Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
'The Remaining' by D.J. Molles with Special Guest OllieEatsBrains | Zombie Book Club Podcast ep 55
Join us for a hilarious episode of Zombie Book Club! We are thrilled to have the one and only OllieEatsBrains, an award-winning zombie chicken impersonator, share his unique perspective and humor as we dissect D.J. Molles gripping novel "The Remaining." Ollie gives us a spoiler-free rundown of the book, setting the stage for our protagonist, Lee Harden, and his loyal dog Tango. We kick things off with some light-hearted banter about Ollie's journey to our show and his uncanny talent for summarizing zombie tales.
Prepare for a rollercoaster of laughs and insights as we debate the true hero of the story: Tango! Our chat takes a deep dive into survival strategies portrayed in the book, from city zombies' sluggishness to the fierce agility of their forest counterparts. We even delve into the practicalities of survival, discussing the emotional and moral dilemmas Lee faces, like asking a child to avenge a loved one.
Finally, we explore the thematic depths of the series, touching on representation, moral choices, and the gritty realities of an apocalyptic world. We debate the most controversial plot points, like the potential infection of Lee's dog and the heart-wrenching decisions Lee must make. Don't miss this lively, laughter-filled episode packed with thoughtful discussions and practical zombie survival tips!
Ollie Eats Brains:
@ollieatsbrains on all socials
ollieeatsbrains.com
DJ Molles - Author of The Remaining Series
https://djmolles.com/
@djmolles
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Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a book and that book starts in a bunker and that bunker is nice, and then we leave the bunker and things are not so very nice. I'm Dan, and when I'm not hiding in my own bunker, I'm writing a book about things being not very nice for a group of very ordinary people surviving a zombie outbreak near a major US city, and it doesn't go very nicely at all I'm leah, and today we are talking about our official zombie book club.
Speaker 3:Read the remaining by dj mole, dan's favorite zombie book yeah, it's one of them, and I'm ollie, a writer of zombie stories and award-winning zombie chicken impersonator ollie, how did you get on this podcast?
Speaker 2:Where'd you?
Speaker 3:come from. Oh, I found your secret password. You eat the right brains. You find passwords.
Speaker 1:That makes all the sense.
Speaker 2:That's how you get on this podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you eat our brains. We release episodes every Sunday on all podcasting platforms, so subscrib.
Speaker 2:Yeah, before we get into subscribing and why you, you should subscribe, I just want to say, ollie, it's really awesome to have you on here with us and very weird to have you in my ears, but in a good way.
Speaker 3:A good weird. Yeah, it's really weird actually talking to you and having you respond to the things that I say.
Speaker 2:In real time.
Speaker 3:In real time.
Speaker 2:Without typos.
Speaker 1:I still have typos. Oh, in your voice typos I still have typos oh, oh, in your, in your voice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my brain is 90 typos. If you say them out loud, are they verbose they?
Speaker 2:are isn't that like the opposite, or like an equivalent of airbnb? A verbo?
Speaker 1:it is uh, so we uh, today are talking about the remaining. We might have mentioned it before a couple times. Um and uh, we're gonna start this off. Um, ollie is gonna give us a spoiler, free intro oh, certainly gonna do my best no spoilers no spoilers, I'll try.
Speaker 3:you know it's hard. Um, the remaining by dj mole. Uh, I have given this one four out of five brains Plot A soldier leaves his secret bunker to find the world ravaged by hyper-aggressive zombies and immediately gets to work rescuing survivors and rebuilding society. If Murphy's Law was a postal apocalyptic zombie survival story, it would be the Remaining by DJ Mole. If there is anything in Lee Harden's life that could go wrong, it will. He can just never catch a break. Want to sleep? Well, sorry, you can't sleep when there's our enemies nearby. Are those people friends or foes? By your luck, probably foes. Better get used to it.
Speaker 3:Being the chosen one left by the US government as a designated survivor of humanity, and given the task of saving humanity and rebuilding society, lee Harden exits his hobbit hole to find a world completely fallen into chaos, though he is well-trained and very well-equipped. Bringing order to the messy remains of society is a task that will test Lee Harden's skill as a warrior, a survivalist and a new parent. Figuratively, they're not his kids, he just has to deal with them. The Remaining is a fast-paced action story that deals with the unrealistic expectations of a sole soldier with an impossible task, while handling the infected, the uninfected and, worst of all, children. Harden also struggles with the immense weight of his responsibilities, his sense of loneliness and the moral complexities of the choices he has to make in an unforgiving environment. Fortunately, harden has an ace up his sleeve that gives him a bargaining chip that can not only help him find a safe community for himself and his charges, but can also boost whatever community he deems responsible enough to trust with his cash.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. I just want to say you can stop listening now. That's like you got it. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:I don't think the blurb on the back of the remaining is even half as good as that.
Speaker 2:No, you should get like. Authors should employ you for summaries.
Speaker 1:It's really good.
Speaker 3:No, probably not, if my book is finished, I'm going to be calling you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that took me about a month to write. Really, it looks flawless and it'll be coming out at the same time as this episode, so it'll be there for folks to share as well. And you can find Ollie, one of our Zom-besties, on all social platforms atli Eats Brains and their website, olieatsbrainscom, which has some really awesome writing that includes zombies, also vampires and other things, and get more ZomBit reviews without spoilers. That will definitely make you laugh. I actually tried to not laugh over you and interrupt this entire time.
Speaker 1:I failed.
Speaker 2:Such I really. What you can't hear in Oli's voice is that it says, being the all caps, the chosen one, which I appreciate because it feels almost I don't know, Ollie, was it kind of a call out for the chosen one?
Speaker 3:It just felt humorous to me. If I could have I don't know how to do the little TM at the top corner, I would have added that on there too.
Speaker 2:That makes a lot of sense. It made me laugh, so it works, and also appreciate you putting a little zombie book club podcast up there.
Speaker 3:I just noticed that, thank you oh yeah, if not for, uh, if not for you guys, I would never have heard that about that book yeah, I, I don't even know how I found it.
Speaker 2:You don't, I don't, I don't remember did you listen to it on Audible first, Dan?
Speaker 1:Oh, I've listened to most books on Audible. I want to say like sometimes I'll just like use chat GPT to be like suggest zombie books for me, wow. Well, I didn't have a spreadsheet of like 1,100 zombie books to know which ones I should read based on how many brain ratings they have.
Speaker 3:Well, you do now, so you don't need to rely on chat GPT anymore.
Speaker 2:Actual human brain power. Yeah, should we talk about the other main characters, because you do a really good job of describing now I'm forgetting his name, lee Lee, like my name, lee Harden.
Speaker 1:I love how Lee is not in your list of main characters.
Speaker 3:Well, I said other main characters, because I feel like you did a good job of introducing him and also, just since it was mentioned, I'd like to point out that that list is now up to 1,500 books.
Speaker 1:Whoa, oh, my God, that's a lot. That's so many books.
Speaker 3:It just keeps growing and you guys are not helping with it. Every time I listen to a new podcast, you just bring up a new book or a new movie and I have to go check the list and I have to be like, oh, is it in there? That's not, so I gotta add another one I guess I gotta go watch something else. Get any rating.
Speaker 2:Get more information would it help if we just added them for you and you can be surprised when you go on the stage I think that would cause chaos I have considered opening this up for a public uh thing, but I just know that as soon as I do that, it's, it's done.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm gonna have like completely unrelated films in here. They're probably gonna put, like I don't know, pride and prejudice in there isn't there.
Speaker 1:Isn't there the pride and prejudice um and make of the zombies, so yeah, movie yeah, yes, there is a book and movie version of it yeah, then I think there's also like, in no wait, this might be abraham lincoln versus vampires, oh, but I kind of feel like around that time they tried to just throw every historical character against every mythological menace.
Speaker 3:There is also Abraham Lincoln versus zombies.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's what we need to watch next?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm actually really surprised that anything that we suggest is not on your list. After reading your comprehensive list of every zombie thing that exists, I felt pretty basic Pedestrian, even in my tastes in zombie fiction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm really tempted. Oh, go ahead, Ollie.
Speaker 3:Having the list is very stressful because once you start sharing that, everyone expects me to know everything.
Speaker 1:That is a good point. I do expect you to know everything. That's a good point. I do expect you to know everything you do eat brains.
Speaker 3:I feel like this is reasonable I've been cutting back, I'm trying, trying to go vegetarian, you know my doctor is telling me to quit eating so many brains.
Speaker 1:is that what he said to you? Yeah, he's like you cut back Brains are high in calories and fat and you have too many of those things.
Speaker 3:You don't have the appropriate biology for that.
Speaker 1:Apparently yeah.
Speaker 2:I have a question. I have a question for you, ollie, and then we need to talk about the remaining. We need to have you back to get really deep into the spreadsheet, because I want to get geeky with you on that, but what I? Want to know is is it true when you eat a brain? Is it true that brains are the texture and consistency of toothpaste?
Speaker 3:uh, yeah, I've kind of I've compared it to like um, like pudding, like like a firm pudding sometimes. But uh, it varies. You know, some people really work out their brains and they taste a little more, a little more solid I feel like my brains would be like stringy I think my brains would have some worms in them. Probably there'd be some tough parts, get some, get some good, uh, brain skeddy with yours, you know that's kind of delicious.
Speaker 1:I'm into it my, uh, my brain definitely has like gristle in it I okay, I know I asked the question.
Speaker 2:I regret the question.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the remaining, let's talk about this book we're supposed to talk about. We're on, uh, let's talk about these main characters the other main characters. There's lee harden. Lee is one of the main characters, correct?
Speaker 2:some might say the main character.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, I would argue that the main character is Tango.
Speaker 2:Really, why do you think Tango is the main character, and who?
Speaker 3:is Tango, because I just flip through the book and try to find him. If he's not on a page, I just skip it.
Speaker 1:I think that that's fair. That's a good way to read a book. I think that what this reveals about the true nature of dogs is that dogs can read our minds and the perspective of the book is actually from Tango. And he is reading Lee's mind and seeing the world through his perspective, because he is empathic as a dog would be.
Speaker 2:If that was the actual story, Ollie, would you give it five brains? Oh, definitely.
Speaker 3:Then there was the actual story. Ollie, would you give it five brains? Oh, definitely.
Speaker 1:Then there's Sam the Kid, the first of the kids.
Speaker 3:The first adopted child.
Speaker 1:Yeah, lee's first adopted child. He doesn't. So, to be clear, lee doesn't actually adopt any children in this, but he does collect them from harm.
Speaker 3:He does seem to have a, a strong like okay, now I can't think of the words.
Speaker 1:It's okay, paternal instinct. Is that what you're going for?
Speaker 3:well, I was going to say uh, basically has a strong tendency to just stumble upon children and just take them home, which sounds like a really bad way of describing that yeah, um, then we also have, uh, what did?
Speaker 1:I looked it up yeah, because our notes don't have the names of these two.
Speaker 2:Preview for the bechdel test. I couldn't remember the name of the two main female characters females as lee calls them yeah angela is the mother and abby is the daughter, and lee rescues them as well. They are very dehydrated on a roof somewhere, so we'll talk more about that later, but uh, they're just spoiler. They are pretty much the only. Are there any other female characters I'm trying to think in this book?
Speaker 1:there's a doctor's assistant at the end right, right, okay, is there oh right, all of three, okay, I recall now and Abby would be the second child that Lee has. As to his collection of children, we're making this sound like a much weirder book than it actually is.
Speaker 3:And just to inform you of how important those characters are. I read this book yesterday just to get caught back up with it, and I also could not have told you what their names were wow that's a lot.
Speaker 1:You know, there is a point where, like, you kind of forget that they are kind of tagging along and you're like, oh right, there's, there's more than just a couple people in this book, because the last character is jack, and jack is like a retired marine corps sniper. Um, I believe he's marine corps. I, I think he's marine corps, yes, I don't know, he's military.
Speaker 2:He talks like this yeah, he talks like this.
Speaker 1:He's got a voice and sounds kind of like this yeah, that's how I hear it anyway, who's your favorite character is?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think you already said tango oh, tango for sure.
Speaker 3:Uh, tango would be my favorite like of the living characters, but I absolutely loved shovel guy. Tell the listeners who shovel guy is uh, towards about three quarters way into the book there's a a just butt naked, uh, infected dude running around with a massive shovel and he is leading a giant horde of other infected and they storm the castle, basically where all the heroes are hiding. And yeah, he is just my absolute favorite. I love that guy. I was really ruined for him. I was hoping he would go further.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe there could be a spinoff series just about that guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's his whole story? How did he gather a whole horde?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's gotta be. How'd he lose his clothes? Yeah, when did his clothes go?
Speaker 2:Well, maybe he was bit while he was sleeping and he was naked. Ollie, I feel like that's possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but also it's North Carolina, so maybe he was just hot.
Speaker 2:Maybe he was in his backyard, yeah.
Speaker 1:In a hammock Just skinny, dip it somewhere yeah, he was doing some gardening, some naked gardening, and then he got bit but yeah, that's.
Speaker 3:That's the whole point. We don't know what happened to him. We don't know how he got there. How, why is he got a shovel?
Speaker 2:yeah, that feels like a good fan fiction I need to know all right, we need to write that fan fiction.
Speaker 1:So that's. You know what this is a good segue into. Uh, what? What kinds of zombies are these? Um, what do we know about these zombies?
Speaker 2:oh, I feel like ollie gave me a little preview of something in our chat and I uh, I'll just tell you this to start, and then you can fill in the blanks. Ollie, but the virus that makes people zombies is called fury as an acronym, and what does that stand for, ollie?
Speaker 3:oh, why are you gonna make me pronounce it?
Speaker 2:because that's what we do febrile eurocanic reactive ursinea and what does that mean?
Speaker 1:absolutely nothing it just sounds good when you have an acronym it does sound great.
Speaker 3:But yeah, I ran over to chat gpt. I know I was just giving you crap about this earlier, but yeah, I went and used chat GPT and I asked them what this meant. And it just comes up and it tells me combining these terms doesn't result in any meaningful medical term or phrase.
Speaker 2:So DJ Mully is not a doctor. We're learning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's sorry, I just completely spaced. Yeah, it's called Fury, it's a, it's a virus. So we've got we've got some pathogenic zombies. But what I find interesting about this a lot of times it's a virus. In this case, it's a bacteria, um, so the transmission type is airborne saliva droplets and fluid exchange. So don't exchange fluids with zombies, is what we're learning but they still bite you.
Speaker 1:It's not like you just get it from being coughed on yeah, um, I don't know exactly how they explain it not being transmissible through airborne saliva droplets. After a certain point, I guess zombies don't cough. Is that what we're where we go with that?
Speaker 3:I don't know. Zombies are generally polite and cover their mouth.
Speaker 1:They do um, so the incubation period is like one week to seven or 72 hours. Um, I don't know if there's an example of in this book. It like how long it takes. But we get a lot of information. When lee opens up his dossier, thumb drive with all of the exposition that explains all of this. How convenient. Yeah, it's not. You know what. The exposition part was not my favorite part of this book, but it did the job and it wasn't very long, it was like a couple, it was like a page of exposition and it's like all right, we get to move on now. So what's interesting about these zombies is that they're not dead, they're just infected. So a lot like a similar four-letter acronym virus that we've heard of in zombie fiction, like the rage virus. This is the fury virus. They're not actually dead, they're just infected. Um, so they're just brain damaged. They have a loss of reasoning and language and they're super hyper aggressive. Some of them are, some of them aren't what do we find?
Speaker 2:was there a single chill zombie in this book?
Speaker 1:I mean that I don't know if chill is the right word, but lee stumbles across a woman in a field who's holding a dead baby and uh is infected and she's. She turns to him and says can you fix my baby?
Speaker 2:I forgot that she was infected.
Speaker 1:I thought she was just really sick yeah, you know, it could have been either way, I guess, but he said she was infected are the docile ones, the ones who cover their mouth when they cough definitely okay, um they.
Speaker 3:Not just the polite ones.
Speaker 1:Right, they also wear masks, so they have a high body temperature, increased metabolism and a constant need to eat. They'll eat anything, which is what we find out in later books. They eat leaves, dry leaves, they eat dirt. Oh, they'll go and they'll raid supermarkets and eat everything off the shelves.
Speaker 3:Wow, spoiler alert.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they'll grab a cereal box. They'll eat the cardboard, they'll eat the plastic, they'll eat the cereal inside. They just gnaw through it.
Speaker 2:Wow, so they're competing for food, then, with humans too, which is not good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is an interesting thing to throw in there too. They're really aggressive, but they'll eat anything but other infected and they travel in large groups and attracted to noise and smells. They are somewhat smart, they can adapt and problem solve, much like our friend with the shovel Shovel guy. He problem solved his way right out of his clothes, these clothes are a problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel that you know what. I think that is the most reasonable explanation for him being naked is he's like clothes are a problem. I'm hot because I have a fever. It's north carolina, it's 95 damn degrees out and I have clothes on I would love to see a visual of this like I'm infected now.
Speaker 2:Don't need these anymore yeah, I don't give a shit what's. Uh, I don't need to be humble, let it all hang out. This is a really great point.
Speaker 1:People see me, my clothes are going to be the least of their problems yeah, um, I I feel like this is going to lead to a a whole lot more zombies that are just full-on just naked, just butt-ass naked, running around I mean, I will never forget the night of the living dead naked lady butt.
Speaker 2:So I want to see shovel guys naked but like dragging the shovel.
Speaker 1:This I mean you know what remaining? I could see it. Let's see the remaining movie. Let's see the naked shovel guy. Let's see the behind the scenes deleted part where we see shovel guy taking off his clothes. So we understand why he's naked. The X rated version Well, this is the deleted scenes in the director's cut, unrated. Unrated version With all the swinging dicks that you could ever want.
Speaker 3:Full on, bruno.
Speaker 1:So, also because they're not undead, you can kill them just by typical means that you can kill a normal human being, but because of their hyper aggression and like their changed metaphysysiology, they are a little bit more resilient. So if you, if you stab one in the chest, it might still take a few bites out of you and then run down the street butt naked and bite somebody else, but eventually it'll die this is how STIs happen yeah, from knife wounds that's why you gotta to clean your knives.
Speaker 2:It's very true, hygiene is important, but also as the series goes on, um, they get scarier.
Speaker 1:So this is a little bit of a spoiler. If you haven't read the whole series, I, uh, I recommend it. Um, but uh, in later on the series they start to adapt. Some of them devolve and some of them evolve. So, ones that gather in large hordes, usually in cities, where their numbers are what makes them a force they tend to become, they lose their reasoning abilities and they become slower and they just kind of shuffle along. They can still run too, but, um, the ones that are out in the woods out there hunting, they form smaller packs and they become stronger and faster and, uh, and they adapt to their, their new life by, like, um, growing more muscular upper bodies and then, like, swinging around trees.
Speaker 2:And running on all fours at 30 miles an hour. I read. That sounds terrifying.
Speaker 1:Climbing over fences like they're nothing. So later on in the series, if you want to know a little bit to keep you going, they get weird, they get scary, they get smart.
Speaker 3:That is terrifying.
Speaker 2:Ollie, what did you love or like? If you don't feel like it's a love about the book, oh, mostly I thought.
Speaker 3:I thought the way he really focused on, like, um, proper survival aspects, like telling people to drink their water slowly and, uh, trying to like not building fire so people don't find you just, it's just interesting, little little aspects that you don't generally think about in apocalyptic things, like it's all about the action a lot of times and while, uh, dj mole does focus pretty heavily on action and he writes it really well, he also writes those moments in between action very well. Like the character dynamics was just wonderful. I love the dynamics between the characters. I love the character development for Lee and the way he feels human and the fact that he's not just like a Mary Sue character that just gets everything done right perfectly.
Speaker 1:He doesn't get through fights without injury, he doesn't do everything correctly, he makes mistakes throughout the book and I think that that's what I really enjoyed about that is that the character just feels human and real and he's just like a real person yeah, I definitely agree with that and I I especially loved in your zombie that you that you mentioned like murphy's law and how everything bad that can happen to this guy does, and like why he's very smart and he is able to handle these situations and he does so expertly it's. It's not enough to avoid the pitfalls of surviving in a post-apocalypse sorry, one sec, alexa dot.
Speaker 3:This might be a blooper episode, dad.
Speaker 2:Sorry, one sec, Alexa. Stop, this might be a blooper episode.
Speaker 3:Dan, I'm so sorry about that.
Speaker 2:That's okay, that is the least disruptive thing that's happened. It's all in us.
Speaker 1:I also especially loved the hyper-realism that goes with that you mentioned. He gets injured and he, like, he takes damage, um, and that's something that carries on through the series like this. I I've said it before and I think it's like how I would describe this is which, which is like the remaining this book. The remaining is good. The series is fantastic, um, and what I love most about the series is that, as it goes on, he keeps on accruing these injuries that have long-lasting effects on him, both mentally and physically, and you truly believe that he is just being battered and destroyed little by little as he goes on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they directly address that. Uh later in the book, when he's like questioning his own ability to get all this done and he's he's sitting there thinking to him I don't remember what exactly he was thinking to himself like am I enough to actually get this all done? Can I handle this? And yeah, it's just real and like really digging into some of the emotional distressors of such such a high amount of responsibility for one person. Yeah, it's, yeah, that's that's what's great about the book.
Speaker 3:Uh, like, pertaining to murphy's law, I it just came up with that yesterday and I I wrote that whole zombie just last night, like about 11, 15, uh, because I just finished the book last night, um, for the second time, and I I was going through the book and anytime it felt like there was a safe moment or anything. What's happening. It was just a complete 180 and it would like something would happen. Anytime they were in a house, you're like, oh yeah, they get a moment of rest. No, something happens. They go to another house. Something happens, they go outside, something happens. It's just, if something can go wrong, it goes wrong.
Speaker 1:That's how it is with them. When I'm, when I'm writing, I try to make rules for myself where, like um, at one point I was like every 10 pages something has to happen, but I don't know if that's necessarily enough or if that like it's almost too um, too like controlling to think of it that way. But I I love the idea of like every time you think that a problem is solved, something else has to go wrong at the same time, though, there's these like really poignant moments.
Speaker 2:They're actually my favorite part of the book, as I. It's really funny. I read these things and I love apocalypse fiction, but half the time, like why does it always have to go wrong? Like why does he have to lose his bunker? I was so upset about that. But it's the moments like in between the chaos, the never ending sense of chaos, where it's like Jack and Lee together in a convenience store. Jack is infected already Spoiler, this is going to be a spoiler episode and they decide to do a scratch off and they win a hundred bucks and it's like it sounds like such a silly thing to put in a book, but if you read the book, you will feel the poignancy of that moment and what's been lost and the connection between the two characters. And then another horrible thing happens right after.
Speaker 1:I've got a spoiler for you, but it's not a series ruining spoiler, it's a series enhancing spoiler. That scratch off ticket it shows up later. Really, yeah, he keeps it, he holds onto it. Aw, it becomes this thing that reminds him that things can go his way, things can be good, and it helps him remember Jack.
Speaker 3:It becomes like an emblem of luck to him. I'm guessing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it becomes important. Is it lucky when him? I'm guessing yeah it becomes important?
Speaker 2:is it lucky when you win a hundred dollars when it doesn't matter? I don't know, this is a stretch.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess that's the question, that that they, that they think about um in that convenience store which is like it's, like it's, it's no good, I can't. I can't like turn this in for money, and even if I could, the money is worthless. And uh, and jack just points out, like you know it, it's. You should keep it, because one day you might be able to just cash this in.
Speaker 3:And he doesn't mean for money, he means like the, the luck that you had in this, like it like this, is evidence that you had luck it's going to be one of those situations where he folds it up five times, dips it in his breast pocket, gets shot and it went below it lands like right in that bounces right off, it scratches off the rest of the ticket how many books have you read of this series dan?
Speaker 1:um well, there's six books in the series and then there's two novellas in the series and then there's a bunch of spin-off books. I haven't read the spin-offs yet um, so the next series that I need to read is is, uh, the lee harden series, which I think takes place three years after the events of the remaining oh interesting so it's like I. I assume that this is, after all, the zombies have died or evolved into more scary creatures than they already are, and he is still on his mission to put together society again.
Speaker 2:Ollie, would you continue reading the series, do you think?
Speaker 3:Oh, definitely it's on my to-be-read list. Yeah, I didn't want to read any of the rest of it until after I listened to the episode, because I didn't want to like fuse everything into one and start mixing up what happened in one book same.
Speaker 2:The audible version has like a preview of the next book and I'm like no, no, no, I can't, don't do that yeah, I just skipped right over it, uh let's talk about his bunker, because his bunker, I'm not gonna lie, I want to live in his bunker Same.
Speaker 3:Leah brought up the bunker just a moment ago and was talking about how, when it collapsed, it was an annoying moment, I will say I remember the first time I read the book. I was excessively annoyed by the fact that they didn't even try to see if they could get into the bunker after the house collapsed to see if they did take all that stuff out. If all that stuff is down there and you got five feet of rubble, yeah, it might be an annoying to try and move all that out of the way, but it's worth at least checking yeah, um, I think to move all the rubble he would need an excavator, which you know you could find in this world, I'm sure, um no, there was that big green one down the road blocking the road oh wow, literally there.
Speaker 2:I don't remember that plot hole.
Speaker 3:Well, it wasn't an excavator, I think it was one of those things that like churns up all the uh, like the wheat, and such that I think they hit oh, the harvester, yeah the harvester that's what it was which might not do the same job, but it might help I, you could, yeah, you could do something with it.
Speaker 1:The uh, the harvester part of it is not too useful, but you know, I mean maybe you could use a tow rope and drag some of the rubble away with it. It's still a powerful tractor, so there's that harvest the wood yeah, yeah, just harvest the house, eat that.
Speaker 1:um, my, I think it could have been written better, but my understanding of what probably happened in that moment is that Lee can't return to that house because the guys who burned it to the ground are probably watching over it. They're probably still there. They're waiting for Lee to come back because they know that he's not in his bunker. They're going to want to see the look on Lee's face when he's like oh shit, my house want to see the look on lee's face when he's like oh shit, my house.
Speaker 2:I wish they'd said that, though, because I had the exact same reaction, ollie, and it really, to this day, bothers me because I just can't. I'm at, or even saying like I'm gonna come back and try later. Yeah, and it's also after.
Speaker 1:That is when we learned that there's other caches, like I had no idea there were other options, which would have made that moment feel a lot different yeah, I wonder if he even knew that when he was writing it because, like it, you know, I kind of feel like burning it to the ground was kind of solving a problem of like this guy's too safe and I need to make this guy less safe like he probably wrote had a completely different image in his mind of what the what this was going to look like in the, in the future of the book. Then, when, when, what actually happened? You know, when you're writing, sometimes the entire ending of your book is thrown out the window and you're like I got to write completely different stuff now because I made a decision, my, my, my characters went off without me and they made some dumb decisions and now I got to rewrite my book.
Speaker 3:Um, that's kind of what I remember seeing. I remember seeing a meme a little while ago where uh somebody was talking about how uh their characters did something stupid and somebody else just looks at them and like don't you write them? And the guy's just like not really is that the case?
Speaker 2:they're gonna write themselves is that what happens for you? Too ollie pretty much.
Speaker 3:Yes, actually I. I didn't want to bring this up because I didn't want to go off on a wild tangent here, but I did want to ask Dan a question about his writing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a perfect time for that. We love tangents. Go for it.
Speaker 3:Are you a pants writer or?
Speaker 1:a plot writer. I'm a combo.
Speaker 3:I'm a plot, chaotic, neutral plot, sir I, because I am like a hundred percent pants I. I cannot plan ahead on my writing. I just get the characters, I throw them into situations and see what happens, and oftentimes nothing good happens.
Speaker 1:So when I started writing the book that I'm writing right now, um, I'd had so many, so many, uh, pokers in the fire. You know, I've got so many ideas right, um, a million different ideas, five different books I want to write. All of them have have great first acts, you know, but none of them finished. Uh, and I was talking to a friend of mine who's a writer um, he's written like 80, 80 novellas and a few. Wow, I don't know what is what his, uh, his pen name is, because he won't tell me he writes erotica. Um, and he just won't tell me who he is. And I'm, I've, I've been trying to guess for a long time, like, are you this person? And he's like no. He's just gonna say, do you write about werewolves? And he's like no, you should read a book called On Writing by Saul something I can't remember the name right now Goodman, saul Goodman, that's the one. Saul Stein, that's what it is. That was close. And also On Writing by Stephen King Save the Cat.
Speaker 1:It is all about understanding the 15 beats of a three-act structure. And he's like ideas are a dime, a dozen. You have to just write it. And I started by being like I'm going to make an outline. I'm going to stick to it. I'm going to make the 15 beats and I'm going to make an outline. I'm going to stick to it. I'm going to make the 15 beats and I'm going to do it. It's going to be done by the end of the year. That was four years ago and I did that. But then, as I started writing it, I found that the characters took over and now it doesn't resemble what I plotted out at all. So now I only plot a few scenes ahead and have a general idea, and then, when we get to that point and the characters take over and tell me a completely different story, I'm like, all right, now I just plot the next thing from this point and keep going. So it's a combo there we go.
Speaker 3:It's like being a DM for for dungeon the dragons, and just plotting everything out, everything like all the way down to like where every store is and what they all have, and then your, your players, just go off on a completely different direction.
Speaker 1:You're like this is that secret that the big bad guy has, and if they talk to them they'll be able to learn the secret of the thing. They're like we'll kill them, just kill them. Kill them and don't ask them any questions.
Speaker 2:I feel like I'm not. I've never thought of this before. It sounds like D&D and writing is a lot like real life, because making plans is. I really love plans because in that brief moment I feel so in control of everything. But it never happens that way. Yeah, and that's what makes it interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's exactly like that Lee's bunker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's your favorite part of like? What's the most MTV Cribs part of the bunker for you, ollie.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Not you, dan. I thought you wanted to know my opinion. No, we have a special guest. Sorry, ollie, definitely.
Speaker 3:It would be that big reveal when he opens up the doors and you've got all the guns there. That's, that would definitely be the MTV Cribs big reward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I found his choice of firearms to be really interesting because I wouldn't think that, um, you know from a utilitarian aspect that he would want to have something that had a grenade launcher attached to it. But it's also like you're, you are prepared for every situation, now if you have a grenade launcher. But I thought he'd like want to go lightweight. You know just something very simple, um, but he's like no, put a grenade launcher on it, it'll be heavy as shit, but but it'll be fine. I need those grenades.
Speaker 2:Was that your favorite part of the crib too? The MTV bunker crib?
Speaker 1:I just liked that it had all the creature comforts of his house. Um, I I love that he had a big TV and a gaming console, even though he admittedly didn't really care too much about video games. Um, I loved when he was like I tried to play some zombie survival games, but it felt too real so I had to quit.
Speaker 3:Which is ironic because he actually hadn't been to the surface yet. He just had an idea of what was going on up there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one detail about life in the bunker was, like, you know, he was checking the internet. He was checking the news sites. The news sites, like, stopped updating after like the first day, so he had no idea what was going on. He could still access them, but nobody was writing articles, so he couldn't actually see what was going on. And there's a point where he's like and uh, I tried to check red tube, but red tube was down and I'm like that is the harbinger of the apocalypse that nobody talks about is the moment you're like oh my god, all the porn sites are down.
Speaker 1:Why didn't I bring dvds at least a magazine society is truly crumbled if you can't access the porn I was.
Speaker 3:The waffle house is closed, porn is gone.
Speaker 2:It's, it's chaos don't talk about the waffle house being closed. They'll never close. You know that would be great to have actually scenes of waffle house in apocalyptic scenarios where they're still open and they're like we're open 24 hours a day.
Speaker 1:The apocalypse doesn't change that. What do you want?
Speaker 3:fully covered, smothered covered I always thought a fun little story also would be the postal workers, uh, still delivering mail. Just be like, um, what that ever that old movie is with what's his face? Um, kevin Costner, who does the postal things, just like that.
Speaker 1:The Postman.
Speaker 3:The Postman.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I never saw that movie, but I kind of want to. It's pretty good.
Speaker 2:I guess we need to add to our list. I did love Kevin Costner when I was a kid, because wasn't he in Waterworld? Not Peter Pan? The other one with tights? Oh, the other one with tights, oh, robin Hood, thank you, he's in tights and they're green.
Speaker 1:I think he was in Robin Hood Men in tights.
Speaker 2:Was he? No, that was another movie.
Speaker 3:That's Carrie, always yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't remember. Like one of my things that's a Teflon pan in my brain. Ollie is names of people. It's horrible, yeah, especially actors of people. It's horrible, yeah, especially actors. I don't. I have no memory you know?
Speaker 1:I don't know if you've seen z nation. I got to imagine that you have I've seen a couple episodes there is an episode where they're they stumble across a lone postal worker in a in his town and he is still trying to deliver mail and take care of the zombie residents of his town.
Speaker 1:That's sweet, that's nice of them and uh fun fact about the us postal service. In the event of the uh law, after the rule of law is gone, or if there's an invasion or something, um, first thing that the postal workers are supposed to do is destroy all the stamps and money orders because they are technically currency.
Speaker 2:But if there's an invasion, at what point does money become meaningless anyways?
Speaker 1:That's not for them to question.
Speaker 2:They just destroy it all.
Speaker 1:That's their first order of business is to destroy anything that can be used as currency. Okay, we're putting my dinosaur stamps in our safe immediately, because I love those and I don't want to use them and then they are uh, the postal workers are repurposed to then um act as government agents who are uh tasked with collecting taxes and other government type um tasks I think we need to talk about what we didn't what we didn't love in this episode, because this brings up my number one complaint, uh, which is that lee's mission is exceedingly unrealistic, and what you just described like if there were postal workers doing stuff feels more realistic.
Speaker 2:Um, who wants to describe the mission that lee is on?
Speaker 1:oh, I mean, I think ollie uh explained everything in a zombie. But, and in short, lee is one of 48 other soldiers who are specially trained and funded to survive the apocalypse, a rank that you can now command soldiers. In case you run across them, you'll have a house that has a bunker in the bottom and every time that we say get in the bunker, you go down in the bunker and you don't come out for a month unless we tell you to. And this is in response to 9-11 and many threats that happened throughout the years, whether it's like we think that Russia is going to launch a nuclear weapon or something, or there's a biological attack or any number of things. They're like go down there and you're supposed to survive and then, when you come up, you are supposed to then find survivors and help them with all of the things that you have in your bunker and help rebuild civilization.
Speaker 2:Does this sound realistic to either of you? Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Did either of you buy it.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, ollie.
Speaker 3:I could do it.
Speaker 2:You could do it.
Speaker 1:As long as you have a dog right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, as long as I've got the dog, I'd go with a cat. Honestly, I feel like I could probably re-establish order like at least within my household.
Speaker 2:probably it doesn't sound like a very complicated task what, uh, what would be your like first five steps of saving your entire state in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?
Speaker 3:saving my entire state um well being in california. That's an impossible task, actually, now that I come to think of it thank.
Speaker 1:Thank you for putting that into perspective for me yeah. So which major city in California are you going to save first? San Francisco, san Diego, los, angeles? How many other ones are there? Sacramento?
Speaker 3:You got to save them all, I think my first step is going to run away, go straight into the hills and avoid all the cities, and then that's the end of my process there.
Speaker 1:that's as far as I've gotten in there yeah, I, um, I agree that this is, uh, a pretty unrealistic way to approach this. I think that, at a very, at a bare minimum, there should be a team of people in this house that goes into the bunker.
Speaker 2:Or just people living all in the same neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or multiple people in the same state, based on how much population, how much area this covers, because it means that the state of Rhode Island, the state of Delaware and the state of Texas has the same amount of resources assigned to it, which is one dude per state.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's one Ollie in all of California, but there's also one person in Vermont for 600,000 people.
Speaker 1:There's one Ollie in Delaware which is like the size of like a typical county in any other state.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you think about the fact that he's just one dude like if it is just California, we're just one dude right there in like Sacramento. How is he supposed to help the people in San Diego? Yeah, like he's not going to have enough gas, even no way to like funnel that stuff to get down there. He's not going to be able to walk down there.
Speaker 1:He's not getting to san francisco okay, what if he has a flat cap um?
Speaker 3:what if he has a hoverboard?
Speaker 1:yeah, what if he has a one wheel personal plane solar powered? Bicycle yeah, there we go. We solved the problem, so you can do it right, ollie yep, he can.
Speaker 2:He can probably take care of, like california, nevada and arizona right there see we're saving the government money here so I I've never spent a lot of time on the west coast, sadly, and I will just admit right now that I don't know how far away those two cities are. How, how far are we talking?
Speaker 3:um, so I'll tell you, I drive an hour to work every day and it's just 30 miles away. So, and that's not even like, I live somewhere just in between San Diego and LA, and driving to San Diego is about just about an hour and a half and driving to LA is about an hour and a half. So if you're trying to drive between the two of those, it's it's. It's an undertaking.
Speaker 1:yeah and those two aren't even that far apart from each other in comparison to like san francisco san francisco, I think, is um, I want to say like a 10 hour drive from here wow, yeah so that's what it takes me to get home in Canada.
Speaker 2:So an e-bike, an e-bike.
Speaker 3:E-bike for sure.
Speaker 1:And in the desert and through mountains, no less, and desert and mountains where there's going to be, like, really psychotic people who are just not very pleasant to be around.
Speaker 2:That's the other thing.
Speaker 3:Have you seen those bicycle campers? Bicycle campers that would solve that problem too. Yeah, they have little campers that are basically just big enough to fit your sleeping bag in there. That's so cute. Toss that on a bike, your little e-bike, and yeah, problem solved there too.
Speaker 2:That sounds almost idyllic, minus the zombies and societal collapse. Yeah, let's sell our house and get one of those. Okay, sounds like a plan. Ollie, what made you not give this five brains? Why did you withhold the fifth brain?
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't know. I felt like some of the characters were just a little like just one-dimensional. You know, I felt like sometimes the author just kind of forgot that Sam was present, just forgot that some of the other characters were there too. I mean, I am guilty of the same thing in my writing. I completely forgot that I had three extra characters in the same RV as everybody else. But I'm not published, so I don't. I have that excuse. I felt like a lot of the villains didn't have any motivation.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's the thing with the bunker really annoyed me not wanting to go back in there to look at it. I wasn't sure about where that candle came from at the neighbor's house.
Speaker 1:Oh, the one that was lit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there was a lit candle in the house. I drew him to it. And when he gets there, everybody's spoiler, everybody's dead and there's just one infected in there I think what the candle is doing is.
Speaker 1:It is, uh, telling us that this happened recently.
Speaker 3:Well, that's what I would have thought too, but on my second reread he had mentioned that they had been dead for quite a while.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well fuck the saddest part there was oh sorry, go.
Speaker 3:No, I didn't have a false out there, I was just saying that was pretty much it. It kind of pushed me to not do that. It just felt like there was one very well-rounded character, one kind of decent character, and then everybody else was just very two-dimensional and no villains had any motivation. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I totally agree. I mean, tango had more substance than any other human character, except for lee harden yeah, which strengthens my opinion that tango was actually the main character absolutely do, we do. We say what happens to tango do?
Speaker 1:I already I already spoiled it in a previous episode oh, that's right, you did okay.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll say it again. So, also unhappy moment the dog dies. That's also why I don't love this, because I I don't. What is it? What does it say about human psychology, or rather mind that I'm more upset when a dog dies? Yeah, I am, I was like no, but maybe it's because tango actually has personality and a lot of other people he killed are like automatons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and bad guys. Yeah, they're bad and have no dimension. They're also really fat.
Speaker 2:One of them definitely is Lee Harden. Does not like fat people. Yeah, he's very fat.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's pretty obvious. Yeah, there's one. I mean, he didn't know his name, so I guess he went by his physical description, um, because he didn't have any interest in knowing his name, because he was about to execute him, uh, street justice style.
Speaker 1:He does actually describe the guy as being fat with a lot of disdain and he doesn't really describe the other um villains that much yeah he described them all by what they were wearing yeah, yeah, we don't know like anything really about them, but we definitely know there's fat boy, which I get annoyed when, like, villains are always fat or like some other thing that's deemed inappropriate by society later on in the series there is also another person who um has lee's ire, who is also fat um, and he's he's talking about how how this guy's skin hangs off of him because he's lost so much weight because of starving and and he was like I don't remember the exact context, but he was talking about the guy and how the, the, his skin kind of like resembled a bag, a bag that just kind of like hung from his waist and he said something like um, like uh, rucksack, nutsack, gutsack. That's rough, which is kind of funny, but also it's kind of like god, I have one of those.
Speaker 2:Fuck you, lee harden all I gotta say about it is like, hey, that person survived the apocalypse because they had a cash of fat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not a bad survival strategy so I do think that that he does. He has some like fat phobia, for sure, um, but also I you know, whatever, whatever is written in like 2014. So I give some pass because, like I don't think people are really thinking about being inclusive back then.
Speaker 2:It's hard to give a pass when it still sucks, but I, I don't know like what your take, all is it on it. But I will say, like in 2014,. Was I fat phobic? Probably probably.
Speaker 1:I probably was too, even though I was fat? Probably Probably.
Speaker 3:I probably was too even though I was fat. I can definitely say I was, but reasons why for that would be an entirely whole other episode.
Speaker 2:We're actually going to have an episode on being fat in the apocalypse and the benefits, so let us know if you have any things you want to add. Let us know if you have any things you want to add. I think we should segue to Sam and some what would you do scenarios, because I really like how you featured the tag along children in your zombie Ollie, because they really do play a very major role in this book, even though they don't have a lot of substance in terms of their backstory. But the thing about the bunker burning down is it Sam's fault? And how old is Sam? Does anyone remember?
Speaker 1:He's 12. Right, yeah, either 12 or 13.
Speaker 2:But Lee pretends he's 16 to try and make him feel more brave. There's some weird toxic masculinity there too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that goes along with the fat phobias, that there is toxic masculinity, and I think that that's probably on brand for who Lee Harden is, as a, as somebody who went through special forces training, so that that's absolutely there. But yeah, there was a point where he says he tells Sam that he's like oh you're, you're only 12 or 13. He easily passed for 16.
Speaker 2:You're a man now, yeah.
Speaker 1:To just kind of like pump him up a little bit and be like, oh yeah, I thought you were more mature because you're so cool and stuff. But yeah, there is a little bit of that because I don't know. I think it's just the nature of the character.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is the part of the podcast I wanted to talk about all night Because, yes, folks, dan and I are up past 9 pm right now it's past our bedtime.
Speaker 1:Zero is letting us know.
Speaker 2:That's how excited we are to talk about the remaining Macaulay, but I've been wanting to talk about Sam burning down the fucking bonkers, the bonkers, the bunker. And I know that Sam, the kid himself did not burn down the bunker, but I feel like he's responsible and, honestly, reading the moment where Lee finds Sam and Tango outside of the bunker and the bunker is destroyed, I was reminded why I don't have children, because I don't think I would have been very nice at all.
Speaker 3:That's why they're listed in in my zombie as one of their, one of his issues he has to deal with most definitely like what?
Speaker 2:what? Okay, first of all, would you have left sam alone in the bunker, a kid you don't know? Would you have left them?
Speaker 3:that that's a difficult situation because on one hand it it's a kid in a bunker. He's going to be safe there from the outside world, but you can't really trust him with everything that's inside. He did bring up the fact that he told him about the guns and gave him some training about the gun, so his childhood curiosity wouldn't just have him digging around playing with guns. But on the other hand, you're about to go into an unknown situation and go and rescue other people and the know it really slow you down in the process. You also have to worry about trying to rescue him and save him from other things and it's just an additional unknown in that situation as well. So it's it's like a double-edged sword there, like no answer is properly correct. But um, I think at the very least he, if he left him at the bunker, he should have told him the dog pees over there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yes, gun safety is good, but there were some important details. Also, don't tell them you're going to be back in a couple of hours. Just say, if I don't come back for any reason, you stay here as long as you can, because that's your safest bet. The fact that that was not a discussion point before he left feels like a really giant oversight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I also would have left him in the bunker because of all everything that Ali states is absolutely true. You know, like the last thing that you need when you're going out on a you know, an operation is somebody dragging along. That's like my feet hurt. I don't. I can't run as fast as you. I'm hungry and I need food. It's like we're trying to save people. Kid, you need to toughen up and be a special ops soldier, so I don't think that works.
Speaker 3:That's exactly what winds up happening also later in the book when he gets Sam back with the rest of the group. But he just became that inconvenience that we were just discussing about having the, the extra one uh just sitting in the back kind of annoying you as you're trying to like survive and rescue people. Because, yeah, as soon as he rejoins the group, when he's, he, uh lee gives the two extra bottles of water that he has to the two girls with them. And sam's immediate reaction was I'm thirsty too, why can't I have water?
Speaker 1:meanwhile, the, the, um, I forget their names the angel and abby angel and abby mom they've been on a roof for like a week and have had no water, and they're severely dehydrated and about to die and need an ivy um, and he's like here's the last two bottles of water, and Sam's like I'm thirsty too. That's such a kid thing to do, though, yeah.
Speaker 2:How come they get water?
Speaker 3:Sam was just in a bunker taking showers. I mean, he was the last person to fill air conditioning.
Speaker 1:The last person in the world to have air conditioning was Sam.
Speaker 2:In video games and he ruins it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to have air conditioning with sam and video games and he ruins it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I'm not as harsh about about sam and his decision to leave the bunker. Um, I, I think that house was burning down no matter what and something that I I think that isn't described too well unless you, unless you catch it. It's like it's one of those details that if you don't catch it, you don't know why. But the reason that the bad guys find lee's house is because he left his truck behind in a previous firefight with them. His truck had a registration and the registration had his address and they used the address on his registration to find his house. And I think that you know they're gonna go through and try to find his house and I think that you know they're going to go through and try to find every little thing that he has. Sam said that they were like throwing stuff out onto the lawn. Um, you know, and then they burned it down. They absolutely found the hatch that leads to the bunker and, sure, if sam was in there, the bunker door would be closed, but that's just a barrier of entry.
Speaker 1:Eventually, they would have gotten through if they had a plasma torch or a magnesium grenade, which they could possibly find in this environment. You know they could. They could find a, a cutting torch somewhere, an oxyacetylene torch even and bring it back A harvester.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and get in there.
Speaker 1:They could get in there if they wanted to, and it was just a matter of time before they got to Sam, or they would have just burned down the house and all of that rubble would be on top of Sam and possibly Lee and everybody else might have been killed in the firefight later on and Sam would just be trapped underground and we'd be reading a completely different book dan, do you have um hard feelings when we criticize this book?
Speaker 1:no, no, darn it I think I think they're good criticisms. I just don't think that anything would have changed for lee's house and bunker situation had sam either stayed inside or left, because sam was able to escape with tango, which means that they had no idea that he was even outside. They didn't see him that's a stroke of luck but they found the house and they found the bunker, so what happened to the house would have happened anyway but yeah, either would have escaped or he'd have been buried alive yeah, but in like the world's best position to be buried alive, like.
Speaker 2:Please. If that's gonna happen to me, please let me be in mtv crib's bunker. The other thing that really troubled me was asking sam to choose whether he wanted to kill his father's killer, because that's where lee comes upon. Sam is. Uh, he sees his dad get shot back in the back of the head, I think. I mean I don't remember what direction the man was facing. Whatever he gets shot and then he has to like figure out how to save sam and help him, and then later he gives him the option to have revenge. How did you all feel about that?
Speaker 3:personally, I wasn't fond of that choice. That's, that was in my spoiler free version area of him. Uh well, actually I don't know if I mentioned it in there, but when I was talking earlier about how he does make mistakes, I felt like that was one of his mistakes. Yeah, just trying to ask a 12 year old to kill somebody is is inappropriate well, I think he was 13. He was almost 13. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know, and I think it would be something that we wouldn't know unless we were in that situation. If you were 12 years old and somebody just murdered your parents in a post-apocalyptic environment, and now you are in the environment and you have to survive, from a psychological standpoint, is it better for you to have the choice of retribution against your loved one's killer and be able to make a choice about it? Because what he was allowed to do was choose either to do it or not to do it, and whether or not it was done was actually not up to him, because lee killed him anyway, but he had the choice, to say, to decide whether or not he wanted it to happen, and I think, from a psychological standpoint, that makes a big difference if, if you make a choice for yourself in that moment, because that's something that you can second guess for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3:if you don't have the choice, so I don't know that's I think that's something that would be interesting to discuss with somebody who has credentials in psychology I am married to someone who is just one class away from being a psychologist, uh, so that's something I could probably bring up with them and see how they feel about that it's definitely a very difficult thing to consider um, whether or not, whether or not that's a good thing to give a child, but it's also a different environment and I think that lee felt like there was there was an important lesson in that that uh would be very beneficial to uh to him and maybe it was the wrong decision and I think, I think he he thinks about that, whether or not it was the right or wrong decision yeah, he did go back on that later and decide that he had made a a poor choice and given him that decision at that age like, I think, for anybody else at an older age, like maybe 18 and over, that would be a perfectly fine choice to give them the option.
Speaker 3:But for someone at 12 who's still so like I understand, like Sam, has been there for a month he's been in that for the last month I'm sure he knows exactly what's going on and everything that's going on around him, how the world has changed and the chaos that it's fallen into, that it's fallen into. But it sounds like up to that point he's managed to somehow maintain his innocence in that factor and having to think about those aspects and relying on others. So in one way, it's an interesting thought to think that you could maintain his innocence, especially since you're trying to rebuild society and give children a chance to just continue to be children but also also to survive in this new world. You have to. You have to kind of put people in situations where they're. They have to understand that the world has changed. You're not going to have the same easy choices of life anymore and some things are just unavoidable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that something that we learn later in the series is that, um, it's possible that that coming to terms with this uh control over an adult's mortality for a child in this world, um, is something that was important for him to think about because of something that happens later and it does, it does ensure his survival for for sam or for lee for sam? Yeah, for sam yeah, and I won't spoil that because it's much, much later in the series. I appreciate.
Speaker 1:I do intend to continue picking this up so I have one more last what would you do? That's not in our notes. Oh, and that is when it comes to tango and what lee has to do with tango, because tango becomes infected. I am not totally convinced by how it was described that tango was actually infected. He got he he consumed infected blood by attacking a naked zombie with a shovel. He started acting weird around jack who was bitten. It's possible that, um, that tango attacked jack just because he knew that jack was was turning? Would you have done the same thing that lee did with the information that you had, or would you wait and see?
Speaker 2:I would have had a personally go ahead that's okay. Um, I'm me and I love dogs and have dogs. So I'd have a muzzle on hand and I would just muzzle them to like, because all of the signs showed that he was experiencing severe dehydration and hunger, like everybody else. So it's hard to tell.
Speaker 1:His muzzle was in the bunker.
Speaker 2:All right, Ollie, you take it from there.
Speaker 3:You did mention that he was experiencing dehydration, just like everybody else, and Lee also mentioned that he had neglected to take care of his dog for quite a while because he was giving all the water and everything to the people. So the dog could have been just dehydrated and really struggling, because when you do get dehydrated you have mental issues. Yeah, and the only thing that the dog that tango did attack was the infected individual. He didn't attack anybody else. He wasn't attacking the girls, he wasn't attacking the boy, he wasn't attacking lee, he only attacked the infected one that he could have perceived as a threat. Yeah, I mean, he's been out there that entire time getting the scent of what infection people smell like, and now he's got somebody right next to him turning into an infected. So I think, well, first off, when you said you had something that wasn't on the list, I thought you were going to bring up Jack, actually not.
Speaker 1:Tango. Oh well, maybe we need to talk about that.
Speaker 3:So yeah, I don't think I would have done that with Tango at that point. I may have just secured him so he couldn't reach Jack at that time, so they could be on separate parts of the truck and then seeing how things went a little further down the line. But I I feel like he kind of jumped a gun when I was reading that. I was really feeling like they were leading up to make us believe he was infected and then find out he wasn't yeah, and it might have just been that he had to be overly cautious in that situation, and you know I understand that question why do you bring jack?
Speaker 2:thank you, yeah, would you bring jack?
Speaker 3:I would not agree. I mean, from the time that jack got bit I don't think he did anything useful for the rest of his existence there except for the cute uh lotto ticket moment. That's it yeah, they had.
Speaker 1:They had a cute little moment, but that didn't he take out a few drivers in a later ambush situation? I'm pretty sure he died immediately yeah, could be, I don't remember it well enough um.
Speaker 3:So, from from my perspective of how the things went down with jack he, he basically just drug jack along, so the rest of his life was just complete misery, until he got hit by a truck I think lee believed that he could be useful up until the point that he lost control of his functions.
Speaker 3:Yep, a hundred percent. I understand that and when he started, you know, losing his ability to really like talk at that point where they were with Tango, I think that would have been the point where I said I think it's time, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like. Sorry, tango.
Speaker 2:I have to do this bang. All right, jack, you're next. I mean jack, I think that's true.
Speaker 1:Jack did want him to to plug him you go.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, jack, I got to do this bang and then it's tango get back in the truck.
Speaker 1:We're gonna see how you go, yeah we're gonna close that window in the back seat so that you can't get through, and we'll just we're going to close that window in the back seat so that you can't get through and we'll just feel this out.
Speaker 3:You know I agree with that.
Speaker 1:That's. I think that's how it should have went. They should have been like sorry, Jack, you're a known quantity here and Tango is an unknown quantity. We're going to, we're going to feel this out with Tango. Sorry, this has to end for you.
Speaker 3:Exactly Because, up to that point, he didn't even know if animals could be infected. He had not encountered any animals up to that point and he didn't have any information on that.
Speaker 1:And on, I mean spoiler.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen any evidence of other animals being infected later in the series, then what makes it worth killing Tango, other than to just upset your reader and make them have an emotional response? What's the point?
Speaker 1:I mean, I think the abundance of caution is the reason that he did it, but I do think that there was another way to exercise that caution and be more informed.
Speaker 3:I will give DJ Mole this. It was a very well-written piece piece and it definitely brought out the emotions of the situation yeah, that's, that's true yeah, I felt a lot of feeling throughout the entire book.
Speaker 2:I actually commented on dj mole's um, I forget what it was about, but it's about the reigning remaining in general instagram and I said, like when what happened with sam? I felt all of the five stages of grief. Same with tango I no, I'm in denial. And then I got angry about it and then I was sad.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's a dream.
Speaker 2:There's two more aren't there.
Speaker 1:Is this a dream DJ? Are we going to find out later that this is a dream sequence and Tango's fine?
Speaker 3:He woke up and realized he's still driving the truck.
Speaker 1:Tango was driving the truck.
Speaker 2:It was all a dream. Let's talk about survival tips. Yeah, I only have one, which is just don't leave your I don't leave your bunker and bring porn dvds with you, if that's something you need yeah, um other dvds too.
Speaker 1:You know, you could get like, uh, the dvd box set of fraser. You know what seinfeld? Go with seinfeld um there's a lot there, oh never, no, not scrubs you don't like scrubs, scrubs.
Speaker 1:Okay, scrubs on comedy central would just have like um, non-stop marathons that seem to last for like 10 years, where it's just the only thing that's playing on comedy central and it just seemed to always be playing whenever I'd go to somebody's house who had cable and uh, and I just can't watch scrubs ever again because I've just I've I've binged too much scrubs I've never on purpose watched scrubs, but I've seen every episode at least five times I am the exact same way with um, that movie, the one with the dude oh, that I know it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that one got it I.
Speaker 3:I have never sat down to actually watch that movie. I only turned on big lebowski. I have only ever turned the tv on and caught that movie in bits and pieces, but through those bits and pieces I think I've seen the entire film.
Speaker 2:Wait, was it really the big Lebowski?
Speaker 3:It was a big Lebowski yeah.
Speaker 2:Wow, dan, that was an impressive guess, are you psychic?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just, I just know, I just know, I've got if you've seen the movie the dude willides, the dude abides.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I think there's a lot of survival tips from uh, from all of these books, but this one specifically, I mean. I I think that if it's the zombie apocalypse and you're driving around your personally owned vehicle that you own, take your registration, take your insurance card, take everything that can take your fucking license plates off, burn it in a pit. Do not leave that stuff in your truck because people will come up and they will sift through your things and that that will. That's, that's as good as having your information on uh on the dark Also.
Speaker 3:maybe hide your vehicle, yeah. Don't just park in the middle of the road.
Speaker 1:That's yeah, again not a good parking spot.
Speaker 3:I know he said there was a ditch and all, but what about the other side of the road? Could he have pulled off over there and just parked behind a tree somewhere?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know. Go up the driveway Park in the backyard, right near your escape to the house just pull right out.
Speaker 3:They could have jumped off into the back of the truck and you could have pulled off with no issue that would have been an actually really awesome alternative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would have loved to have seen. That's the kind of like visual that I'd like to see in like a movie, though yeah, like, uh, like, like the, the cowboy jumping out of the window onto their horse.
Speaker 1:I'd be the same thing, except it's a pickup truck and zombies are involved.
Speaker 2:And two very dehydrated people. They're just going to roll off the roof.
Speaker 1:Is this a?
Speaker 2:two-story house or a one-story house? This is a two-story house.
Speaker 3:Oh no, okay, I take it back, drop off and fracture their ankles.
Speaker 2:That's great for the apocalypse. Yeah, that's my tip Don't break your ankle.
Speaker 3:But if tip don't break your ankle. But if he'd done that he would have got kept his truck gone back to his house.
Speaker 1:In time they never would have found the house and he had the bunker yeah, the only way they could have ever found his house is if they found his registration for his pickup truck would you read a book where everything goes right? No, no. And that's a good point. Everything it's interesting because so much goes wrong. Um, another survival tip be the most highly trained special operations soldier in the united states and be entrusted with a bunker, even if that comes at the cost of being responsible for rebuilding civilization how does I?
Speaker 3:I that sounds like a really hard tip to make actionable for your average person well, get to work okay well, yeah, I think the real issue with that is the fact that if red tube is down, then youtube is probably also down, so you can't really go through all the videos on how to be a well-trained military personnel yeah, you got to download the internet first.
Speaker 1:Are those on youtube?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, of course everything's on youtube, yeah, um, or you can have a copy of the sas survival handbook, like we do on our in our uh library yeah, I've got old-fashioned survival books, not the internet I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Survival handbook yeah, that's a classic yeah, uh.
Speaker 1:What I love about the zombie survival guide is that it's actually a legitimately good survival book. It just happens to have zombies in it.
Speaker 3:Thanks, max but I what I love most about that book is the fact that it's written by um mel brooks's son yeah, I didn't know that I'm learning some fun facts today, max brooks.
Speaker 1:He wrote makes sense world war z yeah, I didn't know he was.
Speaker 2:I like I know who he is. I just had no idea he was related to mel brooks and honestly I don't really love mel brooks um but so I don't know if I wanted to know that, but now I do well, I'm sorry, it's okay, I forgive you ollie.
Speaker 1:But yeah, there are survival tips abound, um. So you know, we could go. We could go on for days. Bring water. You know, if you got a, if you got a bunker, a lot of water in it. Bring water. You know, if you got a. If you got a bunker, a lot of water in it. Bring more water, especially if you're trying to pack water on the back of your truck how about?
Speaker 2:no, none of those. Just have a water vessel and have a fucking pump filter. You can get them at any camping store. Just have a pump filter with you and you'll be able to have water wherever there is water, don't? You don't need to pack it. Yep, this is something that really bothers me. I feel like this should this should be like high on the list of survival tools as a water filter yeah, but also carry water.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because life strong.
Speaker 2:Yes, you're not always going to be able to find a creek I'll notice the apocalypse when I'm pulling up my life straw and, like sipping out of a puddle, that That'll be the moment Drinking the water out of the bottom of a trash can, yeah, the dogs love it. Maybe there's something to this.
Speaker 3:Does the life straw filter out the zombie bacteria?
Speaker 2:We'll have to test it.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. The straw filters out all kinds of bacteria because it filters out giardia and things like that. It filters out a kinds of bacteria, um, because it filters out giardia and things like that. It filters out a lot of viruses um and in this case uh, which is a bacteria in this case, I think it would probably filter it out yeah, I think in this specific situation lifestraw would work bacteria are much larger than viruses, um, which is which is why a lot of times they can't be aerosolized, because they're larger than viruses, so they don't stay in the air as long.
Speaker 1:You usually have to pick them up off of surfaces. Fun yeah.
Speaker 3:So don't share your life straw.
Speaker 1:Don't share your life straw with a zombie.
Speaker 2:That's a good survival tip yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, put that one in the survival book. Don't share your life straw with a zombie. Um. Let's move on to the racist, sexist, capitalist, colonial, ableist misogyny of the living dead you said that so briefly thank you I don't think I've ever heard you say that yeah, usually it's leah's thing. Yeah, she loves it. She loves misogyny.
Speaker 3:I'm here for a big moment.
Speaker 2:I was actually going to get you to read it, Ollie, but you stole the show, Dan.
Speaker 1:Leah, I'm going to ask you because this podcast currently does not pass this test Does this book pass the Bechdel test?
Speaker 2:You joke, that is so true. Um well, I don't know. There's gender diversity on this podcast actually, but it's not to women.
Speaker 3:But I mean that also, like yeah, I was gonna say does non-binary count?
Speaker 2:um in a different test it does yeah, I guess that would be the vito russo test but that is a good point to bring up in our in the bechdel test.
Speaker 1:Um, you know what? What along the the spectrum of gender helps us pass this test hmm, that's a.
Speaker 2:That's a big question that deserves a lot.
Speaker 1:Luckily, this book has a simpler answer, which is no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because not a spoiler. There are no clearly LGBTQ plus characters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's barely women. There's two females. Yeah females, but one of them is a child, which I guess doesn't count in the Bechdel test.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it counts or not.
Speaker 3:I remember Also, I don't think at any point those two actually talk to each other. It's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's kind of weird.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they don't have speaking roles.
Speaker 2:Well, they speak to Lee, but I don't know that they speak to each other. Yeah, I don't think it passes.
Speaker 1:The only time they do speak to each other is to speak about lee?
Speaker 1:yeah, or maybe the about their desire for water. I don't have a specific example. It's a man's world. Yeah, it's true, um, you know, but also a lot like this, this podcast. The number of characters in the book is very small. Uh, four people for most of most of the book. Um, so I mean, I guess that there's at least one quarter is, uh, is is female representation as something I don't know there could have been women villains, like it's not that hard to have like a couple of women.
Speaker 2:They're not that they would have talked, because they also have no personalities they definitely would have, wouldn't have talked about anything other than lee harden well, all we really know about the villains is like one's a pedophile and one's fat or wait, is that the same one?
Speaker 1:I think they're all pedophiles. It was a gang of pedophiles they were. They were chasing down sam because you know. You know how pedophiles do in the apocalypse uh no more law.
Speaker 2:What about the race test? So the race test is when you have a representation and depth of characters of color that have their own narrative arc. That is not solely pushing a white character story forward, does, uh ollie? What do you think of this one?
Speaker 3:um well, they did have two characters of race, one of which died immediately, and then the other, one of which was forgotten.
Speaker 2:Who was the other one, because I also forgot.
Speaker 3:Sam.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I didn't know what race Sam was. It was sort of.
Speaker 3:I'm just assuming because of his father.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, so Sam, I mean, does he? Does he have his own arc? Not necessarily, but he did burn down a house and play video games, so there's something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he moves the plot forward though.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, he had his own arc off-screen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:So I think that's technically a pass.
Speaker 2:I guess it is technically a pass. Yes, but there's a lot of default whiteness and I just did it myself where I was like, oh Sam, sam sounds like a white guy, so must be a white kid, even though his father was short for Samir. Oh, really, yeah, oh, I didn't know that, but still like, even I made that assumption just because that my brain is, like, unfortunately, default white if it's not explicit I have this thing when I read books, where literally every single character in that book is just me I love that.
Speaker 3:It's like lee harden is me, but his name is lee harden. And then I later find out sam is me, but he's a 12 year old uh, middle eastern boy. And they're me until proven otherwise that sounds very fun.
Speaker 1:You get to live uh life vicariously through characters and books. It's like.
Speaker 2:What would it be like?
Speaker 1:if I were a dog that uh gets shot before anybody realizes that dogs can't actually contract the virus so, uh, a tangent moment.
Speaker 3:Uh, there is a book called, uh, the iron druid chronicles by kevin hearn, and, uh, he has a couple side stories that are from the perspective of the main character's dog oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Yes, so I must read.
Speaker 3:Yeah, unfortunately probably no zombies um, to the best of my recollection. I do not remember zombies, but it is 12 books long and it does focus a lot on um, uh, um, irish folklore oh they must have a zombie in their folklore at some point it's basically about the last druid on earth
Speaker 2:oh, that sounds amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah all right, we're getting all that up or not I like.
Speaker 2:I mean, I want to read that book. Sometimes I'm like, wait, what did I sign up for? And I have not read anything else other than sylvester Barsey's Camp Lanier. I can't ever say it right Lanier, I always want to say Camp Lanier as a Canadian.
Speaker 1:That's my tangent Lanier.
Speaker 2:yeah.
Speaker 3:I will say that, despite the fact that it has no zombies, to my recollection, it is one of my absolute favorite books.
Speaker 2:It sounds epic. I'm very interested in druids in general, so sidebar will want to read that if I ever get a chance to not read zombies. We already talked about the Vito Russo test, did we? I thought we Well, I kind of mentioned it in the beginning.
Speaker 1:All right, how did it do?
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't think there's any clear queer trans non-binary characters at all that I know of I don't think so either.
Speaker 1:I don't think there are any in the rest of the series. That's a lot of time to not have any um, not off the top of my head anyways, but uh, I mean I'm, I'm willing to be surprised. How about the fries test, the um?
Speaker 2:representation of people with disabilities I think jack counts yeah, I mean he's infected, so he's uh not doing so hot and I know that earlier I was like totally on board with just killing jack right away, but when I think it from the point of view of like ableism, it's kind of nice they kept him around yeah, he was still useful he could still pull the trigger. Do you have to be useful to be worth keeping around?
Speaker 1:well, to the plot for their own survival.
Speaker 3:It was important well, thank you very much. Now I look terrible um I I still agree that jack should have went before the dog definitely um, do you, do you feel like, uh, a severe dehydration would be a disability, even if temporary?
Speaker 2:I always go by the american disability act, so I don't know severe dehydration counts. I do know that we learned, uh, because we were talking about blood quantum more that substance use disorder counts, which I didn't know that when we recorded that one. Um, so possibly, yeah, I mean it's certainly a temporary. I mean they're not physically well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think that technically counts. Jack definitely counts, because he's infected with a virus.
Speaker 1:That's destroying his brain and also Tango's not doing that hot either. It's got to help him down out of the back of the truck and he's just not doing so good. So yeah, out of the back of the truck and he's just not doing so good. So yeah, I think also later in the series, um lee himself qualifies for the this, uh, for a disability portrayal. Um, there is even a time in later books where he I don't want to say how badly he gets injured, but he has a life-threatening injury that he deals with for the duration of the entire book. That's like you should be dead. You should be dead and you're not, and I wish you were because, damn, what you're going through sounds awful and it's giving me a headache. Ollie, how many, how many zeds? I know you gave it four brains, but how many zeds do you give this?
Speaker 3:so I, when I listen to other podcasts, I go out of like uh, numbers out of 10. I generally just do double what I put in. So if I were going with zeds I would say it's eight out of ten I think that's fair.
Speaker 1:yeah, um, this book, specifically the the remaining in the first book, I would would give it, I'm going to say seven and a half, but if I was grading the entirety of the series, I'd give it eight and a half, maybe nine.
Speaker 2:Wow, so it gets better.
Speaker 1:It gets a lot better.
Speaker 2:I think I would give it an eight, and the reason why I would also give it an eight is because reading this book was like a diversity read for me, in the sense that, like I would not normally pick up a book about a soldier in an apocalypse, like that's just not a thing I would choose to read, and I really was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, even though I don't really agree with Lee's worldview. I think it was. He was interesting as a character and the plot was pretty compelling and all the reasons we said we loved it. Like I think it's it's worth a read. And, yeah, for me it was like, oh, this is like a different perspective. I'm learning something about a army man is he in the army?
Speaker 3:I don't even know, he's an army man, army guy yeah he's a fancy army guy, yeah um, yeah, I can agree. This is definitely something I don't think I would have picked up. It looked like just by the description and the cover and everything. It looks too cliche to stand out, but it definitely does stand out, yeah.
Speaker 1:As a veteran, I think I gravitate towards these things, not because I want to, but because, you know, I see myself in characters like this, and it is a cliche and that's kind of unfortunate, because it is the story that I want to tell and it's the story that I want to read. But also, so many people have their own versions and opinions about what that looks like, and I've read a lot of things that really miss the mark when it comes to the experience of what a trained soldier might seem like in a situation like this, and what I enjoyed about about DJ Molle's version of this is that it seemed very real.
Speaker 1:The realism is, is what got me Cause I'm like I. I feel I can feel this, I feel what is going on, I can feel how drained he is, how hurt he is, and I can, I can identify with this person even if, again, I don't share his worldviews. But I can see myself in Lee Harden.
Speaker 2:That sort of breaks my heart a little bit.
Speaker 3:But I get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a reminder that you've been through some things you know, yeah, but I get it, yeah, don't.
Speaker 1:just, it's a reminder that you've been through some things, you know. Yeah, I mean, especially as the story goes on and he just like, accrues more and more damage, um, and not just the physical damage, but the psychological damage of what he is, what of the responsibility that he holds, like I. I totally identify with those things and and I mean I didn't, I didn't get to bring this up during the things that I like but one of the things that I absolutely love about this series is like how real each um, each encounter, like each firefight, each battle feels like when, when he, when he shoots an enemy, like it's not just an on-off switch for a human being. They groan, they struggle, they bleed out, they plead for their lives. They have those moments where it's just like they're actually dying.
Speaker 1:And Lee has to watch this happen, he has to hear it happen, he has to come to his own realization about how he feels about that happening. There's a point in a later book where he's in a firefight with two other guys and he shoots one and the guy stumbles behind a mailbox and after he's taken out the other guy, he goes down the street and he's dealing with his own injuries at the time. But he walks up to the guy and the guy's bleeding out and he's just wheezing and coughing and like coming to terms with his own mortality. And Lee just looks at him and he's like what does it feel like? Oh, and the guy is just like he tells him honestly what dying feels like. And Lee is just like I'm sorry I had to do this to you.
Speaker 2:This was not a zombie. This was a person. Okay, I was a little confused by that.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, there's a lot of conflict that happens between people in these books. Realism, like really really spoke to me because that's that is. That is what it's like when you're in combat, when you're fighting other people, is that, like you pull the trigger, it doesn't just turn off a person, you don't. They just they don't. You don't see the hit marker pop up like it's call of duty, and they fall down and disappear after you've walked far enough away from from the the map to save resources on your, on your console, like they, they stay there and they're not 100% dead for sometimes quite a long time until, like, their body gives up. And he describes in great detail like how, how long somebody can hold onto to life, even after they've been mortally wounded I don't know how to respond to that.
Speaker 1:That's deep, yeah yeah, but you know, that's that's why I like this series. I I like it because it has all of the moral implications of what it means to actually do these things. It's not just like let's go fight the bad guys, we'll shoot a thousand rounds, uh, without you know having to reload, um and uh, we're just in there you'll always engage the enemy.
Speaker 2:You'll always win every combat yeah, you have no feelings about it.
Speaker 1:No injuries, yeah it's like we won, guys. Yay, um, this. This seems to have much, a much larger toll than just the fight in the moment, just the the on the paper numbers of what everything looks like, it just all, it all adds up in a very real way thank you for sharing that, dan.
Speaker 2:As somebody who's not been in those places, I do think it feels very real and, like I said in the beginning, lee feels very human, but it's um, it's not something that I've experienced, so it's hard to to like know the difference between, like the hollywood glamour version and the realness of it, at least for me. Um, on that note, would you vote for lee harden to be president?
Speaker 1:who's he running against?
Speaker 2:uh, the naked zombie with the shovel yes, I'm sorry, naked zombies got my vote I'm gonna vote for naked zombie with a shovel uh, shovel guy for president, we all agree and the shovel is his running mate oh, what's the shovel's name shovel shove shovel, shovelton, shuffle, shuffleton. Cheryl in the Shovel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, diggy, diggy Hole Shuffleton son.
Speaker 2:It's late over here. I'm starting to lose words.
Speaker 3:He's going to dig up the bad seeds, you know.
Speaker 2:He is and you know what I kind of relate to the Horde in many ways trying to change the world for the better or the worse, I don't know, but it's been really a pleasure to have you, ollie, on here. It's been really fun.
Speaker 1:It's been a pleasure. Your insights have been incredibly valuable in talking about this. I love that we're doing this, because I'd like to do more stuff like this. When we're actually doing like a book club episode, I'd like to hear what other people have to say, and I think that you did an incredible job of providing your insights, things that we probably wouldn't have thought of on our own.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you. It was a real pleasure to be here. I was honestly super nervous in the beginning, but you guys made it very comfortable.
Speaker 2:Did the nerves end by the time? The dog?
Speaker 3:started annoying us. Honestly, it was so much earlier than that, like almost immediately as soon as I got in here and you guys were just like so personable and just easy to talk to, and it just went away instantly and I felt like I could talk to you guys just all night and basically did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for staying with us. Just so everybody knows because I'm imagining Dan will truncate this a bit but Ollie stayed with us almost an hour over our original recording time, so just want to say thank you for that and really hope to have you back for more discussions. Definitely need to have a casual dead together, because that would be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah we'll go on all the tangents all the tangents that I edited out.
Speaker 2:We can address all of them in another episode ollie, is there anything else you want to share or promote before we finish up for the day?
Speaker 3:um, I will say I did have one question for you guys. Oh um, do you know why zombie chickens are so terrifying?
Speaker 1:oh no, because I knew it was coming. That's awful, it's awful, and I love it.
Speaker 3:I was practicing that earlier and I was afraid you guys would hear me in the mic.
Speaker 1:Well, we're at the end here, but you know what? We have new homework for you, ollie and everybody else who's listening. Um, and that's for episode 65. We're reading a different book now. Um, no way, it's called the z word by lindsey king miller ollie, do you want to read the byline?
Speaker 3:do you know where we are absolutely packed with action, humor, sex and big gay feelings?
Speaker 2:the z word is the queer zombie land you didn't know you needed one of the things that got me hooked, even before I read the z word, which is exceptional, it's why we're featuring it is that lindsey describes themselves as a disaster bisexual horror writer, and I relate to that in many ways. You write no, but I am a disaster bisexual, for sure.
Speaker 1:And I'm the writer. So yeah, you're the horror writer. Perfect the Z-Word is available as an audio book or as a physical copy, which is great because it means that I will read it.
Speaker 2:You've already read it. I've already read it, Ollie have you read it?
Speaker 3:I know, but I am downloading it right now perfect.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be a good one. We'll get into more details because we've got 10 weeks folks. I think that's pretty generous to read a book and uh, I'll just say that it really warmed my queer little heart when I read it and I'm really excited to talk to lindsey about it, uh, and it's actually gonna come out in october, so it's kind of great timing because it's gonna come out the weekend of atlanta pride, yeah, and you know, zombie time yeah it's about pride.
Speaker 1:It's about pride yes, zombie outbreak at pride, which would have been great to read last month. But we're gonna get it for the atlanta pride.
Speaker 2:But I will say that I did know I needed this book and when I saw it on um, the wandering readers list for queer authors like queer horror authors I was so excited and then it actually like was also really really good, because you never know, um, but it's an incredible book, so highly recommend that you get it. It will take you on a journey it gets spicy, very spicy.
Speaker 1:There's some spice in it. Be warned people, if you don't want to read spice, then uh, I don't think there's a spice.
Speaker 1:Free version don't listen to the audiobook on your dog walk while you go by your neighbor, which is what I did and had to rapidly shut it off don't listen to it on a speaker at work, and also don't tell your parents that you're reading this book and then say you should read this book with me and we'll talk about it. Definitely not, and then forget that you told them that until they call you and ask you how far in the book you are because they have some questions. Slash concerns.
Speaker 2:My brain is stuttering okay, sorry, I'm too busy laughing, it's all good, you're definitely getting us extra loopy because it is late in our brains. Oh so late. Yeah, uh, if, if you want to potentially join a future book club, call us with a burning question about a book. Tell us a book you want us to read. Um, give us your elevator pitch about your book.
Speaker 1:We love to share those if you've read one, if you've written one and it's about zombies, you know what?
Speaker 2:tell me one you want to write.
Speaker 1:That could be fun too yeah, but we could probably do that yeah, you never know what'll happen.
Speaker 2:I really want to.
Speaker 1:That's really gonna open up the elevator pitch big time.
Speaker 2:I'm really hoping for some trolls. Yeah, ollie, would you want to listen to like troll elevator pitches.
Speaker 3:I would love nothing more.
Speaker 2:There we go.
Speaker 1:Anyways, you can leave us a three minute message with all of your troll pitches about the zombie book that you intend to write in the future 614-699-0006.
Speaker 2:You can also email us Terrible idea. Zombiebookclubpodcastgmailcom, and we actually put that email out on the internet for anybody to answer. So there you go, you know. Do the things, subscribe, come, hang out with us in the places.
Speaker 1:You know where they are Rate and review they're in the notes. You know where they are Rate and review.
Speaker 2:They're in the notes, all the stars yeah, we eat stars like zombie eats. A zombie eats brains. We eat stars like Ollie eats brains. Ollie, you want to close us out for the night?
Speaker 3:Oh, is there anything else left to be said? Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being our own bestie. Yeah, thanks, ollie. Follow us on.
Speaker 1:Instagram and threads bye, everybody link tree is in the description get bit bite somebody else bite someone's ear, lobes tasty. Okay, bye, bye, everybody oh oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh oh.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, oh.
Speaker 3:Oh, oh, oh I listened to a podcast a while ago. I don't remember what the name of the podcast was, but yeah, it was. Hey Riddle Riddle. They had a podcast and at the end of the episode they kept making a joke about pig squeals and such. And then at the end of the episode they just added like an extra hour and a half of just dead silence. And then somewhere in the middle of that they had a 30-second squeal from like a pig orgasm. And I was just sitting there listening to this dead silence on that podcast and I just remember thinking to myself what am I doing with my life? And yeah, so that's a fun story.
