Current Events: Canceling the Apocalypse

I think we have too many zpocs out there.

No, seriously. If you look at the events of the past two years with any inkling of historical perspective, the reaction has killed far more people than the WuFlu. Denied medical care, medical care including ongoing chemotherapy put off, food not planted or harvested, small businesses destroyed, parts and necessary medicines either unobtainable or too long delayed… the list goes on and on.

Apparently our governments and large corporations have learned all the wrong lessons from the unending supply of zombie apocalypse fiction. You’d think a sane person would read, say, World War Z (or preferably skim through the TV Tropes page, that’s more than enough Nightmare Fuel) and say, “See? See what these people did in fiction that produced these horrible results, including clamping down on info, lying about death rates, claiming small businesses are infection vectors even as big stores are somehow immune, the porous borders even as legal citizens get locked down? Let’s not do that.”

Evidently we have a shortage of sane people out there. That, or the whole zpoc meme has been drummed in so thoroughly, people think that of course any spreading infectious disease should lead to mass societal breakdown, looting, rioting, and murder of anyone who doesn’t toe the chosen line.

This is not the kind of world I want to live in. This is not the world anyone should have to live in. Our Founding Fathers lived with the ever-present reality of lethal infectious diseases; one of which, smallpox, the most modern medicine of the time might be able to stave off by variolation. People were doubtful of the procedure because it could have a 2% death rate. The fact that this was still considered a viable precaution should clue you in to the consequences of catching smallpox; about 30% death rate, while survivors were often left with horrible scarring and even blindness. People in the past lived with that reality, and they did not panic. (Most of the time.)

In no way, shape, or form, is the WuFlu anywhere near the level of lethality as smallpox. And yet people are reacting as if Ebola had been unleashed upon the land. Or, you know, a zombie apocalypse.

We need to break down the zpoc panic response. We need to create new memes, and new mental resilience in our culture. In the words of Stacker Pentecost, we need to cancel the apocalypse.

So. How?

Oddly enough, I’d start by looking at another book by the same author as WWZ: The Zombie Survival Handbook. That book shows multiple small outbreaks of zombies getting smacked down by anyone and everyone who could swing a broom or pull a trigger. (The incident of the zombie outbreak mowed down by an assault from combined Los Angeles street gangs is, frankly, dark but hilarious.) That book also shows incidents scattered over recorded history, implying that simple human ingenuity and determination should be enough to stop an outbreak in its tracks.

This is what we need to defang the fear. Stories that show that not only is survival an option, but total eradication is possible and life can go back to normal.

If you want to go for larger apocalypses, harder to beat back? Look at stories like Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. Independence Day (ID4). Mad Max. Terminator. Pacific Rim. All of these are stories that show overwhelming horrors can bust your life into pieces, but people can rebuild a way to live.

Look for the hope. Yes, have characters up against overwhelming odds and not sure if they’re going to make it. But have them always planning to live. (Or in the last extremis, dying so someone else will live.)

Because living through apocalypses and everything falling apart is what humans do. Check out the Toba Catastrophe theory, Pompeii, Krakatoa. Check out the Plague of Justinian, the Black Plague, various outbreaks of Ebola. I could go on. Individual humans die, but as groups we pick ourselves up, dust everything off, and just. Keep. Going.

Or as some would have it, Humans Are Space Orcs.

So. Let’s get brutal, if we have to. (Or soft and fluffy, that can be dangerous too – just ask a kitten.) Roll up our sleeves, do all the finger-stretches, and get creative.

We’ve got a cultural apocalypse to cancel.

Trope Talk: Post Apocalypses

Advertisement