Zombie apocalypse
now!
why the collapse of civilization is nigh
thorfinn sKuLLsPLitter
volume 1
Zombie Apocalypse Now!
Thorfinn Skul splitter
978-0-6484996-6-4
©Manticore Press, Melbourne, Australia, 2019
All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or by any other means, except as may be expressly permitted by applicable laws, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Neither the author, nor the publisher, assumes any responsibility for the use or misuse of the information contained in this book, and they shall not be held responsible or liable with respect to any loss or damages caused, or alleged to be caused, either directly or indirectly by the use or misuse of the information contained herein. Nor do the author or publisher make any representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the accuracy, completeness or fitness for purpose of any of the information contained in this book. Further, neither the author nor publisher have any control over the contents of third-party websites, and other third-party information sources, and thereby assumes no responsibility for their contents.
This work is for education and entertainment purposes only.
Thema Classification:
SZV (Survival Skil s), VXQM3 (Zombies & Undead), RNR (Natural Disasters), JBFF (Social Impact of Disasters), RNPG (Climate Change) m a n t i c o r e p r e s s
www.manticore.press
contents
Preface
7
Chapter 1
Why We Will Soon Star in Our Own Zombie Horror Movie 15
Discourse on the Metaphysics of the Zombie Apocalypse 30
The Coming Col apse of Civilization
38
chapter 2
Lord
of
the
Zombies 47
In Post Apocalyptica Will People Real y Be De Facto Zombies?
61
But Won’t We Be Able to Rebuild?
69
Conclusion: Kiss Liberalism (and Almost Everything Else) Goodbye 72
Chapter 3
Endgame – Our Journey to the End of the Night
81
Complexity,
Chaos
and
Col apse 93
The
Mechanisms
of
Col apse
98
Nothing to Sneeze at: Plagues, Pandemics and Social Breakdown 113
Ecological Col apse and Looming Resource Shortages 115
The
Climate
Cataclysm 130
chapter 4
All You Need Is Lead(and a Few Other Things)
149
The
Philosophy
of
Survivalism
157
Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse 101
162
Bug
Out
and
Survival
Retreats
165
Wilderness and Blackwood’s Survival Philosophy
187
Disaster
Preparedness,
Philosophy
193
Self-Reliance and Self-Sufficiency Philosophy
203
Tools
and
the
Craftsman 206
Zombie Apocalypse Preparation and Survival Philosophy 209
Conclusion Of Book 1
215
Brothers will fight
and kill each other,
sisters’ children
will defile kinship.
It is harsh in the world,
whoredom rife
—an axe age, a sword age
—shields are riven—
a wind age, a wolf age—
before the world goes headlong.
No man will have
mercy on another.
Völuspá, The Poetic Edda (Stanza 45).
PrefaCe
This Thing of Darkness…
Although zombies and the intrinsicaly related zombie apocalypse are cultural commodities worth billions in the global economy, cultural critics have argued that there is a serious message to be found in the mythos of the modern zombie, conceived as a “relentlessly aggressive, reanimated human corpse driven by a biological infection.”1 These “threshold creatures,”
standing in the apocalyptic wasteland between life and death, are
“antisubjects,” ultimate symbolic “Others” who “may be attacked and destroyed without violating increasingly rigid canons of political y correct behavior and utterance.”2 And, in their mindless apocalyptic fury they “signal the end of the world as we have known it.”3 Zombies are a power pack of English lit. meat, albeit rotten.
Zombie films, especial y works of intellectual substance, such as George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), function as contemporary morality plays, where existential anxieties about social disorder, death and civilizational decay can be safely explored without bringing an even colder and more brutal reality home to the viewer, and breaking now well-established thought and speech 1 Matt Mogk, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Zombies (Gallery Books, New York, 2011), p. 6.
2 Brian Anse Patrick, Zombology: Zombies and the Decline of the West (and Guns) (Arktos, London, 2014), p. 48.
3 K. Paffenroth, Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romero’s Vision of Hell on Earth (Baylor University Press, Waco, 2006), p. 13.
7
ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE NOW!
taboos. The zombie, as an “anthropomorphic plague,” where “man has become the pathogenic agent of man,” a consumer object of “our own devouring drive,”4 represents our own dehumanization in an oppressive and mechanistic social order, where most of us have been reduced to the level of meat-machines, less than nothing.
Zombie outbreaks in film and literature are general y, but not always, associated with the victory of the rampaging hordes over civilization, so that a col apse of civilization occurs. Peter Dendle has said that this too is part of the mythos of the zombie as a “barometer of cultural anxiety”:
In twenty-first century America—where the bold wilderness frontier that informed American mythic consciousness for four centuries has given way to increasingly centralized government amidst a suburban landscape now quilted with mall strips and Walmarts—there is ample room to romanticize a fresh world purged of ornament and vanity, in which the strong survive, and in which society must be rebuilt anew. Post-apocalyptic zombie worlds are fantasies of liberation: the intrepid pioneers of a new world trek through the shattered remains of the old, trudging through shel s of buildings and the husks of people.5
The zombie, in “inchoate, rampaging hordes,” stands for “anything and everything that threatens to tear down ‘civilized culture’ and/or the established order.”6 Indeed, in this book it will be shown that this is an accurate description of how in the near future, people in this so-called “real” world, will face the same fate.
4 Jorge Assef, “The Zombie Epidemic: A Hypermodern Version of the Apocalypse,”
LCExpress, vol. 2, no. 7, 2013, pp. 1-21, cited p. 6.
5 Peter Dendle, “The Zombie as a Barometer of Cultural Anxiety,” in N. Scott (ed.), Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil (Rodopi, New York, 2007), pp. 4-57, cited p. 54.
6 Andre Austin, “Cyberpunk and the Living Dead,” in S. Boluk and W. Lenz (eds), Generation Zombie: Essays on th
e Living Dead in Modern Culture (McFarland and Company, Jefferson, 2011), pp. 147-155, cited p. 147.
8
THORFINN SKULLSPLITTER
Given all of the above pearls of wisdom, in this book these observations will be taken to their logical conclusion, no doubt to the shock and horror of gentle academic souls. If “we are the walking dead” and “zombies are us,” then perhaps humans real y are as violent and destructive as zombies, and acting in social systems with an organized economy and military, perhaps even more so. Mankind stripped of the thin veneer of civilization, it will be shown in this book, is very zombie-like, and even more terrifying. Of course, in our world corpses do not literal y reanimate, but as zombology expert Matt Mogk has said: “I would say from a practical point of view, if a raving maniac is trying to claw down my front door to get inside to attack me or eat me or turn me into one of them, I’m not real y interested in having a philosophical conversation about: ‘Is that real y a zombie?’”7 It will be “zombie” enough until the full zombie emerges from the lab of some bored genetic engineering PhD student with mental health issues.
One of the aims of this book is to set out the case, based upon an analysis of peer-reviewed scientific literature, that an environmental crisis encompassing a multitude on interconnected and compounding problems—global climate change, species/biodiversity decline, water shortages and the degradation of water quality, resource depletion, peak oil and “peak everything/doom”—is set, on the business-as-usual scenario of unrestrained global economic growth, to lead to a col apse of techno-industrial civilization as early as 2030, and maybe before. This proposition has been advanced by a minority of respected environmentalists, always with the caveat that a combination of technology and human goodness will be our deux ex machina (ἀπὸ
μηχανῆς θεός (apò mēkhanês theós)), saving our unworthy hides, just in the nick of time. Now is the time to kick sand in the face of that il usion.
The col apse of civilization will occur first by a process of slow decay and disintegration, which, it is argued, is already well 7 Matt Mogk, cited from Bill Bradley, “How to Survive a Real ‘Walking Dead’ Zombie Apocalypse,” November 1, 2014, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/walking-dead-zombie-apocalypse_n_6065332.html?section=australia.
9
ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE NOW!
underway, although the elites pretend that such decadence is actual y progress. However, after some critical or catastrophe point, the social rot and entropy becomes sufficient to cause rapid breakdown, the same col apse that other civilizations experienced.8 Both the Left and Right are usual y optimistic about the prospects of long-term human survival, and hold that even if a col apse of civilization does occur, humans will have the ingenuity to rebuild. I put the case against this uncritical optimism, arguing for the “black pil ,” if not nihilistic thesis, that in the longish term, we are all dead. But, for the short-term … there are things that can be done.
Zombies and the zombie apocalypse then, may well be emanations from the collective unconscious, if there is such a thing, of the fear of the impending mega-death and destruction that the col apse of civilization will bring. If the world is presently ecological y unsustainable, as environmentalist tell us, and thus in a situation of ecological overshoot, future-eating environmental capital, then on a business-as-usual scenario of exponential economic growth, a crash is inevitable, and this will involve a vast die off of the bulk of the human race. This will be unpleasant, to say the least, and will mirror and even go beyond the events of apocalyptic fiction such as The Walking Dead, aborting a new world disorder of war and warlords, cannibalism and impalement, and savage rituals and human sacrifice as occurred in human pre-history. It happened once; it can happen again.
This book sets out the case that the zombie apocalypse is “real,”
or as real as anything in this possibly computer simulated “world,”
and has already begun. Whereas zombie fiction typical y advances from the proposition that zombies → zombie apocalypse, this book reverses the arrow of causality: civilization col apse → “zombies”
→ zombie apocalypse. Chapters one and two give the brutal, grisly background to the social decay and exploding violence that is beginning to grip many cities in the West. With the “death of God,”
that is, secularization and the loss of the social significance of the 8 Jared Diamond, Col apse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Penguin, London, 2011).
10
THORFINN SKULLSPLITTER
transcendent in the life of the West, only consumer affluence and materialism function as social glues, holding the whole experiment of modernity together. As argued in chapter three, this structure is falling apart and a New Dark Age may replace it.
The response to this catastrophe, I argue in chapter four, should be, for those who want to survive (many will not and will accept oblivion; good for them), survivalism, a hyper-Darwinian philosophy of surviving whatever the cost and enduring whatever a cruel cosmos hurls at one, with metaphysical defiance. The chapter offers an overview of the main aspects of survivalism. However, the next book in this series, The Barbarian Reborn: Weaponry and Survivalism in the Near-Term Post-Apocalyptic Wastelands, goes further down the road of ruin, considering the physical culture and philosophical/
mental/spiritual changes needed to endure the coming of hell on Earth, a world without conventional gods and hope of salvation, only impending doom and destruction – Ragnarök! One must become a barbarian in a world that will be nothing short of barbaric, and the present author will be in character.
11
ChaPter
1
Nature is a vast field of carnage. Between living creatures conflict takes place every second, every minute, without truth and without respite. It takes place first between separate individuals, then between collective organisms, tribe against tribe, state against state, nationality against nationality. No cessation is possible.
- J. Novicow (1886)9
Before the tribunal of nature a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake, he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast; his right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence.
- William Sumner10
…and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)11
9 Quoted by W. L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism: 1890-1902 (Alfred Knopf, New York, 1965), p. 86.
10 William Sumner, Earth-Hunger and Other Essays (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1913), p. 234.
11 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1968), I, 13, 9.
why we will soon star in our own zombie horror movie
Zombie Nation: Day of the Metaphysical Flesh Eaters
proposition 1: Humans can be as savage, depraved, mindless and cannibalistic as any zombie/walker in amc’s The Walking Dead, and they will be exceptional y nasty in the extreme and violent circumstances posed by the coming col apse of civilization.
Saturday, may 26 2012, was a seemingly normal day in Miami. As in most cities across the decaying West, rapists were raping, druggies were a-drugging and hookers, hooking. But, on the MacArthur Causeway, off-ramp to Biscayne Boulevard, a road ranger spotted two men, one naked and on top of the other. That in itself, in our enlightened day of sexual diversity would not normal y raise an eyebrow. However, the actions were all-but-friendly from the man on top of the mount in the on-going ground ‘n’ pound. This man was literal y gnawing at the face of bottom man. The road ranger, now Lone Ranger, shouted on his loud speaker for the naked attacker to back off, but this was no more effective than telling a hungry dog to stop gnawing on its bone. A woman riding her bicycle saw the attacker tearing off pieces of flesh 15
ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE NOW!
from the face of his victim and devouring the meat. An observer at the scene told wsvn-Fox 7: “The guy just stood his head up like that, with a piece
of flesh in his mouth, and he growled.” He growled.
The officer at the scene told the attacker—later identified as Rudy Eugene, 31 years of age—to back off the victim, identified as Ronald Poppo, a homeless man who was living in the space under the causeway. Nevertheless, Eugene ignored the demand and continued his cannibalistic grazing. The officer fired his service handgun and delivered a torso hit. Eugene did not seem to notice being hit by the 9 mm round as it was dinner time for him and 9 mm lead was not going to keep him from his meal. The officer fired a number of times, scoring more ineffective torso hits. Then he tried something left-of-field and put one 9 mm slug into Eugene’s head, killing him like…
wel , a zombie. The media and the blogosphere quickly called this case, the “Miami Zombie.”
Zombie experts quickly took to the net telling us, we, the people, not to panic, as the long anticipated zombie apocalypse had not yet begun. There was no cause for alarm – r-e-l-a-x! But, what is a zombie?
How would one tell if one was actual y in a zombie apocalypse, rather than just in your garden variety of social col apse?
I will have more to say on the taxonomy or classification of zombies in due course. However, to simplify, the cause of zombieism may be biological (naturalistic) or supernatural, and a zombie itself (in a provisional definition), is a “relentless aggressive reanimated human corpse driven by a biological infection” and a “living zombie”
is a “relentlessly aggressive human driven by a biological infection.”12
Apparently, real hard-core wizards and witches are short of the ground in Miami, so scratch the supernatural cause. Biological transmission via bites will follow the epidemiology of other infectious diseases.13
That is, unless zombieism is some completely new phenomenon, 12 Matt Mogk, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Zombies (Gallery Books, New York, 2011), p. 23.
13 See P. Munz (et al.), “When Zombies Attack! Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection,” in J. M. Tchuenche and C. Chiyaka (eds), Infectious Disease Model ing Research Progress (Nova Science Publishers, New York, 2009), pp.133-150.
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