Zombie Apocalypse Now!

by Thorfinn Skullsplitter

  mdc.mo.gov/zombies.

  118 G. Lubold, “The Pentagon’s Plan to Stop the Zombie Apocalypse,” May 18, 2014, at http://

  www.stripes.com/news/us/the-pentagon-s-plan-to-stop-the-zombie-apocalypse-1.283263.

  119 P. Munz. (et al.), “When Zombies Attack! Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection,” in K. M. Tchuenche and C. Chiyaka (eds), Infectious Disease Model ing Research Progress (Nova Science Publishers, New York, 2009), pp. 131-150.

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  remaining of humanity and hence no civil authorities to restore basic services. In fact, the report essential y goes on to admit as much.

  usstratcom forces do not have adequate contingency stores of food and water for 30 days of barricaded counter-zombie operations. The zombie hordes are likely to overrun almost all protected military facilities in the first few days of an outbreak and Airborne Command Centers may not be viable after the first week as support bases are overrun by zombies. There will also be a degradation of military readiness due to political, social and economic instability. In other words, the world depicted in amc’s The Walking Dead is not too far from the truth.

  In Post Apocalyptica Will People Real y Be De Facto Zombies?

  They are already. Consider: Lara Logan, then, cbs foreign correspondent, was subjected to a horrific mass rape by a crazed mob of about 200 Egyptian men during the short-lived euphoria of

  “Arab Spring,” February 11, 2011. The mob torn her clothes to shreds, took pictures of her nude body with their cell phones and began beating her with flagpoles and sticks. Then she was raped vaginal y and anal y (presumably, digital y) “over and over and over again.” The victim told the media in a cbs 60 Minutes interview on May 1, 2011:

  “[t]hey were tearing my body in every direction… and they were trying to tear off chucks of my scalp.” “They real y enjoyed my pain and suffering. It incited them to more violence.” Fortunately, a group of Arab women saved Logan before she was torn apart. These women closed ranks around her and apparently, the men were not willing to treat their own women the way they just treated an American. Logan was treated for severe bruising, joint injuries and vaginal and anal tears and has been hospitalized a number of times since the vicious attacks. None of the rapists have been brought to justice.120 If the 120 Scott Pelley, “Lara Logan Breaks Silence on Cairo Assault,” May 1, 2011, at http://www.

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  crazed mob had succeeded in tearing off her flesh, they would be only one-step (the eating step), away from becoming 28 Days- style zombies. Perhaps their sexual aggression makes them even more frightening: Hol ywood zombies do not rape. A lengthy discussion of the migrant rape culture of Europe, especial y the rape of British children by migrant grooming gangs, made in numerous daily online sources, with one horror story trumping the next, need not be made to make the same point.121

  If people can act like that in the “spring time” then how do they fare during times of disaster? Sociologists general y dispute that widespread looting and violence occur after natural disasters, seeing, in general, that people band together to help each other.122

  For example, in the case of Hurricane Katrina, the media came to retract earlier-made reports about widespread violence, looting and raping, such as claims that babies were raped. Sociologists claim that during natural disasters people exhibit prosocial helping behaviours.

  Looting is said to be common in civil disturbances, but rare in the aftermath of natural disasters. Thus, earlier media reports, such as that a seven-year-old child in the Superdome had her throat cut, of 30-40 bodies being stored in a freezer in the Superdome and of 300

  bodies piled high at Marion Abramson High School in Eastern New Orleans, were false. The claims were soon retracted by the media, to be replaced by the other extreme, that there was not one official report of rape or sexual assault, and that likewise, looting was minimal.

  Against this, there are many sources, while accepting that the savage, zombie-like murders and rampaging did not occur, do affirm from personal observations and reliable witnesses and photographs, that widespread violence, looting and raping did occur. Brian Thevenot says that wide spread looting was “definitely not a myth, I cbsnews.com/news/lara-logan-breaks-silence-on-cairo-assault/.

  121 P. McLoughlin, Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal (New English Review Press, London, 2016).

  122 E. L. Quarantelli, “The Myth of the Realties: Keeping the Looting ‘Myth’ in Perspective,”

  Natural Hazards Observer, March, 2007, at http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/

  archives/2007/mar07/mar07.pdf; L. G. Sun, “Disaster Mythology and the Law,” Cornell Law Review, vol. 96, 2011, pp. 1131-1208.

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  can confirm as an eyewitness.”123 Photographs of looters stealing not just food and essential items, but expensive electronic goods, can be viewed at various websites.124 In fact, after Hurricane Katrina hit, the police arrested so many people for robbery that the New Orleans jails were soon full and temporary jails were set up. In early September 2005, 8,000 prisoners were moved out of New Orleans jails and transported to state prisons.125

  Rape is an under-reported crime; the US Department of Justice estimates that in the US over 300,000 women are raped every year, but less than one in three women report the rape to the police.126 A number of sources have claimed that the incidence of rape was greater in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina than the “normal” incidence of rape and that most rape victims did not report it.127

  A study of Hurricane Katrina crimes, as a Master of Public Administration thesis by Kevin Bailey,128 concluded that some types of crime increased after the disaster, but others decreased. In New Orleans, most crime rates increased significantly in January 2006, but returned to pre-Hurricane Katrina levels by December 2007. The annual murder rate increased in the years 2006 and 2007.

  It has been claimed that there was no crime wave among Hurricane Katrina evacuees.129 Others dispute this; one report states: 123 Brian Thevenot, “Myth-Making in New Orleans,” American Journalism Review, December/January 2006, at http://www.ajr.org/article.asp?id=3998.

  124 See for example: http://web.archive.org/web/20140704005914/http://jtf.org/america/

  america.hurricane.katrina.htm.

  125 “At the Train Station, New Orleans’ Newest Jail is Open for Business,” September 6, 2005, at http://www.komonews.com/news/archive/4163081.html.

  126 K. Bishop, “Preparing for THE Worst,” at http://www.preparednesspro.com/preparing-for-the-worst.

  127 See, “40 Rapes Reported in Hurricane Katrina, Rita Aftermath,” http://www.wdsu.com/

  news/5627087/detail.html. http://www.frfrogspad.com/disastr.htm.

  128 Kevin Bailey, An Evaluation of the Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Crime in New Orleans, Louisiana (Master of Public Administration Thesis, Department of Political Science, Texas State University, San Marcos, 2009).

  129 S. Vergano, “Report: No Crime Wave among Hurricane Katrina Evacuees,” February 15, 2010, at http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2010-02-12-hurricane-katrina-crime_n.htm.

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  [w]hen New Orleans residents streamed into Houston six months ago to escape the floodwaters caused by Hurricane Katrina, they brought in gangs and the violence that goes with them. The city had 170 homicides from September through February 22, 28

  percent more than in the same period a year earlier, according to the Police Department. In 29 cases, displaced Louisianans were the victims, the suspects or both.130

  At the time, police said that once gangs had moved in and drug and prostitution rings were re-established, old scores were settled.

  To combat this the police formed the Gang Murder Squad to help prevent a further increase in the murder rate.

  L.G. Sun has said that prior research on looting in disaster situations
may be skewed, being based on “small western populations experiencing more limited disasters in scale and scope.”131 Most research on the alleged absence of looting after disasters has been in developed countries, and in fact, “studies have occasional y observed large-scale looting after natural disasters in the developing world.”

  For example, in the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013 in the Philippines, soldiers and police were deployed to halt large-scale looting; even a Red Cross convoy was attacked. Survivors were suffering from a lack of food, water and shelter in a landscape littered with rotting corpses. However, the prevalence of illegal guns carried by insurgents and criminal gangs, challenged security.

  One alleged counter-example to this claim of increased crime in the wake of disasters is Superstorm Sandy during October/November 2012 in the US. Crime dropped by a third during the storm – e.g.

  murder dropped by 86 percent, rape by 44 percent, assault by 31

  percent, but burglaries rose by 3 percent. Although this seems to support, prima facie, the position of Rebecca Solnit in A Paradise Built in Hell,132 that people tend to work together in disasters, there 130 J. Kennett, “Louisiana Gangs That Fled Katrina Heighten Houston Murder Rate,” March 3, 2006 at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=az6n8C6gsqf0.

  131 Sun, as above, p. 1139.

  132 Rebecca Solnit , A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in 64

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  is contrary evidence. First, crime was down because the goblins and ghouls were off the street; they did not want to be injured. Second, there was some nasty, col apse-style forms of looting, such as people pretending to be Con Ed workers, holding people up and looting.

  There were also tweets from Twitter accounts by twits intending to loot when the storm hit, mainly to secure electronic goods. This is hardly an example of the milk of human kindness. Reflecting on the issue of violence and disaster, environmentalist/peak oil theorist Richard Heinberg has concluded that for “every heart-warming anecdote about the convergence of rescuers and caregivers on a disaster site, there is a grim historic tale of resource completion turning normal people into monsters.”133

  So much then for disasters unleashing the “inner monster,” what then about your garden vanity social breakdown? Consider flash mob crime involving “polar bear hunting,” where people, using social media for organization, converge to a certain spot, destroy private property, riot, commit acts of violence and then disperse –

  quickly. This may be a hit-and-run group crime against a group of people of another particular group. It may also involve a group or an individual targeting another small group or individual, who are the “polar bears,” and knocking them down i.e. bashing them into unconsciousness or death – hence its name, “the knockout game.”

  The distinguished black scholar Thomas Sowell sees this as “early skirmishes in a race war,”134 and who am I to disagree?

  Fernando “Ferfal” Aguirre, a col apse-survivalist whose work I will consider in a later chapter, believes that life after economic col apse will be much the same as it is now – but worse. That is, it wil not be a zombie apocalypse.135 Aguirre lived through the economic Disaster (Penguin, New York, 2010).

  133 Richard Heinberg, “Conflict and Change in an Era of Economic Decline, Part 2: War and Peace in a Shrinking Economy,” December 12, 2012 at http://www.carolynbaker.

  net/2012/12/12/conflict-and-change-in-the-era-of-economic-decline-part-2-war-and-peace-in-a-shrinking-economy-by-richard-heinberg/.

  134 Thomas Sowel , “Early Skirmishers in a Race War,” October 24, 2013, at http://www.

  nationalreview.com/article/362030/early-skirmishes-race-war-thomas-sowel .

  135 Fernando “Ferfal” Aguirre, “Life after an Economic Col apse: The Same… Only Worse, 65

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  col apse of Argentina in (1998-2002) and reports on lessons learnt from that experience. As we will see in chapter 3, even though Ferfal rejects the idea that economic col apse will lead to a type of world like The Walking Dead, the world of economic col apse, even with a limited and dysfunctional government, will be a violent and dangerous place.

  Likewise, Dmitry Orlov, author of The Five Stages of Col apse,136

  who lived through the col apse of the Soviet Union (USSR), predicts the coming crash of the United States, and ultimately of techno-industrial civilization. This will be through resource shortages, passing through five stages of col apse (financial, commercial/

  economic, political, social and cultural), leading to a more primitive Hobbesian existence where life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” This is more to my taste.

  British philosopher John Gray in Straw Dogs observes that even with the present growth of knowledge “[t]he human animal will remain the same: a highly inventive species that is one of the most predatory and destructive.”137 Harold Bloom in The Lucifer Principle argued that “evil” is a part of nature and moves the human world

  “to greater heights of organization, intricacy, and power.”138 The explanatory assumption of “inborn evil” makes sense of the blood bath of human history. Bloom’s “barbarian principle” is also relevant to this book. Civilized societies ultimately become over-civilised and weak and are overcome by barbarians: the ancient Egyptians conquered by the Hyksos; the Babylonian Empire conquered by the Persians; the Persians conquered by the Greeks, even defeating Emperor Xerxes army of 1,700,000 men (according to Herodotus), with Alexander the Great later conquering the entire Persian empire.

  Part I,” November 6, 2014 at http://ferfal.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/life-after-economic-col apse-same-only.html.

  136 Dmitry Orlov, The Five Stages of Col apse: Survivor’s Toolkit (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, 2013).

  137 John Grey, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (Granta books, London, 2002), p. 4.

  138 Harold Bloom, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History (Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1995), p. 2.

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  Today, they are all but an historical memory and we of the West will be lucky to be even that.139

  Supporting empirical material for this pessimistic view of human nature is given by Le Blanc and Register in Constant Battles,140 who show that the idea of the peaceful noble “savage” is a myth and that warfare and violence, primarily for resources, including females, has been present throughout human history and in our evolutionary past. Lawrence Keeley in War before Civilization says that primitive warfare was much more deadly than that conducted between civilized states because of the greater frequency of combat and the more merciless way it was conducted. “Primitive war was very efficient at inflicting damage through the destruction of property, especial y the means of production and shelter, and inflicting terror by frequently visiting sudden death and mutilating its victims.”141 Prisoners, for example, were general y not taken, and if not killed on the spot, were stored, to be tortured and/or fattened and eaten.142 Primitive societies were constantly at war and if modern societies had the same casualty rate in the 20th century, wars would have yielded two billion deaths.

  On average, tribal societies lost 0.5 percent per annum of their populations due to war.143 Sixty five percent of primitive societies were at war continuously and 87 percent fought more than one war annually.144 According to Wade:

  Warfare between pre-state societies was incessant, merciless, and conducted with the general purpose, often achieved, of annihilating the opponent. As far as human nature is concerned, 139 Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West (St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2002).

  140 S. Le Blanc and K. E. Register , Constant Battles: Why We Fight (St Martin’s Press, New York, 2004); Lawrence Keeley, War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996).

  141 Keeley, as above, p.174.

  142 Nicolas Wade, Before the Dawn: Recove
ring the Lost History of our Ancestors (Duckworth, London, 2007), p. 151.

  143 As above, p. 152.

  144 Keeley, as above, p. 33.

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  people of early societies seem to have been considerably more war-like than people today.145

  That includes the Australian Aborigines:

  The Australian Aboriginal tribes seemed to have lived in a state of constant warfare, with defended territories and neutral zones marked for trading. Their tool kit, designed for easy transport over long distances, included weapons like heavy war clubs, a special hooked boomerang, and spear-throwers.146

  It is a myth to suppose that humans have lived in a harmonious ecological balance with their natural environment; rather, technological limits have limited human destructiveness.147 Pre-civilization was no peaceful Garden of Eden. The violence of pre-civilization is well il ustrated by the discovery of Neolithic mass graves in Europe of 6,000 to 7,000 years old, containing human skeletons and hacked off body parts.148 One circular pit, uncovered in Bergheim, France, had seven human skeletons as well as an infant skull section laying on the remains of seven human left arms that had been hacked off, probably by axes, perhaps done for war trophies.

  Other mass graves in Europe have incomplete skeletons, indicating mutilation, and maybe cannibalism and the shinbones of victims are frequently broken, so it is likely torture occurred.149

  Steven Pinker in his study of human violence, The Better Angels of our Nature,150 concludes that the growth of cites, states, technology, 145 Wade, as above, p. 151.

  146 As above, p. 84.

  147 T. Flannery, The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People (Reed books, Port Melbourne, 1994).

  148 F. Chenel (et al.), “A Farewell to Arms: A Deposit of Human Limbs and Bodies at Bergheim, France, c. 4,000 BC,” Antiquity, vol. 89, December, 2015, p. 1313.