Zombie Pandemic Preparation
I was more than a little thrilled to hear about a new potential pandemic. I was more than a little disappointed when I found out it didn’t involve zombies.
I should admit up front that I am a doom-and-gloom sort through and through. I’m also a fan of spectacular collapses, disasters…and zombie fiction.
Zombies, you see, are the pop culture manifestation of our fears of plague, societal breakdown, and the extinction of our own species. These are the very topics that have consumed my interest and shaped my worldview. Heck, I’ve even managed to parlay writing about them into my visible means of support.
I don’t, however, cheer on death and disaster; I just recognize how woven into the course of events they are. And in addition to this zombies have a very special place in my heart. In modern American lore they are often the result of a virus—quite literally a walking plague. They devour without actual need of nutrition. Each victim they masticate rises again in a ghastly parody of life to join the indefatigable, shambling army.
There’s something reflective about their reproduction and consumption. It’s not just the viral base or their walking corpse shtick that strikes a nerve. Their efficiency at needless, destructive consumption is downright American. We’ve met the enemy…and they look awfully familiar.
Zombies individually really aren’t that scary, however. It’s their amazing efficiency and speed at reproduction combined with the slow but relentless advance of their growing horde. The genre’s power isn’t in the glamour of a single horrible monster; it’s in the horror of the collapse of civilization. Cities fall…life becomes a very uncertain struggle…humanity gives way to much baser behavior. And against it all looms the likelihood of extinction. Good stuff!
Societal order isn’t quite as thick and binding a chain as folks like to believe. Chaos rears its ugliness pretty frequently. The more ordered and complex the system, the more shocking the unwinding when it inevitably occurs. In fact, size and complexity invite monstrous bushwackings by chaos. Chaos is like a Midwest tornado eyeing the Trailer Park of Order. It just can’t stay away.
So we don’t get zombies…this time…and frankly we don’t need them. Fate has always done just fine with the usual four horsemen and can afford to spurn such fiction. I think zombies would be a nice way to spice things up, but I’ll probably have to settle for the run of the mill plague or two. And it will be hard enough to fight my neighbors for food when energy prices squeeze supply lines and drive the price of agricultural inputs through the roof. This could be especially true in urban centers dotted with federal reservations housing wards of the state. Those folks could get especially restive when the going gets rough…and they’d be a lot faster than zombies.
Still, I find it helps to think in terms of a zombie infestation. How would I survive if my post-industrial built environment were to become unserviceable? How would I fare should basics like food and clean water become scarce enough in megalopolis to fight over? Really, how useful would gold be in the thick of collapse?
Well, we make our stand where we can. Most of us won’t be able to secure an escape to a well-prepared countryside retreat. We’ll have to make dothe best we can in our urban or suburban wilds. Some non-perishable food, some soap, toilet paper, water…a little whiskey…some gold if things stay fairly sane, some lead in case they don’t. A bit of philosophy would help, too. As Matt Savinar has written, we should be ready to kiss our asses goodbye.
Times are getting rough and all bets are off. It won’t be zombies, but it’ll be interesting.
Regards,
Gary Gibson
Managing Editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder
May 4, 2009
Gary Gibson
Gary Gibson is the managing editor for Whiskey and Gunpowder. He joins the Whiskey staff as a long-time fan and reader of both Whiskey and Gunpowder and the Daily Reckoning. A graduate of Fordham University, Gary now spends his days reading about and writing on limited government, sound money, personal responsibility and resource investing.
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Gary, my dumpling…
What an absolutely fabulous piece, even considering the author! (I feel constrained to point out that you meant “do” instead of “due,” though.)
Have no fear, Mom-Mom has all the answers, after I point out that MY passion is for VAMPIRES. Ah…to be able to fly or turn into a rolling blue mist or flickering lights…never to get fat or old…to be able to sleep all day and have riotous times all night…what else can make life joyous other than congenial companions one can bite upon the neck and home made garlic-herb butter on freshly made Italian sourdough bread? Well…perhaps Robert Heinlein’s Tertius III colony!
The answer to what is to become of my favorite editor other than myself when the Obamanation makes life in Baltimore untenable, the answers are:
1. Tell me what kind of whiskey you want stocked. Charles favors Tullamore Dew.
2. Be certain you know how to get to the oasis that is prepared for you, stuffed full of camaraderie, joy, serenity, fat little Black Dexter cattle, a magnificent library, and far better food than you have envisioned. It comes complete with your relatively humble correspondent (BA, Philosophy, University of Hawaii, etc.), free range eggs, fresh milk, cream, and butter, prime meat…we’ve been working on this project for so long that we’re to frivolities such as building the apparatus to grow Portobello mushrooms which we will marinate in (stockpiled) extra virgin olive oil, fresh-cracked pepper corns (5 kinds), balsamic vinegar (your choice of a dozen other kinds, but Balsamic is the best), topped with fresh home made Parmesan cheese, and grilled. Exquisite.
We may have to live through famine, plague, martial law, and the rampage of the Zombie Leftists, motorcycle gangs, and locusts, , but I can see no reason to do so in discomfort!
I’ve been too busy to get over here for two weeks and was understandably thrilled to see my by-line up TWICE! How good you are to me, and I hope the other barflies like my weird sense of humor and my analysis. Hugs, Linda
Gary…
All South’n gals are shocking flirts, and I’ve had sixty years of practice at it, but there really is a safe haven for you here. Bring the Mogambo along, and JHK even if he is the dreadful Democrat I’ve been told! We’ll invent a game that involves swapping gold and silver futures, or swap metal for hectares, if conversation and cribbage ever pall.
LBT
P.S. Eat this message after reading lest your 40,000 regular readers want to come, too. Haven’t got room for more than a dozen.
Linda,
Duly noted and changed.
And you have to know I’ll be barreling your way at the first sign of zombie outbreak.
Chuckle. That’s my fellow! There is so much going on that I feel like a whirling dervish, and only slightly less productive sometimes.
Today Charles and I went down what is surely the worst “road” in the entire USA to look at a highly suitable hunk of territory only about fifteen miles away but for effective purposes so far of the beaten path that the Zombies would never find it. Alas…there were at least half a dozen shacks and beaten up ancient trailers within a quarter of a mile of the site, and if the two robust young men sitting on the porch of one drinking and smoking during work hours aren’t known as “Bubba” and “Sinister Slim,” then they’re probably “Killer” and “Blade.” Great grief! Just looking around out there from the rutted, washed out clay roller coaster ride was enough to know that the moment chaos broke out the first defensive measure needed would be to shoot all the neighbors! I never saw such an unsavory neighborhood in my life, including the time we got lost on the wrong side of Philadelphia at night. At the very least we’d have to count the cows and chickens every morning.
One reason Jim is right about the desirability of small towns is that you DO know your neighbors. The local gendarmerie, if any, knows exactly who the trouble makers are, and so do all the locals.
We’re looking into land around a small town about fifty miles away not only because it meets all of our parameters (price, location, seclusion, topography) but because we’ve formed a friendship with one of the town’s most influential families. If Miss Moselle (honest, that’s her name!) tells the church ladies and the library ladies that Miss Linda is to be accepted and none of this “We’ll see how we feel about the newcomers in about fifty years” business, that will be how things are. When the wagons have to be circled, it is best to be on the inside.
How interesting that you have no other traffic here, since the Zombie article is one of your best. I haven’t got time, so YOU run with ghoulies and ghosties and longleggedby beasties and things that go “BUMP!” in the night because there is a lot of room for expansion on your theme.
Does Agora have a ‘plane, or do you? Are you, perchance, a pilot? Why not? You’re a fascinating fellow with many interests, and I’m perfectly willing to believe you can fly a ‘plane. Why can’t I? Primarily, because my depth perception has never been good and it is SO inelegant to bounce during the landings. I have several pilots in my family (none close enough to do any good) and they would sneer at me jovially if I bunny-hopped down the runway we’re going to build one of these days. Just a simple little country one suitable for small aircraft….1500 feet long, no more than 2% grade, probably a home made wind sock and possibly jack o’ lanterns for night landings. (Another of my ideas of a grand joke has long been to pour a concrete slab and paint it to look like a heli-pad! I think it would cheer up “fly over” country nicely.) Anyway, if you ARE able to fly, there is a small field about two miles away as the Beechcraft flies, but twice that far by vehicle. If not, there is the local municipal airport (sure to call itself “International” by now.)
It doesn’t look as though we’ll pull ourselves together enough to get to Vancouver, so a couple of suggestions if you aren’t familiar with it. Take at least a couple of hours to wander around Little India just for the fascinating sights and fragrances. You’ll have a grand time and good food of many varieties is one of the best things about Vancouver. The Opera there is superb, of course. If you go look around, would you get me several bags of mace? The flowers, not the ground spice. Bliss! Mace, of course, is the outer hull of the nutmeg. What you want are bright orange dried flowers, sort of. The local China Town is also fascinating, and great bargains are to be had in jade and amber, much of it with inclusions. Funny? John and I went there frequently (one of the five cities where we attended the opera regularly), and always took my beloved Lhasa Apso. We decided to walk him through China Town, and Nefer, who thought downtown was a magnificent place to smell and mark, was horrified. “Oh, Mama, Mama, this NOT good place. Smell funny. Sound funny. We not stay!” By the end of a block his tail was dragging (a SURE sign a Lhasa is not happy), and very shortly thereafter the choices were to drag him on his soft, fluffy tummy or to pick him up and carry him back to the car, which John did, while I finished my shopping. Nefer Neb Tawee (transliteration of the Egyptian hieroglyphics for “Beautiful Lord of the Two Lands”) was from Tibetan ancestors and perhaps he “knew” instinctively that Chinese are the enemy. He didn’t need them threatening the dollar to know they were up to no good; the way they sounded and smelled was proof positive for HIM. Ah, he was a grand companion and ferociously protective of his goddess. He couldn’t stand men and growled at John every time John picked him up. John, 6’2 in his stocking feet, and a mighty hero, just laughed and always said, “You aren’t even dumb enough to bite me.” Nefer always grumbled a clear, “Well, I’m certainly thinking about it and I LIKE the idea.” Nefer adored me, loved our daughter, and could usually be blandished by pretty teenaged girls, but other than that he held the whole world in suspicious, surly contempt. HE was bred to guard temples, and he knew it. He may have looked like twenty-two pounds of silky white fluff with absurd blue satin bows on his ears, but he was incredibly strong for his size, had a mouth full of very sharp teeth, and the temperament of a cranky grizzlie bear. I had to tell him specifically, “Mama needs this man to…” before Nefer would let a workman in the house, and he would watch them all the time, clearly hoping just once I would change my mind and let him run the intruder off. My word was only good for one trip in; if a cable man, say, had to go out to his truck for more tools, Nefer insisted that his pass had expired and we had to go through formal permission for him to re-enter. He never did accept the weekly lawn care crew…Dogs. I love ‘em.
Okay, back to e-mail, which is threatening my 1000 limit again (at 973), and in today’s catch up and research I discovered that a great many people are interested in the outcome of the “outlaw private gardens” bill. I may combine that with the ludicrous “sheer cynical for profit” C&W song, “A Country Boy Will Survive,” and see where that leads me. Glad to see you’ve got Bob Lee as…a client? Consultant?
Hugs, Linda
“Awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom”
Because the lower classes have more children than the upper classes. (In fact the birth rate among the upper classes in all north America and Western Europe is about 1.4 per female, which gives us a half life of about 50 years.) And because we are now importing huge numbers of unintelligent people from the third world….the average IQ goes down every day.
When the average IQ becomes similar to Mexico or Africa or Haiti….only then will we collapse.
What happened to Europeans in Africa and Haiti will eventually happen here, but it will take at least a hundred years for that to happen.
.But come it will …no doubt about it.