I Sense a FlashForward Coming On – This Is Creepy

Perhaps ABC was a little hasty when it canceled ‘FlashForward’ last year. Even though the show’s ratings weren’t that hot, its sci-fi premise sure looks eerily prescient after recent real-world events involving massive unexplained bird deaths, just like one of the series’ plot lines. When do we get to see the future? I’m looking forward to that part.

If any of you remember the show, one of the storylines had the heroes travel to Africa, where they visited a village that had been the testing site of the baddies’ wormhole-making machine (or whatever it was). They located the area while investigating reports of dead birds mysteriously falling from the sky, which was apparently one of the side effects of the device.

(Side note: This strikes me as inconsistent plotting, since the worldwide blackout that started the show didn’t cause all the birds on the planet to die.)

Anyway, as you may have seen or read in the news this week, thousands of blackbirds in Arkansas dropped dead in mid-air on New Year’s Eve. That was followed a couple days later by a similar event in Louisiana involving both birds and fish. Investigators and scientists have still not determined a concrete cause for either incident. Current theories involving loud noises from fireworks hardly sound any less farfetched than an evil time-travel conspiracy, if you ask me.

Admittedly, I seem to be the only one making this connection so far. Bible thumpers are of course reading this as a portent of the End of Times. Strangely, of all the people you’d least expect to act as a voice of reason in the face of religious mania, Christian Evangelist Kirk Cameron seems to be keeping a level head about all of this.

If we do get a glimpse of the future, I hope I’m doing something interesting. However, I’m sure that I’ll probably be doing the exact same thing that I’m doing right now – sitting at a computer writing blog posts about silly nonsense. If, on the other hand, this really is the first sign of the Birdpocalypse, it’s been nice knowing you all.

For some reason, I have a hankering to watch ‘Magnolia‘ tonight. Hmmm…

17 comments

  1. Alex

    My buddies and I, who used to watch Flashforward on Hulu during our lunchbreaks, noticed this too. Creepy connection. Flashforward was definitely a hokey show, but it sure was a lot of fun. I really kinda miss it.

    • Keith

      Same here. I was pissed when I found out they cancelled it. I read someplace that they had several years worth of episodes already written for it too.

      That said, if you guys didn’t know, the TV show is based on a book by the same name. I’m still in the middle of reading it and I’m very hopeful it does a better job of ending the story than the series ending cliff hanger we got on TV did. *rolleyes*

        • Keith

          Yeah, the book is quite different from what I’ve seen so far but there are a lot of parallels. Llyod Simcoe is in the book as a scientist and they’re just getting started with the Mosaic project.

          I’m a very slow reader so I’m still barely getting started so I don’t feel too comfortable with saying too much at this point because as with any book things could change quickly! Plus it’ll ruin it for you if you do decide to read it.

  2. http://familyradio.org/index.html

    Truthfully, though, I am a Christian, but birds falling out of the sky to me is not a sign of the coming appocolypse. There is a perfectly good scientific explanation for this. I am willing to bet, though, that wormholes and firecrackers have nothing to do with it.

    In fact, my theory may be just as crazy as the others. The earth wobbles on its axis. As such, not only does it affect what part of the earth is exposed to the sun, it also affects the magnetic fields of the earth. This wobble is what is leading to colder winters, warmer summers, and birds falling out of the sky, as their magnetic perception is being thrown out of whack.

    Go ahead, come up with a better theory.

  3. I interviewed Kirk a few years back, and let’s just say that, while he’s a religious guy, much of the uber-Christian vibe that he gives off in some of his movies/TV appearances is more for “show” than anything else…he’s actually no more spiritual than most of us.

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      Didn’t Cameron refuse to kiss the actress playing his character’s wife in ‘Fireproof’ because he wasn’t really married to her, and that would be a sin?

      • Ian Whitcombe

        Not uncommon amongst devout Catholic actors. The body-switch episode of The Prisoner, for example, was also a way of having Number Six kiss a woman by working around Patrick McGoohan’s beliefs.

  4. Ernst Stavro Blofeld is in his mountaintop bunker watching news reports of the incident. Now he and SPECTRE can hold the world economy hostage by threatening specific animal species with his moon-based death ray. He will start with the wool market by targeting New Zealand’s sheep population. Expect the press release in the morning.

  5. hurin

    There is nothing strange about this, the birds fly into a hail storm and literally get beaten to death. The hails melt and people finding the dead birds then wonder what happened.

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      A hail storm in Louisiana? How do you explain the dead fish?

      If this were a hail storm, I think the scientists investigating would have figured that out by now. The bird carcasses would show signs of blunt force trauma. That seems to be consistent with this new Swedish incident, but I don’t recall hearing anything about that in Arkansas or Louisiana.

      • hurin

        I was responding to the comment above but forgot to use the reply button.

        But I am sure there is a natural explanation to this. After all there is two explanations to every mystery, the scientific one and the wrong one.

        I do not know if there is a god or not, but even if there is, I somehow doubt he would use dead birds to communicate.