Dear Obsessive Fans of Zombies,
Piss off

Thanks,

Trevor









Ok, maybe thats the wrong way to say it. To those of you voodoo folks, who follow the traditional spiritual belief system and zombies being people controlled and used as labourers by powerful sorcerers ... fine. I've got no beef with you. Even though science for once works with a religious belief to prove the existence of your Zombi, I won't pick fights over that.

No I'm referring to the George Romero worshippers. First let me say, I'm well aware that this is NOT the first film of this style, there were dozens of movies released following a similar premise. Night of the Living dead, released in 68, was the progienator of the zombie apocalypse theory that has been repeated so many times, its starting to make me worry. Can no one come up with something actually nerve wracking, like talking trees, chickens taking over the planet, or more Terminator movies.


Now in doing some research in to the apocalypse theory, 3 common factors come to bear when dealing with Zombies in literature/film/gaming. Below each I will simply input my suggestion for ways to prevent this, that rational people will be able to handle.

1. Zombies, whatever form they take, are unprecedented in the setting of the story; the event that created them is unknown or has never happened before and it is not generally known how to effectively suppress them. The zombies cannot be controlled easily with available technologies.
~ This sort of a scenario would never be able to effectively occur in our society. Due to cynisism being transformed into a virtue, everyone already fears the worst about others and routinely keeps their distance. If anyone were to slowly shuffle towards me with an arm missing, dead eyes, or blood running from everywhere, my first though would not be "I wonder if they're ok". You might shout that first, but I personally think it'd be more akin to "Holy Fuck, I need to find a stick to smack this thing across the head" Most sane adults have seen enough bleak shit in their life to understand what is happening around them. Look at office or postal workers ... nowadays they know when shit's gonna hit the fan.

2. Initial contacts with zombies are extremely traumatic, causing shock, panic and disbelief and possibly denial, hampering survivors' ability to deal with hostile encounters.
~ While it is entirely possible that these reactions would be commonplace, the first several (shock and panic) go hand in hand with the traditional human survival mechanism, fight or flight. Now I'm not sure about you, but if I were to watch someone getting ripped apart by a horde of shuffling moaners, I'm not going to stand around. I'm going to high-tail it, looking for a place with thick doors. Now being a person of scientific reasoning, I would surely think of the latter two reactions of disbelief/denial and I'm sure others would as well. This, however, can easily be cured by the fusion of a firm open hand and the face of the disbelieving/denying imbecile. Problem solved, move along.

3. The response of authorities to the threat is slower than its rate of growth, giving the zombie plague time to expand beyond containment. This results in the collapse of the given society. Zombies take full control while small groups of the living must fight for their survival.
~ This logic pisses me right the hell off, to be honest. This is basically stating that the people that we pay with our taxes are too fucking dimwitted to realise that people are going batshit nuts and trying to eat people, which in turn is causing them to go batshit nuts and try to eat people. Are you serious? Has our respect for law enforcement or military service men and women dropped that far??? Now I'm not suggesting we use the swine flu as an example of government response time, but in a time of emergency, military/police forces can mobilize in minutes, trained men and women specializing in dealing with dangerous situations. So sure the governments may not be too speedy in getting the ball rolling, however, we live in an age of information. Most people that I know of, as soon as they wake up, will be connected to some form of news, whether it be via TV, radio, or internet, and considering that even if local services are not available, international more than likely will be, not alot of folks will be caught in the dark, even if politicians are sitting with their thumbs up their asses.

Now lets take this a step farther and talk about the weapon of choice arguement. Most people with the slighest survival instincts, will have some form of weaponry in their home. Whether it be as simple as a baseball bat or something further along like a gun, most people I know of have some form of armament in their homes. Now couple this with the knowledge available and this more or less will put the zombie apocalypse out of business.

Now upon further reading into the subject I stumbled across this golden coil of dog shit stating: According to a 2009 Carleton University and University of Ottawa epidemiological analysis, an outbreak of even Night of the Living Dead's slow zombies "is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly. (http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf)

I read through this, laughing my ass off at the various means in which these doctoral students attempted to rationalize a spreading pattern of outbreak, through assorted means and equations, missing the desire for survival coupled with the instinct of the Susceptibles labelled therein. Not to mention, military firepower, police firepower and local militia firepower, in addition to the aforementioned Susceptibles. I appreciate the effort folks, but take those other variables into account before you make more panicky dimwits more panicky and dimwitted.

Anyways, I'm going to quote someone much funnier than myself here. In his Left4Dead review, Ben Crowshaw made the following observation: "I guess it's just that the breakdown of society is attractive to people with absolutely no social skills; and while you may have to hide from slavering mutants your whole life, at least the big boys will never again tape you into a bin and kick you down the stairs."

Why is it that people don't concern themselves with the possibility of an army of sexy asses attacking from someplace that we don't understand.










In an interview with Ain't it Cool News, The Zombie Survival Guide author Max Brooks commented on the fans of zombie apocalypses: "I don't know what's scarier, the fact that zombies could rise or the fact there are actually people out there that can't wait for it to happen. So they can just start loading up with guns and get on their motorcycles..." Written as a joke, interpretted seriously.


I guess now he knows how the first interpreters of the Decalogue felt when they read it aloud
Reader #1 "Ok the rest seem to make sense, how does number ten pan out"
Reader #2 "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife nor shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor"
Reader #1 "Wait, what? So it says that I'm not allowed to think my neighbors wife is hot? Or wish my cows were as healthy as his. That has to be a mistake. Maybe you translated it wrong"
Reader #2 "Nope. Thats what it says."
Reader #1 "Well, fuck it, its almost lunch time. Lets just leave it there, I doubt anyone will believe it anyways."

Well enough of the blasphemy for one day, I'm off to battle aliens on a faraway world, which sure sounds like a great movie ... yes thats it. In closing, I'll leave you with the words of wisdom the Forch gave to me ... there is no "I" in team, but there is an "I" in pie. And there's an "i" in meat pie. Meat is the anagram of team... I don't know what he's talking about.