A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

THERE IS NO RETREAT BUT IN SUBMISSION AND SLAVERY! OUR CHAINS ARE FORGED! THEIR CLANKING MAY BE HEARD ON THE PLAINS OF BOSTON! THE WAR IS INEVITABLE – AND LET IT COME! I REPEAT IT, SIR, LET IT COME: Look, an onslaught of Zombies is inevitable. Nanotech, viri, necromancy. Something is going to put zombies in the streets in our lifetime. Fortunately, like the late Senator Alan Cranston and his translation of Mein Kampf, someone has raised the alarm: Max Brooks’ work World War Z : The Oral History of the Zombie War, along with its companion piece The Zombie Survival Guide, offers a chance to do something about it, perhaps in time.

For those of you who have not read the book, Mr Brooks interviews survivors of the Zombie War, which began in the early 2010s, including doctors who treated Chinese peasants near the Three Gorges Dam -- as near to patient zero as the book gets -- retired leaders of the South African apartheid regime – who figured out how to beat the zombie menace, individual American soldiers who held the line at the Rockies, German officers who abandoned everything south of Kiel to save Germany herself.

The book is horrifying in the same way that Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone is horrifying. You assume that, should this all come to pass, you’ll live – scarred until your dying day, yes, but alive. I’m not so sure. I have means for self-defense, and a decent supply of food and water, but beyond that – I’m not sure I’m ready enough.

Nevertheless, there’s much to talk about, so feel free to raise your own topics, but for now I ask our dear readership a few things based on the observations of Mr. Brooks (the “Studs Terkel of Zombie Journalism”):

First, what have you done lately to prepare for the Zombie onslaught? And do you, the readership, have any skills that will come of use during the war?

Second, for those inclined, what is your preferred means of self-defense? If someone can point me to a better option than the Marlin Camp Carbine in .45 ACP, I’d like to know about it. More than enough oomph to decapitate a zombie, compact enough to use in close quarters.

Third, Mr. Brooks alludes to a number of folks who were famous before the Zombie War. I’m pleased that Michael Stipe, apparently, was willing to pick up a rifle at the end of the world, whether he felt fine or not. Come the Jubilee, what famous person do you want there on the firing line?

Fourth, if there is a more dramatic way for the world to end, whimper, bang, or otherwise, what tops a zombie attack as a vehicle to allow you to go down fighting? Best you can do with an asteroid strike is drink a beer as you wait for the shockwave to swing at you from the horizon.