OR A Discourse On The Dead-That-Walk
One of the most worrying moments in my recent history was when I asked a doctor about whether zombies could ever actually exist.
THEY STOPPED TO THINK ABOUT IT.
This, mind you, was a neurologist, the kind of doctor who specialises in the human nervous system and brain, so - we might have cause for concern ...
I mention this because one apocalypse that I haven't covered out of the Top 10 so far has been that staple of horror films, The Zombie Apocalypse.
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| Coming to a city near you! |
Here an aside. Why are these films so popular? I thought you'd never ask! Well, the low-budget requirements are attractive: for the zombies, a horde of extras in green make-up, only ever seen at a distance, with a few Special Focus Extras in elaborate make-up and prosthetics for close-ups. You don't need a big cast for the Survivors Under Siege screenplay.
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| Zombie siege or Black Friday shoppers? |
Practically any location can serve as refuge, sanctuary or fortress, all it takes is some planks nailed over the windows. If you get a budget in the tens of millions, then you can portray how the infection spreads at first, how civilisation collapses, possibly in different countries as well, before cutting to the single (large) sanctuary survivor's set. In both types of film you can blow the zeds away with total impunity with no comeback at all - unless zombies ever get together and form a trade union.
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"You'll believe a man can fly!"
(Briefly) |
Where were we? Ah, just outside Stoke Poges. A long way from home. Anyway, the idea that the dead can or could or might re-animate and become a living plague is, of course, patently ridiculous, because in all human history it's not happened.* Then, too, if this were to happen, the idea that a rotting corpse would be able to run at thirty miles per hour at you when it sees you (The Victim) from a mile away at night in mist during a thunderstorm is also stretching the suspension of disbelief to breaking point.
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The Comsat Angels, because I've not mentioned them in a while
(Plus, that title "Waiting for a miracle" is apt for a zombie apocalypse) |
Of course, if the Dreaded Zombie Infection is actually an extra-terrestrial micro-organism from a Martian meteorite that evolved on the Red Planet (The Comsat Angel's debut single, on red vinyl yet, actually) a million years ago, then all bets are off.**
"Battle of the Damned", a jolly enjoyable B-movie zom-rom zombie-romp, puts forward a compelling alternative to the silly or supernatural: a pathogen that destroys higher brain functions whilst also simultaneously ramping up aggression to homicidal levels. Imagine a football hooligan on intravenous amphetamines and you're in the right desert. Art?
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| Zombies AND killer robots! This film is made of solid Win-Win. Go buy it. |
The question of how a zombie infection in one country immediately spreads to the entire world is rarely covered in films: It's In The Script is my usual response to this. Yes, it may be ludicrous or far-fetched or blatantly impossible but - It's In The Script (I recited this law to my Darling Daughter several times whilst watching "The Meg").
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| Your friend and mine. Okay, okay, mostly my friend. |
In real life epidemiologists point to the ubiquity of international travel (will that line up my intellectual status on Word Count?) to explain how diseases can spread quickly, but to that we*** counter that the internet also provides up-to-the-second news information and updates, which travel faster than aircraft or ships. Thus, those countries most distant from Patient Zero would be aware of the developing crisis and take rapid isolationist measures.
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Your safest haven in a Zombie Apocalypse.
Plus, lots of "Lord of the Rings" film locations |
The other, usually unmentioned, fact about surviving the ZA is that a human body after death is not immortal. You We generally rot apart after a couple of months, so the idea that hordes of ravening undead will be stalking the meadows of Hampshire ten years after Z-Day is patently stupid.
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| A Hampshire meadow (concealing 37 SAS troopers hunting the undead) |
On the frigid taiga of Siberia, perhaps less so. In Norway's picturesque snowy fjords - sorry, no, the cold would render zombies practically immobile and thus easy game for Norks with knives and knouts and knobkerries. In the tropical heat of Cameroon, they would rot apart especially quickly, the end.
Of course, if the human host has been infested with a Martian microbe, that might mean terrestrial bacterial action is slowed or prevented altogether, enabling said shuffling corpse to last for, oh, six months?***
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| The diet was working splendidly - |
Egad. 800 875 913 words on a single topic, when I only meant to mention it in passing. Ah, zombies.
Of course, I could be overthinking the whole topic ...
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| I might have this hiding in the back of a cupboard somewhere |
* Yet.
** I cheated here. This is the McGuffin in my ZA manuscript, "Revelations"
*** The BOOJUM! we - myself (Conrad), Art, Steve, Oscar and occasional editors my kidneys and stomach.
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