The other night I dreamt about zombies. In this dream the previous zombie outbreak had been contained and a large wall built to stop any future infestation. But there was a break in the wall and one small zombie rose from under the ground and shambled in my direction. I realized we could stop this quickly if we could contain it, destroy it & reseal the wall. As is usually the case in dreams, no-one else seemed as concerned to act quickly. By the time I got people moving, the numbers had increased. They continued to increase logarithmically and we were too slow to enact the required responses at each stage. The responses changed based on the numbers you had to oppose. Before I was rudely awakened by a phone call, I was at the stage of locking up the non-zombified in a fortress to keep them alive and worrying that one of them would have been bit before getting in, thus infecting the others.
During the dream I was thinking how interesting it was that zombie numbers were increasing on a standard logarithmic curve...afterwards it occured to me that it looked just like a disease outbreak where no-one had immunity or recovered even down to quarantines and other outbreak control techniques.
6 comments:
You should offer this as a cross-disciplinary Honours project, Jenny! I can already see the New Scientist article in my mind's eye...
funnily enough, I was thinking as I submitted this, that if there was someone with a scientific interest in both topics, they'd goodle it and my blog would pop up...all ready for collaborating to write a learned article on the topic
hmmm after googling, it seems I am not the first to discuss this topic
http://www.lablit.com/article/145
This reminds me of Zombie Dawn game on Funorb. Of course, in the game you play the part of the zombies trying to take over the world.
Bugger. I just had another look for a grants round that still had the instructions for 2008 funding when I looked for it in early September and sent off an (unanswered) email to the DIISR webfolk looking after the site... to find a shiny new site for 2009 funding, letting me know that applications closed on October 24th.
Zombie Dawn looks like fun...if I had any time for more fun.
And Chris? This sounds like a case of "we know who we want to give grants to. Lets make it as hard as possible for other people and just let our guys in on the secret". I've seen it before. Of course, it could just be a snafu. You could always send another email requesting an extension due to the short time it was available and the lack of response to your request (which I'm assuming you still have a copy of in your sent tray).
Post a Comment