Thoughts on the Zombie Apocalypse

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We live in uncertain times. As of this writing, the U.S. stock market has taken two consecutive days of beating, losing nearly 5% of its value. The conspiracy theorists came out to claim that China was mounting an attack on the financial system, and that America was on the verge of economic collapse. China and Russia conducted joint military exercises, and are both engaged in active territorial contention outside their borders. North Korea is on its highest state of alert and military readiness in years, helmed by an unpredictable madman. The middle east is burning more intensely than at any point in the last century. It’s little wonder, then, that one of the most popular and enduring narratives is that of the post-apocalyptic wilderness. Among those post-apocalyptic narratives, none has proven more successful or enduring as that of the zombie apocalypse.

a beacon and a caution: the zombie soldier
He had fun before he was turned, and then someone got to shoot a soldier without feeling bad about it!

This type of story, about individuals surviving in the herd, is a sort of meditation about what can happen when systems fail, and, in order to survive, the individual is suddenly compelled to act violently and cynically without any moral boundaries. Guns are important, as is a very limited, teamwork based on an equal mixture of tribalism and proto-democracy. In other words, it’s a specifically American fantasy, designed for an American audience. Key to maintaining the illusion of zombie apocalypse fantasies being relevant or interesting (rather than stupid and facile, as they are) is that one ignores this basic fact of its American-ness.

Witness the recent Foreign Policy piece that pretended to investigate whether countries would withstand the zombie apocalypse well or poorly, and concluded that the country best suited for this was Russia. The evaluation made some basic assumptions about the nature of the zombie problem, and about how governments and cultures would be suitable (or not) to responding. It privileged authoritarian governments that have supposedly-swift decision-making capabilities, and placed bureaucratic (and therefore democratic) governments at a disadvantage. It also assumed that countries with larger, urban populations would be vulnerable to zombie hordes, as would countries with sophisticated infrastructure. Stepping back, Foreign Policy’s take on the zombie apocalypse looks a lot like a medical researcher’s evaluation of a pandemic. This is the only way to justify the otherwise strange and insupportable conclusion that Russia is best positioned to support a major challenge to its social and political structures.

It’s possible that Russia would be well suited to dealing with an epidemic – the populations are spread out, infrastructure is not developed, and (as pointed out) it’s simple to make decisions at the top and expect them to be obeyed at lower levels. But zombies aren’t a conventional disease – you can’t kill a disease with guns or machetes, because disease is bacterial or viral and remain active after their hosts die. And one of the key components of any discussion of zombies is that these are human-like creatures that can be stopped by severing the brain’s connection to the rest of the body. Why is this important? Because if a disease can be killed like a human, by conventional weapons designed to kill humans, then certain countries and cultures will have an innate advantage – those that glorify and glamorize weapon use and violence, and those with heavily-armed populations.

 

On the other hand, historically, the populations least capable of reacting to crisis have been led authoritarian regimes, not the other way around. Authoritarian or totalitarian countries are filled with cowed and timorous populations who’ve been acclimatized to wait for guidance and official instruction. Populations in authoritarian countries tend to view violence skeptically or even with open hatred; the one thing authoritarian regimes depend on is an actual monopoly on state-controlled violence, and usually have few qualms about dispensing it. Hitler and Stalin, the archetypical 20th-century totalitarian/authoritarian dictators (the conflation is broad but useful for these purposes) proved very poor at handling crises, and their countries both suffered as a result, the latter’s Soviet Union nearly collapsing due to bad decision-making apparatus, and the former’s Nazi Germany being utterly destroyed by the Allies in World War II in large part due to the same flawed decision-making institutions.

Democratic countries, on the other hand, have populations accustomed to making decisions for themselves, and exercising choice and opinion (even when those choices are fairly limited, as in America). Democratic countries countries would be filled (at least in the beginning) with many non-zombie people who were capable of resisting in a way that their authoritarian / totalitarian cousins would not. In other words, countries with authoritarian populations and cultures, as well as those where weapons were not readily available to everyone (authoritarian governments tend not to allow heavily-armed populations as a rule) would be very disadvantaged.

While bureaucracy-heavy and democratic governments tend to move more deliberately than authoritarian countries, they do not blunder in times of catastrophe or crisis. In fact, their true power comes from well-educated and agential populations. The focus on how effective a country would be at surviving a zombie trauma then depends not on its’ government’s response, but how its people responded after government becomes overwhelmed (as it is inevitably in this type of situation). In the case of America, it’s not difficult to imagine a swift that without a credible, robust central government, the country would devolve into regions, and then states, and so on, down to individuals. At each level, however, there would be action and response, a check against chaos and entropy.

In a place like Russia, governors are little better than representatives of their central government, and would be asking that central government for help and guidance.  America and similar Western governments have more room for non-reactionary, positivist individual initiative and choice. This makes them far more resilient in a real way.

Population centers and urban areas are hallmarks of a developed country no longer fully reliant on agriculture – and they would be vulnerable to zombies, especially when one considers that urban populations tend to be demilitarized and conform to liberal stereotypes like pacifism and a reduced affection for guns and violence. This would seem like the ideal place for zombies to be successful. Nevertheless, there’s an important component that analysts seem to overlook here, which is that massive population centers can be easily quarantined or destroyed if necessary. I’m talking, of course, about nuclear weapons. For those who are not read up on the basic capabilities of nuclear ordnance, suffice it to say that a single garden-variety strategic nuke would be sufficient to destroy all combustible biological matter on the island of Manhattan. The places where the most zombie damage can occur is also the place where it’s easiest to eradicate severe outbreaks.

Urban areas are good things for humanity, then, as ways to concentrate risk – but also further underline the fragility of authoritarian organizations like China and Russia, where the entire state is concentrated in those places that are most vulnerable to zombies. America could lose Washington D.C. and NYC, LA and San Francisco, and “America” would survive quite well – similarly, Germany without Berlin is still recognizably Germany. Russia without Moscow and St. Petersburg is – well, it’s a collection of people who speak the same primary or secondary language with varying degrees of fluency.

The points about culture and language and where and what makes a person American versus, say, Russian are important, because, the “zombie apocalypse” has always been a metaphor for how an idea can spread and wipe out opponents. The first Night of the Living Dead is a meditation on how communism works, while later sequels interrogate ideas like corporate consumerism. The zombie apocalypse isn’t really about the end of the world – it’s an eschatological shift, the end of a way of thinking about things. The nuclear family, hetero-normative social structures, science-based empiricism, sex- and gender-based standards for certain types of military service, the glorification of technology in peoples’ personal lives.

And it’s no surprise, then, that upon closer examination – examination of who would win in the zombie apocalypse (heavily-armed democratic individualists predisposed to articulating a vision of the world that depends on the purifying and redemptive power of violence) and who would certainly lose in the zombie apocalypse (everyone else for various reasons) – the zombie apocalypse ends up being a quintessentially American story, set in places and situations where American strengths are privileged. America has witnessed successful movies, a popular television franchise, books, and many thought-pieces on the subject, including this one. It all ends up coming down to the same thing: deprived of actual deprivation like that experienced casually by much of the developing world, Americans are hungry to be used for the ends to which they’ve been conditioned and raised. They are, to a far greater extent than other countries, prepared to encounter the zombie apocalypse – in spirit, if not in reality.

A final irony worth mentioning is that zombie apocalypse films were originally created for an outlier audience – they were considered outré films, about how to resist mob mentality (as stated earlier, associated first with communism and later with consumerism and capitalism). Now, zombie fantasies have been commercialized for the mainstream. Dissent has become fad, revolution is an aesthetic in which one indulges on Sunday evenings.

As genuine intellectual inquiry, the zombie apocalypse does not hold up to scrutiny – it’s an interesting thought, and amusing at first, but once one realizes that it is a meditation designed for Americans, and one where the game is rigged, it’s difficult to stay interested. America would win in a zombie apocalypse, but America would win most games of violence it designs for itself. It’s what America does.

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Adrian Bonenberger

Adrian Bonenberger is a writer. He published his war memoirs, Afghan Post, through The Head and The Hand Press.

2 Comments
  1. I think the dreaming up of the zombie apocalypse is just another one of the many manifestations of decadence in America. I love this country, but we simply have it too nice and too easy. We have the infrastructure to keep the lights on and water running, communication between individuals in the palm of your hand, rather stable law and order, and a laundry list of everyday things taken for granted that citizens of third world countries consider luxuries. I think the only time I have ever been truly hungry was in the military. Only in a nation with the sort of comfort we have would someone ever dream up the notion of their nation’s own potential demise, and consume it as entertainment. I think decadence, or over abundance, or whatever you want to call it is a culprit behind many of the issues we as Americans face. I won’t pretend to have the answer, but I have sat in a college classroom and heard the supposed benefits of anarchism espoused. Like those who salivate over the fantasy of a zombie apocalypse, most of the weak-willed individuals who wish for anarchy would be the first ones to get ground up in the proverbial meat grinder of a lawless society.

    As far as an eschatological(sp?) shift goes, I can agree that the zombie films could be interpreted as such a narrative. I personally don’t see a distinction between communism and the push towards equality. If you believe that something akin to subversion is possible, whether intentional, unintentional, or both, then it is equally plausible that the manifestation of a subconsciously detected threat could appear in entertainment. The problem with making a movie outright about a communist threat is that it would be poorly received and mostly laughed at by critics. Communism? Wake up McCarthy, this is the 2000s. In my opinion, the phenomenon has only been re-labelled and re-packaged. But let us put communism to the side and talk about the entertainment industry.

    I think, once again, partly due to decadence, many of the more serious concerns Americans have attempt to shine through in the mass consumed entertainment and media of the day. After all. the American market for entertainment is the mind of the average American citizen. Hollywood knows how to target an audience. I have a personal belief that the average American is not stupid, as many elitist types would have it. Rather, I believe being "stupid", to put it simply, is a personal choice. To choose to be ignorant and blindly blissful is much easier than taking the hard right fist of reality in the face every day. And I believe this choice of the masses still does not completely blind them from the reality of the situation, instead manifesting itself in various types of entertainment. Deep down, I believe almost everyone has some sort of deep concern for the affairs of this nation, on some level. Everyone has their own subjective beliefs in what the issue is and is not in America. But, each day, Americans spend their time distracting themselves with as many different escapes from reality as possible- mostly social media and mindless movies about America saving the world. I guess what I am saying is that choosing to be stupid doesn’t erase the problem, and it will still manifest itself physically, mentally, emotionally, and of course collectively. A threat perceived through the lens of stupidity, of course, may project itself in an image of stupidity. In warfare, when we learn that an enemy is nearby, what are some of our reactions? Seek and Destroy. Ok, but based on what intelligence? Theoretically speaking, if I am the commander of a force, and I only have a word of mouth report about an enemy location, will I blindly marshal my forces and send them out to attack? Probably not. I would probably want to recon the enemy, find out their strength and disposition, and then act based on intelligence. Taking it a step further, if I hear reports of the enemy, will I stand on a dirt mound before my men and proclaim, "Men, someone said there is a threat out there, but frankly, I don’t want to deal with that shit!". Now, maybe my unit hunkers down in our outpost and pretends like there is no threat. What will we learn about the enemy now? What opportunities does this inactivity give the enemy? When my superior officers decide to visit, what will I tell them about the enemy situation? The truth that I as a commander have at this point is a rumor at best. Basically where I am going with this is the decision to be ignorant not only leaves us exposed and blind, it also hurts others. Collectively choosing to be blind and exposed gives credence to the enemy…whoever or whatever it may be. We can hunker down in an outpost, and at the end of the day everyone still knows there is an enemy out there. But without putting our eyes on the enemy, or at least attempting to, we can never hope to gain a clear picture of what it is we are fighting. I don’t want to pick a fight about what the fight is, but it just seems to me that Americans have chosen to paint themselves into a box and their deep concerns manifest themselves in some very silly ways. Just my 2 cents, but war has warped my worldview and I have some personal beliefs I am sure you wouldn’t agree with, so take it for what it’s worth.

    1. Appreciate the reply – we seem to agree that ennui and ignorance leads many Americans to fetishize violent fantasies. People who’ve gone to war, who know combat firsthand, have a special set of experiences that inform their ideas and opinions. The idea behind state sanctioned violence (war) is that it insulates its actors from some of the horror – the nation takes on the moral imperative of action. In a democracy, that’s supposed to spread the responsibility out equally to the state’s citizens, but in practice it doesn’t end up working that way, for a variety of reasons.

      While it’s possible or even likely that you and I envision different solutions to this problem, we’re in a small minority in that we understand, vividly, what the problem is, what it looks like, and its likely consequences. So there’s that.

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