An Obligation...

This might be a bit of a dreary post, so let me start out by giving you this : http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/02/13/zombies-question-period-baird-martin_n_2680399.html?just_reloaded=1

That, my surviving friends, was the Canadian House of Commons.

But down to business. Trevor Ogden, who by his name clearly would have made him a better character for the whiskey scene in This is not a Test, wrote about the strange, fleeting, yet definite "obligation to go on."
Now, I have several theories of why a person would feel the obligation to go on even though the world around them has clearly gone to shit. I believe that the survivalist tendencies in humans is stronger than we give ourselves credit for. And at this point, I want to address something from class.
Most of what we work through in class is putting our personas, as they stand now, through the lens of a zombie-type-scenario. Usually I find, and I include myself in this, that we will give funny, yet not entirely honest opinion on whether or not we would survive. 'I do no cardio,' doesn't mean that in the event of a zombie apocalypse you wouldn't get your ass in shape, and quickly.
Think of it:
1. Very limited resources leads to quickly having to ration food.
2. Extreme physical activity, each day.
3. Immediate activation of fight-flight type adrenaline in peril situations.
I think you would find yourself in much better shape than you think you are in, and much more capable of getting yourself, and the people you love out of the way of their doom.

You will take on a new role, and a new physique once you put yourself to the test each and every day. Need an example? Cheap beer swilling, brother coke-addict having, crossbow owning, hunting enthusiast? Oh...  you mean the one person everyone can love:

I have gotten myself off track, as I am wont to do.

However, having gone through that explanation of why I think we don't give ourselves enough credit, I'd like to talk about why I don't buy this whole obligation to survive bit. This is going to stray a little bit into the bounds of religion... sorry to add to that tiny schtick of yours, Internet.

Personally, I oscillate pretty frequently in my mind over whether or not I'd want to go on in the apocalypse. On the one hand, I do understand the obligation to go on thing, human beings have managed through some bizarre series of trial and error and utter fuck-ups, looking at you, Twilight,   to accomplish surreal amounts of beauty. These things deserve to be preserved. Also, life in itself is precious, and should not be given up on if there is still hope. On the other, I'm very much of a cynic. Not believing in any sort of divine force, I think if I was trapped in a situation like that, suicide might be the much more attractive option.
Rachael V. brought up in the rules section that it's obligatory for us to go on, and for us to record what we know in order for others along the human timeline to someday pickup and learn from. But, let's think this through: If we're dealing with a kind of 'plague', and there's hope for a cure and we, as a species, just need to wait it out... then yes, I understand the obligation to go on.
However, if this is an apocalypse that is actually the end of the human race, there is no cure, and all you have is a bit of time to wind down until the end of time, I think I'd be more resigned to death. First, for a humorous perspective on the silliness of optimism in the face of statistical impossibilities, David Rakoff. Some context, David here is talking about ambition in the face of extremely difficult odds, not impossible ones.

"I try to conjure the mind-set that beheld this vast, sere pan of brown dirt—with the bare foothills rising in the distance, and the far more forbidding gray, snow-capped mountains rising farther beyond, all under a sky whose unbounded immensity proclaims one's insignificance with an irrefutable and terrifying truth—but I cannot do it. How does one take all this in and still think, Yes, I will go ever gaily forward. I will endure a preindustrialized trek over hundreds of miles on a rocking, hard-slatted wagon bench or in a saddle, or on foot. I will leave my children behind, or watch them succumb to scarlet fever, rickets, or infection. On those special occasions when I do wipe my ass, it will be with leaves. I will have an abscessed molar extracted by some half-blind chuck-wagon drunkard wielding a pair of rusty pliers, and I will employ my own just-past-neolithic tools to make this railroad, this house, this town. And one fine day, with my remaining teeth, I will bite down on a leather strap while they amputate my leg without benefit of anesthetic and then I will hobble twenty-two miles on foot—one foot!—so that I might then climb a scaffold in order to carve a tribute to His glory into the unyielding granite escutcheon of a cathedral. How did they do it? The monks and abbots who hauled the rocks to build their monasteries on craggy Himalayan peaks and kept at it until the job was done? Ditto the conquistadors who, even fueled with the promise of gold, saw those jagged, stratospheric peaks of the Andes and didn't just say Oh fuck this, I'm going back to Spain. It seems frankly remarkable that anyone anywhere ever attempted anything."

Now, for my much more poorly written opinion on the impossible, the real impossible:
Think of having nearly, if not all, of the people you care for in this world ripped from you. Sometimes the die in your own arms. Now you're on a timer. You have some very limited amount of time to put another bullet into the (for now) lifeless corpse of your loved one. Or, you can face the challenge later on, but still have to put them down like sick animals, this will be the last, most vivid memory of your mother, sister, brother, uncle, friend, wife, son, etc.
There may have been a time earlier in the outbreak where people were willing to help other survivors, but that time is long past. As a famous philosopher once said: "When the zombie apocalypse comes, there will be no church in the wild." -Unknown.
You become more and more isolated in a world without any semblance of the what the world once was, what it could have been.
There will be no rescue, and the few people left surviving dwindle each day. Soon you, as a survivor, will reach the end of your food stores, and your guns will run out of ammo.
There will be always be zombies that will find you, having searched all other possible places for survivors. No food, no weapons, no loved ones, no help, no cure.
Still feel obligated to stick around?