Zombie Apocalypse Now!

by Thorfinn Skullsplitter

  It seems that team Rick are slow learners because in season 6, episode 2, (“Just Survive Anyhow” (2015)) Rick, now at the Alexandria Safe Zone (which is anything but safe), takes all of his fighters, except Carol, to drive a herd of walkers away from Alexandria (what stops them from eventual y wandering back?). While they are doing this, Alexandria is attacked by the “Wolves,” a group of gunless, melee weapon-wielding (knives, machetes, sharpened sticks etc.), hacking, hyper-psycho-mzb, and a group with a surprisingly large number of women, perhaps former Women’s Studies or sociology/cultural studies graduates. Carol, the only good fighter there, is baking a casserole and is not on combat alert until the hacking begins. She doesn’t even have an assault rifle (the rifles seem to be m4a1s) with her, although she has a handgun with limited ammo. So – leave a group of defenceless people, a group about which Rick has said ad nauseam, can’t fight – alone, while conducting a mission that would be difficult to do with sheep, let alone the walking dead: go figure.

  As for plans, Team Rick in episode 8, season 6 (“Start to Finish”), plan to escape a house that is surrounded by zombies by using a tried and proven method of camouflaging themselves with zombie guts.

  Fine, but somehow, they forget about a little boy Sam, who is scared shitless by “monsters,” and they fail to even cover his head, as they did with the baby, Judith. He, of course, says “mom” right in the middle 154

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  of a big crowd of zombie shoppers. But, that’s show business. Oh…

  then in the next episode, “No Way Out,” (2016, season 6, episode 9), the continuity problem occurs of him not saying “mom” at that time at al . Rather, although the team start walking with their zombie guts suits in daylight, by nightfal , the kid is freaking out, taking all day to walk a few meters, leading to him to then speak and getting eaten by zombies, and his mom (Jessie) freaking out, and getting eaten by even more zombies, and the older brother (Ron), freaking out, and aiming his gun at Rick, and Michonne skewering him with her katana, leading to his gun going off (which wouldn’t have happened if she beheaded him) and taking out Carl’s eye with a dying shot.

  The foolishness of it all would lead a real survivalist to eating the tv remote, or not watch at al .

  And then there is Morgan, a born-again Buddhist-style pacifist (complete with quarterstaff), who previously was outrightly crazy (e.g. season 3, episode 12, “Clear” involving ritualistic burning of walkers), but now thinks that all human life is to be saved, due to his meeting with Eastman (season 6, episode 4, “Here’s Not Here”), a former forensic psychiatrist, turned mystic via the martial art of Aikido. Yes, a psycho has the luck of running into a professional who specialized in treating people just like him. He aids Morgan in recovering from his ptsd madness through use of, among other things, jō staff-katas/forms, and Morihei Ueshiba’s Aikido philosophy. Thus, while the Wolves are running around Alexandria hacking people to death, he wastes valuable time binding up Wolves that he has captured, much like a spider. His pacifist sins of omission kill people “just as dead” as if he shot them himself. Paradoxical y, his attitude of “all life is precious” does not extend to the living dead; dead they may be as ordinary humans, but walkers seem to have interests (eating people), and can “die another day.”

  Morgan’s philosophical y incoherent pacifism leads to him letting a group of Wolves escape, one of which, red-headed and wearing a battered blue denim jacket, picks up a gun and in a real zom poc would have ended his Buddhism with a bullet (even though Morgan had a holstered gun, which he made no attempt to draw). Then in 155

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  the very next episode, season 6, episode 3, “Thank You,” that same mzb uses that gun to almost kill Rick, who is parked in his recreation vehicle, with the doors conveniently unlocked and oblivious to possible attacks, even though he is aware that Alexandria is under attack and the whole area is teeming with walkers. And it gets even kookier, where in episode 8, season 6, Morgan defends his captured

  “Wolf” from Carol who is seeking to kill him, leading to them both getting knocked out and the Wolf getting a gun. The Wolf knocks out Morgan, who has just knocked out Carol, and then puts a knife to Denise’s throat, hostage-siege-style. Tara and Rosita come, and although they could easily shoot this crazy, decide to lay down their guns at the command of the Wolf with just a knife, so that the Wolf gets a gun (oddly leaving the rest of the guns), and makes off with Denise as a hostage! Any psycho killer worth his meds would have put them all out of their political y correct misery, then and there.

  This gets my vote for the most stupid scene ever to appear in an action film, and Carol in any case shoots this Wolf in the mid-season premiere, “No Way Out” (season 6, episode 9), so it is all for nothing.

  Yet, the episode, despite being ridiculous, was entertaining, once, like with superhero movies, belief is suspended, and one believes in fairies. Or zombies.

  Final y, should one mention that in season 6, episode 1, (“First Time Again” (2015)), Morgan, who is wiping zombie-goo off of his quarterstaff, takes baby Judith to hold without washing his hands, and makes skin contact with her hands, as if a baby is not going to suck or lick her hands? In fact, although walker bites are deadly, the characters are seemingly swimming in zombie goo and blood almost every episode, yet never get infected. Apparently, they don’t have cuts and cracks on their skin.

  And, we shouldn’t be too hard on team Rick in the dumb decision category in the light of all of the above. In season 6, episode 10 (“The Next World” (2016)), Rick and Daryl go on a scavenging mission, as everyone is getting pretty hungry – Rick is seen in one scene putting a new hole in his belt. The pair find a truck loaded with goodies, which miracle after miracle, has gas to go. But, rather than getting the goods 156

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  home fast, as common sense would dictate, they decide to go on a frolic after more goods, and after meeting new character “Jesus,” in a Benny Hillesque chase, lose it al , as the truck takes a swim in a lake.

  Only the script writers save team Rick from oblivion each episode, and in the end, the supposed death episode where Rick leaves the series (season 9, episode 5, “What Comes After,” November 4, 2018), Rick’s “death” while blowing up a bridge is not a real death, since he is whisked away by helicopter to start in a movie versions of The Walking Dead, may the Gods help us. Yet in a real zombie apocalypse, the one we are now going into, we need to do better. None of The Walking Dead characters would have enough street wisdom to survive a real col apse situation, for even a day. To get the ball rolling we start with some considerations about the philosophy of survivalism; for we all love the smell of (burning) philosophy in the morning.

  The Philosophy of Survivalism

  Some of the political y inclined have expressed opposition to survivalist ideas and its core philosophy, even while accepting that a col apse of techno-industrial civilization is coming. American ecological writer and former Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, John Michael Greer, has been critical of survivalism in his books The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age 427 and The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World 428 and other writings. As a caveat, Greer’s more recent book Dark Age America,429 is more along the lines of this present work being more pessimistic than his previous works in this genre.

  427 John Michael Greer, The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, 2008).

  428 John Michael Greer, The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, 2009), and Not the Future We Ordered: Peak Oil, Psychology, and the Myth of Progress (Karnac Books, London, 2013). Further references to this note are to The Ecotechnic Future.

  429 J. M. Greer, Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Col apse, and the Hard Future Ahead (New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, 2016).

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  Greer starts from the plausible enough position that at this point

  “it’s almost certainly too late to manage a transition to sustainability on a global or national scale, even if the political will to attempt it existed – which clearly it does not.” Consequently, “we are headed at breakneck pace toward a future of narrowing options, dwindling resources and faltering technology.” For Greer, there will be no crash or a massive catastrophe, but rather a gradual process of decline, a “slide down statistical curves that will ease modern industrial civilization into history’s dumpster.” This process of decline and fall will take between one to three centuries and end in a Dark Age.

  The West will be subject to epic migrations (or invasions) as the industrial age ends and military forces dependent on fossil fuels, fail. Mass migration will occur by sea and will result in the English language itself “only [being]spoken in a few enclaves in the Pacific Northwest.”

  The Mad Max/Road Warrior society scenario is dismissed by Greer, even though the very thesis of The Long Descent is that in the long march to a Dark Age most of the technology and knowledge of today will be lost. But, he also inconsistently says that even if a mass die-off of humanity occurred the survivors could still use today’s culture and resource base, and before long the internet would be working! He also says: “Everyone alive after the col apse would have grown up in the pre-col apse world and learned the skil s needed to operate a modern society.” This is certainly wrong because a society of the technical sophistication and complexity of ours requires millions of specialized technicians to function and after the death of these technicians, society grinds to a halt, as has been said previously.

  Most people lack the skil s and know-how to be able to repair even relatively simple electronic or mechanical devices, or even light a fire using only sticks.430

  Greer has a comic book view of survivalists as general y lone madmen hiding in a cabin in the woods with stockpiles of food and firearms, while the outside world burns. This is the same view held 430 Lewis Dartnell, The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch (The Bodley Head, London, 2014); Leonard Read, “I, Pencil,” The Freeman, December 1958.

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  by the founder of the transition town initiative, Rob Hopkins, who believes that cities such as the mega-developed Sunshine Coast, Queensland, can make a transition away from fossil fuel use and become sustainable ecocities.431 No, they are not pulling our greens.

  Greer criticizes survivalists for believing in the myth of apocalypse, but the real myth-makers are those who believe such communitarian fairy tales. A few people planting “community gardens” and holding hands and chanting, or praying, does not a revolution make. Nevertheless, the opposition to survivalism is made clear by Hopkins in his article “Why the Survivalists Have Got it Wrong,”432

  which makes the misguided critique that survivalists seek to live in isolation while, “peak oil and climate change, and the challenge that they present, are a call to return to society” and that most beloved of entities, “community.” All of this assumes, of course, that a Mad Max/ Road Warrior die-off situation will not occur, and that a rapid col apse is not going to happen, assumptions which we have seen are questionable.

  Greer also makes specific and weak criticisms of survivalism:

  “Isolated survivalist enclaves with stockpiles of food and ammunition would be a tempting prize and could count on being targeted” by roaming brigands. That, of course is if they find them. Perhaps the attention of these roaming gangs will be taken up targeting the anti-weapon “communities” who have plenty of food, but no guns and no will to resist. The Walking Dead TV series gives good examples of this, especial y Alexandria. To this challenge it could be said: “However many you kil , there will always be more – and eventual y your ammo will run out.” All the more need for truly massive stockpiles of guns and ammo and the use of melee weapons, going medieval, using weapons that won’t run out, as will be discussed later in book 2. Call it “sustainability.”

  431 Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook: Creating Local Sustainable Communities Beyond Oil Dependency (Finch Publishing, Sydney, 2009), p. 79, and p. 224.

  432 Rob Hopkins “Why the Survivalists Have Got it Wrong,” September 4, 2006

  at http://transitionculture.org/2006/09/04/why-the-survivalists-have-got-it-wrong. The article is a response to Zachary Nowak, “Preparing for a Crash: Nuts and Bolts,” Energy Bulletin, at http://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-08-31/preparing-crash-nuts-and-bolts.

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  Hopkins says that survivalism is a distinctly anti-social and irresponsible creed. However, the survivalist movement has never strictly been about lone people or even isolated families preparing for disaster in all its forms and retreating to safer ground.433 Safety in numbers, as far as that is possible, is accepted by survivalists.

  Survivalists though, by contrast to back-to-the-landers, (deep) ecologists, and preparedness retreaters, are robust and rugged individualists who are ready, willing and able to go it alone if necessary, come what may, even if the sewers of hell are opened and flood the earth. The spirit of self-reliance, self-sufficiency, independence and overall toughness, is repugnant to both the socialized communitarian Left and the globalized economic Right. Survivalism is about raising a defiant “rude finger” up to the Establishment’s modernist way of life, that of urban helplessness and dependence upon the crusty teat of Big Sister, the modern boss of Big Brother.

  Kurt Saxon, who coined the term survivalist,434 also notes that survivalists, general y unlike back-to-the-landers, (deep) ecologists and preparedness retreaters, are ready, willing and able to fight if necessary, because self-protection is taken to be a primary component of self-reliance.435 Kurt Saxon was not anti-community by the way; because of insurmountable problems of the future survival in cities, he thought that the most reasonable survival strategy was for people wanting to live, to get out of the cities and head to small rural towns and “become part of community.”436

  Rawlesian survivalists, followers of the survival philosophy of James Wesley, (comma intentional) Rawles,437 although also 433 Meg Raven, “What is Survivalism?” At http://www.aussurvivalist.com/

  whatissurvivalismmeg.htm; Douglas Good, “What is Survivalism?” at http://www.

  aussurvivalist.com/whatissurvivalismgood.htm.

  434 “Survivalism,” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivalism.

  435 Kurt Saxon, “What is a Survivalist? (1980), at http://www.aussurvivalist.com/

  whatissurvivalismsaxon.htm.

  436 As above.

  437 James Wesley, Rawles, How to Survive the End of the World as we Know It, (Plume/

  Penguin Books, New York, 2009); “Precepts of Rawlesian Survivalist Philosophy,” at http://

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  concerned with self-defense, believe that survivalists by stockpiling resources are in a position during a crisis to dispense charity to people in need; hardly an anti-social and irresponsible creed, contrary to Hopkins. Rawles sees it as practical Christianity in action. My view of Christianity is detailed in the next book, and it has no monopoly on kindness and charity.

  In a debate/dialogue with Richard Heinberg, Hopkins was asked whether a focus on emergency planning should be made just in case dire things happen during the “transition.”438 Hopkins response was that “in terms of visioning, there isn’t a positive potential outcome to use to inspire and engage people. Transition is very deliberately designed to be non-threatening, to be inviting and engaging.”439 A vision of col apse preparations could make the movement look like a “survivalist cult” – a political y incorrect fate-worse-than-death.

  However, just when it seems that all hope is lost, Hopkins says that there is merit in putting together bushcraft training, bioregional studies, biointensive horticulture, traditional allotment gardening and emergency respon
se organisation.440 Even in terms of “positive thinking,” as Peter Sandman has said, it is calming for people to prepare, giving a sense of control which builds confidence and hopeful y gives a greater capacity to cope with fear.441

  Chris Martenson in The Crash Course, argues that personal preparation is not selfish because it is one less person drawing on community resources, so putting one’s survival affairs in order, is the best thing an individual can do for the community: www.survivalblog.com/precepts.html.

  438 Richard Heinberg and Rob Hopkins, “To Plan for Emergency, or Not? Heinberg and Hopkins Debate,” May 28, 2009, at http://www.postcarbon.org/article/40535-to-plan-for-emergency-or-not.

  439 As above.

  440 As above.

  441 Peter Sandman, “The Government is Preparing for the Worst While Hoping for the Best

  – Now it Needs to Tell the Public to do the Same Thing,” at http://www.psandman.com/col/

  WashPost.htm.

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  If you do, you’ll have a stable foundation to utilize, and you’ll be in a better position to add valuable resources and skil s to community efforts. A strong community begins with strong household.442

  Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse 101:

  The Coming Col apse of Civilization

  Apart from a number of excellent books dealing explicitly with the zombie apocalypse,443 where zombies are conceived as the living/

  walking dead, little has been written about surviving the coming col apse of civilization, the multi-generational scenario.

  Christ Lisle, a former US Army Ranger in an often cited online article “Prepare for Peak Oil on a Budget,”444 saw peak oil leading to billions of people dying and leaving large quantities of stuff behind.

  He adopted a minimalist approach and recommended not buying survival items (bar one item), but that one should “pick up off the ground when others leave it behind.” For many lacking wilderness survival skil s, such a minimalist approach could guarantee a place among the billions dying. Nevertheless, Lisle recommends purchasing a high-quality synthetic (not down) sleeping bag, rated down to -20 C. The synthetic bag, unlike the down, can still keep you warm when wet, and is a “mobile shelter.” Lisle said: I’ve slept comfortably in the snowy Italian Alps and Alaska with no fire, no tent, and no ground pad – all I had was a good sleeping bag. I’ve spent many nights outside, and I am here to say that a 442 Chris Martenson, The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future of Our Economy, Energy and Environment (John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey, 2011), pp. 258-259.