OP-ED: Zombies, cicadas and UFOs: There’s nothing we can’t handle after this year of COVID-19 Tricia Bishop The Baltimore Sun (TNS) They’re not locusts, but they might as well be. Billions of beady-eyed cicadas digging their way out of the soil in 15 Eastern states this spring — after 17 years of creepily tunneling around underground — definitely feels like a biblical-type plague on the horizon. A plague on top of the plague we’re already in, that is. The insects aren’t even the only thing we have to worry about emerging from the ground after this long, bleak pandemic winter of our discontent. The walking dead are also making a comeback this year, or so we’re told. Nostradamus, that 16th century French astrologer who made predictions in poem form for fun, prophesied a zombie apocalypse in 2021, according to those who are in the know about this sort of thing (aka: internet posters).