![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
What better way to spend a birthday than running away from zombies? (Spoiler alert: Mission 17)
It's my birthday! And as a special present, I discovered that Six to Start had featured me in their shout-out to Zombies, Run fans! How exciting! Of course, with all that hype, I had to run another mission today. Maybe the zombies have birthday cake. (No! The cake is a lie!)
Today Sam needed me to go meet up with some runners from Red Settlement to exchange information. Specifically, we had five hard drives containing such things as a near-complete copy of Wikipedia, the Western canon of literature, kids' TV shows, a whole bunch of Dr. Who... stuff. Useful stuff. So useful that I wasn't alone, I was going with Runner 10.
Let me tell you about Runner 10. His real name is Chris McShell, and he used to be a statistics teacher. Now, you wouldn't expect math teachers to be particular useful in a zombie apocalypse, but you'd be wrong. Chris has been doing research on zombie behavior and managed to figure out a lot about their movement patterns. Did you know there's a critical mass for zombie hordes? There is! After you get about 10 of them together, they start moaning loud enough that they start attracting more. So you really don't want to get that many of them coming after you when, say, you're going to meet up with runners from another township to exchange information. It leads to no good for anyone.
Thankfully, Chris had a plan.
Much like the apocryphal story of the donkey who is equidistant between two identical piles of hay and doesn't know which one to choose, and thus starves to death, zombies aren't very good with choices either. So when they have two targets moving away from them at the same speed and at the same distance, they just sort of keep going forward, regardless of what's in front of them. In this case, "what's in front of them" happened to be a narrow pass between two buildings, which they proceeded to enter in single-file, allowing Runner 10 and I to pick them off one by one, bringing Chris' kill count up to 397.
Yes, you read that right, 397 confirmed zombie kills.
Kids, the next time you ask your parents what good studying math will ever do for you, remember this. Math = dead zombies.
There's one little piece of disturbing information from today's run. See, it turns out that Chris (Runner 10) is from New Canton. He left because they didn't want to let him continue his research into zombie behavior. Not because they didn't think it was useful, you understand, but because they wanted him to transition to a tangential field of research: figuring out how to get zombies to attack other groups of humans.
Yeah, I'm shuddering at the thought too. The more I learn about New Canton, the more I'm pretty sure they're the Bad Guys (tm).
After running mission 17, I stopped for a few minutes to do some groceries and swing by DavidsTea for some birthday tea purchases, and then I walked home to the second supply mission, "Medicine Run." Your operator for this one is, naturally, Dr. Myers, but the "briefings" are just as short as the last supply run. I may not bother with the rest of the supply missions and just start re-running old missions or something. Maybe mission 14, because it's hilarious.
It was a glorious day out in Montreal today. Definitely almost-summer. Everything's green and lively and beautiful, though I really need to stop zombie running in the middle of the day when it's hottest. As the summer heats up, I'll probably shift my walks to the late evening when it's a little cooler. Otherwise, though, pretty enjoyable mission today. Listening to Sam be a fanboy to Runner 10 had me laughing out loud.
Mission 18, I think, is gonna have me listening in on the headset I picked up from Lem in mission 16. So maybe we get to learn a little more about the evil organization known as New Canton. Maybe. I'll find out sometime this weekend, most likely.
Today Sam needed me to go meet up with some runners from Red Settlement to exchange information. Specifically, we had five hard drives containing such things as a near-complete copy of Wikipedia, the Western canon of literature, kids' TV shows, a whole bunch of Dr. Who... stuff. Useful stuff. So useful that I wasn't alone, I was going with Runner 10.
Let me tell you about Runner 10. His real name is Chris McShell, and he used to be a statistics teacher. Now, you wouldn't expect math teachers to be particular useful in a zombie apocalypse, but you'd be wrong. Chris has been doing research on zombie behavior and managed to figure out a lot about their movement patterns. Did you know there's a critical mass for zombie hordes? There is! After you get about 10 of them together, they start moaning loud enough that they start attracting more. So you really don't want to get that many of them coming after you when, say, you're going to meet up with runners from another township to exchange information. It leads to no good for anyone.
Thankfully, Chris had a plan.
Much like the apocryphal story of the donkey who is equidistant between two identical piles of hay and doesn't know which one to choose, and thus starves to death, zombies aren't very good with choices either. So when they have two targets moving away from them at the same speed and at the same distance, they just sort of keep going forward, regardless of what's in front of them. In this case, "what's in front of them" happened to be a narrow pass between two buildings, which they proceeded to enter in single-file, allowing Runner 10 and I to pick them off one by one, bringing Chris' kill count up to 397.
Yes, you read that right, 397 confirmed zombie kills.
Kids, the next time you ask your parents what good studying math will ever do for you, remember this. Math = dead zombies.
There's one little piece of disturbing information from today's run. See, it turns out that Chris (Runner 10) is from New Canton. He left because they didn't want to let him continue his research into zombie behavior. Not because they didn't think it was useful, you understand, but because they wanted him to transition to a tangential field of research: figuring out how to get zombies to attack other groups of humans.
Yeah, I'm shuddering at the thought too. The more I learn about New Canton, the more I'm pretty sure they're the Bad Guys (tm).
After running mission 17, I stopped for a few minutes to do some groceries and swing by DavidsTea for some birthday tea purchases, and then I walked home to the second supply mission, "Medicine Run." Your operator for this one is, naturally, Dr. Myers, but the "briefings" are just as short as the last supply run. I may not bother with the rest of the supply missions and just start re-running old missions or something. Maybe mission 14, because it's hilarious.
It was a glorious day out in Montreal today. Definitely almost-summer. Everything's green and lively and beautiful, though I really need to stop zombie running in the middle of the day when it's hottest. As the summer heats up, I'll probably shift my walks to the late evening when it's a little cooler. Otherwise, though, pretty enjoyable mission today. Listening to Sam be a fanboy to Runner 10 had me laughing out loud.
Mission 18, I think, is gonna have me listening in on the headset I picked up from Lem in mission 16. So maybe we get to learn a little more about the evil organization known as New Canton. Maybe. I'll find out sometime this weekend, most likely.
no subject
I just wanted to give Ten a hug. His practicality and self-deprecation really won me over.
no subject
no subject
Oooo, so hard not to spoiler. ;D
Happy birthday, bee tee dubs!
no subject