Althouse: "If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively."

August 18, 2009

"If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively."

"That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada. They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures."

29 comments:

Hoosier Daddy said...: Maybe we could use that strategy against the jihadists instead. The frequent counterattacks with increasing force part.; 8/18/09, 9:44 AM
Anonymous said...: That's neoconservative military policy, isn't it?; 8/18/09, 9:52 AM
Bissage said...: Anyone who questions the existence of zombies never met my Aunt Beatrice.; 8/18/09, 9:53 AM
EnigmatiCore said...: Professor Robert Smith?; 8/18/09, 9:55 AM
Salamandyr said...: Yet another case of "spending all your grant money on beer and hookers" and then making pulling something off the internet at the last minute.; 8/18/09, 10:00 AM
Hoosier Daddy said...: Well lets face it, zombies wouldn't last 48 hours in the US although I suspect the East coast save New Hampsire would be overrun since its not progressive to own a gun.

Naturally some folks like Robert Cook would be opposed to the use of force against those zombies who hadn't actually eaten anyone.

Europe of course would be a write off.; 8/18/09, 10:04 AM
Kev said...: (the other kev)

My strategy usually involves a mixture of land mines and Civil War era cannons loaded with coiled barbed wire. Leaves a mess, though.

vf - drizebam, as in BAM!; 8/18/09, 10:18 AM
Anonymous said...: Head shots, head shots.

--G.
Romero, WI; 8/18/09, 10:21 AM
Anonymous said...: Are zombies covered by HR 3200? Illegal immigrants get health care under the bill, but would the undead dead?

And if so, how much does it cost to treat the undead dead? Can't be much, can it? Isn't that the whole point of the death panels?

So maybe including zombies in the bill would be okay because it wouldn't actually cost anything. More of a symbolic gesture then.; 8/18/09, 10:21 AM
Anonymous said...: One more thing, before we arbitrarily and unilaterally engage in American imperialism by attacking the zombies, I think we should first work to establish diplomatic relations with them so we can understand the root causes of their aggression.

Who knows, maybe if we can get them to like us they will leave us alone and no zombie blood will be shed.

Just a thought.; 8/18/09, 10:26 AM
TJ said...: EnigmatiCore needs one more question mark and possibly an exclamation point in his comment.; 8/18/09, 10:30 AM
traditionalguy said...: The funny thing is their backwards premise. It is the collapse of civilization that leads to zombie outbreaks, not the other way around. I wonder how much legal and illegal drugs per capita per day will it take to zombie out all that is left of America's traditional judeo-christian civilization?; 8/18/09, 10:35 AM
Scott M said...: My current favorite geek quote (being a closet geek myself)

The hardest part of surviving the zombie apocalypse would be trying to pretty that it's not all totally awesome

Everyone, even if you don't like zombie movies and stories, needs to read Max Brooks (Mel Brooks' son) novel, World War Z. It's a collection of interviews done about 10 years after everything goes to hell.

This is one of two books that I've told everyone I know to read it, going so far as to buy copies as Christmas gifts and birthday gifts, even for people I know don't read for recreation. Each and every one of them loved it. It's a easy read as some of the chapters (interviews with survivors, really) are only a couple of pages long.

Aside form being an incredibly good read about the "end" of the world, but it's a VERY good piece of both social and political commentary/satire.

Brad Pitt and Leonardo De Caprio both have movie production houses that bid vigorously against each other in 2006 for the movie rights. I believe Pitt's won out and they've been working on the preproduction. Given the structure of the book, I think it will be challenging to turn it into a 3rd person narrative fit for the big screen, but I can't wait.

The Battle Of Yonkers, in particular, should be spectacular.; 8/18/09, 10:52 AM
Scott M said...: ugh

that should read,

"trying to pretend" not trying to pretty. lol; 8/18/09, 10:53 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: I've decided to go with American spelling for civilization because it seems to me more civilized than the British spelling.

:-p; 8/18/09, 11:25 AM
Daryl said...: This paper tells us what we already knew: in the event of a zombie attack, we need to strike as hard and as fast as we can.

The old zombie movies would often vilify the government for doing exactly that: showing up in Biohazard Suits with assault rifles and flamethrowers, eradicating all life in the contaminated zone. In fact this was often the message of the movie: that zombies are bad, but that people are worse.

Well, you know what: it's better to gun down 10,000 Americans where they live than to risk letting 10,000,000 Americans be turned into zombies.; 8/18/09, 12:07 PM
Jeremy said...: No brains for oil!

-The Other Jeremy; 8/18/09, 1:40 PM
EnigmatiCore said...: I think that you should change your name to Professor Ann Althouse? in order to differentiate yourself from all other Ann Althouses in the world.

Professor Robert Smith? cracks me up.; 8/18/09, 1:54 PM
dbp said...: I wonder why Robert Smith? didn't pick Robert Smith!?

After all, the "!" is a mathematical symbol and so far as I know, the "?" isn't.

achravot--Oh no! Not ravot again!; 8/18/09, 2:00 PM
Scott M said...: @EnigmatiCore

I think it’s on youtube, but see if you can find the old Fridays! sketch about This Old House doing a renovation job on The Cure’s lead singer, Robert Smith’s house. The whole thing was torn apart and Bob Villa was walking him through telling him what they were going to do. The ever-meloncholy Smith was looking at a completely torn-apart bath room and going into rapture about how perfect it was and for them to not change anything.

Hysterical to this Gen-X’r.; 8/18/09, 2:06 PM
DADvocate said...: I highly recommend The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. My son and I found lots of vital information.

Plan ahead you will survive.; 8/18/09, 2:36 PM
Synova said...: And no one has linked the Onion bit about video games preparing our children for the zombie apocalypse?

"In some respects, a zombie "plague" resembles a lethal, rapidly spreading infection."

A zombie plague IS a lethal, rapidly spreading infection.

And if you're setting up a simulation and have to use a representative "pretend" infection that is passed person to person, why the heck *not* use zombies?

A simulation of an airborn pathogen is different.; 8/18/09, 3:05 PM
Cedarford said...: Jokes aside, this is really a chilling study about civilizational threats imposed by a subpopulation directly hostile to the Civilization.
Or jeopardizing it by their nature - disease carriers, inamicable to civilization culture or religion, or high breeding rates that threaten to overwhelm civilizational contributors with parasites.

Existential threats. And "Zombie" just substitutes for other names that cannot be said openly or used in a hypothetical study.

And the study implies:

1. In simple mathematical deletion, for every Zombie you kill...well, you subtract 1. You do not add 10 or 99 new Zombies.

2. The faster you recognize the threat and use all force to end it, the better.

3. Attempting to capture, or cure "Zombies", or try and convince them to stop behaving like "Zombies" - once the existential struggle begins - is a waste of time. You quarantine and isolate until they self-decimate. Or you kill them.

4. No distinguishment can be made between "innocent civilian" zombies and "active killer zombies" in the Canadian math scenario. They are all a threat.

They all must be dealt with quickly and aggressively. Consider who was dispatched and dragged to the body bonfires in the Zombie movies. Old zombies, female zombies, men zombies, little zombies.

It works in reverse, too. If you wish to take over a civilization as revolutionaries, you wish to do comprehensive "class enemy" liquidations. And act quickly and aggressively against who the revolutionaries see as "zombies".

No morality in this discussion - just the math of epidemiology, vectors, logarithic escalation.; 8/18/09, 3:18 PM
Scott M said...: A simulation of an airborn pathogen is different.

…and magnitudes greater in threat. There’s no good way to isolate the living population behind meaningful defenses. An airborne viral agent cuts against most of the more popular zombie mythos anyway. The whole point is that they attack you, start eating on you until you die, then loose interest (because you’re dead), and at some point thereafter, you reanimate as one of them.

In Max Brook’s World War Z, there are a couple of excellent interviews that talk about this. One is with one of the staff-level officers that was in command during the last of the war years. His discussion is how the “army” of the undead was like no army ever faced and that the entire book of war, “the one that we had been writing since one ape slapped another” had to be thrown out. He shows a wartime map of the US and talks about 200 million undead they were going to have to face to resecure just the continental territory.

Another couple of extremely cool facets of Brooks’ book:

*Cuba because a wartime powerhouse and post-war economic dynamo (explained VERY well).
*Russia becomes a religious empire (also explained very well)
*The war starts with a black president and a “wacko” white vice-president from the other party. I believe (it was written in 2005) that Brooks was channeling Colin Powell at the time and the vice was supposed to be Dean, although it’s never mentioned.
*A hole slew of contemporary celebrities hole up in a web-access (cameras and such) house to ride out the crises and get overwhelmed not by zombies, but by regular people looking for shelter who saw them showing off their fortress online. This particular chapter is voiced by Henry Rollins in the audiobook and he’s exceptional when he describes what can only be Ann Coltur and John Stewert going at it like it’s the end of the world (cuz it is).
*Every single human in North Korea simply disappears after the world-wide crises starts. This part is as creepy in what it doesn’t explore as what it does.
*The first nuclear war happens between Iran and Indian…

My obvious enjoyment of this book really surprised me as I’m not normally one for zombie stories. End of the world/end of civilization…sure, I’m all over it and zombies are certainly one way to get there, but I’ve never been one for over-the-top, just-for-the-hell-of-it gore. This is different. There’s very little “gore” at all in the book.

There are, however, very, very disturbing images that will stick with you like the undead toddler still stuck and struggling in the child carrier backpack (“zombies don’t have the IQ points to free themselves from simple doors”)for years. That one freaked me out for days.; 8/18/09, 3:24 PM
William said...: Zombies exist only to satisfy our genocidal fantasies. As far as I can remember there have been no zombie movies where the undead attempts sexual congress with a woman. Compare these poor creatures with vampires, werewolves, and mummies. Vampires get all the hot chicks, werewolves get to act out their aggressions, and mummies reach out for world domination. What do zombies get? At best, a quick bite before their brains are splattered. A zombie's lot is not a happy one. Igor has more glamour.; 8/18/09, 5:49 PM
traditionalguy said...: Could a zombie be a Hillbilly, who having given up his Second Amendment rights, has now attained level 5 on the Death Panel's critera for immediate end of life to prevent Global Warming caused by gasping Zombie's that are Swine Influenced? That stuff is all current events in the Days of Crises and Socialism.; 8/18/09, 8:06 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: Who said zombies don't exist? Of course they do, and they've already over-run the whole place.

Get your guns, boys!; 8/18/09, 8:50 PM
kentuckyliz said...: Quote is just as true if you're thinking Zombie Banks.

They're sucking the life out of the economy.

I am, surprisingly, interested in reading this book now.

wv fulpula
the soft spot between hard-boned skull plates where the zombies aim when they're going for your brains; 8/18/09, 11:40 PM
kentuckyliz said...: Oh and I live among the Hillbillies. They will NOT give up their Second Amendment rights. They settled here as hunters.

There will be a lot of cold dead hillbillies before you ever get to their guns.

Just sayin.

WV natindw

In the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy...hillbilly for "not in dis world"; 8/18/09, 11:42 PM