DEADLINE open thread. Have a party.

I called mneme to tell him not to read this thread if he intends to skip the Blackout teaser.

mnemex: You mean the thread also has spoilers for the Blackout teaser? Well, that's silly of it. (pause) Maybe I'll read the teaser.

I don't exactly consider the end a cliffhanger. I don't consider anyone who does wrong. But, I was expecting a situation at the CDC with Wynne in control of the situation ending sort of thing. This is a more stable situation, which means I can stick to gnawing my nails and let the zombies gnaw my arms.

I'm wondering if the storm and mosquitoes were deliberately engineered. Science is not my strong suit, so I'm going, "Wait, we can make it rain in the real world, right? So, if the CDC can clone and someone can somehow install personalities / memories, engineering a storm like this is plausible, right?"

A friend of mine is convinced that the storm is coincidental, as letting the mosquitoes get out is an End of the World situation, but allows as how, if the virus is too complicated for them to carry, yes, a simpler strain was probably artificially created. She's thinking this means a contaminated food supply.

I'm still not quite getting the Evil Plan. I mean, I get Control, Culture of Fear, all that. I'm having trouble following Wynne's monologue. Can someone tell me where I'm losing the thread? He seems to be saying: We want a strain with no reservoir conditions so that we can cure KA properly.

By "properly", he seems to mean really and honestly cure, with the ability to shoot all amplification cases on sight simplifying keeping people under control so that there won't be cases of "MY loved one is special and will somehow recover" -- the whole complexity Kelly was talking about that I can't honestly say those in the know are wrong to pause at. (Pause at -- they don't get carte blanche to create evil conspiracies of evilness.)

But... given that the reservoir condition is effectively nature's way of providing a cure -- a highly complicated way with serious moral questions as noted above and in the book, and only a first step, and so on, all disclaimers made -- this seems to be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Is Wynne really that short sighted? If he took in Georgia, Shaun, and Rick to make sure that there were no leaks he had to block and released them all alive, when killing them legally would have been so much simpler, if he played that brilliant end game with Tate's cooperation in Feed, he can't be that stupid.

Unless he is, and his strings are being pulled by someone truly scary.
Unless he was caught off guard by having four people walking into his lab.
Unless I am misunderstanding something.

Any of these is possible.

The Tate endgame also answers a question I'd been wondering, how Tate could have fumbled the ball -- er, lost control of the hostage he had. That wasn't a mistake or a streak of decency. That was a fanatic dying for his cause, doing his best to protect those above him.

Oh... I am of course now wondering who else might be cloned. And how many times.

As for Kelly, the one we see in the book, whether she's the original, the clone, or what, I don't have a full sense of who she is. It's hard for me to figure out what she believes and what she's holding back at any given point and why, and part of this is seeing her through Shaun's eyes and questioning his judgement (the whole slightly insane thing). It's hard for me to figure out just what she knows and what she guesses about what's going on at any point.

And, as with Feed, I got confused about the timeline. At first it was clear enough. Dave was alive on April 12, and Alaric clearly lived until at least the 15th, and Maggie till the 16th, and they got to Maggie's on the 13th, right? But, I'm not sure I am right. After a while, I stopped worrying about it.

I caught the typo about Georgia's year of death. Once I figured out it was a typo, all was cool

I have decided that "Oh fuck" is a phrase coined for reading this book.

And, I'm glad I didn't push to finish it last night. At about 2/3 or so of the way in, I paused for Symphony Space's Bloomsday. It has not yet mingled with Deadline sufficiently as to cause a mash up that goes anywhere interesting.

(Have now learned maximum comment length is 4300.)

A bit beyond our present day science, or beyond the science in the Newsflesh world?

I've not seen the RE movies, but don't mind spoilers. I checked out wikipedia's summary, but, predictably, it left me more confused than enlightened.

Okay, I got it now. Thanks!