[Author’s note: Put this in the “I don’t really have a topic even though I thought about this for the longest time so here is some filler material” category. You might also note that I added a #1 to this as I think this may become a series of posts. I don’t know. We’ll see.]
WSHTF of course is the acronym for “When (expletive deleted) hits the fan”. I was on YouTube the other week looking for a link for the Cowboy Bebop post and the search algorithm popped up a series of survival-preparedness videos as something that YouTube thought that I might like. Apparently there is a whole category with this acronym. I don’t know. I guess some people are bored and have nothing to do.
But there’s a writing topic here (for at least one post though I am already regretting this and now I’m unsure if I want to write more than one of these), so let’s plow ahead and see what happens.
For our first WSHTF scenario we will deal with the current flavor of the month, zombies. What will you do when the global zombie apocalypse explodes and your family and friends turn into brain eating ghouls (though that’s disparaging to ghouls as ghouls are much more advanced than zombies and… never mind, another time).
Apparently this topic gets more play than you would imagine as there are various civilian groups of enthusiasts preparing for a zombie apocalypse and even some government agencies and the military use the zombie scenario as a stand in for large-scale civil disasters.
It has been argued that the evolution of civilization can be broken up into five distinct phases: Survival, Building/rebuilding, Expansion, Maturity, Collapse. In this scenario you are either in the collapse or survival phase. With that in mind, you can choose to handle this in distinctly different ways.
You can choose to throw out all the rules of modern society and focus on your own survival because in a society in free fall collapse you will only survive by using your wits and by being willing to throw out altruism (preferably from a tall building) and looting as many pre-disaster goods as possible while kneecapping as many people you come across and insuring that the zombies will go for them rather than you.
Or you can choose to stubbornly cling to a few choice shreds of civilization and try to maintain some semblance of law and order as well as fanning the flames of empathy and humanity to rebuild a shattered world.
I think the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. In a dog eat dog (and dog eat cat and dog eat human and human eat possum and I guess what I’m trying to say is just don’t turn up your nose at it, okay?) world we will have to make some hard choices in order to survive and trying to do the “right thing” may just be one of those hard choices.
Sure, sure it might be easier to hit that guy with a lead pipe and take his box of mac and cheese. But maybe you can share that mac and cheese with your can of tuna and make a tuna casserole bake and maybe it won’t be as gross as that possum fritter you had for breakfast (I’m just saying maybe it won’t, there’s always a chance).
Sooner or later you will have to cooperate with other humans. Why not start as soon as possible?
I could go into the specifics of machete versus katana as the best bladed weapon or 12 gauge shotgun versus AK-47 but really those are details. The important thing in this scenario is your state of mind. Your philosophy and world view is what you will leave behind to future generations. Make it a philosophy that incorporates kindness, caring, and forward thinking leadership.
Or you know….
At least hire a good biographer that can edit out all the bad bits.
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