I’ll admit it: I’ve been binging The Walking Dead again.
If I want to pretend to be an intellectual, I’d say it was research into human nature in the face of an apocalypse. I have not recently seen evidence in real life that suggests that people will act differently than their fictional counterparts if they were faced with a zombie (or any kind of, really) apocalypse. Zombies in TWD might be the overt threat, but the real monsters are other people. The Witcher games and books, fantasy tales about a “monster hunter” mutant named Geralt of Rivia play the same tune. Horrifying creatures are a real threat, but the true monsters are us.
Following my “intellectual” excuse… I am researching these kinds of things in case I get back to my own story that I was working on. There are some technological horrors in that story, but I’ve been wanting to strip away the façade that the monsters are anything but human in nature. Fear of “otherness”, fear of sharing resources, fear of trusting, tribalistic behavior… all in the face of a sudden and profound paradigm shift. The more I consider it, the more that I agree with Geralt:
“People,” Geralt turned his head, “like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.”
– The Edge of the World, Andrzej Sapkowski
Watching TWD again (and rereading the graphic novel for the purposes of comparing the two variants of the tale), I am more convinced than ever that it might not be the bulk of humanity that works within that mindset, but enough of humanity does think in such terms to the extent that I might go running towards the zombie horde if I lived in that fantasy realm, not away. I’m not sure I am strong enough of a person to deal with other people who refuse to act collectively.
Or… maybe…
I’d just pick up my jo, learn some aikido and use the zombie apocalypse as a test of my ability to embrace Taoism or Zen completely. Maybe I’m more Morgan than I give myself credit for being.
But I’d rather not have to find out either way, given the choice.
If you were be dumped into an apocalyptic scenario, how do you think you might respond? Would you be a leader or white knight? The quiet survivalist? The cannibal or anything-to-live persona? Would you be the irradiated ghoul, that flesh-eating zombie? Or just one of the many dead?
12 responses to “Half-penny Thoughts | 12aug25”
I hope I would be a quiet survivalist. That’s basically how I live in the real world.
That’s just it, isn’t it? Some days, we don’t need an apocalypse to shift us into those kinds of roles. Are we already prepping ourselves for such possibilities?
In my case, with my city being taken over by military authority, it’s no longer a possibility, but a reality. After my husband died in 2012, I worked on the skills he had given me to survive on my own. They worked. They are truly working now.
Ahh, yes. There is that. Hope things smooth out for you sooner than later, before it gets out of hand.
Thank you–there are times where I feel it has absolutely gone too far–and this is one of them.
It’s been something I’ve said myself more often of late. Unfortunately, my opinion isn’t worth much to these folks.
i was gonna say . . .
A survivalist, keeping my head down rather than putting it above the parapet. A lot of truth in what you say here. 🙂
Thanks Laura. I have a feeling that most people will just keep their head down until they can’t any longer.
It’s a difficult thing. What I’ve read, both history and fiction, suggest that not getting noticed is how to survive – but if everyone does that, how do we bring about change? There are so many voices on social media at present calling for change of a certain regime: but it looks like it won’t happen unless they’re willing to take up arms, because those who’ve been elected to represent them seem disempowered. Tough call. 😐
Those are more precursor events leading to a human-initiated crisis, rather than how folks deal with the world after a cataclysmic event (human-initiated or not). But it is a valid point that silence is acceptance — if you do no like the changes you are experiencing, you are obligated to speak/act up, although I lean more towards the subversive rather than the overt (except when doing street theatre).
Apart from street theatre – love it! 🙂