Hey 3.5 readers.
Blasphemy for a zombie nerd to say this, but sometimes I wonder if a zombie apocalypse would be as bad as they are portrayed on television.
Don’t get me wrong. A zompoc would be awful. However, I feel like the government has all kinds of contingency plans on what to do if America is invaded and what with police and army and everything I feel like the zombies could be fended off.
Sure, it would be a disaster. Many would die, have their brains eaten and end up undead. I’m just not convinced that people would instantly drop everything when the first zombie wave hits.
Yes, our public officials, politicians and so on make us worry sometimes but I think they would stick around to coordinate things and I don’t think the army, police, first responders etc would give up without a fight.
Then again. I could be wrong. Everyone might see a zombie and crap themselves.
Even if the world were to descend into an apocalyptic state, I feel like there is a lot of knowledge in people’s brains, such that rebuilding might not be as difficult as imagined. Surely there would be more to life than just wandering from town to town to see which abandoned stores still have old boxes of candy and twinkles to feast on.
Hell, the Ancient Romans built some impressive buildings and did great things with very little compared to what we have today. You, the average reader, could take the knowledge in your modern brain and go back to ancient times and live like a King.
Or could you? I suppose you’d have to have the skills needed to take the knowledge in your brain and make it happen in real life.
I don’t know. I could be wrong. Maybe without the whole system in place now we’d all just end up acting like a bunch of dummies and be screwed.
Maybe I have too much faith in people. Then again. Maybe I don’t. I hope we never find out what a zombie apocalypse would be like in real life as there would be way too many zombies.
FYI the Yeti just reminded me that I did live through a zombie apocalypse that was better known at the time as the East Randomtown Zombie Apocalypse, the terrible ordeal in which #31ZombieAuthors assisted me and gave me the advice I needed to pull myself out of a jam.
I’m sorry. I’m very forgetful when I’m under Yeti control. So yes, to answer my question, people are stupid and a zombie apocalypse would be awful as the zombies would eat everyone and then everyone not eaten would do stupid things.
Ergo, this post was pointless. My bad.
But tell me what you think anyway, 3.5
Bookshelf Battle 
Great post! I’ve often wondered this myself. Every time there’s some terrible virus going around (West Nile, Swine flu, Zika) The media makes it sound like we are all doomed yet I’ve never known one person, personally, to have had any of these diseases. On the other hand, that could be part of our undoing, being desensitized to the fear of infectious diseases.
Another thing to consider is that no other disease has such an aggressive delivery system as a virus that would cause people to attack one another without fear of death or with being so hard to kill. The infected in my book, America Undead, are some of the hardest to kill. For example, in The Walking Dead, they can be killed as easily as smashing the face. But, if the only part of the brain that is active is the brain stem, how would smashing the face stop them?
I have addressed every theoretical problem I could think of with zombie lore in my book. You should read it and let me know if I’ve missed anything.
Well, I do think that new and scary viruses are something to worry about. In that respect, I suppose an airborne virus could zombify everyone. Everyone has the virus in the Walking Dead but the rub is that no one turns into a zombie until they die.
Good luck with your book.
I think it would be awful, but not for the reason you might think. Zombie’s eat brains…if they ventured to Washington after January looking for nourishment, Trump and his cabinet would be safe.
Eh, I don’t think they would have been able to find brains to feast on in DC for many years…they would also starve in Hollywood.
Ever read World War Z, the actual book not the Brad Pitt movie. In the book the gov’t covers it up for as long as possible, tells people they have a vaccine, sells the vaccine, and then it’s too late. Because the vaccine doesn’t work and the disease is too wide spread. Sure the chain of command remains in tact for all that but when the top is lying down to everyone, you’re screwed. I think that is as likely as anything else to happen.
Yes there might be underhanded plots and so on. However, I just don’t think zombies would be that hard to defeat. Zombies are about as dangerous as tigers, lions, wolves and other ferocious animals and man has conquered them, you might even say to a sad level where they are going extinct and one day you might only be able to see them in a zoo.
I would actually argue that a tiger is more dangerous than a zombie but you don’t see a world where tigers rule everything.
I would pay to see a zombie in a zoo. smiles
Zombie Zoo! My next novel!
They did make a Zombie Zoo movie for Scy Fy Channel. The zoo animals are turned into zombies and a group of tourists must escape. It was terrible.
Make a really zombie zoo book.
I’m bummed 2016 is almost over and I don’t have a novel up on Amazon yet.
You can look at it two ways.
A) you lack focus, you slacker.
B) writing is a long con and you have adjusted your game plan to best position yourself in the long run.
Your pick, but I suggest B, it’s way more motivating.
There are a couple of books that deal with the idea of zombies not as a complete apocalypse but rather as something that happens and then is incorporated into everyday life. World War Z does this pretty well. I mean, yeah, a pretty significant portion of the population goes belly-up but the US army still exists and fights them, even to the point of using old tactics in a new way. They discuss those who survive on submarines and create essentially new islands. There is another book by the guys at sterlingandstone.net that deals with similar subject matter.
I personally think it is more interesting to see what happens after zombies happen and we have to adapt to this new kind of predator in our midst.
There was a Schwarzenegger movie in the past couple years. Name escapes me but zombie-ism was basically treated in the story like any other disease. His daughter catches it and has a few weeks before she has to be taken to the zombie hospital (camp where zombies are killed in a contained manner) and it is more of a mediation on the sadness of knowing someone in the family has a terminal illness and yet somehow life must also go on in the meantime.
I did not know that. Now I will have to look it up as a possible add to my collection.
Thanks!
Remembered the other books I was thinking of: The Newsflesh Trilogy by Mira Grant. Fantastic take on a post-zombie world.