I dunno, I wasn't too big of a fan of the first season... reality TV in general turns me off. The overwhelming "fakery" feeling I got from this didn't really help. I found the end of Season 1 to be particularly absurd (I won't post specifics since I don't want to ruin it for anyone who intends to watch).

>>15
<< This guy's idiocy when it comes to gear ratios and torque vs. speed? that was pretty absurd in season 1 to me.

As for this season, yeah they have some first show fakery going on, but I think like OP said, that wears off rather soon.

Also, this is reality TV by name, but thankfully there isn't any competition, no mini-games and voting, no host-player interactions etc. They just put them somewhere, see how they are behaving, find a weakness and toss something at them to attack and point out said weakness.

Take security in this episode for instance; they focused on everything but, thus the influx of people into the unsecured compound. These producers are good at being dicks.

I wish they could kidnap/drug people and force then into what they thought were actual post apocalyptic situations. That would make some good TV.

this is the only reality show i can watch more or less its a physiology experiment

>>17
This is the only thing that goes through my head when I hear a new series of Big Brother announced every damn year. I suppose Charlie Brooker's 'Dead Set' sort of scratched that itch, though it was fiction and featured fucking boring zombies.
What would be really interesting would be somehow convincing a group of politicians that they were the surviving remnants of government and seeing how that played out.

All the characters of the first season irritated me to the point where I could barely watch it.

Then the incredibly contrived "monster of the week" format finished it off.

It's just far, far too artifical- and managed-looking for me to bear.

Did we all catch last night's episode?

Personally, I was totally pleased to see that annoying model get nabbed, and hopefully simulation-raped

>>51
and for those who didn't: http://www.megavideo.com/?d=SNILULO3

This season seems a bit better than the last, though it's obviously not the best simulation ever still. I think they're still grouping people that have too much knowledge, and that's no fun.

>>62
Interesting. I was kind of thinking the opposite about skills. I liked that they went with some lower skilled persons this time, but now I am concerned that they are out-performing their skillsets.

For instance, with the electrification activities, no-one there really has the background to be setting up their grid, but there is the disclaimer at the start that experts are on hand to prevent them from killing themselves, so I am suspecting that there are some cases where they are all like "we want to do X to get Y" then they half-ass and attempt to do X and then have the experts come in and actually fix it up properly.

For the electrical situation I could see them routing cords and putting equipment together, but I bet some outsider actually made the inverter connections to the junction box as well as arranging their battery / trickle charger array for the vastly different load needs of basic power tools vs. welding etc (at least until they got the independent welder/genset).

That's where I'm seeing a disconnect, it seems they are doing things too easily with no struggle of hashing out the details to get things going. Any engineer or inventor knows that all the real work comes at the final stage at the end, as things never work out so perfectly from design as they seem to have been here.

>>14
For anyone left in the dark:

2x01 - http://www.megavideo.com/?d=D9HBWTUX
2x02 - http://www.megavideo.com/?d=WAU40ILP
2x03 - http://www.megavideo.com/?d=1M25E1MX
2x04 - http://www.megavideo.com/?d=SNILULO3
.....
2x06 - http://www.megavideo.com/?d=S9XX8VGX

(my source for 2x05 is down, anyone else know one?)

the big raid reminds me of getting attacked by 3 goblins ambushes in DF at one time

>>69
So there's a supposed viral outbreak and these people wear respirators that filter nothing but particulate matter and are not even airtight around the nose/mouth.

is there a source for 7 yet?

>>80
Pardon the delay:
2x07 - http://www.megavideo.com/?d=3MO5VZLQ
2x08 - http://www.megavideo.com/?d=UVSR4G93
2x09 - http://www.megavideo.com/?d=VYKF8AYU
2x10 - http://www.megavideo.com/?d=865ARU51

You will rage if you know anything about shielded electrode arc welding come episode 10. Watching this idiot just bounce the stick on his joints and never actually maintain an arc or work a melt pool along the seam made me rage so damn much!

>>73
I'm not sure which respirators you were talking about, but if they were impregnated with zeolites or activated carbon (the air filtering part would likely have a darker off-white to grey tint to it), then they are anti-bacterial and anti-viral to a significant extent.

>>167
Very little about this show is raeg-proof. the alcohol distilled for that engine will get them..about ten seconds after they get it fired up. Maybe.

NOTHING in the show is realistic. it's absolute bullshit. I do not have a clue why you people watch it.

>>171
Because it is the closest to a PA fiction set in modern times we can get, and unlike many other supposed "survival" reality shows, this one lacks any obvious 'gaming' and therefore all the retarded psuedo-psychological bullshit like "forming alliances" and "developing 'strategy'".

Besides, some of the characters are great, like Mike the handyman from season 1. Sure he was dumb, but his social skills (or lack thereof) made him a hilarious watch.

Since MTV's debut reality TV shows, I unfortunately had the displeasure of viewing there's only one constant among all "reality" TV. That is that reality is just as stupid as the people portraying it.

Take this for instance, >>167, I know people in real life that do that shit. And this, >>171, I know people that will debate you until you are blue in the face about how wondrous ethanol is and that ethanol from corn is the best thing since sliced bread.

I'm glad I only have the internet to show me how stupid people are in general and no longer watch/listen to TV/radio programming at all.

>>1274
Best thing ever...no. But it is a viable fuel. My issue is with the VOLUME. They just couldn't make enough fuel with the supplies they had for it to be worth doing. It's silly.

>>1275
Viable yes, sustainable, no. Ethanol is a poor use of corn. Corn itself is a rather poor crop in the first place. Industrial farming of corn is creating a dust-bowl of a different sort now.

As for the show you are referring to, I've not seen it. Though, you're going to need a lot of ethanol to power anything. Even in standard gasoline engines 10% of the gasoline is now ethanol. That's 1/10th of every gallon. In a 10 gallon tank that's 1 gallon of ethanol.

Yeah, you'd need a lot of ethanol just to replace gasoline in the first place. i can't imagine anyone building anything in a reality TV show that would use ethanol more efficiently than a standard gasoline engine uses gasoline. I don't even know what sort of engine they were using.

I make alcohol, fyi. It takes a shit load of material to make it in concentrations higher than standard wine through distilling. It's fine for human consumption needs in smaller amounts, but when you start needing 5-10 gallons of ethanol pure enough to run an engine for any length of time you are talking some serious input of resources. Also, standard gasoline engines (in the USA) don't like concentrations higher than 10% ethanol mixture.

...I'm glad I don't watch that shit. I'd have never ending rage from it. Like it'd wake me up in the middle of the night and I'd curse it thoroughly.

>>1276
I don't remember exactly, as you necro'ed a thread from a year ago...but I think they ended up with less than a gallon of the stuff. As for the engine, it was a air boat engine, I think...so the chances are pretty good it ran on alcohol to begin with as I recall.

>>1280
>, as you necro'ed a thread from a year ago.

I didn't. I think someone may have posted and deleted their post to bump it up to the top of the board. I've never been past page 0 yet.

>engine

I googled and it is, "the airplane engine is a high compression engine that runs on high octane fuel." Avgas is 100 octane and pure ethanol is 105-108 octane (Avgas is just higher octane gasoline, fyi). You'd need to run the ethanol through the distiller about 4-6 times in a regular distiller or 1-2 times through a reflux distiller. Fractional freezing is a better method to get the ethanol up to about 95%ABV. You'd need to use benzene or glycerol to get it to the fuel alcohol level of 99%ABV. After that, you need to modify the gasoline engine so it can run on the ethanol and mix the ethanol with gasoline so it's 85% ethanol. If you don't the engine will knock badly and be damaged. Anyway, the engine would work for a little while.

Airboats made with aircraft engines usually get about 3mpg at best, but usually in the 2-3mpg range. if you get 3-4mpg range you are pretty lucky and most likely have no load, small tank, and a lightwieght boat. They usually have a 40 gallon tank that will get them 80 miles. The depth of the water also play a big part in mpg. The deeper the water the worse the mpg. Airboats are extremely inefficient fuel-wise. A prop in the water would get you 10mpg.

I wonder if they had to get licensing for making the distilled alcohol and if their distillery was approved? Otherwise, it's illegal in the USA if they didn't denature it.

Oh, and from what I just googled, the airboat in Episode 7 of The Colony had a hidden outboard/trolling motor. And there's talk about the propeller they had actually turning in the wrong direction that would have been pulling them backwards.

What was wrong with making paddles and a dragon boat? No engine problems and you can really fly in one if your team is coordinated. lol I think The Colony show is rigged to hell and back and wants to use much higher technology than what is needed.

Watching the Colony I did always feel that the concepts they 'came up with' were foisted upon them. It was sort of interesting nonetheless though, and a bit of critical thinking would probably tell you which concepts were sound.

My favourite bit had to be in season 2 when the US marine walked through their camp in broad daylight and left a note stabbed into place with a combat knife, all without them noticing him. I think there's a third season on its way, at least they were recruiting people for it, I'm not sure how long production takes. A little suspension of disbelief goes a long way though, and it's a good discussion starter more than a realistic guide.

>>1282
On the first season of the MTV show, "The Real World", they constantly did things like buy alcohol for them, get them into idiot situations, and tried to get them to cause as much drama as possible. Since then they've been casting people that are as dramatic as possible and pairing them with some that are not in order to cause further drama and sensationalism.

I've never seen a single reality TV show that did not do similar tactics to make for "better" TV.

>>1283
I was horrified to find out that the Real World is still going. I thought it ended long ago. MTV is the best at creating reality shows that make me want to leave this planet though. My Super Sweet 16 is a prime example.

>>1284
I stopped watching TV programming around season 2 of The Real World.

>My Super Sweet 16

I'm not even going to google that.