Coming in on the tube, I read about an attempted gas attack last week in the London Underground. All very scary. As the tube begins to go overland I see that London is shrouded in a thick blue mist. Visibility is so limited that the skeletal gas towers and iron bridges begin to strobe past me before I even notice their arrival.
I think about reading “Underground” (a book of interviews of survivors of the Tokyo sarin attack), and I look about the carriage. For a brief while, the only people I can see are those in the train with me. An Aisan man in a grey suit, about 22 years old reading a copy of the “Metro”, and a white woman looking pale and haggard on this Monday morning.
Graffitti suddenly veers out of the fog: “BOMBER” “MADMAN!!” “EXPLODE”
I was brought along yesterday to a terrifying subway beneath Waterloo Station; an arched redbrick road running directly under the unused old Channel Tunnel rails. The Cans Festival was there last weekend and the work remains (largely) untouched.
It’s wonderful idea; take a disused pissy tunnel and make it bright and wonderful for free by allowing stencil graffiti artists to run wild . Make a point of going to see it if you’re in London.
Full photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/waxydan/sets/72157605637352766/
Some irony of course snuck in. Genuine irony that is; not the Hoxton kind so adored by the artists. A large billboard at one end read “Gentrify This!!” as though the stencils were somehow ‘keeping it real’. You are gentrifying this area, and every area where you spray, with this work you moron. You think property is expensive by Old Street station because people just love urine-stained postwar housing? You’ve filled an old filthy tunnel with bright paint and middle class nonces with cameras like myself.
Cops are also patrolling the station to fend off any further spraying which, while not as amusing, is kinda ironic too.
“Two.
Two - SIXTY???
… Interest you say?
I’m sorry, but that simply can’t be done you see. You understand that I start with nothing each day. What goes into my account must stay there. YOU know what happens to money don’t you? It slips away down the drain as soon as your eyes leave it!
A summons? For me? Now that wouldn’t be very nice would it, sir?“
There are many cities where one faces commuting challenges and difficulties. I think here in London the delaus are so uniquely terrible that it has a wonderfully positive impact; people read. More than any other city I’ve ever travelled through; the population read. Great stuff.
Also only in London can my tube be delayed for 30 mins “due to an unexploded World War Two bomb on the tracks”.
I love this town 
An afterthought to my most recent post regarding close quarter combat with zombies:
I spent no small amount of time on Saturday evening discussing this with friends and, while the value of teamwork was generally agreed, a few extra weapons were suggested. Some I’m going to choose to dismiss out of hand (sorry Dave) as neither a katana, halberd nor a medieval mace are readily accessible in my daily life but… the fireaxe struck a cord.
A fearsome, easily used, weapon that doubles as a door-levering tool (see the back of the bladed head) and also as a good short shoving weapon for when escape is preferable to destruction.
This is a part of my continuing journal recording my thoughts on surviving a zombie apocalypse. The most important word in the last sentence? Apocalypse? No. Zombie? No. Survival? Yes. Yes. And yes again. Our goal here is not to wage war against the living dead; counting success not in numbers downed but in inches of fetid zombie flesh carved into chunks around your ankles… No, this is not our goal. Our goal is to survive and make our way to a defensible location. For, no matter your skill and the efficacy of your killing instrument of choice; Zack will, given time, always win with the sheer number of inexhaustible troops.
So, when the time comes for me to hack, slash and bludgeon my way to safety what will I choose? Will I go for the kill and destroy the brain or will I aim to disable and flee?
The sledgehammer: undoubtedly, given my relative lack of training and skill and averageish physical strength, the unstoppable might of a sledgehammer bearing down on Zack’s brain has a great appeal. But, having used one very occasionally in my urban city-boy life, I know from experience that after a few good satisfying knocks I would quickly tire and be overwhelmed by my fetid foe. So no to Mr.Sledgey.
The baseball bat: I spoke at length about this with a friend (and possible team-mate during the Zombie Apocalypse, or ZA) last night. I initially guffawed at his suggestion of a titanium bat. Thinking that it had little chance of actually cracking open a human skull on contact first time, every time. But, as he quickly pointed out, the aim is survival not revenge. A baseball bat is a light, easily learned weapon that could inflict enough damage to, at least temporarily, down a good number of foes and clear a path to freedom. Also, assuming the Infected and not Zack was the foe in question; a bat will cause light trauma and concussion every time. Allowing for a secondary weapon (possibly a hammer and chisel or a hacksaw) to be used by a colleague to quickly and certainly dispatch felled enemies. So… Baseball bat… I’m not sold but I could warm to it; especially as part of a team effort to run a production line of zombie slaughter.
The trusted crowbar: the crowbar is given no small amount of praise in Max Brook’s seminal Zombie Survival Guide and who hasn’t had the urge to go a bit Gordon Freeman on their rotting asses… but… I’m not so certain. He makes the excellent point that, when travelling across infected territory, one must travel light. A primary weapon that can double as an indispensable tool is not to be dismissed lightly. Think of the well fortified office blocks and farmhouses that can broken into for a nights stay or the well stocked supplies of canned goods and medicines just waiting in locked cabinets for your trusty tool. Just think! But Mr.Brook’s suggested killing method leaves me anxious; I do not have the skill to successfully hook the end of the crowbar through an eye-socket to blend brain everytime. I simply don’t. This is perhaps a failing on my part but until such skills are tried and tested I would choose not to rely on them. Yet… perhaps in the team effort suggested above this approach would win out. A bludgeoning weapon such as a bat or crowbar being used to bring Zack to the ground and then either the pointed or hooked end of a team-mates crowbar rapidly plunged into said Zack’s brain could prove a trusted strategy.
The hand-axe: light and easily added to a travel kit. Enormously useful in rural environments for gathering materials and, to a lesser degree than our friend the crowbar, in urban environments for getting through locked doors in a hurry. An efficient weapon not requiring much skill… The hand-axe is a contender… But, imagine yourself faced with even three lumbering G’s. You swiftly brush aside the clawing hands and diligently bring your weapon to bear upon the skull. A satisfying cleft spells victory and, as your two remaining foes move toward you, you attempt to pull back only, with horror, to realise that your primary weapon is embedded too deeply in Zack’s broken skull… It’s stuck and you’re in trouble.
The hand-axe? No, not for me.
The machete? Even worse.
So? Given the above what is my close-quarters arsenal of choice? Team-work and the choice to survive.
The good fellows at Commoncraft have taken a break from their regular (and very useful) guides to web tools to bring us some very pertinent information; how to survive a zombie attack.
I fondly remember little Vib through the smokey haze of a shared house some years ago.
Wonderful montage. Someone put a whole lotta work in. Well worth a look.
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