If life was a movie and zombies took over our world, and I was among the few humans who survived the initial wave of zombie-related deaths, there's absolutely no way I would last long. Three good reasons for this:
(1) I don't fit the long-time survivor type: White guys tend to do well in post-apocalyptic movie settings, but only certain types of white guys. Like Bruce Willis. Bruce would go all John McClain on the zombies and would establish himself as a leader of the human resistance movement. Bruce would last the entire movie. I, on the other hand, am more the Jeff Goldblum type: Tolerably likable, a little brainy, and ultimately a sympathetic character, but also someone who dies about an hour into the film. You're shocked by my death for about 10 seconds, but then you move on and forget I even existed. There's no way I last to even the 80-minute mark.
(2) Lack of firearms training: I have fired a gun exactly once in my life. It was a .22 pistol, not something with a heck of a lot of kick to it and certainly not something that's going to wipe out zombies gathered in any significant numbers. Bruce Willis' character would hand me a gun early in the movie and I wouldn't know what to do with it. Or else I would blow my own head off looking down the barrel of the gun just because I'm fascinated by how it works. You have to handle some pretty heavy firepower in a zombie-dominated world, and that just isn't me.
(3) Eventually I would give up: If there's one thing we've learned about zombie fighting tactics, it's that they're willing to sacrifice themselves in favor of unrelenting ground attack. They just keep coming and coming and coming. The adrenaline rush would get me through the first wave or two, but after that I would undoubtedly get discouraged and just let them kill me. Bruce Willis would try to convince me to keep fighting, but in the end I would give up. High school football coaches would show that part of the movie to their players to illustrate why only those with the persistence to keep on fighting even when things seem most bleak (like Bruce) ultimately succeed, while people like me deserve to be eaten by zombies.
I just thought you might want to know all of this in case you get cast in the movie next to me. Do not, under any circumstances, put your hopes in my character, listed in the end credits as "Sad White Guy #4."
Nobody survives a zombie apocalypse. That's why it's an apocalypse. If people survived it, they would refer to it as "the zombie scare" or "the zombie inconvenience" or "Reno '97, all over again."
ReplyDeleteA very fair point, actually. Maybe it's just a matter of semantics. I thought "zombie apocalypse" was good, but maybe "the great zombie takeover" is more accurate.
ReplyDeleteI am perfectly willing to admit I may be in the minority here, but you'll note that the title of this post is things that happen in movies "but never in the world where I live.
ReplyDeletesee their reviews