Zombie Cliche Lookout: Time for You to Leave
While having more people around in a zombie survival situation certainly has its benefits, knowing when someone isn’t working can also be invaluable. Granted, no one wants to lose out on the extra helping hands, but if one person is dragging down group morale or putting people in danger, they’re likely not worth keeping around.
The funny thing about breaking off a relationship is that it’s often better to do this sooner versus later. That way, they have less time to become a part of your life and – in a zombie survival scenario – an essential part of your survival strategy. This can be difficult, however, because you generally also want to give people as many chances as you can to prove or redeem themselves, if possible.
About this Episode:
Cheryl has generally been a pretty even-keeled character. She has a long temper, and one of her primary goals is to encourage everyone in the group to work together and get along, because that’s best for everyone’s survival. Despite that, it looks like we can only push her so far.
Other News:
I’m working – albeit very slowly – on the site redesign. As part of this process, I want to really optimize the site in every way. As part of this process, I have been evaluating what people are doing on the site, and have identified one area that takes up a lot of space, but gets almost no attention. I’m talking, of course, about the Forum. It was a fun experiment, but I think it’s been a failure. It’s clear that people are much more interested in communicating through comments than the forum. Because of that, I’m going to be removing the forum from the site in the very near future.
Discussion Question: Changing Society
Imagine that we are a good long ways into the zombie apocalypse. Humanity got knocked down, but wasn’t completely taken out. Eventually, we started coming back, taking out the zombies and reclaiming the world for the living. As society begins to reform, what sort of changes do you think we’ll see? What groups will become powerful? Which will be marginalized? What sort of rights will people demand, and what freedoms might they willingly trade for protection?
Only one typo today, Dave: “This can be difficult, however, because you generally also want to give people as many chances as possible to prove or redeem themselves as possible. There are one too many “as possible” in this sentence, remove one of them! 😀
Good spot; I hate when I do that. Fixed!
Great that you’re working on your site-design. After two years I finally figured out how to get my site running on a local server on my MAC (using MAMP). I even considered mailing you, but tried it myself one last time 🙂 Turns out it was pretty easy too. So now I can finally upgrade my themes and fully test them before putting it on my live site, I hadn’t updated the theme since two years because it broke my (shabby under the hood) design.
Good luck! Every time I start on a redesign I understand why webdesigner is a study and full-time job. Very difficult to get things consistent, recognizable and not go overboard with all kinds of gimmicks.
Now I’m doing a little redesigning myself, nothing much really, but just some stuff to make it easier under the hood and a little more consistent across the site as a whole.
Thanks, FL! I’ve definitely got my work cut out for me, and it’s going to take a while since working on the redesign is going to be a lower priority for me. Regardless, I’m quite excited about it.
Regarding your site, you can always reach out to me and I’ll help as much as I can. Louise from Tranquility Base is also a developer who has helped me a time or two.
On a brief side not looks like Cheryl and Inez are suffering from what I like to call “Queen Bee Syndrome” Call me a politically incorrect misogynist pig all you like, but put two even moderately strong female personalities together in a male dominated environment and watch the sparks FLY.
I think a new society will look a lot like colonial America once the dust settles a bit. You will have groups of highly independent and self reliant people banding tighter for mutual interest. A persons social position in the group will be dependent upon their skills and abilities. There may be some groups that are big enough to have an organized and dedicated leadership structure, but for the most part political and administrative classes will have vanished.
Sure there will probably be a few despots around in the beginning, I can certainly imagine a “Woodbury” or two popping up where people will submit to a questionable leader in order to be safe. And I imagine that there will be more then a few instances of roving bands of people who get their hands on military equipment and survive by raiding and pillaging.
But at the same time, just about anyone who has survived to that point will be some degree of badass in their own right. I remember reading once in a book on he western migration in America that the Hollywood tales of bands of outlaws terrorizing small towns were bunk because the vast majority of the men in the West at that time were hardened veterans of the civil war and not about to be cowed by a few punks with guns.
After a few years and the immediate danger is less of a factor, I think society will slowly rebuild along the same lines that established it across North America and the remoter areas of Europe.
Great thoughts here, Damage. I’m going to tackle the “Queen Bee Syndrome” idea first.
You disclaim yourself a bit to avoid being call a mysigonist, but I think many feminists would agree with you. I recently read Sheryl Sandberg’s excellent book, Lean In, and she addresses this concept directly, and actually uses the exact same language you do. Crazy, eh?
Okay, circling back to your second point here, I really love the picture you paint. This would be an amasing backdrop for a zombie story. I’m not talking about a typical zombie survival yarn, but something more along the lines of A Song and Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), where characters face external threats (zombies) as well as internal ones (politics, wannabe dictators, etc).
Story Line: Because if those “family of origin” issues, temperementaly, I juggle extreme loyalty with swift disconnect. That is, I am extremely loyal, even onto death, to a handful of people in my life. Wife, children, and some others. I also have a very clearly defined set of populations I would “take a bullet for.”
Conversely, I also “divorce easy.” Outside that inner circle, I can engage and commit to relationships, for years if need be, but under certain conditions, I will disconnect, move on, and not look back. Of course I would miss them and wrestle with the loss, but when the time comes, I’m out of Dodge. Yeah, it confuses the shyte out many around me, but those in the “inner circle” get it.
So, I fully relate to the scenario above: “We are done. There is the door, either you take it, or I will. Parenthetically, when the point is reached, I wouldn’t bluff or try to emotionally blackmail. And no, I wouldn’t simply kick the person straight into harm’s way, but once divorced, me and mine are gone. Which probably means that either way, my tenure in the zeepoc is literally short-lived.
I completely understand, Luis. I am largely the same way, although I have a harder time “divorcing”, as you say.
Are you like me in that you have very few very close friends, but a lot of people you consider to be in that inner-circle? That confuses the hell out of my wife, and took her a while to get used to when we were first dating.
Spot on, Dave. I’m really gregarious at many levels (my professions require me to be a communicator), which attracts many, but at the end of the day, doors close, blinds shut and, “it’s now time to go home folks.” I’m not sociophobic, I just like alone time. 🙂
Right there with you, Luis. I appoint myself fairly well socially, but I find if exhausting.
Yeah it is! Especially since I haven’t read her book. May have to add it to my wish list. Gender is a part of peoples personalities, that’s just a fact. Ignore it at your peril.
Yessir. I quite liked the book, although I also consider myself a feminist, so your mileage may vary.
Discussion Question: Unless the zeepoc has led to extreme environmental degradation, say radiation, biological agents and such, I do not see “mere” zombie pandemic as an extinction event. Scavenging little weasels that we are s a race, we will survive.
The first crisis will be the shock if the initial pandemic.
Second major crisis will be the breakdown of technology and infrastructure
Third, the ancillary environmental degradation by death and decay.
The last crisis will be, your question: We have survived, now what? I’ve always felt that our social reconstruction model would be the Dark Ages of Europe. I see the zeepoc as the Black Plague writ large.
Our pockets of survivors would consolidate into a feudal system congregating around prime agricultural real estates. Survivor bands will consolidate into tribal systems. Tribes will come together for the greater good: ward off marauders, ongoing zee threats, work the land. Alpha tribe leadership will create confederacies leading to micro kingdoms and so forth.
Sadly, history shows us that once we reach a certain population size, environment nor zees will be our greatest enemies, but each other. Heh! Seems that we I am making a case for a recursive historical system.
Absolutely classic approach right here. It reminds me of a movie I saw a few years back that was sort of like a Mad Max take on your description here. It wasn’t a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it had some really cool ideas.
Ha. ”Misogynist”
As a frequent Tumblr user, I’ve seen that word thrown about a lot more than it needs to.
Yes indeed, it gets bandied about quite a bit.
I wonder if there will be some sort of midnight women’s conversation in the middle of the night, before Inez actually leaves in the morning a few episodes later, if she does leave in the morning?
I still feel as if there’s some way for Inez to redeem herself, because if she goes out into the wilderness around the cabin, she’s probably going to encounter far worse people than this group and she’s suddenly going to realize what an idiot she’s been to them. That is, assuming she survives by herself, that I do see being a big problem, though. Does Dave have some sort of alternative plan for Inez should she not immediately find a new group to be terribly afraid of? 😉
Tumblr.com really has been taken over by radical feminists (or ‘feminazis’ :D) which is why we see it there a lot more often.
A lot of people claim that these people must be good, because they only want equal rights for both men and women…
Except they actually don’t. You spend time listening to what they have to say, and it just comes off as really hateful. 0/10 would not recommend