A while back I got hooked on watching The Walking Dead series - one of a number of shows and movies about a "Zombie Apocalypse" where most of the population is turned into zombies by a mutant virus, aliens, government weaponized virus, GMO's,  etc.,  - you get the picture - take your choice! The plot is predictable - a small band of "normal" humans makes a trek to find sanctuary from the hordes of zombies and there's loads of zombies being shot (preferably in the head if you want to stop them!), hacked, stabbed, etc. - you get the picture - take your choice!

Netflix has a companion series (that means a blatant rip-off!) called Z Nation - same premise, same plot, same head shots, stabbings, hackings, etc.  I had run through all The Walking Dead shows, so I started watching Z Nation and it was indeed a pale imitation and not nearly as good as The Walking Dead - heck, even the women weren't nearly as good-looking although one heroine has a couple of prominent attributes!

However, in Season 1, Episode 10, the brave little band of humans encounters a nuclear power plant over-run with zombies and is about to go Chernobyl in exactly 48 hours (how they know that since they can't get inside the plant is anybody's guess!)  ... apparently zombies aren't very good nuclear power plant operators!  There is one human nearby who knows how to scram the plant and hopefully save the day.  Our brave little cadre decides to get inside the highly radioactive plant, kill the zombies, and scram the reactor with Mr. High IQ's help.  His so-so daughter (who lets everyone know right away she is a pilot - after all, she's wearing a leather jacket!)  quickly gets tasked to fly the one guy with zombie antibodies in his blood to a secret lab where an anti-zombie vaccine can be made to save the world - after all, a plane is the fastest way to clear the blast zone should things go horribly wrong at the plant ... hmmm, the show's director must not know the cruise speed of a 701 !

Sure enough, sitting in the hangar is a Zenith STOL CH 701!  Of course, that's not exciting enough for the show's director - turns out there is no more gas, but plenty of vodka from an abandoned liquor store. One of the show's heroines says "she once had to convert a car to run on alcohol" so she pop's the cowl, and with apparently little or no tools, "converts" the engine and they fuel it with 22 gallons of vodka!  What a waste of perfectly good booze!

Alas, the 701 makes it about 10 miles (probably just long enough for the remaining gas in the lines to run out and the vodka to hit the carbs!) and down she goes!  They show a nice little clearing the 701 could easily make, but of course, this is television and it has to crash into some trees.  The passenger/zombie-anitbody guy walks away unscathed (typical for a 701 crash!), but alas and alack, the poor pilot is impaled in the chest (nope, the leather jacket didn't help one bit!) on a 3 ft long metal bar which must be a new 701 mod - never seen one before in any other 701.  Of course, if you die and it's not a head wound, you become a zombie - which does not improve the poor girl's looks one bit!

Just felt I had to let our crowd know that apparently Zenith aircraft are ever-increasing in popularity as now it's featured in a TV series. If your interest is piqued and you have Netflix, go directly to Season 1, Episode 10 and you're done - skip the other 20-30 episodes!

I publish this message in the interests of public safety, anticipating a FAA advisory circular on a critical operational issue - don't fuel your Zenith aircraft with vodka - drink it instead!  ;>)

John

N750A