The Walking Dead

[Victor]

So you've just realized you live in a world overrun by zombies. Tough luck. I feel ya. Word. What are you gonna do?

 

The zombies are the people walking dead. The overwhelming majority of those who's half-working minds are geared towards the protection of a parasitic worldview and world order that feeds on them and us, where they are merely work drones with preferred ice-cream flavors and an addiction to stories. They are the ones who diligently fight and reject the reason and clarity that would extend and improve our lives, and not out of sinister desire to rule, but out of anxiety-based self-management. What are you gonna do?

 

These Zombies are everywhere, and they stumble upon themselves to eat you, themselves and us. They are herded by a few live ones who've mastered survival, zombie management and pestilence tolerance techniques.These zombie farmers don't grow stuff. They feast on the spillage left by the hoards as they run over the possessions of the live and productive. What are you gonna do? 

 

It's getting tougher. You can see the undead mobs stumping on fertile fields and munching on and rotting the roots. You can hear the herders behind them on megaphones, urging and cheering the feast; declaring the live and productive the most succulent dish to chew on. What are you gonna do? 

 

You've seen many who've worked on a cure. Highly skilled survivors who believed they could return a man from a zombie. Who have lived their lives running for cover amongst the mobs attempting to deliver antibiotics that some very rare times do work but nobody knows why, how or when, or how to potentiate, replicate or deliver in mass. What are you gonna do? 

 

You heard about some who have re-built towns and re-started civilization get run down, either from mobs herded at them or by infections from within. Building a camp will not only entice the herds, but also attract scores of robbers and scammers who'll pretend to be survivors looking to work with you to rebuild, but who will run away with your resources as soon as you lower your guard. What are you gonna do? 

 

You hear of some who tell you that you won't get to live in civilization. That at most you can get is to protect yourself from infection and maybe save a few children from the deadly bite that turns them. This effort takes enormous skills in combat, survival and immunization that take years to learn and many more to master. There is no other proposed or attempted treatment of the zombie outbreak with comparable comprehensiveness. But there is also no data or evidence that this will work and overtake the spread of the disease. What are you gonna do? 

 

You know of many alive, hiding out, surviving and fending off the roaming biters. They don't have a unified plan, nor method, nor goal. They don't have a camp, nor a stockpile nor walls. Not a common place to defend and fight for, nor a destination to take their children to, to be safe. What are you gonna do? 

 

The zombies don't care for you, nor your goals nor your dreams. They'll eat you. They prefer to eat you alive, while you're free from rot. The zombie farmers ultimately depend on you. They need your produce for sustenance, but they're happy to go to the next one living once your flesh is chewed up and swallowed in the belly of the beasts. What are you gonna do? 

 

Are you frightened by them? Sensible not to hurt them? Would you run them over to protect your own? Do you think the zombies are people who deserve protection, respect and dignity? What about their infected children? What's your limit in the fight? What is too gruesome and nasty for you that you'd not do to a zombie to advance yourself and yours? Will you help them? Would you?  Would you rather fight to help the undead or their children to help build up a future zombie-free world instead of building up your stash and ever-higher walls to guard it for your own in this present apocalypse? What are you gonna do?

 

[shirgall]

The reason the show "The Walking Dead" is popular is not so much superhuman combat and survival skills it is the superhuman resilience of the characters to recover from continual disastrous events that come their way. Some are not so resilient. People eventually figure out that the Walking Dead are not the zombies, but the humans that merely go through the motions of survival hoping that things will magically turn out to be okay.

 

The show is the latest incarnation of "eschatology" which is the study of Armageddon... the end of the world. The Christian version has within it final judgment of your deeds as well, and you may find yourself critically looking at what Rick and the rest are doing from your comfortable armchair in a similar vein, asking yourself, "Why does that bozo get to live but this favorite character have to die?" They express our own fear and rage against the arbitrariness of random events that lead to loss. I think the growth of these stories has a lot to do with our own dislike of the omnipotent and arbitrary state. Zombies at least can be seen and dealt with. The tax man cannot.

[jpahmad]

I just watched the episode in season 4 when "the governor" raids the prison stronghold a second time and everyone practically kills each other.  I was horrified as both sides, mostly populated by descent people, were just mowing each other down.  It captures the essence of war so perfectly; It is only one or two psychos who emotionally manipulate everyone in the group to kill.  It was just pointless killing.  Amplify that scene by a thousand and you get the real world. 

[luxfelix]

In The Last of Us, one way I'd translate Ellie's immunity to zombie bites, is as logic and empiricism against philosophical zombies; she's still vulnerable to attacks, but never at risk of turning into one of them.

 

Likewise, we have an immunity to infection.