manufacturers label appliances in such a way as to make them appear more powerful, but that they make appliances which are more powerful. With this mindset, and invaluable input from friend, colleague and fellow visionary Malcolm* (who introduced me to the engineering mantra 'if you can't fix it with a hammer, it's an electrical issue'), I set about creating a whole new range of man-friendly household appliances.

First to be reinvented was the vacuum cleaner. As mentioned above, it should be substantially more powerful than anything currently on sale. Most vacuum cleaners tend to have 1000-2000 watt motors. Pitiful, isn't it? 11 kilowatts (equivalent to about 15 horsepower), now that's more like it. That's the sort of power that gets your attention. It should be, because that's the sort of power that will be capable of sucking the pile off a carpet, never mind any dust. The machine should be bagless, partly because changing bags is the sort of dirty job that I for one will avoid unless it absolutely must be done, and partly because this beast will be able to double as a garden vac. Bypass the dust chamber, attach a large nylon bag to the exhaust and you'll be able to rid the garden of leaves, having just rid the living room of crisp fragments. A butane-fuelled afterburner in the exhaust (deactivated in outdoor mode, so as not to set the bag on fire) will incinerate any pet hair, etc... that makes it out the other side, thus our cleaning behemoth will have a hypo-allergenic sticker on it, to assure prospective buyers that it is safe for people with hay fever, asthma, etc... Finally, it needs a clunkily industrial-sounding name. 'Suction Multi-Tool' should suffice.

Next, the kitchen; a room which should already be fairly appealing, as it is full of things which require power. But aside from the fridge and kettle, what is there to attract a man's attention? First thing to be upgraded is the cooker. I'm thinking an oven capable of melting copper, a grill that can turn sausages into charcoal in a few minutes and one big burner for a hob. You'll lose the odd saucepan handle now and then, but it can be used as a barbecue; every man's preferred method of cooking. This cooker will come with a set of ceramic heat-resistant tiles, to be fixed to the ceiling directly above the monster hob, to make sure nothing structural catches fire. And prevent bits of burnt plaster landing in your food.

Moving on, and sticking with the gas burner idea, consider the toaster. Nothing wrong with toasters as they are, you might think. And you'd be right; there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the basic design. Put bread in, wait a few minutes, toast comes out. Job done. But what if, instead of using the heat radiating from a hot wire, toasters had several small burners? Put bread in, wait up to four seconds, toast comes out. Job done. Faster. And all that's required is a way of getting gas to the toaster. I'm thinking something along the lines of those little camping gas cylinders. Maybe the toaster should come with heat-resistant tiles, too, to allow it to be used underneath cupboards, without all your plates falling out.

There's nothing terribly wrong with the blender as it is, either, but more power can only improve it. I understand some companies can sell you a blender with one third of a horsepower, which is obviously nowhere near powerful enough. And so I have found one redeeming feature in the Toyota Prius: its twin electric motors, which produce a combined 80 horsepower. Putting just one of these in our improved blender will endow it with 40 HP. Take that, Moulinex. Seriously, never mind blending fruit for a smoothie, that'll blend gravel.

And then we have the washing machine. Loathsome things, washing machines. I've never figured out how to use any particular machine without help. I can see how to make any other household appliance do my bidding, but a washing machine I haven't encountered before? Someone has to show me. I find that infuriating, and I blame the dial on most washing machines which, using randomly arranged hieroglyphics and no small amount of idiosyncrasy, allows the shaman using the damn thing to choose from dozens of subtly different programmes. So that needs to go. The man-friendly washing machine will have just three (fairly vigorous) programmes; light colours, dark colours and whites. That's it. If you're wondering why there's no delicate wash, that's because men don't have delicates. At least none that aren't permanently attached. As you'd expect, it has a little more power than the one currently in your kitchen. Picture a horizontal water pipe. Now picture a chamber like an upturned bottle connected to the pipe, sticking straight up. This is what will allow the washing machine to deliver the white wash to end all white washes. The chamber will be, say, three quarters full of water, with air at the top. As the machine heats the water, steam will form above the water. As steam builds, this pressurises the water, preventing it from boiling further, allowing the water to remain liquid far above 100 degrees. Think a boil wash is good at getting stains out? Try the same thing at 300 degrees or so. That'll get the black out of onyx. It'll need a pressure release valve, of course, in case of emergency, and it probably wouldn't be safe to blow superheated steam into your drains, but look at it this way; you can have your own geyser in the back garden.

Well, that's it for now. I had a couple of other ideas, but they're just not feasible. My idea for a super powerful microwave can't happen, due to some silly little law about background radiation. And the less said about the deep fat fryer, the better.


*Surname withheld, to protect the guilty.

Urban Legends (Part one)

It's almost that time of year again. Shops full of enough brightly-coloured decorations to induce seizures, cheesier-than-stilton ads on tv, peculiar customs that would certainly raise an eyebrow at any other time of year and children so full of sugar, they're probably flammable. That's right; Hallowe'en. Don't get me wrong, I love hallowe'en. And not just because it's a great excuse to get moderately stewed, while dressed as a champagne bottle.

I always loved it as a child: the toffee apples, the bags of mixed nuts (which brought the challenges of trying to crack a hazelnut without damaging ornaments and trying to crack a Brazil nut without damaging yourself), the fireworks and, of course, the assorted spirits walking the earth for one night only. While I have since (mostly) outgrown witches, vampires, et al, I do still enjoy the odd urban legend. You know, missing person eventually found dead in a chimney, someone on PCP turns cannibal, that sort of thing. They're grown-up fairy tales, unsettling if you dwell on them, but mostly just escapism. They're fun, because you know those things can't possibly have happened, so you indulge your imagination for a moment, then it's back to the real world. Like the story of the toxic woman, that's just absurd, surely? A human being whose blood is harmful to anyone near it? Not possible.

Except it is, because it happened. The case is actually quite well known. On the 19^th of February 1994, Gloria Ramirez was admitted to an emergency room in California, suffering from advanced cervical cancer. Around the time it became apparent that Gloria was not responding well to treatment, medical staff noticed an oily sheen on her skin. A nurse drew some blood and noticed a foul odour, rather like ammonia, emanating from the syringe, which she passed to a doctor, before fainting. The doctor noticed manila coloured particles in the blood, then complained of feeling light headed, left the room, sat down and fainted. Shortly after, a respiratory therapist also fainted. In total, 23 staff were affected. Gloria Ramirez was pronounced dead 45 minutes after being admitted. The case was swiftly downplayed, dismissed as mass hysteria and basically swept under the rug, although some people have their doubts about the mass hysteria explanation. Like the doctor I mentioned, who spent the next two weeks in ICU and developed hepatitis, pancreatitis and avascular necrosis (cellular death of bone components, which causes bone structure to collapse. Not fun). The fact that the autopsy was carried out by people in full hazmat suits also suggested something more than panic might be to blame.

In July this year, a disused bank chimney in Abbeville, Louisiana provided proof that the first urban myth on the list isn't so mythical. As the bank began renovations, the remains of Joseph Schexnider were discovered in the chimney, which had long since been closed off. He was last seen alive aged 22 in 1984.

As for PCP turning an otherwise unremarkable person into a crazed killer and cannibal, that just sounds like propaganda. Until you hear what happened, the last time Antron Singleton took PCP. Better known (apparently) as the rapper Big Lurch, Singleton was picked up by police staggering around the streets of Los Angeles one night in April 2002, after a PCP binge lasting almost a week. He was naked, liberally coated in blood and howling at the sky. This was unusual enough, but it gets worse. His 21-year-old female room-mate Tynisha Ysais had been found in her apartment by a friend. She was dead, with a 3-inch section of a blade broken off in her shoulder and tooth marks on her face and on her lungs, which had been torn out. A medical examination performed after his capture found human flesh in Singleton's stomach that was not his own.

And then there's the cursed phone number. The most trouble I've ever had with a phone number was a few years ago, when I got a new phone, changed my number and found the new one hard to remember for a while, which is part of the reason I find the cursed phone number so interesting. Seriously, there aren't many phone numbers that are easier to remember than 0888 888 888, but the convenience comes at a price. Everyone who has had the number since 2000 has died. First,Vladimir Grashnov, former CEO of Bulgarian company Mobitel, which issued the number. He died of cancer in 2001, aged 48. Despite a flawless reputation, there were rumours that a rival deliberately caused his cancer using radiation poisoning. The number of doom passed to Bulgarian Mafia boss Konstantin Dimitrov. He was shot by a sniper in 2003 while inspecting part of his drug empire in the Netherlands. Russian Mafia bosses were thought to be behind the murder. The number passed to businessman Konstantin Dishliev, who managed to keep breathing till 2005, when he was shot outside a restaurant. By day an estate agent and by night the head of a massive drug trafficking operation, Dishliev was killed after police intercepted enough cocaine to ski down coming into Bulgaria from Columbia. The number has since been suspended by Mobitel, who are apparently worried about the possibility of any more fine, upstanding pillars of society being murdered by sinister rivals.

So it turns out that if you do a little digging, you might find there's some truth in that outrageously macabre story, after all. Think about that, next time you get an email about that babysitter brutally slain by what she wrongly assumed was a statue of a clown.

And, in case you were wondering (or didn't already know); yes, I am the proud owner of a champagne bottle costume. You haven't lived, till you've seen a 6'4” champagne bottle dance.

Julia Roberts changed my life

Funny things, life-changing moments. They can occur anywhere, at any time. From near-death experiences to something as simple as seeing a sunrise, you never know when something will trigger a serious self-evaluation.

The backdrop for my little epiphany was fairly undramatic, to be honest. Taking the advice of a friend, I sat back in my armchair with a nice cold beer to watch Sleeping With The Enemy, a film I had somehow missed until that point. Nothing against Julia Roberts, you understand, I'm just not normally drawn to chick flicks and had always assumed it was one. So, having been assured it was, in fact, a thriller, I got comfortable and prepared to have my mind changed. It was. Then it changed again, in a slightly different direction. It might not be a chick flick, but it is bloody awful.

It's not that there's a major flaw anywhere, it's that there are several small ones. For example, why, when everything else seems to have been very carefully planned, does she decide to dispose of her wedding ring in the toilet? Any idiot could have told her it wasn't going to flush and it didn't, so her husband saw it a few days later and realised he'd been had. Then there's the part where she goes to visit her mother in the nursing home. Dressing as a man, she even dons a fake moustache. “Your own mother wouldn't recognise you”, coos Ben. Of course she wouldn't: she's blind. Plus, Julia Roberts dressed as a man just looks like Julia Roberts dressed as a man. And the cherry on the dog turd is the final scene, where she calls 911, gives the name she recently started using, says she just killed an intruder and shoots her deranged husband. Of course, she and the failed actor will live happily ever after. The police won't be remotely curious about the woman who just moved to town, is known to practically no-one and just shot someone. Oh, and they'll never identify the dead man, discover that he is not a career criminal after all and wonder what he's doing in Nowhere, Iowa. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that she won't get away with it.

I'm not saying he deserved any better than five in the chest, I just don't like the way the film appears to tie everything up nice and neatly, when, in all probability, our heroine is destined to spend the next few years of her life in an orange jumpsuit, before being executed. That probably wouldn't make a great sequel.

And so, while watching the end credits starting to make their way up the screen, I realised something. That was two hours of my life wasted. Of a finite amount of hours available to me, I had just squandered two of them. Couldn't help but find that a little depressing.

But if there's one good thing about wasting part of your life, however small a part, it's that you start to think about things you could do that won't feel like a waste. I've already started on some constructive uses of time, the details of which I won't go into here, but what I haven't started yet is my own bucket list. So. Here goes;

1. BASE jump from the Eiffel Tower. As places to get arrested go, Paris surely ain't bad.
2. Compete in some form of motorsport. I'm thinking hillclimbing, since it is one of the cheapest forms of motorsport and you are, in theory, mostly competing against yourself.
3. Fire a machine gun. What can I say? I'm a man. We don't grow up, we just get bigger, louder, more expensive toys.
4. Punch Justin Bieber. Enough said.
5. Drink a yard of ale. Preferably without almost drowning upon reaching the point of no return (the point when air can finally get into the bowl at the end, allowing a pint or two of ale to surge down the glass like a storm drain in a flash flood).
6. Build something useful. Nothing huge, you understand. Just a car or something. Or maybe some sort of light aircraft.
7. Meet Simon Cowell and ask him how exactly he sleeps at night. Apart from 'on a big pile of money', obviously.
8. Go to Australia and see Uluru, formerly known as Ayers Rock. People who've been there often talk about the rock as if they're Vietnam vets; “You wouldn't understand, man. You weren't there”.
9. See what happens when you microwave a watermelon. It might be a bit immature, but I'll bet it's funny. As long as the microwave is outside. And not my own.
10. HALO. And I don't mean the Xbox games. I mean a High Altitude, Low Open parachute jump. Normally used by the military as a means of getting personnel and equipment into hostile areas from the relatively safe place that is an aircraft at 30 000 feet, civilians now also have the chance to jump out of a perfectly good plane from over five and a half miles up. http://www.incredible-adventures.com/halo-jumping.html#.ToDrAdQlfzM charge what they call a 'special intro price' of $3495 for the experience. To be honest, I'm not convinced these guys are right in the head, but they seem to know what they're talking about. You jump from so high up, you spend time before the jump breathing pure oxygen. Without oxygen, you can expect to be 'usefully conscious' for around thirty seconds. But the thing that interests me about a HALO jump is not the danger (I could black out, or get something similar to the bends, a condition associated with deep sea diving), not even the (up to) two minutes of freefall. The view is bound to be spectacular, of course: from that height you'll probably be able to see the curvature of the earth, but it's not that either. It's the speed. During a normal parachute jump, from much lower altitude, you accelerate at a fairly alarming rate, before reaching terminal velocity, which is when the force of the air resistance equals the force of gravity. You will continue to fall, of course, but you can't fall any faster. Terminal velocity is normally around 125mph. During the early stages of a HALO jump, when the air is much thinner and so drag is greatly reduced, you can expect to reach an initial terminal velocity of more like 250mph, before reaching the thicker air and greater air resistance closer to the ground and slowing to 125mph. Not bad, when you consider that a Bugatti Veyron requires 1000 BHP (Brake Horse Power, for the non-petrol heads among you) to do that sort of speed, whereas you could do it on your own, using no more than ale and pies.

Well, that's a start. I'll no doubt keep adding to it over time, and I'll even have a go at crossing stuff off. And I strongly suspect that my life will be the better for it. And to think: if it hadn't been for a Julia Roberts film, I might never have thought to do any of it.

How to waste time and energy

Since early humans discovered fire and subsequently discovered that meat tastes pretty good barbecued, mankind has moved steadily from one innovation to the next. But the past two hundred years is where we really got going.

• 1800 The first steam engine to use the pressure of expanding steam, rather than the vacuum created by condensing steam, increases power and efficiency and shifts the industrial revolution up a gear.
• 1837 Charles Babbage designs his Analytical Engine. Unlike his earlier Differential Engine, it could do more than just perform calculations. It could be programmed and incorporated an arithmetical unit, utilised flow control in the form of branches and loops and had integrated memory. Your computer works the way it does because of the Analytical Engine.
• 1880 The electric light bulb is perfected. You're welcome, Vegas.
• 1942 The first nuclear reactor is built, making nice clean nuclear power possible. And the production and testing of so many nuclear weapons that the background radiation worldwide increased to such an extent that carbon-dating can be used to confirm the vintage of some old wines, but lets try to focus on the C02-free electricity, shall we?
• 1957 The first man-made satellite, Sputnik 1, is launched into orbit and starts the 'space race'.

And now, at the pinnacle of our development, we have the £5 kettle. Pinch me. Okay, I might have gone round the houses with this one, but I think you know what I'm getting at: a kettle used to be a significant(ish) purchase, now it's almost an impulse buy. I nearly did. Luckily, an under-utilised area of my brain (the area responsible for rational thought) stepped in and pointed out that I already had a kettle and had absolutely no need of another. But what happens if you do end up buying a kettle you don't need? What do you do with it? I suppose you could just keep it as a back-up, in case your main kettle fails, but I have a much better idea: electrolysis.

As you are no doubt already aware, water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, essentially two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen. Using your impulse-bought kettle, it should be possible to separate the two and collect the hydrogen. In its standard, off-the-shelf state, your £5 kettle, like any other, passes an electric current through an element. This causes the element to heat up, and this heats the water (assuming you haven't filled it with beer, to see what happens) to boiling point. All you need to do is cut the element in the middle and form the ends into two electrodes, which will point upwards. These two electrodes will pass a current through the water, 'cracking' the water into its component parts. Placing an inverted test tube over the cathode (the negatively charged one) will allow hydrogen to be collected, using a thin, flexible tube that reaches to the top of the test tube. This tube will also be pressed into service as a siphon, to remove as much air as possible from the test tube, so that the first test-tubeful isn't just air. If you're going to turn this £5 kettle into a means of manufacturing hydrogen, you don't want the hydrogen to be contaminated. Unless you just want to fill a small balloon with H2 and see what happens when you hold a lit match to it, in which case, enjoy. I mean, I wouldn't do it, but maybe I'm just too fond of my eyebrows. 

Of course, kettles use alternating current, which is a problem, as you'll need one negatively charged electrode to collect the hydrogen and this requires direct current. No biggie: just get an inverter to convert AC to DC. I couldn't find one that would take 230V AC and output 230V DC, but did find a promising looking inverter that puts out 48V DC, which should be plenty. Maximum current is given as 13 amps, so the improvised water cracker shouldn't give your household electrics any problems.

Next problem is how to actually collect the hydrogen. The good news is that there are a lot of air compressors out there which are more than up to the job of taking in gas and storing it under pressure until needed. The bad news is it's going to be a right bugger to get the air out of the tank,so that you can fill it with hydrogen. And you have to be careful not to suck hydrogen out of the test tube too quickly and end up getting water in the compressor. And compressors with tanks tend to be petrol-powered, making them unsuitable for indoor use. And you'll need an oil-free compressor. And this could cost £1k or more. Although I suppose you could always use a deflated airbed, suspended vertically, a foot or so above the top of the kettle, so that the hydrogen naturally inflates it. This method is considerably cheaper, but brings its own problems. For example, you'll need to keep the airbed well tethered to stop it heading for the clouds, since hydrogen is, of course, lighter than air. Also, you'll end up with a few cubic feet of extremely flammable gas in what is basically a balloon. Not ideal storage.

However you collect and store your hydrogen, keep in mind that for every three litres of water, there is a potential two kilograms of hydrogen (excuse the mental chemical arithmetic) and this is, dependant on temperature, over 20,000 litres. Most kettles have a capacity under two litres, but, even assuming you put in 1.5 litres of water, that's a potential 10,000 litres of hydrogen. Not bad for a fiver. 

However, thanks to competing side reactions (really not going into that here), you actually end up producing less than that, but it should still easily inflate an airbed or five. Another problem is that while water does conduct electricity, it's not very good at it. Pure water actually has about one millionth the electrical conductivity of seawater. In order to increase the conductivity of the water to the point where electrolysis happens reasonably quickly, you need an electrolyte. In other words, add salt. The process can be hurried further through the use of an electrocatalyst such as platinum, but, unless your £5 kettle has a platinum-coated element, probably best to forget about it.

To sum up: fill the modified kettle with saltwater and suck the air bubble out of the inverted test tube, then connect the end of the tube to the compressor inlet (assuming you don't want a Hindenburg in the back garden). Switch on the kettle, the test tube will now start to fill with hydrogen. When it's almost full, start the compressor (which should be empty: not even air inside) and the hydrogen will be collected and stored. What you do with the hydrogen is entirely up to you. Hydrogen actually has many applications, although these are mostly industrial, so, unless you have an overwhelming desire to hydrogenate fat, all you can really do with it is use it to power a fuel cell. What? You don't have a fuel cell in the garage? Ah. Must admit, I don't know how to build one of those.

The more I think about it, the more I begin to wonder if this was such a great idea, after all. Firstly, you're using electricity to extract hydrogen gas from water, then going to some trouble to collect and store the gas for use in the fuel cell you don't have, to generate electricity.

Then there's the equipment required. Including the price of the kettle, the inverter I found on trcelectronics.com and an oil-free compressor with a capacity of 100 litres (from a company called Bambi VT), the water cracker will cost £2733 to build. Plus delivery charges.

Expensive things, kettles.

Don't Panic

A while ago, after watching an episode of The Walking Dead, I realised that my area had no zombie apocalypse evacuation procedure in place. I honestly don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before. So, borrowing a little from films and television, I created one. I'm not going into detail here, but it's basically a three-step process.

1. Tool up. Grab anything that could be used to decapitate a zombie, destroy its brain, or just incapacitate it long enough for you to run to safety.
2. Get the hell out of Dodge. Zombies aren't smart, co-ordinated or especially fast, but they can swarm. If enough of them swarm around a house, eventually, they'll get in. The fact that zombies can't feel pain allows them to be utterly relentless (to a point). I chose a local bar as my safe place. Nice thick doors and gates, a selection of places to barricade oneself in and a lovely view of the river* make it ideal. The large stock of beer doesn't hurt, either.
3. Sit tight. Whatever remains of the government and armed forces will hopefully be able to bring the undead threat under control. If not, the bar becomes humanity's last refuge. On that street, at least.

Zombies taking over the world may not be terribly likely, but you never know, and there's absolutely no harm in being prepared. 

 

Some time later, me being me, I started to wonder just how likely a zombie apocalypse is. So, basically, I identify a possible threat, figure out what to do if it happens, and then worry about it. Anyway...

Before we work out how likely it is, we must first work out exactly what a zombie is. If I've learned one thing from television (and it's entirely possible that is indeed the case), a zombie is a dead human, somehow reanimated. There are two ways to look at this; the first is that it is, like that film said, the result of hell being full, forcing the dead to walk the earth. If this is what makes zombies, then there is no need to worry. O r at least no point. If the devil can't do anything about the overcrowding, then there's probably not much God can do, either, and if he can't do anything, we're pretty much shafted. In the event of a zombie apocalypse, open a cold one and wait for death. Take pictures.

The other is some sort of pathogen. A virus, perhaps, capable of hijacking the human brain and shutting most of it down. The brain, in full working order, is what makes you you. It is what makes you breathe, eat, move, shout at the TV and think. Thing is, not all of it is essential. If the mind is Windows 7, then the brain stem is the BIOS. It is what gets you up in the morning. Neurological functions located in the brain stem include those necessary for survival (breathing, etc...) and for arousal (being awake). Without the other grey bits, you cease to be an individual human being and become simply a being, intent on nothing more than survival. But don't panic just yet; while something like eastern equine encephalitis can cause serious brain damage, no virus capable of shutting down all but the brain stem currently exists and we'll never see a zombie virus, because the minuscule genome basically rules out a virus complex enough to infect a host, set up camp in the brain and set about rewiring. So, sorry, my fellow The Walking Dead fans, but zombification caused by a virus is impossible.

A parasite might do it. Something like Toxoplasma Gondii, perhaps. This is a parasite which lives in the digestive system of cats, shedding eggs which can be picked up by rats. An infected rat still looks and behaves the same, except it shows absolutely no anxiety when it smells cats in the area. Instead of running for their lives, they can actually head towards the predators, apparently curious. Or maybe in some kind of trance, repeating to themselves “Must... get... eaten...”. All it would take for the parasite to cause serious behavioural changes (aggression, cannibalism, etc...) is a little genetic fiddling. Considering the amount of research being done on biological weapons these days, I wouldn't be amazed to discover that Toxoplasma Gondii 2.0 (Zombie Version) already exists. Oh, by the way, it's estimated that half the human population of earth is already infected. Toss a coin to see if you're one of them.

Or maybe we should be worried about neurotoxins. Several poisons exist which are capable of slowing the metabolism to a point where a person can pass for dead. The 'corpse' can be brought back using alkaloids, leaving them in a trance-like state with no memory, but capable of basic tasks like eating and walking. A man pronounced dead by two doctors in Haiti in 1968 was discovered shuffling around the village, groaning, eighteen years later. He, along with others, had been turned into a mindless slave and put to work on the sugar plantation.

Or there's my personal favourite: nanobots. Self-replicating nanobots, carried in the bloodstream, could, with the right setup, cause the necessary changes in behaviour and could conceivably also be found in saliva, making transmission by bites possible. Good news, though: the technology is nowhere near advanced enough. Yet.

When I started thinking about whether or not a zombie apocalypse is possible, I began some in-depth research (okay, I read some articles and had a coffee) and discovered that there are a few ways to cause zombie-like symptoms in living people. But I have so far found nothing that can induce that most recognisable of all symptoms: decomposition. It's a pretty common theme in zombie flicks. The zombies are always slightly grey, they have serious cataracts and, every now and then, something falls off. A true zombie would have to actually die, while somehow remaining capable of walking, groaning and eating brains and, as far as I'm aware, this is simply not possible. So, how likely is a zombie apocalypse? It's not. Not even a little bit.

But what if I'm wrong? What if the dead did somehow get up and walk? How worried should we all be? Not very. Firstly, nearly every country in the world has an army and if soldiers can be trained to fight people who have guns and explosives, they can surely take care of people with no heartbeat, who are armed only with... um... arms. And lets not forget the survivalist nutcases. Their decks have been well shuffled, but they know one end of a high-powered rifle from the other. Just stand behind them.

While the armed forces are working on eradicating the undead hordes, institutions like the World Health Organisation will work to prevent the plague spreading. The CDC already has advice on what to do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Check out http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2011/05/preparedness-101-zombie-apocalypse.

The next problem facing Mr and Mrs Cadaver is that they're an easy target for predators. I know, bears probably aren't much of a problem on your street, but smaller creatures, that wouldn't normally go for a living person, will find zombies irresistible. Stray dogs won't take long to work out that zombies are basically walking dinner. Flies like to lay eggs in dead things, so zombies that haven't been torn apart by dogs will soon have maggots falling out of them. Which leads me to the small matter of decomposition.

The immune system is a thoroughly impressive thing. We are constantly under attack from various malevolent microbes, and the immune system is constantly defending against them. Until we die, that is. Your immune system pretty much stops when your heart does, which is not something I'm terribly worried about. As far as I'm concerned, after I'm dead, every bacterium in the world has my full permission to chow down. But the complete lack of defences is a zombie's biggest problem, apart from the fact that their sole means of reproduction is also a major food source and their main predator. The trouble starts from within. You know the so-called 'good bacteria' in your digestive system? With no immune system to control them, they'll soon get to work on the (very) soft tissue of the intestines. While they're busy eating and producing CO2 and methane, the exposed surface of the eye is fair game for whatever lands on it. With no blood pressure, the smallest wound (which the zombie can't heal) is basically an open door. Within the first few days, Mr Zombie will be a hive of germ activity, with each micro-organism taking away more and more flesh. After a week or so in a warmish climate, putrifaction has already happened. Possibly sooner. This ain't pretty. Basically, subcutaneous tissue liquifies, with the skin holding it together, so the whole thing is basically a big bag of putrid matter. Assuming the putrifaction isn't what does for the zombie, there's a very real chance that the gas build-up in the abdomen will cause the lower torso to burst. 

 

Long story short: the 'life' expectancy of a zombie is a week or so, during which time they will pick up all sorts of injuries which will never heal, gradually becoming slower and weaker, before eventually falling apart, mid-stride. After a fortnight, and possibly not even that long, the zombies that haven't been eaten by dogs, colonised to bits by flies, blown to pieces by the army, decapitated by keen amateurs, or just swept away by the river they fell into, because they didn't realise what it was, will die for good. Those of us who survive the 'apocalypse', and that'll be the vast majority of us, will sweep up the bits, hose down the streets and get on with our lives. Zombies, even if they were a possibility, would be about as dangerous as rabid cows.

Just in case I'm wrong, buy a crowbar. You'll know what to do with it, when the time comes...

*Yes, I was joking about the 'lovely view'. Although I suppose there are worse things to look at, while you're waiting for a zombie apocalypse to blow over.

Normal v Me

Normal, it goes wihout saying, is a subjective term. What you consider perfectly reasonable, someone else might think is laughable, insane or just disgusting. Take Jedward, for example: someone must be buying the cds, and while no-one I know owns a copy of Planet Jedward (as far as I'm aware), the sales just keep on coming. It stands to reason, therefore, that while I mostly listen to rock, some people prefer the tone-deaf caterwauling of two overgrown toddlers.

However, leaving musical taste aside, I have long been aware that I am... how shall I put this?... a little odd. I mean, I don't go around licking pigeons, or anything, but every now and then, something happens that makes me pause for a second and think: 'man, I'm pretty weird, aren't I?' 

One such event came after a conversation with a friend who was rather busy at the time. “If there were another 24 hours in the day, I'd be fine”, quoth she. Most people would sympathise, move on and forget it. Not me. I thought about it. I decided fairly early on that adding 24 hours to the existing 24 would be unworkable. Most people, so I'm told, sleep for up to 8 hours a day, leaving 16 hours for going to work, eating, googling OMG cat, etc... A 48 hour day would mean sleeping for up to 16 hours at a time. While I might be able to manage that (I once slept for 18 hours, but there were special circumstances), I realise some people might find it a bit of a stretch. The bigger problem is trying to stay awake for 32 hours a day, for the rest of your life. Student doctors can get stuck with 36 hour shifts, but not consecutive, continuous 36 hour shifts. This may be why it is relatively rare for a student doctor to suddenly snap and go on a killing spree. Prolonged periods of sleeplessness can cause weakening of the immune system, psychosis and even death, so the 48 hour day is clearly unfeasible. I considered splitting the 16 hour period allocated to sleep into two 8 hour periods, but then realised this would be basically the same as the current 24 hour day. Most people would give up at this point, but I was stuck on a runaway train of thought and, to be honest, I was enjoying the ride.

So. There are 168 hours in a week. If we divide that by 6, instead of 7, we get a 6 day week, with 28 hours in a day. It may seem like giving up a lot for a small gain, but bear with me. If, in a 28 hour day, the average person were to sleep for 9 hours, that leaves 19 hours for other things. If you don't have much to do, 19 hours worth of blinking is no more useful to you than 16, but, to someone with a lot of things to do and places to be, the extra 3 hours could be extremely beneficial. Imagine how productive the human race could be, if we all worked for, say, 11 hours at a time, rather than just 8. 11 hours a day, 4 days a week gives a 44 hour working week, which is 4 hours more than 9-5, monday to friday and means the weekend can still be 2 days, only now there's more time to have a lie-in or read the even bigger weekend paper they'll no doubt be producing.

Unfortunately, as with a lot of revolutionary ideas, there are a few bugs to work out of the system. Mostly minor stuff, like how many days are now in each month, but then there's the small matter of trying to slow the rotation of the earth by 16.666666666666667%, so that each full rotation takes 28 hours. Might take a while to ponder that one. Or I might just go to the pub. Guess which.