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Other Stuff => General Wargames and Hobby Discussion => Topic started by: Grimmnar on December 28, 2024, 09:32:13 AM
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Sitting here watching World War Z and thinking which Zombie world you think would be the worst to live in? Any source material
Grimm
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Honestly, any of them, especially the post apocalyptic ones, it's not the zombies or whatever its the break down of the social order and the rise of the dog eat dog mentality I find truly disturbing :(.
Just proves that even after several of (hundreds of) thousands of years, we as a species have not evolved beyond the tribal/family unit stage.
Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 hit the nail right on the head ;)
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I'm currently playing Fallout 76. I'm with Storm Wolf, it's not the zombies it's the breakdown of social norms.
"If the ferals and the ghouls don't get you the rads will!"
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While zombies are a bit of a silly concept, the only ones which would really threaten human society would be the fast ones (ala World War Z or 28 Days Later types). Slow zombies would never successfully overrun anything.
Also, the destruction of society is way overblown in the "slow zombie" genre. If, somehow, 90% of the population was wiped out...everyone remaining would have their own grocery store to live in for decades, eating canned goods, etc. There would be so much excess material, that humans would be fine...and killing slow zombies (albeit an arduous task) would be feasible.
You'd have to elevate the threat level, so speed...ferociousness...airborne contagion, or very simple "splatter gets you infected", etc. This "slow zombies bite you" thing would never work.
I agree though, in most of the events you would have a return to natural animal existence. You'd have some distant groups who agree to live in a semi-normal communal habitat until a bigger/badder/stronger force shows up and takes all your stuff.
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Shaun of the Dead zombies for a slice of fried gold! Trainable, fun, and hilarious!
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"...Winchester?"
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"...Winchester?"
YEAH, BOIIIII!
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medical care would be problematic... theoretically, hospitals are going to be ground zero, so medical staff would be amongst the first generation of victims. Pharmacies would be raided, but things like antibiotics will be limited, you have use by dates, you have hoarders keeping them just in case.
never mind slow zombie bites, a splinter could kill you.
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The ones that staff the local big barn hardware chain as seasonal labour over the summer. Dead eyed, effectively brain dead, they shuffle lifelessly around the aisles, impervious to repeated queries as to where to find fixtures, tools or fittings, animated by some unearthly force.
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I've always had an issue with the 'zombie bites you and you get infected' approach. While I love me some zombie movies, at some point, wouldn't we all just wear some kind of padding and armor? And why do the tanks never seem to work anymore?
Seriously, one guy in a truck with a flame thrower. A wall. Things like that.
Now, the 28 days later zombies .... well, we're all dead then.
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Now, the 28 days later zombies .... well, we're all dead then.
While I hate to be ‘that guy’ - alright, I admit I enjoy it - I feel compelled to point out that there are no zombies in 28 Days Later. While they may look and act like the insatiable brain-eaters with which we are all familiar they are in fact a quite different beast, being infected with a rage virus. For some reason - unlike the virus itself - this concept doesn’t appear to have caught on.
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medical care would be problematic... theoretically, hospitals are going to be ground zero, so medical staff would be amongst the first generation of victims. Pharmacies would be raided, but things like antibiotics will be limited, you have use by dates, you have hoarders keeping them just in case.
never mind slow zombie bites, a splinter could kill you.
You’re suggesting that the NHS would be at breaking point? What an odd idea.
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As noted above, in zombie movies the real threat isn't the zombies, it's the breakdown of society and the one or two selfish assholes in your survivor group that gets you all killed while trying to look out for themselves.
Zombies are just the lingering environmental threat that destroyed the old world and persist to prevent a rapid recovery. A non-zombie plague that killed humans but provoked high aggression in animals would have the same effect. Or even a weather shift that made staying outside for too long lethal. Zombies aren't the real threat, they're the why behind "why we're stuck in this small group with limited space and supplies, vulnerable to a single act of betrayal exposing us to the lethal hazard outside".
It's why I never bothered with The Walking Dead, either comic or TV series. Understanding the above, I knew that the long-form of the zombie story would quickly shift from survival horror to "soap opera with dead people shuffling around".
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Interestingly, at least to my mind, Robert Kirkman, the creator of TWD, has said that he doesn’t regard it as horror. I don’t recall what, if anything, he said he did regard it as.
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"...Winchester?"
Romantic night out and impenetrable fortress!
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The book World War Z by Max Brooks (there is no film) covers a scary scenario (it and the 1975 series Survivors came to mind during recent events).
The initial problem is that nobody believes in the beginning, so it builds up rapidly.
Brooks has one character saying countries with large numbers of firearms are at disadvantage due to relying on them and not knowing that only a headship works.
For a classic example of what happens is a scene in the series Black Sunday where there is a massive pink on pink incident.
Armour does turn up, CRM and the Commonwealth utilise armour, the prison riot armour gets used and someone builds their own using telephone directories (ask your parents) in Fear.
The problem is it is heavy if you are on the move, and you can easily get overwhelmed.
In Closure, Limited and Other Zombie Tales there is a story that includes a Chinese tank that ends up as a mini Redeker plan, that takes some of the stress off the new Great Wall.
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While I understand 28 Days Later aren't 'technically' zombies, they fit the trope and are often discussed as the alternative to the standard zombie.
And the destruction of society is definitely an undercurrent of the zombie trope.
One idea that I think should be explored more to make the traditional zombies 'scarier' ... what if the zombies ate everything. Or if the plague could be spread by animals? Not only would society be crumbling, but you would also face the idea that the wilderness is scary. 28 Days Later touched a bit, with the idea that a bird eating a not-zombie dropped blood on someone, infecting them, etc. But what if the bird WAS the zombie? What if any animal, no, EVERY animal was a threat? That would make the trope a bit scarier. Sure, walls would keep out traditional bad guys, but what happens when a crow who hasn't decayed so much it can't fly heads over the wall and bites the one guy who refused to tell anyone he was bitten? Or a cat sneaks through a crack and claws someone? That would become much more intense and scary.
The scariest idea ... vegans could tell us all they were right the whole time! :)
I also think 2020 showed us that, if zombies were real, a significant portion of the world would refuse to believe it, do their own research, not think the disease could be transmitted, etc etc. The Walking Dead never offered us a view of the 'This is all just an internet hoax' civilization :D
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The book World War Z by Max Brooks (there is no film) covers a scary scenario
Oh, but there is:
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_World%2520War%2520z
And that, at least according to some people on the internet who enjoy messing with our minds, is not all:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_3BIzLoLI&pp=ygULd29ybGQgd2FyIHo%3D
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The ones that staff the local big barn hardware chain as seasonal labour over the summer. Dead eyed, effectively brain dead, they shuffle lifelessly around the aisles, impervious to repeated queries as to where to find fixtures, tools or fittings, animated by some unearthly force.
As the great Milton Jones said, "Locked up in a shed without daylight for 12 hours a day, forced to wear orange jumpsuits and interrogated with questions you don't know the answers to... It's not easy working for Homebase."
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The book World War Z by Max Brooks (there is no film)
Oh, but there is:
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0816711/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_World%2520War%2520z
Next you will tell me there is a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy film (there is not).
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Clearly my IDS* needs to be upgraded.
* Irony Detection Sensor.
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Clearly my IDS* needs to be upgraded.
* Irony Detection Sensor.
^__^
I am glad you clarified that, I was wondering what sort of upgrade you were proposing for the MP for Chingford.
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Possible spoilers for series two of TWD (though there are clues) but if you watch Z Nation it is upfront about it - everyone is already infected so if you die you turn (subject to not dying of traumatic head trauma).
There is a joke in Fear where an old lady dies in the night and tries to bite her husband, but to no avail as she took her teeth out before she died.
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I enjoyed the book called World War Z more than the film bearing the same name, much as I vastly prefer the books and radio shows of HHGTTG to the tv show and film bearing the same name (and don't get me started on what they did to poor Marvin) >:(
As for scariest zombies, probably the tsunami like approach of the slow ones. They just never stop
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The scariest zombies are the living ones staring into their cellphones.
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^__^
I am glad you clarified that, I was wondering what sort of upgrade you were proposing for the MP for Chingford.
Hadn’t thought of that - I was just concerned that it might be taken as a reference to an ailment I used to suffer from. (In case anyone’s wondering, I can recommend veganism for that.)
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For those of you who can find it, I can recommend the the audio book of World War Z. The author provides the links and the interviewer, and there is a large and famous cast doing the interviewees.
Every time I listen to "The Fall of Hamburg", it chills me.
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Which zombies are the worst? The ones closest to me?
I actually find Voodoo Zombies to be the worst, because they are the personification of Slavery in the Caribbean. An actual horror attached to the horror.
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Which zombies are the worst? The ones closest to me?
I actually find Voodoo Zombies to be the worst, because they are the personification of Slavery in the Caribbean. An actual horror attached to the horror.
I'm inclined to agree but for very different reasons. Hollywood voodoo is mired in racist tropes designed to malign the religious practice of African descendants by distorting and focussing on those aspects most alien to its audience. Voudou, like Candomblé and Santeria are outgrowths of a variety of West African religious practices, in large part those of the Yoruba people. Whilst there are significant differences, in of themselves unsurprsing given the physical distance between parts of the diaspora as well as the differing origin of its members they do share common traits. They are syncretic religions, adopting aspects of the dominant religious practice of the colonising power, in this case Roman Catholicism. The initial reason they are syncretic was in large to mask their existence as continued African cultural expression was suppressed, often extremely violently by the colonial power.
Hollywood's adoption of the voodoo trope goes back to the 1920s. It's a complete miscast of how the religion operates and it's hard to divorce from the prevailing racist sentiment aimed at further dehmanising and marginalising the formerly enslaved African diaspora. It's now shorthand for 'black magic' and yes you can read that in both senses.
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Oh and as aside to all of this, that marginalisation and mis-characterisation continues across the hemisphere. Largely thanks to the influences of US originated evangelical Christianity, there is a growing movement to shun and eliminate the practice of traditional African religions like Candomblé and its hybrid offshoots like Umbanda.
In recent years we have even seen the growth of the bizarre phenomena of narco-evangelicos in Rio. Drug gangs won over to Pentacostalism who have been closing places of traditional worship (the terreiros) and threatening the lives of its practitioners*. Leaving aside both the moral contradictions of drug vending and professed Christianity or the religious intolerance of fundy evangelical types, it's worth noting that the Hollywood trope sparked its own local version back in the 1960s and '70s. The association of macumba or black magic with traditional religious practice follows the same, essentially racist, path as its Hollywood progenitor.
*It has recently spread in one part of the city to Catholic churches which just goes to show that in religion, market positioning, branding and market dominance is a big thing.
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Ultra Vanilla smurf...
Can you explain a few terms you used.
"Only a Headship works" What is a headship?
"Massive Pink on Pink incident" ????
"mini Redeker plan" ?????
Even with my Iron Detection Sensor turned up to 11, I can't get a read on these phrases.
Must be the difference between English and American.....
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I read “headship” as “headshot” (damn autocorrect?). Can’t help interpret the others, though.
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Ultra Vanilla smurf...
Can you explain a few terms you used.
"Only a Headship works" What is a headship?
"Massive Pink on Pink incident" ????
"mini Redeker plan" ?????
Even with my Iron Detection Sensor turned up to 11, I can't get a read on these phrases.
Must be the difference between English and American.....
Headship. Headmaster or principal of a public (private) school. Public schools are in fact the factual start point for the living dead.
Pink on Pink. Introspection by the American female singer (real name Alecia Hart) epitomised by her hit song and a personal Christmas favourite*. Fuck the Pain Away. Have a listen and see if you can make a zombie connection (apart from Christmas of course).
Redeker Plan. A scheme to ensure that the late Quinn Redeker, one time stalwart of Days of Our Lives, stays perpetually in human memory. Involves AI and repeated showings of older episodes on TV.
* Thanks to James Acaster Joe Lycett for convincing me of the appropriateness of this tune to the Yuletide Season.
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I read “headship” as “headshot” (damn autocorrect?). Can’t help interpret the others, though.
Damn you autocorrect indeed.
It should be head shot.
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"Massive Pink on Pink incident" ????
Living on living (from Blue on Blue for a friendly fire incident).
"mini Redeker plan" ?????.....
Paul Redeker (a former Apartheid era South African intelligence consultant) and his plan are the subject of a chapter in World War Z.
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I was close then?
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lol lol lol
I don’t know about anyone else, but I certainly enjoyed the alternative interpretations!
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I was close then?
^__^
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@Carlos- Thanks for the deeper dive on the topic. I still stick with my assertion that voodoo based zombies are the worst for a number of reasons.
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Thank you.