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Cool! This is like Fallout 3 the TV show! Truthfully, I like anything that concerns an apocalypse. I’m going to dub it it’s own sub-genre: Apocalyptica. Anything that involves the end of the world. You heard it here first. *Whisper Whisper* Oh, he did? Fuck Mel Gibson.

Anyway, a new showed aired on tonight (July 21st, 2009) on Discovery channel: The Colony. No, the show is not about how Pilgrims shot Indians and used their children as rucksacks. That would be too economical for the Discovery channel. The Colony is a TV show that places individuals in a post-apocalyptic setting in order for them to survive. Sounds neat right? Well it is.

It’s the near future and viral outbreak decimated the planet. Six people undergo 30 hours without food or sleep to simulate stress caused by the apocalypse. They band together and start out by scavenging an abandoned store for food. They then walked to eight miles to an abandoned warehouse complex. All of this is taking place in a quarantined section on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Eventually, four other individuals were placed in the experiment to see whether or not they would be accepted by the colony, or if they would be rejected. After much bickering, the original six allowed the new four to join them.. for now. Each person has some skills: Vladimir Beck, a 62-year-old retired oil industry engineer. John Cohn, a 50-year-old chief scientist for design automation. George Fallieras, a 34-year-old internal medicine/pediatric/ER doctor. Morgan Hooker, a 23-year-old aerospace engineer. Michael Raines, a 47-year-old solar panel installer/fabricator. Joey Sciacca, a 37-year-old contractor. Leilani Smith, a 36-year-old black belt martial arts fighter/instructor. John Valencia, a 37-year-old machinist. Amy West, a 34-year-old marine specialist. Allison White, a 29-year-old registered nurse.

Michael is known on the show as the handyman and has been putting in a good amount of work. He’s also kind of a dick as he was the main opponent of allowing the new four to enter and he likes to watch women wash his clothes. John is a compassionate yet crazy mad scientist that seems to be the most interesting character so far. At the end of the episode, there was a slight revelation of some tensions starting to build between the colony. It’s going to be interesting to see how this ten week adventure pans out.

In the first episode, the colony  needed water but their source was extremely polluted. John, being a genius mad scientist, made a filter out of sand and charcoal. Boom, water problem solved. Nice. Eventually they started to run low on water. Michael and ..some other guy (I forget) rerouted a gutter to deposit rain water into a storage tank. Genius! Water problem #2 solved. To add to the experiment, actors were thrown in to be raiders and try to break into their colony, steal their shit, and just plain piss them off. So security was an issue. The first attempt ended in failure as the raider couldn’t open the locked gate.

Many challenges lie ahead for this colony. The will run out of food. They will fight. They will encounter villains. It’s going to be very interesting to see how this plays out, ESPECIALLY since I just finished playing through Fallout 3 for the second time. Do yourself a favor and buy that game if you haven’t. It’s about as close as you’ll get to experiencing the Apocalypse until 2012 (I don’t believe that really… or do I?).

1/5 Chezwicks