Zombie Cliche Lookout: Kids in Danger
There’s no quicker and easier way for a writer to raise the stakes than by putting a cute kid or animal in harm’s way. The vast majority of us don’t want to see anyone hurt, but when it’s someone innocent and defenseless like a young child, it really gets to us. As a non-zombie example, let’s look at a movie I absolutely hate, Independence Day. During the early parts of the movie, where the hostile aliens are destroying major cities and slaughtering people by the tens or even hundreds of millions, we’re all expected to feel a great sense of relief when a dog manages to leap to safety, right before being incinerated. I get it, I didn’t want the dog to die either, but it sort of puts the horror of all those people being burned alive by the aliens on the back burner.
The child/dog thing comes up in zombie fiction all the time. The Walking Dead had it both ways. In the comic, they subverted the trope (and that’s as much as I’m willing to say), but on the show they’ve played it relatively straight. There are even examples of it being used really well in service of the plot, like in The Last of Us.
About this Episode:
Ted has been a world-class coward since day one of the comic, but he’s also been concerned about his family the whole time. I’m enjoying making his cowardice and love for his family fight to the death. So far, family is winning.
Discussion Question:
Today’s question comes from BrickVoid, who asks “In what way could the zombie’s mindless mentality of always pressing on be exploitable to the survivor’s advantage? If these zombies are simple-minded, or imitate such behavior, then there’s a very good chance strategies exist that can deal with it and turn it to the defender’s favor.”
I think this is a pretty interesting one because it gives us the opportunity to talk about traps and snares that exploit known zombie behavior. I can’t wait to hear your awesome ideas.
Typo alerts:
“While I won’t say nobody (there are some sick people out there), the vast majority of us don’t want to see anyone hurt, but when it’s someone innocent and defenseless like a young child, it really gets to us.” This sentence has issues with the flow of the sentence, particularly if you take the bracketed section out. It needs to be rewritten properly, I myself would remove the entire bracketed section, plus “While I wont say nobody,” so it reads as follows:
The vast majority of us don’t want to see anyone hurt, but when it’s someone innocent and defenseless like a young child, it really gets to us.
It’s implied already in the sentence construction that there are sick people out there and doesn’t need additional information saying nobody would do such a thing.
“We’re all expected feel a great sense of relief” add “to” between “expected” and “feel”. 😀
Good call. Fixed both.
Good topic! A predictable opponent is a huge advantage in conflict. I guess the first thing you need to do is figure out what riggers a zombie’s predatory response. You will recall that freshly killed deer have been used in TWD to lure zeds.
Movement, body heat, sight, scent etc. Then use this information to make appropriate trap and or distractions.
Traps
The Zed Motel
Using either shipping container, dumpsters, or semi-trailers you construct a very simple trap based on fish/crab traps. The zeds have to walk up a gentle ramp to get at the bait but before they reach it they drop off the edge and cannot climb back out. Once the traps full you either dispatch them with long spears or set them on fire. (flesh is very combustible) Since the zeds wont mind the purified remains of their brethren, you dont need to clean out the trap before reusing it.
The Lemming
For this trap you need a deep hole like an old quarry or mine shaft or cliff. Simply suspend some bait out over the dropoff where the zeds will fall off the edge while trying to reach it. If the fall isnt high enough to finish them they should be messed up enough to make them easy to finish.
The Cuisenart
This one is tongue-in-cheek but only slightly.
If you have on and can spare the fuel just add a commercial wood chipper to the the Zed Motel. Zeds make a lovely mulch for the garden.
Hah, awesome suggestions. “The Lemming” is what sprung to me mind. Dig a hole, lure in some zeds, and occasionally burn it.
Heh. Some lovely zed ideas here. I was hoping someone wouldn’t steal my idea, and it looks like they haven’t, yet. So here it is:
A deep pit, covered with a circular lid that naturally tends to stay flat, and which is just big enough for a zombie to wander across it, and which is designed so that no two zombies can step on it at once. The lid is suspended over the pit by a rotation point at the diameter of the circle. Toad traps here in Australia where I live are that simple, they’re genius, I’m pretty sure zeds wouldn’t be much smarter! 😀
If you want to kill the zeds, either a Cuiesnart, which would probably cost fuel, or an incinerator setup in a water boiling configuration, gotta have burnable fuel to boil water to turn into steam, now where’s the next zed coming from? 😀
Very cool. So I’m picturing a whole that’s covered with a lid that’s only fixed in two places, on opposite sides. So when a zed steps on one, it pivots and drops the zombie into the hole. Sounds pretty damn good to me.
Haha, the dog scene in Independence Day, always get a good laugh from me. By the way, Roland Emmerich did it again in “2012” with a Chihuahua… I think it is meant as a joke more than a serious piece of story, his movies don’t make any sense anyway.
Huh. I have a vague recollection of watching 2012, but don’t remember that scene. But, then, I don’t remember most of that movie. I’m not a fan of Emmerich.
2012 is definitely forgettable, it is just fun to see how far he is willing to push the envelope. I can watch this and still have fun with it, unlike a Michael Bay movie that will just give me a headache.
It’s definitely a different kind of bad movie. Michael Bay seems to have a more identifiable style, and I actually liked Pain and Gain.
I have not seen Pain And Gain. When mentioning MB, I meant it more to compare the big stupid destruction movies like the Transformers series. The big difference is that with MB everything is so serious that it becomes insulting. At least the Emmerich movies to take themselves too seriously.
I was pleasantly surprised with it. It doesn’t follow the real story terribly well, but it hits enough of the high notes.
You are right about the unearned sense of self-seriousness on display in Bay movies. The jokes are also terrible.
I grew up on Transformers, enough, at least, that I can just switch my brain off to the bad jokes and write it up as humorous. Although, I have to say that while the incident with the fuel cap is out-of-character for a Transformer, I can stand the rest of the Michael Bay films, and still watch that scene being played out without losing what’s actually going on. Each to their own, I guess. 😉
Yes indeed. I certainly like my own trash; I’m not judging.