By Andrew North
I can’t help but notice the tendency of marketers to compare electronic devices to robots lately. Little androids fly around collecting music, cell phones become self aware, mechanical men put on deodorant because it’s just that fucking strong! And Cyberdine? It turns out they’re real too (http://www.cyberdyne.jp/English/). Humans have become infatuated with robots despite the numerous warnings found in the science fiction genre and we are steepening our dependency on them every year. If we are already trying to use robots to find music, call people and smell better it seems inevitable to me that we will try to use them against the zombies.
I know that initially this plan sounds bad ass. And I’ll be the first to admit that watching the T-800 blow through zombie infested New York with a Harley and a sawed off shot gun would be an experience not altogether different from pornography. On the flip side watching Wall-E cram zombies into his adorable trash compacter of a chest would an unrivaled scene of endearing gore. Even putting all action flick fetishes aside, it seems like a practical idea. Robots are stronger, they won’t get scared and best of all they can’t get infected. They’re the perfect solution to a near hopeless predicament. But what happens after they kill all the zombies? Everyone knows the answer to that question, I think: The murder machines no longer have a purpose, we decide to disconnect them and suddenly we all start looking like John Connor. And in regards to the other robot reference, everyone knows Wall-E is bullshit. The closest we will ever get to a “nice” robot is the HAL-9000 and he won’t even help fight zombies because he’s a just a god damn computer that sings and asks asinine questions.
I’ll be honest; the use of robots might be the only absolutely sure way of beating a global zombie invasion. Except for maybe a nuclear holocaust and the results of those two options probably don’t differ very much. Suddenly it becomes a matter of choosing between two evils. Would you rather fight supercharged, metal Nazis or the ragged sea of squishy cannibals?
If you need help making that decision just refer to these completely logical predictions: one will, at the very least, require the use of armor piercing bullets (at the most a collection of random factories with metal crushing sections or lava) to kill the brain along with some kind of rudimentary knowledge of cybernetic soldiers that are not only self-aware but inexplicably evil. With the other you might need a hammer. You could use your hands if you’re wearing gloves I guess, but that’s gross.
Because of the low risk factor involved in robots fighting zombies it will be easy to form a dependency on them. I’m not the self proclaimed robot expert around here but I know that the first step to robots taking over is dependency. But at least they’re clean. So when you’re standing in front of the Skynet control board and you’re deciding whether to just run from the three hundred zombies banging on the window or pushing the “release Zombie-Terminator army” button, try thinking in the long term. Imagine three hundred indestructible Arnold Schwarzeneggers standing outside that window. But you should absolutely not think of Wall-E. That is a sink hole of implausibly adorable scrap metal you will never work your way out of.
