earthfamilyalpha: World War Z

The first time I saw pictures coming from Comrade Putin's War in Ukraine, there were trucks, troops, and even tanks all marked by hand with a Z with a box around it. At the time, I didn't know if they were Russians or Ukrainians. It made sense that it could be either. After all, President Zelenskyy of Ukraine could be the hero or the target, but in fact he was not that popular as the attack began. Why the Russians would mark their vehicles with Z perhaps made sense to remind the troops that overturning the Ukrainian government of Zelenskyy was their true mission.

Of course it reminded me of the 2013 movie, World War Z. This from Wikipedia:

"Former UN operative Gerry Lane, his wife Karin, and their two daughters, Rachel and Connie, are in heavy Philadelphia traffic when the city is overrun by zombies. As chaos spreads, the Lanes escape to Newark, New Jersey and take refuge in an apartment with a couple and their young son Tommy, though they are forced to escape with Tommy when a horde of zombies attack the apartment and his parents are infected. UN Deputy Secretary-General Thierry Umutoni, an old friend of Gerry, sends a helicopter that extracts the Lanes to a U.S. Navy vessel in the Atlantic Ocean where scientists and military personnel are analyzing the worldwide outbreaks. Andrew Fassbach, a young virologist, insists that the plague is a virus and that the development of a vaccine depends on finding the origin."

Ultimately, after a lot of blood and global chaos, a new vaccine is developed thus allowing offensives to be taken against the zombies. In the end, Gerry finds and embraces his family and all is more or less well. There was talk of a sequel and return of this zombie apocalypse but it's no where on the horizon.

It's certainly not needed given that most all of us are experiencing our own zombie apocalypse as a different World War Z unfolds in front of our eyes. As the Russians attacked from the North, the South, the East, and from the air under the pretense of being peacekeepers for the newly Russia recognized eastern region of Donbas of Ukraine, the veneer rubbed off quickly. It was a full scale attack to return Ukraine to the Russia fold. And with 200,000 soldiers, heavy armor, and dominance of the air and of the seas to the south, who would not imagine that they would succeed in days.

Apparently President Z.

Along with the 44 million Ukrainians who had voted 9 to 1 for independence from Russia in 1991 and with help from the EU and US, Ukrainians are now in their second week of holding much of the Russian army at bay. It is reported that somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand Russians have been killed and more than 250 tanks have been lost. Stories of Russian soldier discontent are growing.

And everyday, more javelin antitank weapons and stinger anti aircraft missiles are arriving from the West. President Zelenskyy has become a hero of his people and of much of the anti-autocrat world. Yet the outcome is grim to most military professionals. But within this bleak assessment of the outcome, other intelligence officials are saying that Putin has blundered, that he has already lost this war, and any victory now will be pyrrhic.

However heart wrenching it becomes, the Zelenskyy defense of his people and his famous quote, "I don't need a ride, I need ammunition", will be remembered long after these weeks and months of autocratic fiat has cast its dark shadow over Europe and the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, the Real World War Z rages on. For Climate Change will be our last world war if we don't defend ourselves.

A new United Nations science report is saying climate change is about to get much worse. It's likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier, and much more dangerous within the next 18-20 years.With extreme weather now, climate change is about to get so much worse.

And after that watch out.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said Monday if human-caused global warming isn’t limited to just another couple tenths of a degree, an Earth now struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways with some being “potentially irreversible.”

“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health,” says the major report designed to guide world leaders in their efforts to curb climate change. Delaying cuts in heat-trapping carbon emissions and waiting on adapting to warming’s impacts, it warns, “will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

Today's children who will be alive in the year 2100 are most likely going to experience up to four times more climate extremes than now, even with a few more tenths of a degree of warming over today's heat. In addition to that, if temperatures increase two more degrees Celsius from now (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit), they will feel over five times the floods, storms, drought, and heatwaves, according to the collection of scientists at the IPCC.

And yet our own "Zombies of the R Kind" thwart global leadership and their own President as they deny the science of climate change and instead highlight high gas prices and attempt to make political hay with their mendacity. They are slaves to their need for power, not unlike Putin.

And in their support of Heir Putin and his genius, (sic)

their victories too,

will also be pyrrhic.