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?
Leave a comment. Markdown use is permitted.