Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2011 October 25

= October 25 =

Body horror films
Please suggest some really scary body horror films like Re-Animator or The Fly --X44toyrojso (talk) 01:32, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I was going to suggest David Cronenberg, some Peter Jackson, and Altered States because I happened to see it recently, but the list in the article Body horror is better than my list. Oh, one thing missing from that article: recently there's been a fad for short East Asian body horror films, such as those found on the compilation Three... Extremes. The directors of the films on that compilation are worth investigating, if you want more of the same, although of course their work will vary (like that of Takashi Miike, for instance).  Card Zero  (talk) 08:19, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Um, as hesitant as I am to suggest it ... The Human Centipede. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 18:59, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Star Trek Warp & Halo Slipspace
I am trying to do a warp speed table but also work out a "light-years per day" section like in Halo, by that I mean on the Halopedia Wiki it says that, Earth ships can travel at approximately 2.625 light years per, Covenant ships can reach 912.12 light years per day and so on. So if Warp 9 (using the Warp Factor Scale from the Daystrom Institute Technical Library site) is 1'516 xC (I assume thats times the speed of light), than how many light-years per day whould that be ? Scotius (talk) 12:09, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem with your approach is that there never was a definite scale for warp speeds in the Star Trek universe - Memory Alpha has a table of wildly inconsistent warp speeds mapped to "real" speeds taken from various episodes and some background info here. As far as I recall, warp factors were intended to be a simple logarithmic scale with warp 1 being the speed of light and warp 10 unattainable infinite speed, but in essence the show's writers made it up as they went along so there simply is no reliable canon source for how fast warp 7 or warp 8 actually are. -- Ferkelparade &pi; 12:30, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That said, if you wanted to lock into a given point in the canon (the Next Generation era writing was, for the most part, reasonably consistent), then yes, you could use Warp 9's definition as being 1,516 times the speed of light. Ferkelparade's memory is correct, and again goes based on how the writers for the NextGen era of shows were looking at things. Some quick math: 1516 x (186,000 miles/sec) x (3600 sec/hour) x (24 hours/day) x (1 light year/6 trillion miles) = 4.06 light years/day. -- McDoob  AU  93  14:45, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Caretaker (Star Trek: Voyager) (and the corresponding Memory Alpha article) state the 70,000 light year journey home will take 75 years at maximum speed. That suggests a speed of around 2.5 light years per day.  Dialogue in various other episodes suggest somewhat faster speeds of 3 or 4 light years per day.  Astronaut (talk) 11:07, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

How about if we used the warp factor chart from Daystrom Institute Technical Library Scotius (talk) 11:42, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Will the internet survive a zombie apocalypse?
For the purposes of a work of fiction, I am trying to ascertain whether the internet will survive a zombie apocalypse. Please help. --123.237.74.1 (talk) 17:17, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm... well thinking about it, if there was a zombieapocalypse, some of the survivors would probably be able to still run their servers and computers, but moch or most of the internet wouldbedown, assuming anyone had any free time to spend on things other than fighting off zombies, finding/making food, and deloping anti zombie weapons. Heck froze over (talk) 17:23, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * According to Seanan McGuire (writing as Mira Grant) - it will. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.66.116 (talk) 17:50, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * If you're writing fiction, you can decide for yourself. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:19, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That's a pretty worthless answer. I'm sure the person in question is aware of what fiction is, but you seem unaware that believability of a work of fiction often requires as much technical accuracy and attention to detail as possible. APL (talk) 02:56, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, that's certainly unnecessarily aggressive, APL. I'm sure Bugs has read fiction before as well. Dayewalker (talk) 05:11, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Having a working Internet would certainly be a great advantage during a zombie apocalypse - you could communicate with other survivors, tell each other about weapon/ammo/food caches, create real time zombie infestation maps, and get manuals for building improvised weapons and for using all that specialized military hardware you've never laid a hand on before. That being said, the Internet consists (basically) of lots of already configured routers and servers, they would just continue running as they are now...at least for a while. There are two things to consider:
 * Mechanical components in servers (hard disks and cooling fans) will fail over time, so the Internet will gradually become "smaller" as more and more servers fail and shut down.
 * More importantly, all those servers and routers will only continue to work as long as they have power - so the real question is, how long will the power infrastructure work without any maintenance work/without anyone refuelling power plants?
 * --Ferkelparade &pi; 20:47, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

And there are, of course, internet zombies. μηδείς (talk) 01:20, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Here's a somewhat relevant article The Straight Dope : When the Zombies Take Over How Long 'till the Electricity Fails. If a single town still had electricity, people in that town could probably still email each other, but I wouldn't depend on them being able to connect outside their little island of electricity.
 * In a local emergency, keeping lines of communication open is a big deal. Both for government incident teams and for civilian companies. Check out this truck put together by Cisco systems. Satellite based internet connections would survive for as long as the ground-based stations they connect to survive, which would probably be a while. Those communication hubs are designed to survive emergencies. But how much would that help? I'm sure, for example, Twitter headquarters are not so well fortified against disaster.
 * I would like to point out that Ham Radio operators already have a "internet alternative" that would survive the zombie apocalypse, for while at least. Packet Radio and the AMSAT system could be used in place of the Internet if any of the survivors are Ham Radio operators. APL (talk) 02:56, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I was just about to mention Echolink, which is another radio thing. (oops, I was wrong about Echolink!) I knew there was some kind of radio based system that could be used in an internet-like way, but couldn't remember what it was called. And I seem to recall an emergency system that could "take over" cell phone tower equipment in order to create a data and communications network with decent bandwidth. In addition to ham radio operators, Emergency management agencies have a variety of tools for establishing some kind of network were the Internet to go down. As I understand, some of the methods are able to function even if there is massive infrastructure damage. Of course, if an Internet website server goes down, it is down, whether or not you have a communications network up. Perhaps that is the main point--there are alternate, robust communication systems that can be deployed relatively quickly, and which can handle digital data, voice-over-IP, and such. But if you want data from some webserver and that server is down...well, maybe there is a tape backup that can be physically accessed? Anyway, if the electrical grid goes down, say goodbye to most of this--though perhaps radio-based networks could still function off portable generators and batteries, I'm not quite sure. Pfly (talk) 09:12, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, another possible source of information is the book The World Without Us, which explores the idea of what things will last and for how long, and how they might fail, if the world suddenly had no people. Pfly (talk) 09:17, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See List of Internet exchange points (and Internet exchange point). While it no longer seems to be the case that wiping Reston, Virginia (MAE-East) off the map would close down the Internet, I still have little doubt that the supposedly mythical Internet kill switch would be flipped in the event of any zombie apocalypse, to help prevent it from driving down the stock market. Wnt (talk) 23:46, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It's difficult to imagine what could drive down the stock market more than the federal government shutting down the Internet. Besides the direct economic impact, it implies that the government is in a state of total panic. Far better to leave things running but announce that a solution is just around the corner.
 * APL (talk) 06:01, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Actors who've been on Doctor Who
I have recently rewatched all the vintage Doctor Who episodes from Tom through Colin Baker. I am still amazed how many faces pop up, like Graham Crowden playing Soldeed  and Joan Sims as Queen Katryka. Then, lo and behold, Brian Blessed shows up in the second segment to the Trial of a Timelord. Is there a list of actors who've appeared in Dr Who? And who was perhaps the most prestigious actor to appear on the vintage Dr Who? μηδείς (talk) 17:36, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See List of Doctor Who cast members, perhaps? Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:40, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Or perhaps - List of guest appearances in Doctor Who  WormTT   &middot; &#32;(talk) 13:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Pokemon mystery dungeon anime
How come the first episode didn't get  any  other  episodes to continue it on  I am meaning from the them go getters  episode. --86.45.134.83 (talk) 21:57, 25 October 2011 (UTC)