I would assume that all of us had some prior knowledge about zombies coming in to this course. I mean their presence and popularity are at an all time high. To be a zombie right now is like being a combination of Miles Davis and James Dean, they are about as cool as it gets. This can be seen with the overwhelming popularity of AMC's The Walking Dead, or many other mainstream media outlets including film and literature. I thought I knew quite a bit coming in, or at least the essential bits.
Five Things I Knew About Zombies Coming in:
1. Kill the brain, kill the zombie.
-Every zombie tale has this same theme. The only way to kill the carnivorous walking dead is to smash their brain till it no longer lusts for human flesh. Simple enough...
2.Guns are good, but not great.
-Knowing how to shoot a gun is helpful because it is a great way to kill a zombie, but ammo always seems to run out at the worst possible time...
3.Cities are bad, wilderness is good.
-More people = More Zombies = More likely to get eaten.
4. Someone, if not everyone, you love is going to die.
-While quite depressing, it is something that we will have to deal with during an apocalypse.
5. You clothes and shoes are going to be tarnished.
-If you are going to survive, you are going to have to get dirty. Whether it's blood and guts or dirt and sweat, don't think you're coming out of this looking like you're ready to go to prom. While this seems obvious I thought it was a good time to lighten the mood and also I realized I only knew four things coming in but I didn't want to change my heading.
Not really an extensive list but one that I thought could get me through the first couple days without being bitten. Already I feel like this class has given me some helpful tips. I read Zombopocalypse Now and now I feel tested, I feel more practiced and I feel like it is a good thing I took this course. Although humorous, this pick your own adventure story had me dying more often than surviving. I'm not sure whether it was due to my poor decision making skills or that the book has more dead endings (pun intended) than happy ones. I would say I tried about 20 different combinations and I am ashamed to say I perished in all but 2 of them.They were just disastrous results and it made me feel like I had a lot to learn. I realize I'm not a stuffed pink rabbit that can't tell that his date is a zombie, but this literature can still prove helpful. Things I learned from Zombopocalypse:
1. Don't go all Rambo on a heard of zombies just because you have a gun.
-Thinking you can take on the whole zombie population with a hunting rifle is an awful idea. You have to ignore the fact that they drew first blood and try to stay alive.
2. It is almost always better to have numbers on your side.
-As useless as someone may seem, another human can most always prove helpful. At the very least they can distract zombies with their "tasty" flesh as you make a run for it. Yes, I realize that was quite morbid but you have to have the...3. Will to live.
-You aren't going to make it if you aren't prepared to make the calculated decisions that propel achievement.
4. You can still maintain some sense of humanity.
-I found that most of the times that I said "eff it" to other characters in the story I ended up meeting my demise. I'm sure this was something the author wanted to convey because every time I made inherently selfish decisions I paid the price. I guess if you're a jerk in a zombie apocalypse, you're going to die like a jerk in a zombie apocalypse.
I learned four things, which is clearly not as pretty a number as five, but it's what I took from the story and I feel their is no need to fudge another token of learning.
We also looked at the first episode of The Walking Dead, which has enlightened me quite a bit. In fact I re-watched the whole first season for purely academic purposes. There is so much to learn from Rick Grimes and the gang. Some things went along with similar themes from the adventures of the stuffed rabbit, like maintaining our humanity and strength in numbers, but others were new to me and I feel they would hold some weight if the worst were to happen.
The Walking Dead and Me:
1. Comas can be a good thing.
-Rick was in a coma and a well placed gurney was all that was necessary to protect him. Dude didn't even have to be awake to survive
2. Riding a bike in a hospital gown is going to look funny no matter how dramatic the situation is
-I laughed even though the music was tense and their were dead bodies everywhere.
3. Zombies eat animals too.
-I had always wondered if it was only humans they desired or all living things. After I watched a group of zombies rip apart a horse I know for sure.
4. Stock up on deodorant-Showers are going to be hard to come by so deodorant, non-scented of course, will be essential at least for me. Even though I will be fighting for my life, I don't want to be doing it while smelling like a heathen.
There have been so many lessons learned already and I'm sure as we dive deeper into the subject I will become more educated and more prepared for what seems like a plausible future.
While it's true that your clothes are probably going to be tarnished by the end of a zombie attack, somehow all of pop culture seems to teach us that if you are attacked by zombies, your hair and makeup will still look flawless by the end. No matter how long you are in the wilderness, your beard will only reach carelessly-badass length as opposed to caveman or dumbledore style. Your teeth will be vibrant white, and you will not have a blemish to speak of. It is perfectly practical to have a pair of $300 leather boots as your only shoes (Lori in Walking Dead - yes I noticed). Realistic? Maybe not, but hey, we have to accessorize for the apocalypse.
ReplyDeleteThe immaculate appearance of characters in zombie apocalypse shows or movies is bothersome, but what bothered me in the Død snø (I did my blog post on this movie, so it's still on my mind) is that the characters in this movie are medical students, yet they go through the entire movie with blood spattered all over them for hours. You'd think with them being medical students, they'd wash the blood off of them - especially zombie blood. One of the characters amputates his arm with a chainsaw after it's bitten by a zombie, and he lights a backpack on fire to cauterize the wound. Why cauterize when every part of you is covered in zombie blood, even the other orifices? One of the other characters has a chunk of flesh bitten off of his neck by a zombie, and all he does is stitch it up (MacGyver-style, with what looks like a fishing hook and fishing line). There's snow everywhere - they could at least use that.
ReplyDeleteI have always wondered what Rick and the gang do about things like dental hygiene and deodorant... do you think they floss while slacking off on lookout-duty?
ReplyDeleteLike you, I sometimes have fun (although that sounds like entirely the wrong word) imagining, from a very practical and realistic point of view, what a zombie apocalypse would actually mean for our lifestyle. I mean, putting the zombies aside for a moment, there's still the rather gargantuan problem of no fossil fuels, no running water, no electricity - essentially none of the modern conveniences that we're used to - and while you can probably survive by looting for quite awhile, those are finite resources as well.
Ive thought about this as well, after months of living in the woods, fighting off zombie hordes, digging graves for loved ones, prepping defenses, scavenging, and general apocalypse duties, etc... how do you stay clean? Healthy? Its a pretty big drop off from modern life, where most of us dont go without a daily shower, to lose all of our basic daily routines. Looking at the Walking Dead, Rick and the group just kinda make it work with what they have, but still they look far too good most of the time. Plus, depending on where you are/live/hiding youve probably smelled worse (hordes of fetid, rotting, undead) than morning breath and a little body odor.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, it's not just zombie movies where characters keep their clothing and bodies looking neat and clean under harsh conditions. In a lot of post-apocalyptic TV and film, survivors seem to have a strange knack for looking remarkably photogenic in the middle of a ruined wasteland (NBC's new show "Revolution," for example, has a woman who can survive a knife fight in a sewer without messing up her makeup). I think that this is a rather disturbing symptom of the way our post-Cold War generation thinks of the apocalypse; in popular culture, it's come to represent a kind of freedom, a liberating adventure where we learn to live without the burdens of modern society. Everyone wants to picture themselves as the lone wanderer, roaming the wasteland in their Mad Max-style leather jacket, showing off their awesome shooting skills by blowing the heads off zombies. But of course, the nasty thing about a post-apocalyptic world is that in order to get there, a lot of people have to die. And if we weren't among them, we might still wish we had been. We would be living in squalor and misery, making our clothing and shelter out of whatever filthy scraps we could find, and personal hygiene would be the last thing on our minds when the zombies are on our doorstep. I love a good zombie story as much as anyone, but it's good to get a reality check, to take a step back every once in a while and think about how much it would suck to live in that kind of world.
ReplyDeleteI often wonder if the zombie movie and shows truly portray what a zombie apocalypse would be like. It raises questions in my head. I often wonder if people would remain in all out panic or would it return to a different type of normal? What that new life be worth surviving in the first place? The walking dead characters seem to think that surviving is the the ultimate goal but what does the future of Carl and other children in zombie movies and show look like? Even in a world that seems so hopeless and cruel the Walking Dead characters seem to put every effort in some type of hope for tomorrow. The flawless appearance of many of the characters depicted so far has never really bothered me until reading the above comments, but I often wonder we Rick needs to wear his uniform-even when any sense of authority has disappeared. Is it to establish a sense of rank in the community so other members can look to him as both powerful and a source of protection?
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely hilarious. The section about someone you love is going to die is beyond true. We discussed in class, as a society we have this notion that it will never happen to us. Whether that it be a car crash, a breaking and entering, or even a zombie apocalypse, we have this unified notion that we can survive everything. But the truth is, if it happens to none of us, it would never happen at all.
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