Reconstructing historical events and putting the pieces together is always a challenge. Perusing the events of 1927 at first looks unpromising. Al Jolson released the first talking motion picture, “The Jazz Singer.” The Holland Tunnel opened. Work began on Mt. Rushmore. Josef Stalin took control of Russia, expelling Trotsky. On May 22, some 200,000 people in Xining, China, died from an earthquake measuring 8.6 on Richter scale. Just one day earlier, Charles Lindbergh had completed the first transatlantic solo flight in The Spirit of Saint Louis. Which of these events, if any, figured in the 1927 uprising and the remarkably effective cover-up that followed? If Xining, China, were not so far from Mississippi we might easily have our answer. But even if 200,000 zombies could cross the ocean — by no means certain, given the intense pressures on the ocean bottom — those zombies would take months to make the journey. The simplest understanding of geography also suggests that the zombies would land on the west coast of the American continent. If 200,000 zombies had walked across Mexico, the southern United States or even Panama, reports would likely have been too numerous to suppress. We might wonder if Lindy is a link in the puzzle. In particular, we might naturally ask what scared Lindbergh into taking a tiny metal box all the way across an ocean? What did he see that made him flee the U.S. at that exact year in time? A good question and we will never actually know how zombies fit into the historic journey made by the Spirit of St. Louis.
One event from that time makes the undeadness meter ping like a Geiger counter in a starship’s warp core: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
This flood affected 700,000 people and is considered by some to be the greatest national disaster in US history. Here is a quick down and dirty review of the official story:
1. Heavy Rain began in the late summer, a year before in 1926.
2. On April 15, 1927, 15 inches of rain fell in 18 hours.
3. April 15th, the Mississippi River broke out of its levee system at 145 locations.
4. Water flooded an area of twenty-seven thousand square miles.
5. States affected included AR, IL, KY, LA, MS, MO, TN, TX, OK and KS.
6. Worst affected was Arkansas, 14% of the state was flooded.
7. Following the disaster the Flood Control Act of 1928 created the world’s longest system of levees.
From http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/1927.html
The rain is indisputable, of course. But let’s forget about levee systems and look at the effect of flooding 27,000 square miles. How many cemeteries are there in a 27,000 square mile area? How many gravesites are there in those cemeteries? We could probably come up with a rough calculation, but I’m sure even approximate numbers are unnecessary. The tally of corpses freed in the muddy waters had to run to many thousands. How many reanimated? Even if only one in one thousand came back to shuffle beside the chewed-up banks of the Mississippi River, the loss of life would have been horrific and, unfortunately, easily explained away as a natural consequence of the Flood.
