Prepped for it, exposed to the ideas of it and potentially waiting for it. Gen X are the ones in line for this I feel, and possibly quite a few of Gen Y as well. And I wondered why. Why the need to have it as a mainstream idea, they are not without uses and this one has been carried forward like a security blanket. As if the idea of an outbreak leading to a zombie apocalypse has been so thought through and expected, that it can’t be let go of. And I’m sure the idea of it may seem silly to some who have not considered it, but to a certain group of people, or section of society should I say, I suspect they know precisely what I am talking about.

I have already given a brief overview of my thought in The Zombie Thing article, and touched upon the idea of the dead coming back in The dead walk the earth, but could it be that it was never meant to be that way. The idea of it was. People fear people, that’s no secret, but the idea of people being turned or mutating into the very worst version of a human is one of our deepest fears perhaps. The number of humanoid monsters and demons that are depicted in movies and films is like that for a reason, because we can identify with it, however horrible it is. And that is what makes it even scarier, seeing part of you in it, and it in you.

But what if they pre-program us to behave in that way when faced with what appears to be a similar scenario. There seems something familiar about it, so we do what makes us feel most comfortable in an uncomfortable situation. If we remember ‘seeing’ someone else react a certain way, even if only on the television, it is still a reference of experience, or at least our brain may treat it as such. Two things spring to mind, even if only a loose connection to what I mean. Firstly, a Derren Brown trick in one his tv series years ago, where a chap was playing a zombie video arcade game, and then he was ‘hypnotised’ by Derren to think it was happening. Add in some actors in make-up, lighting and everyone else playing along, and he thought it was real. Even without being hypnotised, just having actors, make up and scenery can do the job tricking our mind into believing that is our reality at that moment. We have two processing centres in our brain (they say), called primary processing centre, which obviously acts as the first response. Followed by the secondary processing system, which then takes over after the initial reaction to review it and make sure it was appropriate. But as we know, in a split-second life or death decision making situation, you will have to reply on the primary response centre. Whatever information it is accessing for that moment is what you will have to go with, so if you don’t have very good reasoning skills or reactions on the spot, you will fail. No pressure or anything.

The second thing that came to mind, in two parts, or rather two things rolled into one. A company started doing zombie simulation ‘games’. Where you had an area, actors pretending to be zombies, and the thrill ride of pretending the outbreak was happening but in safety and a big comfort zone. The other tie in being the film The Fifth Wave – whereby they fool children into thinking there are aliens/infected that have to be killed – but really they are other humans. We appear to have a bulk of crisis actors across the board today, and although it might seem far-fetched to think we could actually have a zombie virus outbreak. I sure as hell believe they could easily fake one. As has been done with so many other situation, scenarios and events.

But that does not mean to say the time was wasted or misspent, there may well be a time coming where we have to consider if our fellow man is really so, and that something dark does indeed lurk and dwell in this realm. You never know when there may come a time for all that training and thought to be put to good use…

(c) K Wicks