bored bored BORED

[beccaelizabeth]

It is really boring in here. For values of 'in here' ranging from 'my flat' to 'my brain'.
Brain is doing reruns of all the stupid petty embarrassments of the past 20 years, with intermittent punctuation from smoke alarm related fear memories.
I think I need to start writing a book just to stop being EPIC BORED all the time.

I tried watching War of the Arrows but I stopped after about an hour because it uses shaky cam and I was feeling incredibly ill. Also, I was bored. There's a war, and there's three characters who aren't dead yet, two guys and a girl. One guy is her brother, one guy is her husband, they had a fight because the brother didn't want to give the husband-to-be permission and then he puked on him. Drama! And then there was a wedding but because it was so early in the plot you know basically there will be horrible badness because they're still at inciting incident phase. So then it got invaded.

I'm having trouble caring? I mean, so far what we know about the guys is they go to joy houses and get drunk and brawl and puke. And what we know about the girl is she's supposed to be super pretty. I actually spent most of the first hour waiting for her to pick up a weapon and kick arse, because her father hands her the bow in the first five minutes so surely it's her turn? But no, it's not that kind of kicking movie. So far she's just been being dragged around playing damsel. So the story appears to be about two boring blokes and a damsel, and nothing is grabbing my attention.

Also, they're not doing a grand job of making the archery interesting. In comics archers are just as dynamic as any other martial artist cause they jump off things and dodge around and it looks interesting. In this film they just kind of point a bow and stand very still. Also they all look like they're doing it wrong, which is probably because they're using a different sort of bow to the ones I'm used to, but is a bit offputting.


... I forgot I was writing this and got distracted by playing with google maps. I was planning routes to bring goods or cross between settlements after the zombie apocalypse. The places I chose have good names but no navigable river so I decided the railway survived the zombie apocalypse. Would it? I have no idea. I mean, I can't see zombies doing anything to the tracks, so it may as well still be there. But I don't know how long it would last and the tracks still be useful. Maybe people should just use the roads? Whatever I try I have to decide between things that make sense and things that use the places with the coolest names.


I should probably stick to places I've actually been, but I wanted cliffs and tunnels and norfolk is not famous for either.


I'll post this and then go think of something else to do.

Comments

[melannen]

Reply here instead of Tumblr because I can't do tumblr-reply character limits:

Would railways survive in a usable state after a zombie apocalypse?

1.) no, not for very long; within even a few months of disuse and no maintenance, even minor things like debris and weed growth on the railbed would make it likely to dangerously derail a modern cargo train.

2.) Possibly surprisingly long; I've gone for long walks on disused rail lines, and while they're not in great shape, if you were using short, low-speed trains, probably not diesel-powered (as would be the case in a collapse-of-society situation) and travelling slowly enough to stop and clear obstructions as you went, you might make do for several decades even with no active maintenance happening.

3.) Not long at all; there's a lot of good steel in train track, and it's heavy enough it wouldn't rust out for years, and people will have other uses for that stuff.

4.) Most of the maintenance on rail track can be done pretty low-tech, and without needing a lot of highly-manufactured replacement parts; if you have a society that's reasonably stable and invested in keeping them running, and has the manpower, and isn't getting eaten by zombies whenever they go outside, and is capable of dropping down to lower-tech solutions for things like signalling, they could probably last as long as you have trains to run on them.

5.) If you don't need to run things on rails, you just need a road, my (limited, one-climate-only) experience is that with no maintenance, abandoned railbeds stay navigable for longer than roads, and since (again, at least in the US) they tend to have been originally built in the late 19th/early 20th century, things like bridges and causeways are often better-made than the crumbly concrete the modern highway system uses for everything. They tend to be raised higher above surface level and have a much deeper and more durable base layer of large-sized crushed rock. (Also, depending on type of apocalypse, won't be as clogged up with hulks of cars, and - at least in the US - will often go for long distances through less-built-up areas than roads.) A very, very rough ride for anything with wheels, though, and even walking you have to watch your footing. My current 'scram' plan for apocalypse is to walk the railroad tracks west until I get out of the megalopolis.

6.) It depends on stuff. Some places will be totally unnavigable almost immediately with no maintenance or use, or fail in ways that would be near-impossible to fix without modern technology; some could last surprisingly long.

[beccaelizabeth]

This is a good answer. Carefully logical, and fitting lots of different stories.

[philippos42]

Hi. Maybe you haven't missed me, but I suddenly realized that I hadn't been on this account for a while.

I like reading your stuff. I think it's important to say things like that sometimes.

[beccaelizabeth]

*waves*

thanks :)

[aurorra.livejournal.com]

Railway lines will be a great way to travel till they get overgrown. Roads will be choked up with cars / bandits. Not to mention cars with zombies trapped inside.