Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse

My mom asked me fairly recently what my obsession was with zombies.  I wouldn't say that I'm "obsessed" with zombies, but it does come up a lot on my personal Facebook page, so I can see why she'd think that.  On my Facebook page, it has been a bit of a running joke amongst a lot of my friends and my minister (who I also count as a friend) to talk about zombies, ever since shortly before last Easter, when somebody referred to Easter as Zombie Jesus Day and then my minister (I totally <3 her, have I mentioned that?) posted a link to this video:



After she posted that video, I pointed out how awesome it would be if she mentioned zombies in her Easter sermon.  For some reason, she refused (even though it totally would have fit, since she talked about alternative explanations for the Jesus resurrection story!).  This was not the end.

Every year, our minister offers up a sermon topic as an auction item in the church auction.  Myself and several others decided that 2010 would be the year of the zombie sermon and pooled our money together to win it, which we did.  Even now, the zombie jokes and comments continue though, leading to my mom's puzzlement, wondering if it was part of some sort of game or something.

I explained to my mom the back story that I just shared with you, but then added that I like talking about zombies as a lighthearted way of getting people to think of preparedness issues as well.  People may not like to think of the possibility that their spouse could be injured and unable to work for a long period of time, possibly around the same time as the birth of their third child, like what happened to my family a couple years ago, so it is a great idea to have several months supply of food or whatever on hand.  People may not like to think about severe flooding like what is happening down south as something that could happen to them that they should have a plan to deal with.  They might not like to think about hurricanes, pandemics, or even a power outage lasting a few days or weeks, but these are all things that really could happen.  To anyone!


But a zombie apocalypse?  That is something more people seem to be willing to think about and possibly even prepare for.  I was overjoyed today to see that the CDC is taking the threat of zombies seriously.  From one of their sites:

There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.

If you aren't quite ready to take the zombie apocalypse seriously, here is a novel that I read about a zombie apocalypse that I really enjoyed:

  World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War:  The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”