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You Support This Site When You Buy My Books E.C. McMullen Jr. PERPETUAL BULLET "'Some People' ... may be the standout story in the book." - John Grant, Infinityplus E.C. McMullen Jr. WILLOW BLUE "'Willow Blue' will burrow under your skin and stay there long after you've put the book down." - Jeffrey Reddick, Creator of FINAL DESTINATION IN OTHER BOOKS E.C. McMullen Jr.'s short story CEDO LOOKED LIKE PEOPLE in the anthology FEAR THE REAPER "This Ray Bradbury-esque is one of the most memorable and one of the more original stories I've read in a long time." - Steve Isaak, Goodreads HORROR 201: The Silver Scream Filmmaker's Guidebook featuring RAY BRADBURY, JOHN CARPENTER, WES CRAVEN, TOM HOLLAND, E.C. McMULLEN Jr., GEORGE A. ROMERO, and many more. Extensively quoted in PHANTASM EXHUMED The Unauthorized Companion Robert S. Rhine's SATAN'S 3-RING CIRCUS OF HELL Forward by GAHAN WILSON & FEO AMANTE. Featuring comics by ALEX PARDEE, WILLIAM STOUT, STEVE BISSETTE, FRANK DIETZ, JIM SMITH, FRANK FORTE, ERIC PIGORS, MIKE SOSNOWSKI, OMAHA PEREZ, DAVID HARTMAN, STEVEN MANNION, and more! And In CINEMA E.C. McMullen Jr. Head Production Designer MINE GAMES (Starring: JOSEPH CROSS, BRIANA EVIGAN, ALEX MERAZ) Dept. head Special Effects Make-Up (SFX MUA) A SIERRA NEVADA GUNFIGHT (MICHAEL MADSEN & JOHN SAVAGE). Production Designer UNIVERSAL DEAD (DOUG JONES, D.B. SWEENEY, GARY GRAHAM) Art Director THE CRUSADER (COLIN CUNNINGHAM, GARY GRAHAM) |
- REIGN OF FIRE -
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY KELLY PARKS |
First, and foremost, there's just no way (unless you invoke magic, which the moviemakers do not) that an animal bigger than an elephant can fly by flapping its wings*. I'll spare you the equations but trust me. The wings would have to be many times bigger than pictured in this movie, which makes the muscle and bone strength requirements quite impossible. Only magic dragons can fly. Second, even though we see several scenes of the dragons eating unburned people, we are told that their normal diet consists of ash, which is why they burn everything.
No.
Ash is basically just carbon. Its biochemical energy content is essentially nil. You'd starve mighty quick on an ash diet.
Third, if the world had gone through cycles like this for millions of years (and clearly each cycle can't be more than a few thousand years long since the last one happened within recorded history), there would be tremendous archeological evidence (many, many layers of ash). There is not.
Fourth, even if they could fly and even if there were millions, we'd still win. Helicopter gun ships could easily outfly them and jets would be quite safe. Building fireproof bunkers would keep people and supplies perfectly safe. The list goes on. This would not cause the collapse of civilization.2
SCIENCE MOMENT BY E.C. MCMULLEN JR. |
*Actually, the Quetzalcoatlus Northropi from the Late Cretaceous was larger than an elephant. First discovered in Texas, it was in fact, larger than a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and it flew^.
What's more, for a body built for flight, it had relatively short wings, not large ones.
There is no specific size for the Quetzalcoatlus, each one found is of a significantly different size though all are 17 feet and up. The largest we've found so far had a wingspan of 21 meters (68.9 feet) and a body length more than half that (about the height of a tall giraffe).
Compare that to the largest of elephants past or present: the Steppe mammoth, an animal about as long - stem to stern - as it was tall - feet to shoulder, 4 meters (13 feet - the largest known).
nps.gov/bibe/learn/nature/pterosaur.htm
Blog.ted.com/2013/05/30/10-fascinating-facts-about-woolly-mammoths/
Of course, an animal built for flight isn't proportioned like an elephant. The largest Quetzalcoatlus thus found weighed about 250 kilograms (550 pounds), compared to a Steppe mammoth, which weighed about 12 tonnes (13 tons).
Then again, the dragons in this movie aren't proportioned like elephants either. In fact, the dragons for this movie are designed with greater wing to body ratios than are seen in the Quetzalcoatlus or Azhdarchild.
Another flying animal of the Megafaunas is the magnificent Argentavis magnificens. With a wingspan about as long as a Harrier jump jet, it may have flown as fast as 150 freaking mph! Holy shit!
npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11710794
^There is some discourse on whether or not the Quetzalcoatlus could fly. Some Paleontologists argue that the Quetzalcoatlus could not fly because, well, it was just too big to fly is all!
This hypothesis doesn't stand up to the fact that, for the Quetzalcoatlus to have been a land animal, it would require a certain bone density in its forelimbs, as well as a foot pattern for weight distribution, that the beast just didn't possess. Also, it's hindlimbs can't make up for the lack in it's forelimbs, as they are clearly clawed-for-gripping, feet.
2 That's not science. That's all faith-based assumption. Here's what we do know.
A helicopter can fly faster than any current winged animal, but it can't come anywhere close to manuevering like one.
Helicopters are built to be flown by people and they have to take the stress limits of the people within, into consideration. Moments after the first dragon died bringing down a helicopter - because it hit the business end of the prop on top, the rest would soon figure out what part of the shopper to avoid.
Jets, which fly much faster, have far less manueverability, and we'd have to get them off the ground first. The dragons in REIGN OF FIRE are supposed to be more or less equal to us in intelligence, so it wouldn't take them long to figure they should take out airports with jets on the ground.
A sudden attack of thousands ofWe'd lose all ability to drill for oil: No energy. No dams, no wind power and no solar farms. ranches and plant farms and cities would be decimated - like we see in the movie.
How are we going to transport, feed, and house the tens of thousands of people and all of the machinery they'd need, as well as land surveys to find the optimum places to dig fireproof bunkers to accomodate billions of people?
We wouldn't be able to do it for millions of people. There's no energy and stored food, whatever is left, is rapidly dwindling: No energy, water, food, or communication with other bunkers.
Perhaps a few thousand people around the earth could hide in bunkers, but in all reality we have currently no bunkers for so much as 0.001 of the world's population of people. Further, the massive undertaking of building such infrastructure takes decades. Finally, People hiding in bunkers don't contribute to society, they cower, waiting for society to wake and rise.
So yes, millions of dragons in the sky attacking all things human would effectively destroy civilization.
UPDATE: 2021 -
But you know what else? We believed that Quetzalcoatlus Northropi had to be the largest living creature that ever could be capable of flight. Quetzalcoatlus in weight and size was nearly physically impossible werre it not for the fact that, well, we could prove they existed!
Yes, no animal capable of flight, let alone extended flight, could have ever existed.
That is, until we came across an ancient "graveyard" of petrified bones in Morroco.
So may I introduce another long-necked varmint from earth's past, the Azhdarchid pterosaur,
The biggest animal ever to fly was a reptile with a giraffe-like neck
This review copyright 2004 - 2021 by E.C.McMullen Jr.
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Some people think I'm more important than you (I don't, but they do. You know how they are) and this is their (HA!) evidence. INTERVIEWS Matt Jarbo's interview with Feo Amante at The Zurvivalist. James Cheetham's Q&A with Feo Amante at Unconventional Interviews *. Megan Scudellari interviews Feo Amante and Kelly Parks (of THE SCIENCE MOMENT) in The Scientist Magazine. Check out our interview at The-Scientist.com. REFERENCES Researcher David Waldron, references my review of UNDERWORLD in the Spring 2005, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture entry, Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic (downloadable pdf). E.C. McMullen Jr.
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