#PennedPossibilities 827—Would your characters survive a zombie apocalypse in your universe?'nThe zombie narrative relies on elite fears of slave uprisings, and is inherently racist.
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#PennedPossibilities 827—Would your characters survive a zombie apocalypse in your universe?
The zombie narrative relies on elite fears of slave uprisings, and is inherently racist. It also relies on a culture of brutality and violence—the assumption that the uninfected will murder anyone who looks odd at the drop of a hat. The COVID lockdown shows us other approaches are possible. Finally: the apocalypse is a Christian eschatalogical construct, and one I hold in contempt.
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#PennedPossibilities 827—Would your characters survive a zombie apocalypse in your universe?
The zombie narrative relies on elite fears of slave uprisings, and is inherently racist. It also relies on a culture of brutality and violence—the assumption that the uninfected will murder anyone who looks odd at the drop of a hat. The COVID lockdown shows us other approaches are possible. Finally: the apocalypse is a Christian eschatalogical construct, and one I hold in contempt.
Another thing that bugs me: zombie stories are rarely innovative. What if most people just get a cough or sniffle and the full zombie effect only hits 3-10%? Or there's a 30-minute genome test that identifies the 3-10% at maximum risk? You could get huge mileage exploring that! Even before we get to "… and in 90% of zombies they recover if you can keep them alive and fed for two months, after six months they're back to normal." Then add reinfection risk …
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Another thing that bugs me: zombie stories are rarely innovative. What if most people just get a cough or sniffle and the full zombie effect only hits 3-10%? Or there's a 30-minute genome test that identifies the 3-10% at maximum risk? You could get huge mileage exploring that! Even before we get to "… and in 90% of zombies they recover if you can keep them alive and fed for two months, after six months they're back to normal." Then add reinfection risk …
Well, if it were the American healthcare system, most people couldn't afford those tests and treatments, so not much change?
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Well, if it were the American healthcare system, most people couldn't afford those tests and treatments, so not much change?
@weekend_editor It's not the American healthcare system; it's the Scottish (independent) one, which is somehow far, far, worse.
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@weekend_editor It's not the American healthcare system; it's the Scottish (independent) one, which is somehow far, far, worse.
Worse than the US. Well, that's... innovative, I guess.
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Worse than the US. Well, that's... innovative, I guess.
@weekend_editor I was planning this book in the dog days of the first Trump administration, by which time it was clear that EVERYTHING could—and was going to—get worse.
How do you make an alt-2020s dominated by Trump and Trump-like regimes worse? Simple: just add a zombie pandemic, then make it treatable, then put Martin Shkreli in charge of the CDC …
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@weekend_editor I was planning this book in the dog days of the first Trump administration, by which time it was clear that EVERYTHING could—and was going to—get worse.
How do you make an alt-2020s dominated by Trump and Trump-like regimes worse? Simple: just add a zombie pandemic, then make it treatable, then put Martin Shkreli in charge of the CDC …
Ugh. You said *that* word: "Shkreli".
I was working as a research statistician in pharma then. Yeah, everybody hated us. But we hated Shkreli even more!
Hedge fund bastard cosplaying as a pharma bro, with a constructive patent on the out-of-patent drug daraprim, gouging prices just because he can.
A thoroughly despicable human being.
He's out of prison now, but permanently banned from being an officer of any publicly traded company.
We didn't put Shkreli in charge of CDC or HHS, but we did get JFKJr, which... I dunno if we even deserve to survive that.
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Ugh. You said *that* word: "Shkreli".
I was working as a research statistician in pharma then. Yeah, everybody hated us. But we hated Shkreli even more!
Hedge fund bastard cosplaying as a pharma bro, with a constructive patent on the out-of-patent drug daraprim, gouging prices just because he can.
A thoroughly despicable human being.
He's out of prison now, but permanently banned from being an officer of any publicly traded company.
We didn't put Shkreli in charge of CDC or HHS, but we did get JFKJr, which... I dunno if we even deserve to survive that.
@weekend_editor Which is worse: RFK in charge of FDA during a Coronavirus pandemic, or Shkreli in charge of FDA during a Zombie pandemic?
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#PennedPossibilities 827—Would your characters survive a zombie apocalypse in your universe?
The zombie narrative relies on elite fears of slave uprisings, and is inherently racist. It also relies on a culture of brutality and violence—the assumption that the uninfected will murder anyone who looks odd at the drop of a hat. The COVID lockdown shows us other approaches are possible. Finally: the apocalypse is a Christian eschatalogical construct, and one I hold in contempt.
Classist, maybe, but calling it racist ignores the class aspect, and seems narrow to me. The rest seems spot on, except the Covid point. COVID showed 48% of Americans would do anything they could to try to infect one another so long as they could own the libs. Antivaxxers, antimatter, superspreader events, social distancing violators, and people intentionally coughing on those trying to follow guidelines. We're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and they're the far right.
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Classist, maybe, but calling it racist ignores the class aspect, and seems narrow to me. The rest seems spot on, except the Covid point. COVID showed 48% of Americans would do anything they could to try to infect one another so long as they could own the libs. Antivaxxers, antimatter, superspreader events, social distancing violators, and people intentionally coughing on those trying to follow guidelines. We're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and they're the far right.
@WarmasterPalak I'm not American.
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@WarmasterPalak I'm not American.
So you're pulling a 28 Days Later.
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So you're pulling a 28 Days Later.
@WarmasterPalak A what?
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@WarmasterPalak A what?
Might be a deep cut.
28 Days Later is a film about a "zombie" outbreak in Britain. The zombies are actually humans suffering from the "Rage" virus. It travels by blood, and one drop will infect you permanently. No one outside of Britain knows what's going on in the rest of the world, but its assumed the virus escaped and infected the world. However, in one of the last scenes of the movie, we see an airplane (looks like a commercial airliner, but might have been a military plane not painted up in colors) fly over one of the protags who had been taken out into the woods to be shot/left for the "infected" to be found. Seeing the plane, and realizing that there's a way off, the protag gets so angry at the soldiers who are holding the two other survivors (both women they intend to rape), that he can now pass among the infected without being attacked.
Basically, I'm paralleling your comment about not being American as if somehow America was walled off and is suffering its own little zombie outbreak while the rest of the world during Covid was just a placid sea of rationality. Honestly, since I was locked down here in the US, I have no actual idea what the rest of the world was going thru during Covid. I have no idea if they think its still going on like it is here, despite everyone here being so tired of living responsibly that they'd rather pretend nothing is wrong. We can't trust our news media anymore, if we ever could, and so the only news I get is from those online I know and trust not to be lying about things.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only survivor is a world gone mad, except I do know that about half the nation feels the same as I do, and the other half is busy pretending they speak for 95% of everyone because land votes or something, except their states are so barren that their entire state population is smaller than the population of the metropolitan area I live in and I'm not even in a big city.
Today has got me really going down a zombie apocalypse rabbit hole. If any of this is offensive, I'm sorry. I'm not really in a good headspace at the moment. I started writing for the prompts and got distracted with reality parallels, and some of my own writing themes. As I said a week or so ago, I'm really good at grimdark because its too easy for me to fall into that way of thinking.
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Might be a deep cut.
28 Days Later is a film about a "zombie" outbreak in Britain. The zombies are actually humans suffering from the "Rage" virus. It travels by blood, and one drop will infect you permanently. No one outside of Britain knows what's going on in the rest of the world, but its assumed the virus escaped and infected the world. However, in one of the last scenes of the movie, we see an airplane (looks like a commercial airliner, but might have been a military plane not painted up in colors) fly over one of the protags who had been taken out into the woods to be shot/left for the "infected" to be found. Seeing the plane, and realizing that there's a way off, the protag gets so angry at the soldiers who are holding the two other survivors (both women they intend to rape), that he can now pass among the infected without being attacked.
Basically, I'm paralleling your comment about not being American as if somehow America was walled off and is suffering its own little zombie outbreak while the rest of the world during Covid was just a placid sea of rationality. Honestly, since I was locked down here in the US, I have no actual idea what the rest of the world was going thru during Covid. I have no idea if they think its still going on like it is here, despite everyone here being so tired of living responsibly that they'd rather pretend nothing is wrong. We can't trust our news media anymore, if we ever could, and so the only news I get is from those online I know and trust not to be lying about things.
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only survivor is a world gone mad, except I do know that about half the nation feels the same as I do, and the other half is busy pretending they speak for 95% of everyone because land votes or something, except their states are so barren that their entire state population is smaller than the population of the metropolitan area I live in and I'm not even in a big city.
Today has got me really going down a zombie apocalypse rabbit hole. If any of this is offensive, I'm sorry. I'm not really in a good headspace at the moment. I started writing for the prompts and got distracted with reality parallels, and some of my own writing themes. As I said a week or so ago, I'm really good at grimdark because its too easy for me to fall into that way of thinking.
@WarmasterPalak It's a film, then. (I don't watch films/TV made this century—my damaged eyeballs can't cope with the fashionable drab/dark colour palettes and rapid camera motion, and I've got mild ADHD on top.)
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@WarmasterPalak It's a film, then. (I don't watch films/TV made this century—my damaged eyeballs can't cope with the fashionable drab/dark colour palettes and rapid camera motion, and I've got mild ADHD on top.)
Fair. It's spawned 3 sequels so far: 28 Weeks Later, 28 Years Later, and 28 Years Later: Temple of Bone. They progressively show how the world outside of Britain did and did not have to weather the Rage Virus. (Hint: It took time, but eventually, it infects most of the world, rather like poisonous political views.) I believe there are books, or more likely graphic novels they were adapted from, if that's more your speed.
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Fair. It's spawned 3 sequels so far: 28 Weeks Later, 28 Years Later, and 28 Years Later: Temple of Bone. They progressively show how the world outside of Britain did and did not have to weather the Rage Virus. (Hint: It took time, but eventually, it infects most of the world, rather like poisonous political views.) I believe there are books, or more likely graphic novels they were adapted from, if that's more your speed.
@WarmasterPalak Yes but it's zombie fic, a sub-genre I generally despise (because of it's elite panic/white supremacist roots)
