What I mean is the inevitable what if's that plague our conscious mind when we hear of really bad things;
What would I do if a tsunami hit, what would I do if the electricity stop, what would I do if I happened to come across a zombie?
Now we all do this, but there are the extremes to either degree, those who blindly ignore even the possibility of anything bad ever happening to them, to those who take it to the far end of the spectrum.
Yes, I'd like to think that I'm getting more and more prepared for the zombie apocalypse, but I have the whole idea of zombies firmly tongue in cheek, as (like many others) consider the idea of a zombie apocalypse as a metaphor for all the things that could possibly go wrong.
Some folks call themselves preppers, some survivalists, some are preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
In essence all are preparing for the economic collapse of our society, as it seems more and more a logical conclusion to the economic shenanigans that have gripped our world.
A zombie apocalypse of our own making, if you will.
Others see a solar storm on the horizon, huge bursts of solar radiation, destroying electrical grids with impunity, cars, telephones, gps.
All gone in a flash, to hazard a pun.
But the mindset is more than that, it's about preparing for personal tragedy, about the loss of job and having a store of several months of food so that you don't starve while finding another job.
Building bunkers in the back yard, but not so much for the fallout from a Fukashima or Chernobyl type event, but more likely for a tornado.
Back up generators, in case of a terrorist EMP attack, or when the ice storm kills the power for several days.
There are many degrees of things to prepare for, from the personal tragedy of job loss, or being attacked by a mugger, to the community wide disasters such as a tornado or hurricane, to something like an economic collapse that affects nations, such as the fate that has descended on Greece and her neighbors as well.
I like the idea of preparing for a zombie apocalypse, why? It's fun.
In my youth, it was world war 3, then the whole Y2K nonsense, and this year we have the whole Mayan/Polar shift/planetary alignment/Solar Storm/Economic collapse of western civilization...
Everyone you look to sees gloom and doom, feels a sense of oncoming dread, and no small amount of being caught up in the tin foil hattery that is so prevalent in today's internet and media.
But prepping doesn't need to be a soul draining/staving off the end/bad times are a comming, daily watch for the end of the world as we know it.
Zombies are a metaphor for any and all disasters, from the various warnings about pandemics, to the ease at which a terrorist could launch a missile from a shipping container over our heads and plunge the continent into the dark ages.
In other words, if you could survive a zombie apocalypse, you could survive anything.
And it suddenly becomes fun.
After all, the movies, the constant joking about what you would do, and to return to the title of the post, the constant "mental masturbation" that you can delve into.
What if zombies invaded our town, how would you react?
It's not nonsense either, how would you eat, is there enough water, are you protected, if you have to bug out is your vehicle capable of skirting around broken down cars?
Do you have enough bullets?
Much of it you could apply to a great many other disasters...
And honestly, unlike the single minded question/preps of shows like Doomsday Preppers, why not prepare for everything.
But best of all, you can couch it all in a fantastic scenario.
So your prepping, your saving, your learning CPR and storing food, and it's somehow fun.
It's hard to explain.
Again,
Back to the Mental Masturbation...
Sometimes, something happens that borders far too close, and then we see an odd thing happen.
In Miami a few days ago a man walked naked onto a bridge and attacked a homeless man.
For 18 minutes he attacked, beat and ate nearly 80 percent of the man's face.
He ate his face off.
The officer arrived after several phone calls and approached, he saw what was happening drew his sidearm and shouted at the attacker to stop, eventually shooting him.
According to news reports, the man turned to face him, growled, then continued to eat his victims face.
A half a dozen rounds later the man lay dead beside his victim.
You can imagine the reactions once the story began to get reported.
Zombie?
The reactions were shock, horror, and in a very weird way, excitement.
After all, most have the mental reaction to zombies, garnered from countless movies, myths, and What If's played thru the mind over the years.
Of the reactions I have seen I have seen three distinct types, with the lines blurred depending on reaction to topics posted on messageboards and forums, discussions around the workplace, and friends who talk about the lastest news.
From cocaine psychosis to "bad LSD" to haitian voodoo curses, the news is flooded with reports that are mostly conjecture and 'best guesses'.
On the internet it's even more varied, from drug abuse to government conspiracies.
Reaction one is the initial and the most common, I think.
Shock.
Why is the prevailing question, and endless discussions that can become quite educational on the resultant behavior of drug abuse to the status of mental health issues.
Reaction two is typical of the anonymity of the internet.
Humor.
Although to be honest, sometimes it's easier to laugh at something than to deal with it outright.
Call it gallows humor at the best, callous disregard for tragedy at worst, and it's really hard to judge based on words on a page. Sarcasm, anger, humor, all can be misinterpreted, but laughing at something is not always mocking it.
The third reaction is the one that tends to raise an eyebrow.
The almost "need" for this to be the beginning of something apocalyptic.
In this case I see the constant explanations that would tie one tragic event into a larger conspiracy, sometimes even in the face of simpler and more obvious conclusions.
While no sane person would want to see anything even approaching a zombie apocalypse, there seems to be a need for justification in preparations.
We look for the truth, and try to understand tragedy, we laugh, because sometimes it the only way to cope with such horrors, and in extreme cases, we want the disaster we prepared for to hurry up and happen.
That last part is very complex, but also easy to understand.
Sometimes reality is worse than the stylized zombie apocalypse that we've all watched, laughed at, and fantasized about 'what we would do" in.
Maybe when faced with the horrors that seemingly normal people are capable of we'd rather see something else at work, be it supernatural, as a zombie virus, or simply to say that drugs are responsible.
It's easier to put the blame on anything besides the idea that people can be that vicious to each other.
I dunno...
In every disaster that's ever befallen humanity, it's always been outshadowed by man's inhumanity to his fellow man.
What that means is that no matter the cause of any disaster, it is the potential for otherwise normal people to become savages that you worry about.
I write my posts without any real planning, so in this case, I have no pithy ending, no witty retort to what I've written, just an open ending frustration with what people are capable of with so little prodding.
What's the old saying, people are only three missed meals from anarchy?
If it's really that easy for people to descend into madness...
hell, i'd rather have zombies...
