Zombie Cliché Lookout: I Get by with a Little Help from My Friends
Surviving in the zombie apocalypse isn’t going to be a cakewalk, so you can put those dessert-related carnival game thoughts out of your head right now. No, it will likely be more like Thomas Hobbes described in Leviathan: nasty, brutish, and short. And that’s exactly why you need a standup friend of two to have your back when things get nasty, or even just a well disposed stranger. Otherwise, every time you get in over your head, you’re well and truly screwed. With a buddy, you at least have a fighting chance. And with two buddies, well, I’ll let you do the math.
Having a few allies can help in other ways too. If you’re good at locating food and supplies, but can’t read a map to save your life, having a friend with a those skills is going to save your ass nine times out of ten (actual ass-save ratio may vary; not a guarantee).
There’s also the notion that people are social animals, and companionship will help us cope with stressful situations. You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Of course there are always trade-offs. More people in your group means more supplies are necessary to keep everyone going, including more vehicles when it comes time to move. It means more noise made. It means the potential for in-fighting and challenges for leadership or other social statuses. Is the trade-off worth it? Most would say so.
Discussion Question: Your Zombie Apocalypse Super Team
Do you have a group of friends, family, or coworkers you’re planning on surviving the zombie apocalypse with? How did you go about choosing them? Do their skill sets compliment and round out your own, or do you simply know you can count on them when things get rough?
I’ve said this in a past discussion, but I would use some of my schoolmates and maybe one or two I have a crush on. I would either convince them to come with me or I would save their lives at the last second so they owe me big time and have to do…anything…I say.
So, to you, the end of the world is a good time to meet women? Awesome!
I’m waiting for Dave to post the “About this Episode” part. 😀
Not really much to say about this one.
Well, you could discuss why this one has many angles and the other comics don’t seem to have nearly as many angles! 😀
Hey man, I like interesting shot angles. I’m a nerd. These things appeal to me.
Hey Dave, I need my regular fix of ‘About this episode’! 😀 You could always talk about how you go about planning and preparing shots, and deciding which will make the final print and which get discarded for one reason or another! 😀 Or you could talk about how you’d script the episode, lighting, anything for the newcomers to webcomic making! 😉
See, I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic here or not.
Are you putting together a webcomic?
I will offer this up: the panel in which the zombie is getting bonked in the head required the use of stickytac on the zed’s feed to keep him standing on the smooth surface. In the original photo, you can see a greenish-yellow blob of the stuff through the leg-hole, but I Photoshopped that out.
Do you remember a previous comment of yours where you mentioned you need to remember to include certain things because people expect them to be there? 😉 As to whether I’m being sarcastic, that depends on what you remember! 😀
On the webcomic thing, yes I was putting one together. But at the moment that’s on hold, as I might be moving IRL sometime in the forseeable future, and the last thing I want to do is make a webcomic scene then suddenly have to space-compress or rebuild the whole thing because of less space than I originally had.
I’m curious, what’s the webcomic you’re planning about?
I’ll shoot you a BCN private message one day, maybe. 😉 But I need for it to be kept private, okay?
Oh yeah, I can certainly understand that.
As to the question of whether the male EMT got bitten, he seems a bit unsure! I’m not half as uncertain about his companion!
Definitely ambiguous. That can happen when things get chaotic. People have walked away from accidents and the like, never realizing they were badly injured.
In this case, I’d expect it to be pretty clear. His uniform looks pretty hardwearing, I doubt a zombie could bite him through it. That just leaves hands and face, and I think a bite there would be pretty obvious.
I don’t trust people. Not all of them at least. If I have to have a group it would be around the size of five people…
Trust is the most important thing in any relationship.
So is the guy in the orange shirt also a zombie or another survivor we haven’t seen yet?
As to who I would take with me…. ideally I’d be grabbing my family. There are also some friends whom I plan to try and grab hold of too. And in the ideal world, I would starting or joining a survivor caravan to hold off the tide of undead and shambling horde and those who’ve gone bad and are going to be the little Shanes and other twisted monstrosities that an Apocalypse can bring out are going to be tossed to the wolves.
That is the ideal world and what I would to do. But I’ll be practical too. If I couldn’t save family, that would just have to be it.
The guy in the orange shirt we’ve only seen briefly getting into the ambulance. We’ll get more of him on Monday.
I have thought long and hard about who would make the best group in a zombocalypse, but saying it all would require a lot of context and more words than I’m willing to type.
Summarising it, there are a fair few people. I would probably take a fair few of my friends, although they generally share my less than altruistic view on zombocalypse survival, and there are some useful traits. One of them would be pretty good at looting, one is fairly ruthless (like I said, we’d be less than altruistic) but still generally grounded, one is essentially the smart guy character archetype as a real person, the list goes on.
I like this “less than altruistic” euphemism. I’m totally using that.
I wouldn’t stick with so many people, some are a bit weird. I asked someone what they’d do in the event of a zombie apocalypse, they said this:
-Kill all zeds in the street outside
-Take all the girl zeds
-Hide them in his garage for future…usage?
Oh dear 😛
I think I’d probably avoid that guy… holy shit.
Did you explain to them it doesn’t matter what sex the zombie is, they’d still get bitten? I’m with Dave here, I’d avoid him, too! 😀
I would take: family, friends(church & school), fighter (trainer or street.), and travel on small fuel efficient cars.
My family & friends do well under pressure, I trust them, the fighter is if we can find him.
e keep him as advisor so that he doesn’t try to take over.
all in all, about 15 people.
15 is a pretty big group. That’s a lot of logistics.
it’s actually honda be 3 groups of 5. My group bring the most trusted and the others, not as much
Yeah, I could get by in an EOTWAWKI situation (not that it would be pretty). My friends are all survivalists, or ex-military, and gun-nuts. We’re all independent, educated, prepared, and trained.
The question I pose is, by “zombie apocalypse” are you speaking literally, or figuratively? That is, are you aware of the Canadian study that showed a real-life zombie outbreak would last about fifteen minutes? Basically, between the rednecks and the military, the poor zombies would all be dead by breakfast.
Now, if by “zombie apocalypse” you mean “complete societal breakdown”, I am on board.
What factual basis would they have for it being that short? 😀 We haven’t yet had a real-life zombie apocalypse, so it would be rather odd for it to last such a short time! 😉
Yeah, do you have a link for this study? Sounds pretty damn interesting.
Went to The Google and here are a 3 of articles on a study by some Canadian students. First one is a report; second one is the conclussion of the report; third one is the mathematical model. Bo, ist this what you were referring to?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8206280.stm
http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/~jfeder/Journal_Club_files/ReichZombiePresentation.pdf
http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ted/203S10/Projects/Zombies/Zombies.pdf
Yeah, the study was a mathematical analysis. I remember reading a good deal of it, and understanding all of it but the math. Their conclusion, using epidemiological models: Zombies dead by lunch. 😉
The conclusion of the paper is, kill all the zombies, quickly, or they will kill you. In my experience, this is the likely scenario: quarantine areas, then kill the zombies.
I feel like this is an extremely important quote: “It’s imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else… we are all in a great deal of trouble.”
If they aren’t dealt with quickly; if people don’t understand, or think the infected can be killed, then things could go to hell in a handbasket.
Again, it’s not zombies that worry me. Zombies are only a euphemism for any REAL EOTWAWKI event (currency collapse, H1N1 pandemic, etc.).
Zombies are fun, because the “heroes” are always grossly unprepared for anything untoward.
Are you a Zombie Squadder, by any chance?
I am not. I am familiar with their page; but I do not post there (not that I don’t subscribe to the philosophy).
I hope someone doesn’t get a girl crush–Stewart will be pissed xD
He does seem like the jealous type, doesn’t he?
It could lead to a big thing later on in the comic…
Perhaps so.
Just testing the new avatar
trying again
Yes! it worked!
it might take a few more hits to the face
I think I’d try to gather as many people as I could find, find a good place and start to build a small fort. I visualise a zombie outbreak differently than many, I picture parallels to the early colonial period, with the exception that zombies are generally less dangerous than the natives were. I would try to carve out a decent chunk of clean land, and keep it clean. I would recognise that there is much more to survival than just killing the enemy, as important as it is to be able to do that. I wouldn’t turn people away because they don’t have what it takes to be a soldier, there’s a lot of work that needs doing besides combat.