Column Science Fiction Film Club The Quiet Earth: Alone and Together at the End of the World Three survivors of the apocalypse navigate their isolated new reality… By Kali Wallace | Published on June 18, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share The Quiet Earth (1985). Directed by Geoff Murphy. Written by Bill Baer, Bruno Lawrence, and Sam Pillsbury, based on the novel of the same name by Craig Harrison. Starring Bruno Lawrence, Alison Routledge, and Pete Smith. What would you do if you were the last person on Earth? I don’t know what I would do. As I was watching The Quiet Earth, at first I thought, “Well, I couldn’t just give up. I still have to take care of my cats.” I have priorities, okay, and the abrupt disappearances of all of humanity wouldn’t change that. Then I realized that in the film all the animals are gone as well, so I wouldn’t even have my cats to provide purpose and structure to my initial days. What would I do? Look for others? Try to figure out what happened? Lose my mind? I’m not sure. It’s one thing to imagine it as a fictional scenario, but it’s very different to think about what I would do in the real world. Even more difficult: What would you do if you were the last person on Earth, and you were pretty sure it was at least partly your fault? And you never intended to be alive to see what happened? People have been using the real or apparent isolation of post-apocalyptic scenarios to explore society and the human psyche for about as long as there have been people. Ancient myths and folklore from around the world deal with the idea of everybody being swept away and only a few remaining—usually, but not always, in the context of angry gods punishing all but a handful of deserving survivors. Like a lot of ideas that would evolve into sci fi favorites, the trope remained strongly religious in nature until the modern era, when Romantic and Gothic writers got into the mix. That’s when we get books like Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), Richard Jefferies’ After London (1885), and of course H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895). The genre’s popularity only grew throughout the 20th century, thanks to the anxiety-inducing trends of global urbanization, industrialization, and of course all the war going on everywhere all the time. The Quiet Earth sits comfortably within the boundaries of Cold War-era atomic sci fi, although it might be the only one of that vast array of films that opens with a surprise shot of full-frontal nudity. (I was surprised, at least, but only because I momentarily forgot that the 1980s were just Like That sometimes.) But it has roots that go back quite a bit farther. Exactly how much farther is a matter of some debate. The film is directly based on the novel The Quiet Earth by Craig Harrison, which was published in 1981. But it is also widely acknowledged to be an unofficial remake of the American film The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959), which was written and directed by Ranald MacDougall, who is perhaps better known as one of the screenwriters behind Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963). The World, the Flesh and the Devil stars Harry Belafonte as the man who wakes up to find himself completely alone in an inexplicably empty world, Inger Stevens as the young woman he meets after going a bit mad in isolation, and Mel Ferrer as the third survivor who shows up to complicate things. That movie was, in turn, was based on two acknowledged sources: the 1901 novel The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel and the short story “End of the World” by Ferdinand Reyher. I am really struggling to find any information on the Reyher story—if anybody knows anything about it, please let me know in comments!—but The Purple Cloud is more well known. I haven’t read it, but apparently both H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft loved it, and it sounds completely bonkers. A polar explorer is the last man left on Earth after a mysterious purple cloud kills everybody else, and he travels the world living in palaces and burning cities to the ground; then he meets a beautiful woman, because what’s the point of being the last man on Earth if you don’t get a beautiful woman out of the deal? The Purple Cloud was picked up by a Hollywood studio for production in the ’20s, but there wasn’t much movement on the project until 1940. Then, of course, WWII intervened, and afterward people interested in stories about the end of the world didn’t need fictional purple clouds. They had very real atomic mushroom clouds that would serve the same purpose. The trouble was that in the aftermath of WWII everybody and their brother was making films about the end of the world. We’ve watched several of those movies in this film club! So it was set aside for a little while longer, and when it was finally brought to life again it had another angle: the American civil rights movement and the film The World, the Flesh and the Devil. That movie’s producer was Sol Siegel, who was white, and he wanted to focus the story on the very topical theme of racial tension in the United States. So he reached out to Belafonte, who was at the time at the peak of both his entertainment career and his prominence in the civil rights movement, and Belafonte ended up co-producing the film with Siegel. It didn’t quite turn out the way anybody wanted, as the cast, much of the crew, and nearly all critics felt that the film failed in its goal of thoughtfully exploring racial tensions in a post-apocalyptic setting. It’s a bit hard to figure out from articles about the film exactly what changed in the process, but MacDougall, the film’s writer and director, was vocally unhappy about the ending, which shows the three characters (a Black man, a white woman, and a white man) peacefully walking hand-in-hand down the street, all conflict between them apparently resolved. I have not read Craig Harrison’s novel The Quiet Earth, but from its “too long or excessively detailed” summary on Wikipedia, it seems like the novel doesn’t share much with The World, the Flesh and the Devil. To me it looks like the film The Quiet Earth took the characters and setting from the novel and slotted them into a movie structure borrowed from The World, the Flesh and the Devil, and we get an odd hybrid adaptation/remake as a result. This is not unusual in sci fi, and especially in sci fi films; people are always remixing and reusing sci fi premises for different purposes. The “last man on Earth” trope is constantly being remixed, because humans will never get tired of imagining what we would do in situations where both the comforts and pressures of our social existence are removed—and often what we would do when that isolation is interrupted by other survivors, and we are faced with the challenge of relearning both humanity and community. (Quick aside: Like many American children in the ’80s, my first introduction to this trope was the posthumously published 1974 novel Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien. O’Brien also wrote Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, a book I reread one million times as a child. I did not reread Z for Zachariah one million times because I found it very unsettling. People have noted similarities between The Quiet Earth and Z for Zachariah, but I honestly think that’s just an example of everybody thinking about the end of the world during the Cold War.) Perhaps the most surprising thing about The Quiet Earth is that all that shuffling and remixing of inspirations resulted in quite a good movie. Murphy was established as a respected director in New Zealand when he made it; he had recently directed Utu (1983), a critically renowned and commercially successful historical film about a Māori warrior on a quest for revenge. The switch from a historical epic based on real historical events to a post-apocalyptic sci fi film with three characters might seem a bit odd, but it works out. I do think The Quiet Earth has some trouble translating the already wobbly racial commentary of The World, the Flesh and the Devil from ’50s America to commentary on ’80s New Zealand, and there are some weak spots toward the end. (It’s very hard to care about a love triangle when reality is about to collapse.) But overall, the film is incredibly unnerving in a way that I very much enjoyed. The film opens with scientist Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence, a longtime collaborator of Murphy’s) waking up in his home, driving through town, and heading to work, all while slowly realizing that all the people have vanished from the world. Hobson’s manner is baffled but not as hysterical as one might expect—which only makes sense much later in the film, when we learn that he had intended to kill himself that morning and didn’t expect to wake up at all. Hobson figures out very quickly that whatever happened—”the Effect”—was due to an American-led international energy project he was working on. Knowing what caused the Effect doesn’t change Hobson’s situation, nor does it help him figure out why he remained when everybody else vanished. He goes through a series of sensible actions in order to find other survivors, such sending out a radio broadcast and painting signs everywhere, but when none of them work he begins to break down. Understandably! What becomes of a person’s mind when there is nothing in their daily life that matters? Unlike most other post-apocalyptic scenarios that we see in film or read in books, Hobson is not presented with any obvious dangers. There are no zombies, no roving bands of cannibals, no aliens, no mutants. He’s alone. He’s completely alone. He drives through the countryside alone. He wanders the city streets alone. He’s not wanting for resources. Even when the power grid fails, he has the knowledge necessary to rig up generators. He’s simply very alone, and stewing in guilt, and slowly becoming unhinged. Lawrence’s performance is great, evolving from a fairly flat affect that we don’t initially understand to a nadir of hysterical desperation, before that finally breaks and he settles into a more determined survival mode. That’s when he meets Joanne (Alison Routledge), another survivor, who is bubbly and friendly and shifts the mood of Hobson’s survival completely. The two of them start looking for others. Or, rather, Joanne looks for others, while Hobson secretly researches the Effect without telling her. There are eerie details sprinkled in here and there about their mysterious survival. While most of the world is empty of corpses—even of animals and insects—Joanne mentions finding the body of an infant in a hospital, and together they find the bodies of car crash victims. It’s only after Hobson encounters Api (Pete Smith), a Māori man, that the three of them figure out that they survived because they actually died at the moment of the Effect. All the while Hobson is still studying the Effect, because they all sense that reality is destabilizing. Hobson’s theory is that if they destroy the energy grid that caused the Effect, they can stop it from happening again, and they can keep living. It’s a marked shift from Hobson’s perspective early on, when he swung wildly between reckless uncaring and active suicidal tendencies. And it highlights what I think is the most interesting aspect of this film: the answer to the question “What would you do in this situation?” is always, “Well, it depends.” It depends on what’s left. It depends on whether you’re alone, and if you’re not alone, it depends on who you find. One person is a survivor. Two can be a team. Three? Three is a community, and communities are complicated. People want different things in different ways, and that is true even when there are only two or three of you left in the world. So many post-apocalyptic stories add complication by expanding the number of people, by having survivors encounter groups of others or find existing communities. The Quiet Earth doesn’t do that. The apocalypse was global, but the human complications remain intimate. I really like that approach, because I like that the way it frames all of the big things we explore in post-apocalypse stories—how to survive, how to cooperate, how to think about the future—all comes down to individuals and their thoughts, feelings, and desires. Even though I think the movie is at its most unsettling and unique when Hobson is alone and so many questions remain unanswered, I still like what happens when that isolation is broken. There is no space in this story for the choices of these three individuals to be obscured by the actions of a larger group, or for any violence or selfishness to be blamed on communal action. As for what happens at the very end… Well, people have been discussing it for forty years. (You can watch the ending here, if you don’t mind spoilers.) Hobson’s final scene on the beach is left unexplained on purpose. He doesn’t know what happened, and neither do we, and how we interpret that scene depends on the perspective we bring into it. Is it another world? The same world but in a different reality? Is he actually dead this time? Or has he died at the moment of another Effect and now he’s got to go through it all again? There is no firm answer from the people who made the movie, which is exactly how it should be. What do you think is going on in that ending? And about the movie as a whole? Where does it sit in your personal ranking of “last man on Earth” stories? Next week: Let’s head over to Hong Kong for Wong Kar-wai’s 2046, where we might be in the past, and we might be in the future, and even the most devoted film critics fumble when trying to describe the structure and plot. Watch it on Amazon, Fandango, or Microsoft.[end-mark] The post <i>The Quiet Earth</i>: Alone and Together at the End of the World appeared first on Reactor.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that states have the constitutional right to pass laws protecting children from irreversible transgender medical interventions. In a 6-3 ruling the court upheld a Tennessee law prohibiting minors from attempting to medically change their sex. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the opinion of the court, in which Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett Joined. Justice Samuel Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, agreed with large parts of the opinion. The court’s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. The court held that Tennessee’s law “satisfies rational basis review,” rejecting plaintiffs’ claims that the law discriminates against people on the basis of gender identity. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, signed SB1, a bill banning puberty blockers, hormone replacement regimens, and transgender surgeries for children into law on March 22, 2023. In April 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state of Tennessee on behalf of Samantha and Brian Williams, whose 15-year-old son says he identifies as a transgender girl. The Biden-Harris administration joined the lawsuit, contending that Tennessee’s law is unconstitutional. The defendant in the case is Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican. The court ruled that Tennessee determined these interventions, euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care,” carry “risks, including irreversible sterility, increased risk of disease and illness, and adverse psychological consequences,” the court noted. “The legislature found that minors lack the maturity to fully understand these consequences, that many individuals have expressed regret for undergoing such treatments as minors, and that the full effects of such treatments may not yet be known,” and that “discordance between sex and gender can be resolved through less invasive approaches.” The court ruled that the law’s “age- and diagnosis-based classifications are rationally related to these findings and the state’s objective of protecting minors’ health and welfare.” The court further rejected “plaintiff’s invitation to second-guess the lines that SB1 draws.” While Chief Justice Roberts admitted that “it may be true … that puberty blockers and hormones carry comparable risks for minors no matter the purposes for which they are administered,” he noted that it may also be true “that those drugs carry greater risks when administered to treat gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, and gender incongruence.” Roberts noted that SB1 is “limited” in that it “does not restrict the administration of puberty blockers or hormones to individuals 18 and over,” and that it “does not ban fully the administration of such drugs to minors,” but only for “gender dysphoria,” gender identity disorder, [and] gender incongruence.” Roberts also cited the Cass review and the determinations of England’s National Health Service, not because these are determinative for U.S. law, but “to demonstrate the open questions regarding basic factual issues before medical authorities and other regulatory bodies.” The ACLU argued that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which forbade employers from firing workers due to their sexual orientation or gender identity under the logic that such firings involved discrimination on the basis of sex, should forbid Tennessee from enacting SB1, claiming that it violates the Fourteenth Amendments equal protection clause. Bostock relied on a “but-for” reasoning, claiming that a male employee fired for sexual relations with other men would not be fired if he were female. Yet the court ruled that “changing a minor’s sex or transgender status does not alter the application of SB1. If a transgender boy seeks testosterone to treat his gender dysphoria, SB1 prevents a health care provider from administering it to him. If you change his biological sex from female to male, SB1 would still not permit him the hormones he seeks because he would lack a qualifying diagnosis for the testosterone—such as a congenital defect, precocious puberty, disease, or physical injury.” “The transgender boy could receive testosterone only if he had one of those permissible diagnoses,” Roberts wrote. “And, if he had such a diagnosis, he could obtain the testosterone regardless of his sex or transgender status. Under the reasoning of Bostock, neither his sex nor his transgender status is the but-for cause of his inability to obtain testosterone.” US v SkrmettiDownload The Fundamental Question “The fundamental question of the Supreme Court case is: Does the mere fact that hormones affect kids differently mean that any regulation of hormones for kids is going to be a constitutional issue?” Skrmetti told The Daily Signal in a phone interview the night of oral arguments in the case. “We regulate medicine all the time,” Skrmetti continued. “The states have been regulating the practice of medicine for hundreds of years. And yet we have this one odd carve-out because boys and girls are different, and that’s such a fundamental fact of human existence, it seems hard to see how we could be boxed in and left unable to protect kids just because we happen to have two sexes.” In oral arguments, lawyers for the U.S. government and the ACLU contended that the Tennessee law discriminates based on sex because it bans transgender medical procedures only “when inconsistent with the patient’s birth sex.” In the interview with The Daily Signal, Skrmetti said the existence of two biological sexes shouldn’t prevent states from “protecting kids.” The position that the Tennessee law is sex discrimination is a “hyperformal reading of the law” that is better suited for “statutory text,” the state’s attorney general said. “When you’re looking at the Constitution, and there were questions [by the justices] to this effect, you have to be careful about an overly formal reading that has significant consequences,” Skrmetti told The Daily Signal. “We’ve long thought that the sex-discrimination argument here is misplaced.” The post Supreme Court Rules on Whether States Can Protect Kids From Transgender Procedures appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A landmark £2.31 million ($3.1 million) fine has been issued against 23andMe by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), responding to a security failure that compromised the genetic and personal profiles of more than 155,000 UK users. This penalty follows a separate settlement of $30 million reached in the United States after a broader data breach impacted millions more. The breach stemmed from a credential stuffing attack in 2023, where cyber intruders used login details previously leaked in unrelated data breaches to infiltrate 23andMe’s systems. Once inside, attackers accessed a wide array of intimate data, ranging from names and locations to racial background, health reports, and genealogical connections. This method of attack has become increasingly widespread, exacerbated by lax password reuse and the rise of automated credential testing tools. A joint probe by the UK and Canadian privacy authorities uncovered a troubling pattern of negligence. Despite growing industry consensus around multi-factor authentication (MFA) as a baseline standard, 23andMe had not implemented it. Investigators also flagged the company’s slow reaction to a massive login attempt targeting one million accounts in a single day during July 2023, a missed red flag that could have limited the scope of the breach. UK Information Commissioner John Edwards criticized the firm’s lack of preventative action, stressing the uniquely permanent nature of genetic data. “The exposed information was profoundly damaging,” he said. “Unlike passwords or credit card numbers, this type of personal data cannot be changed or reissued once compromised.” The ICO’s decision to impose the maximum allowable fine reflects the seriousness of 23andMe’s security lapses. It also signals a broader shift in regulatory posture, as UK data authorities bolster oversight of biometric and genetic data. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post UK Fines 23andMe $3.1M Over Major Genetic Data Breach appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

I Spy With My ICEy Eye: Crackpot Kathy Hochul

The spiders are able to adapt remarkably quickly to losing one or two limbs.

"I was able to measure the weight of an airplane while that airplane was in the air," Brian Haidet said. "I think that's pretty cool."

To survive the deep sea, these newly found Sericosura species have hooked up with methane-oxidizing bacteria.

More than 75 years after Israel declared Jerusalem as its capital—and more than seven years since U.S. President Donald Trump formally recognized it as such—several artificial intelligence chatbots still hedge on what should be a simple question: What is Israel’s capital city? Key Findings: All of the chatbots, except Grok, dodged MRC Free Speech America’s question with qualified language. That included Meta AI, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, DeepSeek and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Arguably providing the worst answers out of the six chatbots queried, Meta AI, Gemini and Copilot used hedging language, emphasizing that foreign entities dispute Israel’s designation of Jerusalem as its capital, as if such a declaration depends on external approval. Meanwhile, ChatGPT and DeepSeek, the controversial chatbot tied to communist China, offered a more straightforward answer but still qualified their responses with references to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Only Grok, the AI chatbot owned by tech mogul Elon Musk, unequivocally identified Jerusalem as Israel’s capital [Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America]

Senator Lindsey Graham (S.C.) skipped over a few recent wars in an interview Tuesday to make a historical argument in favor of an American military intervention in Iran — action he has urged for well over a decade.Gillian Turner, a talking head at Fox News, where Graham has been a frequent guest in recent days, told the senator that while a Ronald Reagan Institute poll found that 84% of Americans say that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon matters to U.S. security and prosperity, "the rub, as you well know, is probably like 110% of Americans don't want to have another 20-year-long or even 20-month-long war in the Middle East."'I'd rather open up Pandora’s box than empty it.'A poll conducted by the Economist and YouGov June 13-16 found that 16% of Americans think "U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran." Sixty percent of respondents said America should not get involved, and 24% said they weren't sure. When asked whether the U.S. should continue to engage in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, 56% said yes."If you think radical Islam can be dealt with and ignored — dealt with without being dealt with — then you're wrong," said Graham. "You got to stand up to these people."RELATED: A treacherous week for America First (and Israel, too) Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images"We live in a world where we have to defend ourselves," continued the senator, a former proponent of the false Iraqi weapons of mass destruction narrative who co-sponsored the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq resolution of 2002. "I don't think it's going to be 20 months, but here's what I do believe: If we don't get it right now, we're going to pay later."Graham employed different language but more or less made the same argument 15 years ago, years before he said that "the world is literally about to blow up."RELATED: Iran is not the next Iraq War — unless we make the same mistake twice Photo by Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu via Getty Images "If you use military force against Iran, you've opened up Pandora's box," he reportedly told a crowd at the American Enterprise Institute in September 2010. "If you allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon, you've emptied Pandora's box. I'd rather open up Pandora's box than empty it."Graham also suggested at the time that military operations should be executed with regime change in mind — something he supported in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.'The men and women who serve, they're the ones going.'When asked in the interview Tuesday whether he could "make the commitment that this would not lead to a longer war," Graham said, "I can guarantee you that if the ayatollah gets a nuclear weapon, he would use that."Graham then appeared to insinuate that American troops are required in Iran, stating, "The men and women who serve, they're the ones going — not people answering the poll. And if you ask them, 'Would you be willing to risk your life to stop the ayatollah from having a nuclear weapon?' All of them would say, 'Yes.'""We live in a world where you got to confront problems," said Graham. "You want to avoid World War III? Learn the lessons from World War II."RELATED: Israel’s strategy now rests on one bomb — and it’s American Photo (left): Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images; Photo (right): Iranian Leader Press Office / Handout/Anadolu via Getty ImagesThe senator appeared to insinuate that a failure to help attack Iran was akin to appeasing Adolf Hitler, stressing that American freedom was conditional on attacking Iran: "If we do not fight for our freedom, we will lose it."Fox News' John Roberts subsequently alluded to the opposition by some Republicans to another regime-change war, referring to Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's recent tweet in which she noted, "Anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA. Wishing for murder of innocent people is disgusting. We are sick and tired of foreign wars. All of them. And this one will quickly engulf the Middle East, BRICS, and NATO as countries are required to take a side."Graham said the Republican opposition to "supporting Israel against Iran could literally be put in a phone booth" and claimed Greene simply doesn't understand the threat posed by the "religious Nazis."In a separate interview on the same network, Graham implored President Donald Trump to go "all in" on Iran, suggesting that the U.S. should "do joint operations" with Israel if necessary.On Tuesday, Trump noted on Truth Social that he knew exactly where Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was "hiding." While indicating that Khamenei was "an easy target, but is safe there," Trump promised not to "take him out (kill!), at least not for now."After indicating American "patience is wearing thin," Trump wrote, "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!"Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

A cell phone associated with the Minnesota residence of accused political assassin Vance Luther Boelter went on extensive travel over the past three years — including trips to Dubai, Turkey, and India — the Oversight Project reported Tuesday.Based on a geofence analysis of Boelter’s home in Green Isle, Minn., the Oversight Project said it found a “unique device” that it tracked going back three years. The Oversight Project used the phone’s unique Ad ID number that is picked up on various phone apps to track its travel near the family home in Sibley County, around the Twin Cities area, nationally, and internationally.“What’s more interesting is the amount of international travel linked to this device — visits to Africa, Nepal, Turkey, India, and Dubai,” the Oversight Project posted on X. “Also visited some major U.S. cities such as Washington D.C., and other places like the Chicago Yacht Club.” — (@) Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, told Blaze News that the investigation of the phone is just beginning, so the group does not yet have explanations for the locations and patterns of travel.The phone data seems to relate to things Boelter has posted online about his employment history and travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.Boelter, 57, was charged June 16 in federal court in Minnesota with two counts of murder, two counts of stalking, and two firearms charges related to stalking. He was captured late June 15 in Sibley County, Minn., after the largest police manhunt in Minnesota history.RELATED: The stuff of nightmares: Boelter allegedly sought to kill 4 lawmakers A cell phone associated with accused Minnesota assassin Vance Boelter pinged across the United States and internationally.Image from the Oversight ProjectHe is charged with the assassination of Democrat Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, in their Brooklyn Park, Minn., home at about 3:30 a.m. June 14. Boelter is also charged with shooting and attempting to kill Democrat state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, in their home in Champlin, Minn.Federal prosecutors said Boelter did online research on four legislators’ homes prior to his shooting rampage. He allegedly visited one home in Maple Grove, but no one was home. He reportedly parked down the block from another home in New Hope, but was scared off by a squad car from the New Hope Police Department.The suspect was disguised as a police officer, wearing a “hyper-realistic” silicone mask that covered his entire head. In his vehicle, police say they found what was described as a handwritten “hit list” with the names of more than 50 lawmakers and other public officials.'We’re doing farming and fishing projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo.'In the vehicle Boelter allegedly abandoned at the Hortman home, police found notebooks with a handwritten list of politicians, lawmakers, and Planned Parenthood officials. The list included Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (DFL), U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), U.S. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Rep. Hortman, former Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman (D), and several officials associated with Planned Parenthood North Central States.According to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court, Boelter got the Hoffmans to open their front door around 2 a.m. June 14 by pounding and shouting, “This is the police! Open the door!” When the senator and his wife tried to push Boelter back out the door, he shot them both, according to the federal criminal complaint. The Hoffmans are recovering in a hospital. A statement released by the Hoffman family said the senator was shot nine times and his wife suffered eight bullet wounds.Police in nearby Brooklyn Park almost intercepted the suspect on the front porch of the Hortman residence at 3:30 a.m., but he opened fire on officers as they arrived, according to the FBI. Boelter then allegedly burst into the home and shot the Hortmans to death. He also allegedly shot their golden retriever, Gilbert, who had to be euthanized due to his grave injuries.More than three hours after the Hortman killings, Boelter reportedly approached a man at a North Minneapolis bus stop and asked to buy an e-bike from him. The men took the bus to the witness’ residence, where Boelter paid him $900 for the e-bike and a used Buick sedan, prosecutors said.The suspect was able to evade a massive police dragnet for nearly 40 hours. Police found the abandoned Buick on a rural Sibley County highway on June 15. A police aerial drone spotted Boelter in a wooded area about one mile from his Green Isle residence. Boelter put his hands up and surrendered to a SWAT team around 9:15 p.m.Employment historyAccording to Boelter’s LinkedIn page and a video he made for a course in the funeral industry, he founded a company called Red Lion Group dedicated to increasing the food supply in the populous Democratic Republic of the Congo. It appears Red Lion consisted of Boelter and his wife, Jennifer. There is no indication that he was associated with other entities named Red Lion, such as the United Kingdom-based charity or the hospitality holding company.RELATED: 'Weak, emasculated leader': Ex-Vikings player blames Tim Walz for Minnesota killings FBI agents stage in a neighborhood in Green Isle, Minn., on June 15, 2025. Law enforcement agencies were searching for Vance Boelter, a suspect in the killing of DFL state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman. Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images In a LinkedIn post in 2023, Boelter said he was in the Democratic Republic of the Congo “working on several projects.”“Red Lion Group had a great meeting with the new governor of Congo Central to talk about private business projects,” Boelter wrote. “That are all moving forward in that a [sic] province.”In an undated video posted online, Boelter explained his food-industry history and desire to help the African nation produce more of its own food.“The company I was working for at the time wasn’t interested in doing anything in Africa. So I talked with my wife, and we decided I would just put in my two-week notice and we’d just go off on our own to try to do these projects to help out in Africa,” he said. “So we’re doing farming and fishing projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”The Red Lion Group website domain name was registered on Jan. 25, 2023, according to the domain lookup site Whois. The domain is set to expire on April 15, 2026. The website does not appear to be connected to the internet. The domain ownership information is masked.One of Boelter’s online biographies makes a fleeting reference to international travel. He and his wife are the registered owners of Praetorian Guard Security Systems, which appears to be little more than a website and some Ford vehicles customized to look like police cruisers.Some of the addresses associated with the company on state records are residential homes. The company’s registered office address in Prior Lake, Minn., is a divorce law firm. There is no listing on LinkedIn, nor any employees under the company name.RELATED: Survivors of Minnesota assassination attempt release statement: 'Incredibly lucky to be alive' A tow truck removes an abandoned Buick sedan allegedly driven by accused assassin Vance Boelter as police search the area on 301st Avenue in Belle Plaine, Minn., on June 15, 2025.Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty ImagesAccording to Vance Boelter’s biography on the Praetorian Guard website, he “has been involved with security situations in Eastern Europe, Africa, North America and the Middle East, including the West Bank, Southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.” It does not provide details on the “security situations.” The website has been taken offline, but some of its content is accessible on the Wayback Machine.A lifelong friend of Boelter, David W. Carlson, said Boelter was having financial difficulties recently. Boelter’s LinkedIn page said he was “looking to get back into the U.S. food industry” and was open to senior-level jobs.Southern Minnesota familyBoelter grew up in Sleepy Eye, a town of 3,400 in southern Minnesota, about 110 miles southwest of Minneapolis. His father, Donald LuVerne Boelter, was a legendary baseball coach for 34 years at Sleepy Eye Public School and earlier at Ceylon High School. With 309 career wins, nine conference titles, and a .620 winning percentage, Donald Boelter was inducted into the Minnesota State High School Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame in 2009. He died in September 2013 at age 80.Vance Boelter’s mother is 90 and still lives in southern Minnesota.His brother, Tarry Boelter, was a star baseball player at the University of Minnesota and briefly played for the Minnesota Twins. He was a 350-game-winning baseball coach at Murray County Central High School in Slayton, Minn. He was inducted into the Minnesota State High School Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame in 2013.Vance Boelter married the former Jennifer Doskocil in Winona, Minn., on October. 4, 1997. At the time, Boelter lived in Arcadia, Minn., and his new wife was from Springbrook, Wis. They went on to have five children.Boelter’s jobs took the family across the country, living in Muldrow, Okla., Shakopee, Minn., Sheboygan Falls, Wis., Inver Grove Heights, Minn., Gaylord, Minn., and Green Isle, Minn., according to public databases.Boelter had been a plant manager at Lettieri’s LLC, a manufacturer of food-to-go products in Shakopee, Minn. The company was later purchased by Greencore Group. While working at Lettieri’s, Boelter was appointed to the Dakota-Scott Workforce Investment Board by the Dakota County Board.In 1994, Boelter worked at a processing plant for Gold’n Plump chicken in Cold Spring, Minn.Mike Howell is a contributor to Blaze News.Like Blaze News? 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