Zombie Cliche Lookout: Ready?
Zombie fiction, and indeed horror in general, is chock full of characters getting injured and then having to try to power through the pain to get to safety. The oldest, hoariest example, of course, is the young woman who falls while running away and hurts her ankle. Of course, that’s been a cliche for so long that inversions of the trope have practically become cliche at this point.
Nevertheless, injuries are an all-too-common part of life, and in the high risk atmosphere of the zombie apocalypse, they’re only going to become more common. So that trope about a character hurting themselves and having to soldier on anyway? Well, that’s probably going to be pretty close to reality.
About this Episode:
Having a LEGO minifig help another LEGO minifig to walk is a lot tougher than I imagined it would be, and I figured it would be a real pain in the ass. Suffice it to say, I’m going to have to minimize this technique in the future.
Discussion Question: Coping with Injury
This one hits pretty close to home. As many of you probably recall, I broke my leg quite badly this winter (two broken bones, two surgeries, nine screws, and a big metal plate). It was, as I’m sure you can imagine, both very painful and very inconvenient.
What you probably don’t know is that, when I fell, I was all by myself outside. That means I didn’t have anyone to help me. So what was I to do but stand up and walk back in the house? And that’s exactly what I did. Did it hurt? Oh you bet your ass it hurt.
I hope this little anecdote demonstrates what normal people can do when they have to. I could either cope with the pain and get inside, or stay where I was and hope someone came and helped before I got hypothermia. And I say “normal” here because that’s what I assume my pain tolerance is; essentially, I don’t think I’m that tough.
With all that in mind; how do you think the average person could cope with injury in a zombie survival situation? Let’s say they’ve sprained their ankle while fleeing zombies? Could they conquer the pain (possibly with the help of adrenaline) in time to escape?
Typo alert, Zombie Cliche Lookout, second sentence: There is no such word as “horriest”. Dave, I suggest using any of these: “most horrible”, “most horrid”, or going to an online dictionary site (I myself use dictionary.reference.com, YMMV.) and looking up horrible then clicking on the synonyms link above to look for words that fit better with the sentence you’re trying to construct. 😀
When you fix that typo, one way to check the fix is to see how it’s usage works. For instance, “A most terrifying example is” works because it’s been properly constructed with verbs, adverbs, adjectives, etc.
On to more typos:
Same section, second paragraph: “all-to-common” to–>too 😉
Same paragraph, second sentence: “having the soldier on” the–>to How did you make that typo, Dave? 😉
Horriest is is typo, but not of “horror”. It’s supposed to be hoariest.
Everything else is fixed.
As far as how I made that mistake? God, I have no idea.
Funnily enough, I didn’t think of that word, although it certainly exists, and fits. 😀
To be fair, it’s not a terribly common word.
Regarding the first typo above, you could also use “most terrifying” it depends on what you’re trying to describe. It is, however, tricky, though I seem to recall that there are sentence construction checking sites out there that might be able to help out if you’re having trouble finding the right words to say, like the dictionary site I referred to. There’s also sites that quite literally check sentence construction for you. 😀
The issue here is just a misspelling. I was going for hoary, which is a little-used word that means old and overused.
Hmm I don’t know what the mouseover text is saying because there isn’t any, and I’m on my PC so I don’t know what is stopping it from rendering here. 😀
I would go with “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be!” if you don’t have any, though! 😉
Hmm, okay, there is mouseover text there, I just saw it when archive diving to check something. My bad, I think some page rendering is breaking itself somehow here. I’ll have to keep an eye out for other occurrences so I can see if I can find what’s causing it! 😀
This one is my fault. One of the many updates to the site changes the way the mouseover text is setup. I simply put it in the wrong spot out of habit. It’s fixed now.
One question I do have is this: Is Dave going to just leave Inez’s abandonment of Lou hanging in the air, or will this come back at a later date? Whilst I suppose he might possibly have zombiefied and been a useless zombie that just moans and groans but doesn’t actually move, it would indeed be interesting if we get a better look at things from Inez’s point of view. 😀
I’m not really sure at this point. I like the idea of leaving it hanging and letting people draw their own conclusion. That just seems more realistic to me.
However, I’m still flirting with different ideas of how I’m going to develop Inez’ character. If I go certain route, I probably will need to address what happened from her perspective.
I must say that even though I’m not a huge fan of the new format, it really speeds things up for mobile.
Hey Noms, this isn’t really a “new format”, just some updates to the theme I’m using. It’s temporary, but it’ll probably be around for a bit. I think I’ll write up a blog about what I’m doing on the back-end, because there have been a few questions about it.
Dave
Had a similar experience a few years back. Fell in my driveway while unloading my snowblower from my truck after I took it out of storage. Broke my right leg just above the ankle when I landed on one of my ramps. Called for help a couple of times but when it was clear no-one was coming I got up and hobbled back into my house. Kind of infuriating to come crawling in though the door covered in snow and panting only to have my kids just kind of look at me funny and ask if I could take a look at the router because the wireless wasn’t working. (you just wait until your kids get a little older)
I don’t think I was in any immediate danger, probably could have lain their for a couple hours before hypothermia became a real danger and someone would have come looking for me eventually, but a man has his pride.
I have read stories about Inuit people, injured while hunting alone out on the ice, literally wearing the ends of fractured leg bones smooth by walking on broken limbs because they knew they didn’t have an option. It was move or die.
Adrenaline is great stuff, but as anyone can tell you, it doesn’t last very long and usually leaves you feeling even more exhausted. In the end I think it would come down to two things, your realistic understanding that you really don’t have a choice, and your will to survive. I think that a lot of people who “give up” in a survival situation have been programmed by works of fiction that someone or something will swoop in and save them at the last moment. They don’t really believe that their survival is purely dependent on them.
Although you do bring up another very interesting point. I knew a hunting guide many years ago who admitted that he always carried some illegally acquired synthetic opioid pain killers in his pack. His logic was that if he or a client were ever injured and in a situation where they needed to travel to get to help then they could use them to take the edge off the pain. Might be a good idea to make acquiring some of these a priority in an EOTW situation. Shouldn’t be too hard since a lot of people are on them these days. Course that opens up while new area of potential problems as far as potential addiction is concerned.
“Dad, once you’re done playing in the snow would you mind fixing the wi-fi?”
lol.. kids.
Hah! Got to love it.
Oh man, that’s an incredibly similar story, Damage. At least my kids were in bed when I did it, otherwise I probably would have gotten similar questions.
Uh oh do I sense a potential romance in the works 😀 !!!