Concerning Zombies: Keep up the Intensity

 

By Andrew North

People are always coming up with plans that don’t work: Mexico planned on keeping Texas, Priam planned on keeping Troy from burning to the ground, Robert Parker and Harry Longabaugh planned on going to Australia, Emperor Palpatine planned on turning Luke Skywalker over to the Dark side and Michael Bay planned on being a good director. So in the context of zombie invasions it would be advantageous to assume that any plan you’ve concocted for the occasion won’t work. I know that taking your uncle’s gun collection and running to your friend’s house on a forested hill sounds like a fool proof plan but when the cards are down and the zombies are pulling aces all situations are liable to be fucked to death. That doesn’t mean you need to forget the plan, it means you need to practice a certain amount of flexibility.

Here’s a completely plausible scenario: your friend on the forested hill decided to have a party, the awkward type that’s typically thrown when a high school teenager’s parents are out of town and the only parts of the concept that anyone has down are the drugs and losing their virginity. The orgies and PCP induced knife fights would come later. Or they would have if all the bright lights and loud noises of adolescent debauchery hadn’t attracted the only zombie in the forest. The drunken activities that had taken place that night were the result of broken windows, unlocked doors and lightweights passed out head first in the pool. The security of the house was severely compromised. Meanwhile, you discovered that the day had finally arrived. You had killed the first of many walking dead to come and being the well informed citizen that you are you know that it’s a short matter of time before the city becomes the most dangerous place for humans to walk. So you go with the plan, get the guns and head out into the woods, but when you arrived at what was supposed to be a safe haven you found a haunted house.

I won’t dispute anyone’s ability to slaughter dozens of zombies, repair the house and fortify it properly, but this is the kind of situation in which it’s important to remember that their strength lies in their numbers. Our chances of getting infected become larger the longer we fight them so a building full of undead is not an invitation to be a badass, it’s cause for moving on. The best thing to do, particularly if you’re alone, is to simply move on to the Plan B you made after reading this. Also, if you’re alone, Plan B should involve finding other people, because stress is detrimental to zombie-plan making and it helps if there is someone around to share the anxiety.

However, stress relief isn’t the only attribute of travelling with a group. Everyone has something unique to offer. There is of course the classic role playing group consisting of the healer, the tank and the damage dealer (which, in a best case scenario, translates to real life as a First Responder, a martial artist, and an ex-member of some badass, covert-ops, military force), but I’m not just talking about different people’s areas of expertise. I’m referring to the one person in the group who might be completely out of his mind. The one you should only listen to ten percent of the time, the Han Solos and Malcolm Reynolds of the world, the people who come up with such ludicrous ideas that they make your brain twitch violently with bewilderment. Every group has that guy who would walk out of a room with a roll of duct tape, a case of shotgun shells and a see-saw saying “This will work, trust me.” If you end up in a group that doesn’t have that guy I suggest you start looking for him, because everyone needs a Butch Cassidy to make them jump off a cliff.

The simple fact of the matter is that zombies are not innovative creatures; they are mindless forces of nature. We don’t need to worry about outwitting them, only outlasting them. So in the end we won’t be running from zombies, but battling the environment. Sometimes that requires innovation on our part. The Days of the Dead will be a curse with many blessings because I can guarantee that we will find such uncanny uses for things as to blow the all the greatest minds to have existed in this world right back to their stupid, non-zombie attacked centuries. There will be chainsaws used for doorknobs, pogo sticks that could launch a human into the stratosphere, cities will have giant guillotines for gates and all things will be at least fifty percent duct tape.