"When Tomorrow is Today..."
October 23, 2020 2:27 PM   Subscribe

Retro-future airship suits from 1936's "Thing to Come" available now for your virus-free todays.
posted by acroyear (21 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
That's terrifying. I kinda want one.
posted by vibrotronica at 2:33 PM on October 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


Attn: moderators...

Oops, the first link should go to this.
And "Shape of Thing" should be "Shape of Things" with an "s". Thanks!

I really should post more than once every 5 years...
posted by acroyear at 2:33 PM on October 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


There's also the Air, which I think is actually kind of stylish, although it doesn't give you extra hit points and damage output like the BioVYZR.
posted by theodolite at 2:39 PM on October 23, 2020 [3 favorites]


The gloves are not a bad idea. As we all learned in March, it turns out humans must touch their faces at least four hundred times per hour to stay alive. With that Air one, you either die from not being able to touch your face or you die because you remove it and become exposed to the plague. So that's just death all around.
posted by whatnotever at 2:55 PM on October 23, 2020 [6 favorites]


Just in time for Halloween.
posted by tspae at 3:02 PM on October 23, 2020


Mod note: fixed link!
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 3:04 PM on October 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


In fairness the chap in Things to Come was living in a world that had lost 50% of its population to a plague.

We've never had it so good.
posted by biffa at 3:56 PM on October 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


You have to buy filters from them, because I'm sure this Kickstarter funded fad bio-suit will be around for future filter needs.

Also why are there filters at all? The suit is far from hermetically sealed. This is just an elaborate spit mask, all kinds of ways for particles to enter into the suit.

I want my 12 Monkeys biosuit dammit.
posted by geoff. at 4:05 PM on October 23, 2020


air sold separately
posted by clavdivs at 4:05 PM on October 23, 2020 [3 favorites]


Things To Come was directed by William Cameron Menzies who probably deserves most of the credit for the way the film looked. (Also see his undersea crystal world in Thief of Baghdad and, of course, the great Invaders From Mars.)
posted by CCBC at 4:10 PM on October 23, 2020 [4 favorites]


I think the filter is in front of a fan that makes the inside positive-pressure. Not exactly hermetically sealed, but a bit of an answer to the leakage concerns.
posted by skyscraper at 4:20 PM on October 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


The art design by Vincent Korda deserves some credit as well.
In his review, Jorge Luis Borges wrote:
“The heaven of Wells and Alexander Korda, like that of so many other eschatologists and set designers, is not much different than their hell, though even less charming.”
(from Criterion)
posted by thatwhichfalls at 4:32 PM on October 23, 2020 [4 favorites]




Gonna get real hot in there.
posted by charlesminus at 6:14 PM on October 23, 2020


So... it's a positive pressure environment. Which means that a fan is drawing air into the hood through a filter, and then the air exits the hood... pretty much anywhere. Unless there's a gasket of some sort between the hood and the person inside it, all the air inside is going to head for the easiest way out, any unfiltered route.

If the person wearing this happens to be infected with Covid, it will function as an amplifier.

PAPR hoods are a well-known technology, and are not very expensive. The reason doctors aren't generally wearing them as protection against COVID is because they don't want to spend their days wafting about in clouds of potentially lethal aerosols.
posted by MrVisible at 6:32 PM on October 23, 2020 [2 favorites]


I, too, have often dreamt of placing an upended child's car seat over my head, and draping the rain cover from a toddler's stroller in front. I had thought these the follies of a silly old man, but no, now I see they were a harbinger of our glorious future
posted by phooky at 7:24 PM on October 23, 2020 [6 favorites]


Something like the suits from Prospect is more my style.
posted by rodlymight at 7:48 PM on October 23, 2020 [1 favorite]


Wings Over the World.
posted by Rash at 9:04 PM on October 23, 2020


"The brotherhood of efficiency! The freemasonry of science! We're the last trustees of civilization when everything else has failed."
posted by The Tensor at 12:26 AM on October 24, 2020


This post's title, BTW, is a line from the song "The Shape of Things to Come" from fictional band Max Frost and the Troopers off of the "Wild in the Streets" 1968 OST.
posted by acroyear at 1:06 AM on October 24, 2020


Wasn't the helmet actually in lieu of a proper cockpit on his helicopter? I mean, not actually to keep disease out?

It's forty years since I saw it, but as I remember the end of the film, science is endangered by a mob who've been whipped up with crackpot consipiracy theories. What a ridiculous idea. Who could believe that?
posted by Grangousier at 2:22 AM on October 24, 2020 [3 favorites]


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