What are your guys thoughts on that new show Revolution?

[R.E.H.W.R.]

What are your guys thoughts on that new show Revolution?

Found it kinda funny that a show on NBC has the bad guys using gun control on a network that regularly advocates it.

[MrBogosity]

I'm having problems with the whole premise. Something (will the mystery be revealed later, or are they just making it up as they go along?) took out all the power. Cars even stopped working, planes fell to the ground. That means that the phenomenon not only deactivated all electronics (like a high-altitude nuclear blast, a la Dark Angel), but also canceled all chemical and mechanical energy as well.

So, how come guns still work?

[R.E.H.W.R.]

I'm having problems with the whole premise. Something (will the mystery be revealed later, or are they just making it up as they go along?) took out all the power. Cars even stopped working, planes fell to the ground. That means that the phenomenon not only deactivated all electronics (like a high-altitude nuclear blast, a la Dark Angel), but also canceled all chemical and mechanical energy as well.

So, how come guns still work?

Plothole?

It's kinda a rip off of S.M. Sterling's The Change series. Where all electronics and firearms stop working and people go back to the medieval age. I'd definitely recommended the first three books because there is no real explanation of what happened, although the Clan Mackenzie drive me up the wall with all their mystical shit. The books after that go into mystic mumbo gumbo as the cause. I was pretty pissed.

[evensgrey]

Plothole?

It's kinda a rip off of S.M. Sterling's The Change series. Where all electronics and firearms stop working and people go back to the medieval age. I'd definitely recommended the first three books because there is no real explanation of what happened, although the Clan Mackenzie drive me up the wall with all their mystical shit. The books after that go into mystic mumbo gumbo as the cause. I was pretty pissed.

Do they give any explanation of why diesel engines stop working as well (designs that incorporate electronics are recent), as well as why firearms don't work but the chemical reactions involved in life still work?

[MrBogosity]

And, of course, the human brain is electrical and chemical reactions, so why is everyone still alive?

[R.E.H.W.R.]

Do they give any explanation of why diesel engines stop working as well (designs that incorporate electronics are recent), as well as why firearms don't work but the chemical reactions involved in life still work?

At the beginning of the series there are many theories. Aliens shutting off our toys being one of them.
In later books they explain that three Wiccan goddesses decide mankind isn't ready for the power we created and shut it down. Of, course, killing billions. You can see why I was a little pissed.

I would have rather had no explanation of why it happens than that. 

[MrBogosity]

Yeah, that's one of my many fears with Revolution: they'll get stuck and have to come up with some crap like that. (Of course, I'm still feeling the burn from Lost...I really should have pretended that Season 3 was the last and stopped watching.)

[Ibrahim90]

why not just say all the feul on the planet ran out? that would do it....maybe.

yeah, fuck it, Revolution makes no sense.

[FSBlueApocalypse]

At the beginning of the series there are many theories. Aliens shutting off our toys being one of them.
In later books they explain that three Wiccan goddesses decide mankind isn't ready for the power we created and shut it down. Of, course, killing billions. You can see why I was a little pissed.

I would have rather had no explanation of why it happens than that.

There really is nothing worse than a Deus Ex Machina explanation, and that sounds like a really shitty Deus Ex Machina.

[R.E.H.W.R.]

There really is nothing worse than a Deus Ex Machina explanation, and that sounds like a really shitty Deus Ex Machina.

Which was why it enraged me so much. The books were fascinating about how the US would change since our culture is so mixed, seeing different factions take up different weapons and tactics. Everything from knights, a country of mostly archers, samurai, Native Americans even a country of ranchers who take up tactics from the mongols. There was a major cult later in the series that the Higher ups would go crazy and be very difficult  to kill, like the viking berserkers, which is what I thought was happening, that they had made a drug that did that, nope, they possessed by demons.

I can't finish the series now! I can't. That just ruined everything! Something that had a good amount of realism, other than the premiss, now has magic swords that can cut through full grown trees.

[evensgrey]

why not just say all the feul on the planet ran out? that would do it....maybe.

yeah, fuck it, Revolution makes no sense.

Of course it doesn't make sense.  It's TV.

Incidentally, diesel engines run perfectly fine on vegetable oil.  In fact, that was the originally intended fuel.  Diesel oil ended up being cheaper to produce for reasons having nothing to do with the technology of the engine.  Now that petroleum-based products are starting to get both a bad rap and a higher cost, biodiesel (which is basically just vegetable oil with a little jiggering to help along the modern engines, which are rather less tolerant of fuel variation than earlier ones) has been coming out for mostly PR reasons.

[Ibrahim90]

Of course it doesn't make sense.  It's TV.

now I know why I do not watch most TV.

Incidentally, diesel engines run perfectly fine on vegetable oil.  In fact, that was the originally intended fuel.  Diesel oil ended up being cheaper to produce for reasons having nothing to do with the technology of the engine.  Now that petroleum-based products are starting to get both a bad rap and a higher cost, biodiesel (which is basically just vegetable oil with a little jiggering to help along the modern engines, which are rather less tolerant of fuel variation than earlier ones) has been coming out for mostly PR reasons.

yeah, it's actually why I gave up: OK, so if you run out of petroleum based feul, what of vegetable feul? did we suddenly run out of veggies? we couldn't produce enough diesel engines?

It's starting to sound too much like Mass effect (2 and 3 especially): so many plot-holes, and no way to save it from becoming utter nonsense.