Article II: More Zombie Basics

What We Can Learn From Zombies: An objective look at the world of the living dead and their reflections on modern American society.

Article II: Zombie Basics Continued

Last time we discussed some of the basics of zombie-hood. Lets continue on that for a while to help those who aren’t familiar with zombie lore, or more so, the widely accepted understandings of who/what zombies are.

I again recommend reading the works of Max Brooks, especially World War Z. Also watch Sean of the Dead, a hilarious movie, which actually gives a pretty good account of what a zombie infestation might be like, set to the music of Queen.

We spoke last time of a truer definition of zombies, their motivations, and very briefly how to stop them. How to stop zombies will represent a significant series of postings, so we’ll just be skimming the surface at best for now.

What I’d like to discuss this time is how zombies have come to exist and how they would be allowed to proliferate in numbers large enough to cause a wide scale “outbreak”. Now, I do prefer the term outbreak. Being a zombie is a disease. It is a disease that kills you, than forces you to walk the earth seeking live-human flesh, which serves no nutritional value to you whatsoever. Go Figure. Zombies are like teenagers going after convenience store nachos.

Now before we go farther into proliferation let talk about the creation story. Zombies are potentially created by a few different methods:

Science: Science, as we know it, in the hands of those who would prefer to use its glory and wonder for the purpose of war or profit, have been known to create some pretty nasty stuff. Napalm, Atomic Weapons, Anthrax, and of course Biological weapons. It could be foreseen that a bunch of G-men scientist all got together to create a weapon that would slowly kill the enemy and cause him to infect his comrades by through the transmission of bodily fluids via feces, blood, semen, and saliva only to find that while it does slowly kill them, it also brings them back as the living dead. (Yes, I predict in the early days of urban outbreaks, we should watch the streets for Zombie hookers. Swear to god, Zombie hookers will be the first sign).

Nature: Some guy is going to fuck a zombie monkey in the Amazon and it’s the eighties all over again. Hopefully a sexually repressed President won’t be in office so we can admit that people do weird shit for sexual pleasure, and not just get kicked out of office for doing said weird shit on the side. This could also happen if we come into contact with a spore or a bacterium that was previously uncovered and it spreads slowly through the world via out elaborate trans-continental transportation system. More on that in a few.

God: God created the word and this time instead of making an elderly man build a big ass boat using a measuring system queerer than Metric before he drowns all the heathens and sinners, he’ll unleash the recently deceased upon us in revenge for taking advantage of the free will he gave us. Those who can’t get into heaven will be set forth to eat the sinners and heathens. “Hey bill isn’t that your priest eating that little boy!? And look over there, a zombie!”

You can imagine a million ways zombies can come to fruition. My personal favorite has something to do with a combination of sleeping pills, dirty spinach, and the bird flu.

The honest answer is we may never truly know how zombies come to exist. While it may help us to understand the disease that causes “Zombiphilia”, if you will, it won’t truly help us to stop the disease. (I’m going to continue to use the term “Zombiphilia”, as I believe it represents a recognizable description of the ailment.) Much like AIDS and HIV, while in time we may be able to slow the march of the disease, we probably won’t be able to stop it. To that point, the science and medicine that has allowed people to live their lives, virtually without complication. The disease, most likely an exotic virus or the like, will not allow people to live a life of any quality. It will kill a person, and it will cause them to reanimate, eventually.

The recent discovery of the potentially disastrous “Bird Flu” has given a few insights into the transmission of illnesses throughout the modern world. The reason the aforementioned flu is considered to volatile is in much part due to the host which carries it. Birds are by nature migratory, therefore, any disease they carry will migrate with them.

During the plight of the Black Plague, the disease du jour was carried through out Europe on trade routes by infected rats. Imagine if you will, during the initial zombie outbreak, we are those rats. Except instead of a rat having to survive on a trip by boat for months potentially to go from one edge of the world to the other, a person can travel from New York to Los Angeles, heading east mind you, in about a days time.

A recent headline catcher involved a man with a potentially dangerous strain of tuberculosis who was able to travel across borders without being stopped. Another involved a man who was poisoned by small amounts of radioactive material, enough to kill him, that left traces of the stuff on the plane he flew in, exposing hundreds potentially to danger.

If you doubt the possibility of a disease of this, think of our power to stop people from crossing the border, or from eating tainted food, or getting poisonous children’s toys shipped to our homes. These aren’t all necessarily connected, but they do say that we are often all to aware of the threats against us, far to late for them to be stopped.

Two things, I will argue will next to doom us in the initially stages of the outbreak:

Not Understanding the disease or its symptoms.

People will not know what is happening to their loved ones. Hospitals and clinics may misdiagnose the disease due to inexperience and lack of information. People will essentially go about their business after being infected, spreading themselves throughout the world. And it will be a long time before a true understanding of the threat. Because this lack of understanding, we get point number 2.

The Government(s) will, almost without question, FUCK IT UP HUGE!! Can you imagine a response to zombies walking the earth as inept as the response to Hurricane Katrina; missing all the warning signs, poorly planning for basic needs, allowing the disintegration of order, temporary RETARDATION of the minds of civic leaders, denial of actual issues at hand by the federal government, late reaction time, poor execution of emergency planning, an evacuation efforts that leave all those without private transport and many with stranded or deadlocked in traffic, near complete breakdown of public health systems, so on and so forth.

It will be a bad time my friends a bad time indeed.

A good friend suggested a Zombie Glossary. I will be posting one shortly, as well as links, and references to source material and Zombie paraphernalia.

Next time: “Why I’ll probably just go ahead and shoot myself in the head if a Zombie outbreak actually happens”. More on what to expect when the pillars of society begin to crumble.

Article I: Zombie Basics

What We Can Learn From Zombies: An objective look at the world of the living dead and their reflections on modern American society.

Article I: An Introduction to Zombie Basics

Please take your time to read. I hope it is in some ways enlightening.


I’m a zombiphile, or one who is immensely enthralled with zombie lore, myth, theory, and science. Zombies are by far are the most terrifying and thusly interesting “monsters” in existence. Notice no quotes on existence.

Zombies, as I see them can be used as a barometer for out preparation, reaction, and tolerance for thinking of the most unthinkable, yet imminently feasible threats to our existence as living beings and as a nation. What I intend to do with these writings is to parallel the “fictitious” battle of man kind vs. the living dead, with our battles with everything from religious fundamentalism, global warming, and war, to being a huge tool and/ or a douche or douchette in the public eye. It is my hypothesis that we as a people, Americans that is, are in serious, serious trouble of losing sight, and thusly grasp of all the things that have truly made us great as a modern culture and a nation. So I hope that you will take something from this, and that it will help to spark discussions of your own. Please enjoy and feel free to comment.

I intend this commentary to be politically neutral, but, as I consider myself to be a “pragmatic progressive” as is the term en vogue, you may notice some obvious leanings to the proverbial left.

I will lead with this disclaimer; much of my “research” is based on the books of Max Brooks, author of the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z. I must give much credit to Mr. Brooks for furthering the study of Zombies and the potential threats they represent.

To begin I must argue that zombies are in fact not true monsters. A monster can be best described as a being that has a motivation, rational or not, that leads it to commit unthinkable, grisly, often murderous acts without the barriers of reason, compassion, self-preservation, or fear. Vampires are monsters. Wolfmen/ Wolfladies are monsters. Child-abusers are monsters. Hitler was a monster. Zombies are not monsters. Zombies are, well, zombies. Zach, a term borrow from Max Brooks’ “World War Z, is unthinking, unknowing, and unfeeling. It doesn’t really give a shit why its wants to rip you apart and devour your flesh. In fact Zombies actually CAN’T give a shit. They don’t have the mental capacity for such reason. Zombies eat because that’s what zombies do. They are much more like the Ebola virus than they are like the hoards of hellhounds they pulled out of Mike Vicks basement. The dogs are like “FUCK YOU! I’m gonna rip your face off!”, before they rip your face off. Zombies are like, “ “, before they rip your face off. They eat humans because it is what they are inherently programmed to do. Zombies and viruses ravage our bodies with our conscientious thought without a thought for a moment about the pain we are in, which is in turn why we must respect them and the damage they can inflict. I guess that’s the point I’m most trying to make, that monsters kill us because of the pain is causes while Zombies do so without so much of a glimmer of thought on the subject.

Zombies are really easy to kill with the right training and tools, or rather; A Zombie, in the singular, is really easy to kill given the right tools and training. Zombies, in the plural, actually, are potentially the most devastating natural disaster to reach the shores of humanity. Destroying the brain, as it is widely agreed, is the single means to stop a single zombie. I argue that you must destroy the entirety of the Zombie head to toe, but I’ll save that one for the boys at the think tank. The average sized American, armed with a medium weight garden spade, in average American shape, which is knowingly abysmal, can stop the average Zombie, given that they do not panic, and think through their situation. I want you to consider two potentially major issues with this scenario. 1.) People are prone to panic, and 2.) A Zombie may in fact be one of many, many, unyielding pursuers of your demise. Another thing to also consider is that we tend to prepare for disastrous events, six months or more after a disastrous event. Consider Katrina, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and the rise of sub-prime lending. Even with warning signs potentially beating down our doors (with Zach this may be literally), we tend to think of what we will wear to meet pretty betty or bobby at the bar, instead of what is necessary for our sweet pretty asses to simply exist for one more day. You can equate this on a larger scale, to our political leaders, thinking of what will get me into office, and not so much what is truly best for the people of my constituency. I agree, looking great for Betty can feel like it holds all the weigh of the world, but as some of us Californians can known, if you spend all that time preening and fawning only to walk outside to see your whole world burning to the ground, finding out what’s really important is so much easier, when you aren’t at risk of being, reluctantly to say the least, torn from the roster of the living.

Next Time: More on the Basics of Zombies.

This first entry is dedicated to David May, a man who shares my love for all things zombie, and who, as long as I’ve known him has never been afraid to share his passions with the world.