Zombie Cliche Lookout: Limited Consensus
Getting people to agree when they aren’t under the threat of being eaten by zombies is difficult enough. At the end of the world it’s bound to be damn near impossible. This is exactly why we need leaders, and the larger the group in question, the more important those leaders are. In a small group, a true democracy can work, although it will still tend to be a cumbersome way to run things. In a larger group, democracy simply cannot work. This is why, even in places like the United States where democracy is cherished, things are actually run through a limited republic instead.
If you want to get things done, you need to have a couple of people with the ability to make a decision for the group. That said, there is also the danger of investing too much power in too few people, the ultimate example of which is a dictatorship.
About this Episode:
I’m quite happy with that shot of Barb in the third panel. She looks dead serious, which is exactly what I was going for. She’s telling Clark that she’s happy he agrees with her, but that she wouldn’t have let him stop her even if he didn’t.
Discussion Question: Choosing Leaders
It’s the zombie apocalypse, and things have gone right to hell. You’ve managed to make your way to a small group of survivors, none of whom you knew before today. The group seems to be a pretty standard collection of the people you would run into on any given day: a couple blue collar workers, a few office drones, and a couple people that don’t work or are between jobs. Knowing very little about everyone, how would you choose who might be a good leader for the group? What sort of experience and personality traits are you looking for?
Well done, Dave! There are no typos for today! 😀
Awesome!
The mouseover text is interesting: For one, kicking a zombie’s ass won’t kill it, two, it’s quite obviously not directed at any of the group members, and if it really wants some effectiveness behind it, it really needs to kick zombie heads in, too! 😀
That being said, I get that it’s an euphemism for getting things done, so since action seems to be called for here’s a Discussion Question I think would make for interesting discussion:
How would you go about choosing weapons and defenses for people in your group? How would you go about preparing them for the inevitable onslaught of lots of zombies, all wanting a bite out of them?
Improvising in Barb and Clark’s case seems likely here, although they have a nice heavy tool chest available. What other items would you be likely to come across in a zombie apocalypse scenario that can make good zombie bashing weapons with relatively little wastage of time preparing them? 😀
It’s definitely a “get things done” expression.
Thanks for the discussion question!
Dave, who do I report issues with invalid certificates to? There’s apparently a site, serve.vdopia.com or similarly named, on this site, which keeps triggering my AV security alert because it’s certificate is invalid. Could you please look into this and see if you can get these advertising site issuers to update their certificates? It gets annoying to have to allow it all the time, after a while, and I have no clue why I’m being bugged about this, as this really should be an issue the site owner gets bugged about, because they’re the ones who can fix their out-of-date certificates!
I had no idea what Vdopia was; Google tells me it’s an advertising platform. I don’t use it, so I’m not sure why you would get those warnings on this site.
Has anyone else received these messages?
It is possible that you have a browser hijack. Basically your browser could have picked up a malware add on that make click bait appear.
Check you browser add ons, which are found in settings usually for all browsers.
Normally there shouldnt be any. Unless you put them there, delete or make them inactive. See if the problem persists
That’s a good though, SPS. I wonder if the error comes up elsewhere, or just on this site.
To be more specific I’m seeing this triggered when I go back through the archives to Episode 706, is anyone else seeing this when going back through the episodes to there?
I don’t know if there is a browser hijack, but I’m fairly certain if there was, my AV would be blocking the damn thing. I only see four add-ons, three of which have descriptions that seem to fit their purpose, and one that’s from Adobe but is disabled. As for Extensions, there’s only the AV software present. So if anything was hijacking my browser, it would be having a rather difficult time as my AV should be detecting it already.
As a followup to this, I found their site had a contact form so sent them a message about their invalid site certificate, although with the jumbled mess of advertising that is hidden on some sites I have no idea what is really going on here.
If I learn anything that might be useful I might drop Dave a PM with the details through BCN.
Altruism is the obvious choice to me… People thinking for the general interest.
Not being the leader so the others protect you, using them in your personal interest. I guess in a ZA it’s something that can be detected pretty easily and pretty fast, even if you don’t know people…
Damn that’s a great response.
As for the discussion question:
I would choose for leader….
ME!
For if they were dumb enough to let me be anywhere near the decision process for choosing a leader there is no way in heck Im going to be dumb enough to follow them. 🙂
Otherwise I would choose the calmest, and most rational person in the room reguardless of job, experience or training. A rational and down to earth person would be able to find a way to use those people who do have experience and training to the groups benifit.
One would hope at least 🙂
Hah!