Tag Archives: zombie
Zombie drug ban
People are inventing so many new, legal ways to get high that U.S. 
lawmakers can’t seem to keep up.
Over the past two years, the country has seen a surge in the use of synthetic drugs made of legal chemicals that mimic the dangerous effects of cocaine, amphetamines and other illegal stimulants. Some are imported cheaply from China or India.
The drug that causes Zombie like reactions is often sold at small, independent stores in misleading packaging that suggests common household items like bath salts, incense and plant food. But the substances inside are powerful, mind-altering drugs that have been linked to bizarre and violent behaviour across the country. Law enforcement officials refer to the drugs collectively as “bath salts,” though they have nothing in common with the fragrant toiletries used to moisturize skin.
President Barack Obama signed a bill into law earlier this month that bans the sale, production and possession of more than two dozen of the most common bath salt drugs. But health professionals say that there are so many different varieties of the drugs that U.S. lawmakers are merely playing catch up.
“The moment you start to regulate one of them, they’ll come out with a variant that sometimes is even more potent,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
There are no back alleys or crack houses in America’s latest drug epidemic. The problem involves potent substances that amateur chemists make, package and sell in stores under brands like “Ivory Wave,” ”Vanilla Sky” and “Bliss” for as little as $15.
Emergencies related to the drugs have surged. The American Association of Poison Control Centers received more than 6,100 calls about bath salt drugs in 2011, up from just 304 the year before, and more than 1,700 calls in the first half of 2012.
The problem for lawmakers is that it’s difficult to crack down on the drugs. U.S. laws prohibit the sale or possession of all substances that mimic illegal drugs, but only if federal prosecutors can show that they are intended for human use. People who make bath salts and similar drugs work around this by printing “not for human consumption” on virtually every packet.
Barbara Carreno, a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Agency, said the intended use for bath salts is clear.
“Everyone knows these are drugs to get high, including the sellers,” she said.
Mark Ryan, director of the Louisiana Poison Center, says there are so many different drugs out there that it’s almost impossible to know what people have ingested, or how long the effects will last.
“Cocaine is cocaine and meth is meth. We know what these things do,” he said. “But with these new drugs, every time the chemist alters the chemical structure, all bets are off.”
The most common bath salt drugs, like MDPV and mephedrone, were first developed in pharmaceutical research laboratories, though they were never approved for medical use. During the last decade they became popular as party drugs at European raves and dance clubs. As law enforcement began cracking down on the problem there, the drugs spread across the Atlantic.
Poison control centres in the U.S. began tracking use of the drugs in 2010. The majority of the early reports of drug use were clustered in southern states like Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky. But the problem soon spread across the country.
The most dangerous synthetic drugs are stimulants that affect levels of both dopamine and serotonin, brain chemicals that affect mood and perception. Users, who typically smoke or snort the powder-based drugs, may experience a surge in energy, fever and delusions of invincibility.
SURVIVAL TRAINING – PURIFY WATER
You have been fighting zombies all day, your dying of thirst. Water is dirty and you need it to survive..but how do you make water clean so you can live to fight another day….
- Clean the containers in which you’re going to hold or store the water. Use dish soap and water. Rinse thoroughly. After washing the containers, submerge them in a solution of 1 teaspoon of non-scented liquid household chlorine bleach to every quart (or liter) of water (making sure the entire surface of the bottle comes in contact with the solution for a minimum of 15 seconds), then rinse thoroughly with a weaker mixture of bleach and water.[1]
- Don’t use any container that has had milk or fruit juice in it. Milk protein and fruit sugars remain in the container and can fuel bacterial growth when water is stored. Plastic soda bottles are suitable.
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Filter water through a clean cloth.Filter water through a clean cloth. Then allow it to settle for at least 30 minutes and pour off the clear water for purifying. This process of filtering and settling is especially important if you’re going to be using chemical purification because disinfectants are less effective in cloudy, murky, or colored water.[2]
- It is possible to use cotton cloth, such as a clean handkerchief or clean white sock, or silk (water passes quickly through multiple layers).
- One way to set this up is to cut the bottom off of a water or coke bottle. Roll a clean sock up on itself and stuff it down to the neck of the bottle. Pour your water through the filter until it is clear to the eye.
- If you have a portable water filter, use it.
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Speed up the clearing of water.Speed up the clearing of water. One way to do this is to add a little aluminum sulfate. This causes impurities to coagulate, which are removed as the particulate settles to the bottom of the container.
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Purify the water using any of the following methods.Purify the water using any of the following methods. If you can, combine boiling with a chemical disinfection method; the boiling is more thorough, but the chemical method will continue to keep the water safe when it’s stored.[3]Select a method:
- Boiling: This kills most types of disease-causing organisms and is the most recommended purification technique. Boil the water for 1 full minute, then let it cool. Make sure it’s a full, rolling boil. If you are more than one mile above sea level, boil for 3 minutes longer.[1]
- Disinfecting: Disinfecting with household bleach kills some, but not all, types of disease-causing organisms. The bleach must contain chlorine in order to work. Don’t use scented bleaches, color-safe bleaches, or bleaches with added cleaners. Most household chlorine bleaches have 4-6 percent available chlorine, in which case add 1/8 teaspoon (8 drops) of regular, unscented, liquid household bleach for each gallon of water (2 drops per litre), stir it well and let it stand for 30 minutes before you use it. Check the label; if the percentage of available chlorine is around 1 percent, or you don’t know what the percentage is, use 40 drops per gallon/ 10 drops per litre; if the percentage is 7-10 percent, use 4 drops per gallon or 1 drop per litre. Double the amount of chlorine if the water is cloudy, murky, or colored, or if the water is extremely cold. If, after sitting covered for 30 minutes, the water doesn’t have a slight chlorine odor, repeat the dosage and let sit for another 15 minutes.[2]
- Granular calcium hypochlorite: This works in the same way as household bleach. You can dissolve one heaped teaspoon of high-test granular calcium hypochlorite (about 1/4 ounce) in two gallons of water (1 heaped tablespoon or 7g for every 7.5 litres or 1 gram for every litre of water) to make a disinfecting solution. Then add one part of the disinfecting solution to each 100 parts of water to purify.[2]
- Correction: replace the word tablespoon with teaspoon. As correctly stated above, one heaped teaspoon = 1/4 ounce = 7g. One ounce = 28.35g. One tablespoon = 3 teaspoons = 22g per 7.5 liters = 3g for every liter of water. The solution would be 3 times stronger than it was intended to be.*
- Potassium permanganate (KMnO4): This can be used to disinfect water. It can be purchased from camping supply stores and pool treatment stores. The water should be colored slightly pink, 3 or 4 crystals in a quart or litre of water. Let the solution stand for at least 30 minutes. This is definitely an emergency measure only, and should not be used for planned leisure activities, such as hiking or camping.
- Disinfecting with iodine: This is generally less effective than chlorine in controlling the parasite Giardia, but it’s better than no treatment at all. Add 5 drops of 2 percent iodine (from the medicine chest or first aid kit) to every quart or litre of clear water; add 10 drops if the water is cloudy. Let the solution stand for at least 30 minutes.[2]
- Commercial tablets: For commercially prepared chlorine or iodine tablets, follow the instructions that come with them. If you don’t have instructions, use one tablet for each quart or litre of water to be purified.[2]
- Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS) method: Pouring the water into clear plastic PET bottles, and exposing to direct sunlight for at least 6 hours has been shown to be an effective method of disinfecting.[4]
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Be careful with the cap or lid of the container.Be careful with the cap or lid of the container. If you’re chemically disinfecting water in a canteen or other portable container with a screw-on cap, wait about five minutes after adding the purifying chemical(s), then partially unscrew the cap and shake the container so that some of the water sloshes on the inside of the cap and the threads of the container, then re-tighten the cap and let it sit for the remainder of the time specified above or in the instructions. Otherwise, there may still be contaminated water in the cap, on the outside of the container’s neck, or on the threads.
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Improve the flavor of purified water, if needed.Improve the flavor of purified water, if needed. Boiled water can taste “flat”, and disinfected water can have a strong chlorine taste. Aerate it by pouring it from one clean container to another several times. Alternatively, add a pinch of salt to each quart or litre of water.[2] If the flavor is still unpleasant, use a powdered drink mix, if available.
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Take care when consuming.Take care when consuming. Once the water in a container has been purified, open and close the container carefully. Don’t touch the inside or the rim with your fingers, or else the water could become contaminated.
- If you’re going to drink some, but not all of the water, don’t drink directly from the container. Pour it into another container and drink from that. Contact with your lips and mouth can contaminate water that’s going to be stored.
- If you don’t drink the water immediately, write the date on the bottle. Store it in a cool, dark place for up to six months.
ZOMBIE OUTBREAK? – Are Zombie Bees Infiltrating Your Neighborhood?
Parasite zombie flies and a honeybee; courtesy of John Hafernik/SF State University
Zombie bees are not science fiction. They are real—and real threat to already-threatened U.S. honeybee populations.
Honeybees (Apis mellifera) in California and South Dakota have been observed acting zombielike, wandering away from their hives at night and crawling around blindly in circles.
These insects have been rendered insensate by a parasitizing fly that lays eggs in the bees’ bodies. After the bee dies a lonesome death, pupae crawl out and grow to adult flies that seek new bodies to infect.
Such a sight startled John Hafernik, a professor of biology at San Francisco State University, when he looked at dead honey bees he had collected on campus. He soon started noticing clumps of dead bees under light fixtures in the area. He and his colleagues found that this bizarre bee behavior was the result of the fly Apocephalus borealis (they described their findings in January in the journal PLoS ONE). After sampling hives around the Bay Area, they found that, disturbingly, more than three quarters were infected with this parasite.
Honeybee colonies have been collapsing at an alarming rate in the U.S. for the past several years. And without these important pollinators, many of our favorite foods, from almonds to zucchini would be difficult to produce. Scientists have implicated viruses, fungi, mites and other invaders in colony collapse disorder, but Hafernik suspects this parasite is a new villain on the scene. “Honeybees are among the best-studied insects,” he said in a prepared statement in January. “We would expect that if this has been a long-term parasite of honeybees, we would have noticed.”
How do you catch a zombie bee? A “ZomBee” trap; courtesy of John Hafernik/SF State University
Now, to see how far the zombified bee problem has spread, he and his colleagues are enlisting the help of the whole continent. They have launched ZomBeeWatch.org, a citizen science project that allows people to help them track suspicious bee behavior and collect specimens. Through the project, which launches in full today, they are hoping to find “if this parasitism is distributed widely across North America,” Hafernik said in a new statement.
To help out, you can sign up to collect sick-looking or dead bee specimens and observe them to see if parasite fly pupae emerge. Industrious citizen scientists can build light traps to attract any parasitized bees in their area (full instructions are on their site). And the researchers promise that even bees that do not turn out to be true “ZomBees” are important to report in an effort to better understand contributors to colony collapse.
“If we can enlist a dedicated group of citizen scientists to help us, together we can answer important questions and help honeybees at the same time,” Hafernik said.
Not sure what a zombie bee looks like? Here’s a video clip of a sick bee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs32DCaxU1U&feature=youtu.be (Read more about parasites that make their hosts act like zombies in the article “Zombie Creatures.”)
In case you’re wondering what we’ve been wondering—ahem, what else can these zombie flies infect?—ZomBee Watch has an answer: “The zombie fly only parasitizes insects and does not lay eggs on or in humans,” according to its website. “As far as we know, it does not transmit any diseases that are contractible by humans.” As far as we know…
The Walking Dead: Love Will Continue To Blossom For Maggie & Glenn
SAN DIEGO, CALIF. — “The Walking Dead” survivors may be gearing up for another battle with zombies in Season 3, but it looks like love will continue to blossom for Maggie and Glenn.
“I think where we are going to pick [back up] is two people, living with an entire group, where the key is survival and survival means needing the person next to you,” Steven Yeun, who plays Glenn told AccessHollywood.com at Hyundai Undead: “The Walking Dead” 100th issue release party at Petco Park at Comic-Con 2012. “And, if you have someone you love, needing them even more, and I think the bond only gets stronger.”
WATCH: Norman Reedus Interview — The Walking Dead Season 3 Is ‘Full Of Rage’
Lauren Cohan, who plays former farm resident Maggie, thinks her character has found “the one” in Glenn.
“I think Maggie and Glenn have definitely been looking for their kindred one and their kindred spirit and I think they both have this kind of pure, optimistic, hopeful thing,” she said of the characters’ love in the show’s crazy world. “And when you find that in someone else, you’re not going to let it go, especially when there’s nine of you and four of them are your relatives.”
But with the coming of one of new villain — The Governor (David Morrissey) – and the world filled with plenty of survivors hoping to do the gang harm, that love could be used as a tool to manipulate the other party.
“Absolutely. There is weakness in that as well, which is exactly — leverage,” Steven told Access. “I’m sure that’ll be tested, but I can’t say [any more].”
WATCH: David Morrissey Talks Joining The Walking Dead Season 3 As The Governor
Currently halfway through shooting Season 3, the cast are still amazed at how big their show has grown.
“It was crazy, it was craziness,” Steven said of their Season 2 ratings, which reached 8 million. “To think about what you do in an isolated area of Atlanta, and you just come together and put makeup on and pretend. And to have that many people watch it and enjoy it and continue to watch it and support you? That’s an overwhelming feeling. I can’t even qualify it really. It’s pretty great.”
“The Walking Dead” returns October 14 at 9/8c on AMC.
5 Things to Know About Zombies
The Bridgewater Township Library is holding its Zombie Party Thursday at 6 p.m. for grades six through 12, as everyone will be invited to see if they have what it takes to survive the Zombie Apocalypse. The party will include Zombie Trivia, Humans vs. Zombies tag and much more. So in honor of this exciting evening, we present five things to know about zombies.
Information from trivology.com.
- Completely Undead—Zombies are fictional characters that are brought back to life after death. Once back, they are said to feed on human flesh. They come back to life through some kind of magic.
- Programmed Robot—Supposedly, zombies are not conscious of having been brought back to life, and they act like robots with no other objectives.
- Long Popularity—Zombies have been popular in European and American cinema since the 19th century.
- Really Scary—Zombies are considered to be very scary villians in cinema because they are not afraid of anything. They also tend to pop up randomly in films, frightening those around them.
- Spread by Bite—Normally in films, if a zombie bites another human just once, that person will become a zombie too.