An open letter to the Discovery Channel.
Dear Discovery Channel;
Recently, my husband and I rented one of your programs from Netflix called "The Colony". Unfortunately, Netflix had mis-categorized the show, labeling it "Reality" when clearly it should have been categorized as "Comedy". You may want to contact Netflix and have them remedy this oversight.
We did come across a couple of technical errors we thought you might want to be made aware of, for future reference, of course.
- When fleeing a major metropolitan area in a post-apocalyptic world, no survivor in his/her right mind would hole up in an 85,000 square foot warehouse (made of tin - you could breach it with a can opener!). For starters, a space that large is completely indefensible, not to mention tactically untenable.
- Random survivors would not ALL happen to be wearing scarves.
- 1 Carp does not feed 10 people (with fillets) and nobody who is starving to death would think to make Orange Gravy to go over their rice.
- Goats require fodder and fresh water in order to produce milk.
- To make cheese, you must have rennet, which means there would be no more little goat (rennet is made from the stomach).
- There is not a survivalist on earth who would think that building a "dirigible" (for aerial reconnaissance) was a good idea when they were starving to death.
- Finding medications in a hospital after a plague, borders on the ridiculous.
- Finding the materials to build an electric trike, an ozantor, a working phonograph, a Tesla coil, a solar tracker for a solar array, and enough battery clamps for 20 car batteries (both lead acid and gel cell, being charged together!) is not only highly unlikely but, quite frankly, is rather comedic.
- Without a charge controller, the solar panels would have fried the batteries with the first full day of sun.
- The "generator" (made from a pressure washer and two car alternators) was turning so slowly (not enough RPM's) that it wouldn't have created more than a few amps of power - never enough to charge the batteries (oh, and the pressure washer would not have been able to run one alternator at maximum output, let alone two).
- You don't try to beat fish with a fish trap, rather you leave it in the river and let it catch fish that you then pick up on your next trip.
- You can't just dump lye, lard and herbs into a pot and get soap (by the way, where did the lard come from? Just wondering.). You have to stir and stir and stir until the soap saponifies and then you must let it age, otherwise the lye will burn your skin.
At this point the whole thing starts to get pretty redundant. We won't even cover the security issues, hygiene issues and other survival basics. Suffice it to say, had this been a real TEOTWAWKI event, your colonist would have died, quickly and horribly. Our 7 year old summed it up when, halfway through the first episode, she asked "What are they trying to do?". I answered "they are trying to survive the end of the world". She said "well, they are doing it wrong". Out of the mouths of babes!
Although I am quite certain you meant for this show to be included in the comedy section, I thought I would bring these discrepancies to your attention just in case "The Colony" had been correctly classified as Reality T.V.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to call me (again).
Yours very sincerely,
Enola Gay
Paratus Familia Blog
