Zombie Cliche Lookout: Live Together, Die Alone
Cooperation is an essential part of story of human domination of the planet, so it goes without saying that it would continue to be important in the zombie apocalypse. People, after all, can only do so much on their own, so teaming up only makes sense from a practical standpoint. Community is important.
Of course, it’s not always as simple as all that. Teaming up with someone sounds great, as long as that other person has complimentary skills and is decent to be around. But what happens if their skillset doesn’t offer much to you? What happens if you just plain don’t like them? Cooperation doesn’t sound so great then, does it?
About this Episode:
I feel like I’ve been dragging this arc on a little bit, mostly because I’ve really been enjoying this bit of the story. Since I know everyone is eager to check in with some other characters, I thought I’d do a slightly longer episode and wrap up this arc. On Monday, we’ll be checking in with Cheryl and Stewart, whom we haven’t seen in quite a while.
Discussion Question: Zombie Fiction Versus Zombie Reality
This one comes from BrickVoid, and I think it’s a great one: “How similar would you expect a real zombie apocalypse situation to be like fictional writings and TV shows portray it to be?”
Since I didn’t come up with this question, I’m going to take a stab at it. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume that the zombies behave about as we’d expect, slow shambling walking corpses.
I think it could go one of two ways. First, because the public at large is very well educated at dealing with zombies, I think the whole thing might just get nipped in the bud immediately. On the other hand, it might make people go the other way and be in denial. Did they wander onto an indie film set? Is this some sort of prank? They don’t know, and they might not figure it out until it’s too late.
If zombies really showed up…. we’d go down. First and foremost because I don’t think real zombies could be put down by destroying (what’s left of) their brain…. the brain is what controls us in life… not in death… some of these zombies don;t even have a connected nervous system (for example after they’ve been stabbed in the neck or something like that) and still move their body parts… how is that possible if these body parts are being controlled by the brain…
Besides; Why do you think the world is well educated at dealing with zombies? You are biased in that opinion because you are surrounded by people who know about fictional (!) zombies…
And now for something completely different… I still think it could work; she reluctantly goes with Sam… Sam ‘saves’ her… a little Florence-Nightingale-effect… then the ‘shipping’ part and they ride of into the sunset together… Just look at Sam’s; “you know you’re mine baby!”-face in some panels, ha ha 😉 😛
Hah, I am quite biased, aren’t I? I just going on the mainstream popularity of zombies over the last decade or so. Just look at how many people watch The Walking Dead. All those people know how to kill zombies.
Also, I’m glad you find that face creepy; that’s exactly what I was going for, and exactly why I love it.
After watching the public’s reactions (or lack thereof) to the “bath salt zombie” out of Florida a while back, I’m confident that we’d be screwed. Not enough people would take the situation seriously enough, or too many would be in outright denial, for things to go well.
We wouldn’t even be able to rely on the government, judging from the way they’ve responded to and handled other disasters in the recent past. The military *might* be slightly more effective against the zombie hordes than in the movies, but only if they’re allowed to act independently of government meddling and political motivations*. Still, the average Joe in a major population center would be totally boned.
*I’m talking about the US government and military being an American. I have no idea how the governments and militaries of other nations would react to and handle a zombie outbreak.
Some excellent points here. Just look at Katrina. After that, it’s hard to think the government could react with the swiftness and coordination that would be necessary.
Now did you read this yesterday:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/13/exclusive_the_pentagon_has_a_plan_to_stop_the_zombie_apocalypse
Extract:
“Buried on the military’s secret computer network is an unclassified document, obtained by Foreign Policy, called “CONOP 8888.” It’s a zombie survival plan, a how-to guide for military planners trying to isolate the threat from a menu of the undead — from chicken zombies to vegetarian zombies and even “evil magic zombies” — and destroy them.”
Looks like the pentagon really has a plan for when a ZA should occur. I really LOL-ed because of the evil magic zombies, vegetarian and chicken zombies! 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzKExIxArIA
Yeah… we’d be going down very fast judging by this video 😉
Dude, you ever BEEN to NYC? Zombies are the LEAST disturbing thing your likely to see on the streets.
Haha, Yes I’ve been there a couple of times… and I have to admit; you’re right haha 🙂
I’ve never been to NYC. I really need to get there some day.
Oh my god that video is hilarious! Nice share!
That creepy smile of Sam is disturbing at least.
Awesomely disturbing.
I think we wouldn’t even survive if zombies look like what they in movies, expecially if there was an outbreak around or on Holloween (or other countries equivalent). We would probably think it’s a costume parade or a prank. If and when you were to figure out it was real, you’d most likely already be dead. And anyone who didn’t know, a laboratory (in one of the southern states, I believe) managed to make a virus and infected a rat. It made it canibalistic (more than rabid animals) and had no pulse, yet could preform basic skills, and was violent in general. However, the makers of the virus (who were extremely stupid for wanting to make it) forgot to figure out a way to kill something already dead, and the last time I heard it was impossible to kill the damn thing (other than burning it into oblivion). So technically, the zombie virus exists. I think this was either 2012 or 2013.
Also, there was recently repots of “zombie bees” in the Northeast of the US.
Haha, what a coincidence that you mention zombie bees today… (and Okay, this is sorta a plug, sorry Dave); one of them bit me yesterday; http://foolishlego.com/?p=4192
Nice shot, FL. What’s the zombie bee eating?
It’s eating a piece of muscle / meat from my thenar 🙁 I’m happy to be alive today…
Hah. I had to google “Thenar”.
Are the zombie bees the ones infected with that weird fungus like in Planet Earth?
I find your story about a man-made virus which turns ordinary rats into violent, canibalistic rats without a pulse who can not be killed and only burned to get rid of them… kinda unbelievable.
Do you have a (legitimate) source of this story? I searched the Internet but could not find any mention of it.
The closest I found was something about the research of Robert Sapolsky in Stanford on the parasite Toxoplasmosis in rats which can influence behavior, but that is it really…
How about this one?
http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2006/01/17/the_return_of_the_puppet_masters.php
It’s a longish article, so I’ll note down what I made of it here.
The Toxaplasmosa Gondii alters the mind of the rat and rewires it to go seeking predators (ie. cats) by the smell of urine odor that a cat leaves to mark territory. Rats usually stay away from this for obvious reasons, but it seems the infected rat has a newfound objective to be eaten by the cat, in order to complete the Toxaplasmosa Gondii’s life cycle.
And it could potentially go up the food chain.
Good thing cats aren’t on the menu in any parts of the world…
Very interesting, but it’s quite a bit different than what’s described about. I see no mention of cannibalism or lack of a pulse. Still, very, very creepy.
Yeah, that’s something like what I found (You can find a link to download the original article about research like this by Robert Sapolsky here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17404235 ). But it’s nothing close to what Nom Zoms describes imho.
I too would love a citation on this zombie rat story.
Other than that, I think you make a good point about people assuming it’s a prank. Just look at all the Zombie Walks, Zombie Pub Crawls, Zombie 5Ks, etc. we have all the time.
I might have gotten some facts mixed with the article I was talking about and another one about a similar thing (a similar virus that killed but allowed the animal to move for about 30 minutes afterwards). If so, I apologize, it was published around 2012-2013 as I said before, but I do remember it was from a news organization like NBC. So I didn’t make anything up (as you saw in the articles), but I do believe that I might have mixed up articles, and if so, I do apologize.
I know the feeling, Nom Zoms; it’s definitely happened to me before. No worries.
Haha, that happens to me on (probably) weekly basis… 🙂
I imagine zombie to be some kind of a curse brought to us in order to bring back a bit of balance.
Something like a very fast world wide high scale infection (like middle ages’ plagues but planet wide). Something that strike,for unknown reasons, more in highly developed country. Nothing religious here but it could sounds like this (à la “The Day The Earth Stood Still” but involving zombies, not aliens). Something we could learn from once we finished deal with or be completely destroyed by it if we don’t change a lot of things in our way of life.
Very interesting. I like how you talk compare it to The Day the Earth Stood Still. The original movie was just incredible, and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it.
Looking back at this story arc, I find myself wondering how Dave stopped Emma from pulling the trigger! 😀
Nicely done, sorry for the late comment, I’ve been getting tired eyes lately, must be too much watching this darn computer monitor! 😀
He learned manipulation techniques from Abe… He is enjoying a much better result than his “mentor” though…
Hah! This is fantastic!
No problem on the late comment, BV. Thanks for the awesome discussion question.
Whether we would survive in a zed apocalyspe I think would depend on where we are. Large cities like New York, Tokyo, London and Moscow probably won’t make it. Rural places where it would be hard for herds to form and people are more self sufficient probably could.
I think the two Koreas stand the best chance. They are reasonable isolated being a pennisula and both have large armies with mandatory draft so most adult males are military trained. Only problem could be the North is so dependent on outside food they might invade the South just to eat. Then again the zeds are what might finally get them to reunite.