Without further ado, I present the incomparable.....Wendy McCloud

Should You Prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse?

By Wendy McCloud
edited by Christine Stuckey and Dr. Charles Anderson

It’s something we’ve seen all too frequently. An attractive young person running down a dark alley, screaming in terror while being chased by a rambling, shambling horde of rotting corpses intent on eating live brains.

Don’t let this be you!

With proper preparation, you can be on top of a well-fortified roof, blowing off zombie heads with expert precision. Between the emergence of novel viruses and the lack of proper medical response in the world today, it’s only a matter of time. Should you prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse? If your answer is not a resounding “Yes!”, then you might wind up as the main course in a zombie buffet.

Dr. Robbin Koenig, a scientist in the field of host-microbe interaction, explains that science has not ruled out the possibility of a Zombie Apocalypse. On the contrary, Koenig says it is “certainly possible.” When asked about a plague causing higher brain functions to cease but causing the body to remain animated, reducing it to animalistic behavior, a concept portrayed in the television series The Walking Dead, Koenig points out that diseases such as Syphilis already affect both higher and lower orders of thinking. It only is our learned sense of moral right and wrong which prevents humans from eating their neighbors like BBQ at a 4th of July picnic. If a virus were to eliminate that moral-right-and-wrong portion of the brain, well, Koenig says, “You could have smart, predatory zombies!”

Viruses and parasites can be terrifyingly precise. Did you know there are currently viruses and parasites altering host behavior to benefit their lifecycles? Toxoplasma gondii, for example, infects rats, causing them to become attracted to cat urine, which increases the likelihood of the rats being eaten by the cat. Once the cat has eaten a rat and then become infected, it can transmit the disease to humans via feces (Berdoy, Webster and Macdonald). And how about zombie insects? There is a virus that causes caterpillars to self-destruct, raining new virus particles down on uninfected caterpillars. And there is a virus that forces female moths to continuously mate, therefore infecting more and more males. (Kuchment).

One of the biggest arguments against preparing for the coming Zombie Apocalypse is that our modern medical system will save us. Unfortunately, that faith is largely misplaced. Koenig, who works with the FDA doing new drug testing, offers a gloomy outlook on the subject. Bacteria have become more resistant to current antibiotics and many research facilities for new antibiotics have closed. Viral vaccinations are even more difficult to produce, especially in the case of new or novel viruses. Mass inoculations are the only way to combat a viral outbreak, and if you’ve ever stood in line for a flu shot, you understand how lengthy and difficult that process is.

If the Zombie Apocalypse comes in the form of “higher order parasites,” the battle is taken to a new molecular level. Treatment for higher order parasites takes time and is often dangerous to the host. These are just the practical medical reasons Koenig lists. The truly frightening reason hits a lot closer to home, especially in these days of economic freefall: research is exceedingly expensive and no one is willing to pay!

Koenig isn’t the only one who sees it in economic terms. Take a moment of your time to check out Pulitzer Prize-winning author Laurie Garrett’s Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health or The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. She paints a bleak portrait of the medical system and of our world. She surmises that if the world doesn’t start working together to create a safer environment, the microbes will win. Garrett compares the microbes to predators, and we are their prey. Given that Homo sapiens have considered themselves at the top of the food chain for years; it is certainly food for thought—while we still have brains to think about anything at all.

Let’s face it; a Zombie Apocalypse isn’t that farfetched. The question then becomes, what are  going to do about it?

Simple preparation is the key. There are books galore on the subject to help you map out the perfect plan of defense. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead is a perfect example. This ingenious novel includes such sage advice as:

    Organize before they rise!
    They feel no fear, why should you?
    Use your head; cut off theirs.

Even the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has acknowledged the need for a Zombie Apocalypse survival plan: “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse” is available on the CDC website. The best part is, with the right planning, you will be ready for the impending flesh eating masses, as well as fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and even nuclear war!

There are numerous practical applications for the skills you will learn as you put together your Zombie Apocalypse Action Plan. It is commonly accepted that the only way to truly kill a zombie is by decapitation or mass trauma to the brain. You will gain valuable hunting skills as you hone your zombie sharpshooter techniques. If you can take down a rotting corpse at 100 feet with one shot, a 10 point buck in the woods won’t stand a chance. Not only will you save your family from impending zombification, you’ve taught yourself to feed them dinner.

A secret stash of canned goods, purified water, and toilet paper will help while you are huddled in fear during the initial zombie outbreak, and it will come in handy during the nuclear holocaust. Just don’t forget the can opener. There is nothing worse than staring longingly at an unopened can of peaches while drawing straws to see who will leave the safety of your underground shelter for a can opener. Poor little Susie is only 10, and she won’t stand a chance against a full-fledged 28 Days Later zombie. Those suckers can run faster than Flo Jo in the 100 meter dash!

Perhaps your argument for not preparing is: “Why bother? There is no hope for human survival anyway.” Are you going to put a bullet in your own brain? Or are you going to go ahead and throw yourself onto the buffet line and become a zombie canapé? This will result in your own zombification and in you hunting down little Susie to snack on her tasty medulla oblongata. Is that really the kind of person—I mean zombie—you want to be? Suicide doesn’t just hurt you, it hurts everyone around you. Don’t be a quitter!

Maybe you don’t need your own plan because you’re friends with someone who is zombie prepared. Good for you! But have you given careful thought to what your friend’s plan really is? As the character Otis recently learned on The Walking Dead, Shane’s (another character in the series) plan was simply: “I don’t have to be faster than the zombies; I just have to be faster than my friends.” In which case, you’d better have a contingency plan for that bullet one of your slower friends is sure to put in your kneecap, leaving you to become human tartare.

As you can see, there are good reasons to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse.

You don’t have to go out and dig a bomb shelter in your backyard, just start small. Hiding away canned goods and non-perishable foods is the perfect beginning. Head to the nearest military surplus store and stock up on MRE’s (meals ready to eat). Those things will survive a nuclear holocaust; surely they will survive the Zombie Apocalypse. Purified water, spare clothes, extra Tylenol, and some Neosporin wouldn’t be a bad idea either; however, if you do get bitten by a zombie, no amount of Bactine is going to save you, so in this case, conflict avoidance is the best policy of all.

It’s time to face the ugly, decomposing facts. The Zombie Apocalypse is on our horizon. What are you doing to prepare for it? If you still think this is all nonsense and that you don’t have to do anything to prepare for the coming Zombie Apocalypser answer, is “nothing” I hope your favorite color is putrid green, your favorite scent is rotting corpse, and you aren’t too attached to your limbs because soon, they won’t be attached to you.

Wendy McCloud is a forty-something-year-old college student who takes her passion about all things zombie to fun, yet useful extremes. She is a fan of all thing zombie and believes being prepared for anything is never a bad plan! Her future goals include writing a biography and some romance. The romance won't be zombie related, though, because that's just gross.   

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

28 Days Later. Dir. Danny Boyle. Perf. Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris and 
     Christopher Eccleston. DNA Films, 2002. Film. 
     http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043.

Berdoy, M, JP Webster and DW Macdonald. "Fatal attraction in rats infected with
     Toxoplasma gondii." Proceedings of the Royal Society. The Royal Society, 7
     Aug. 2000. Web. 2 Nov. 2011. 
     http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/267/1452/1591.

Brooks, Max. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living
     Dead. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003. Print.

Garrett, Lauri. Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health. New York:
     Hyperion, 2000. Print.

Garrett, Laurie. The Coming Plauge: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of
     Balance. New York: Penguin, 1995. Print.

Khan, Ali S. “Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.” Emergency
     Preparedness and Response. CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
     16 May 2011. Web. 2 Nov. 2011 
     http://www.bt.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp.

Koenig, Robbin. Personal interview. 31 Oct. 2011.

Kuchment, Anna. “Zombie Insects: A Q&A about a Sinister Virus.” Scientific
     American Magazine. Scientific American, a division of Nature America Inc. 
     29 Oct. 2011. Web. 02 Nov. 2011 
     http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=zombie-insects. 

“Series 1 & 2”. The Walking Dead. Prod.. Earnest R Dickerson and Gwyneth
     Horder-Payton. Perf. Andrew Lincoln, Jon Bernthal and Sarah Wayne Callais.
     AMC HD, Little Rock. 2010-2011. Television.  
     http://www.imdb.com/title /tt1520211

The Most Awesomest

Some awesome things are happening this week.

I get to go see Chicago the Musical with my bittiest sister this coming weekend. I was featured in a spotlight article at work. And I got free panties from Victoria’s Secret. Sometimes it’s the little things in life.

The most awesomest, though, was that I received pretty print copies of Quills & Pixels with a published essay of mine very own in it.

I’m in print bitches!

I really thought just finding out that it would be published was the big news. Turns out I was wrong. Seeing words you wrote on real paper that is bound and covered is actually pretty amazing.

It’s not the Best of American Essays of 2013 or The New York Times or anything, but it’s a start. It’s a little peer reviewed publication from UALR, where I graduated last spring. Being featured by my own community has a pretty special feel to it.

I’m a firm believer in celebrating life’s little triumphs. Hell, I celebrate when I clean my desk off. This is more of a bottle of wine and three chocolate cupcakes type celebration with a little bit of dance party thrown in for good measure.

My amazing and deranged friend, Wendy McCloud, is also in the same publication. I won’t go into full details about her, but you will see her featured here as often as I can talk her into it. She’s not only a funny and talented writer, she is also a ballsy, awe-inspiring survivor. She always says that “you can become the person you want to be, not the person you were born to be” and it’s an ideology she accredits with every breath she takes.

This week I'm going to post one of the pieces she had published. She’s a complete show off (dramatic eye roll) and just HAD to have two in there. Despite my resentment, I have to admit that one of them holds an especially important message.

Life is full of surprises, most of them are beyond our control. That doesn’t, however, mean that we are helpless. Our dear Wendy is here to enlighten us as to why we need to worry about something that is completely out of my realm of expertise.

Unfortunately, I won’t be posting her work tonight - but I will be posting it tomorrow. So keep an eye out. You really won’t want to miss this.

“How wild it was, to let it be.”

I saw the movie Wild this past weekend. The book one very dear to my heart. I read it several years ago and have reread it and referenced it more times than I could possibly count.

The first time I read the book, there was something that I absolutely marveled at and I was reminded of it when I saw the movie.

After suffering an enormous loss, the author's life spun out of control. She suddenly became aware of the juxtaposition of what her life looked like and who she felt she really was under all of her pain and grief. She looked in the proverbial mirror and said, “Wow. My life is a fucked up mess and I need to do something about it.”

She was lost. She had broken into 10,000 pieces. She was trapped and paralyzed by her own mistakes, fear, guilt and grief. Then one day, she was standing in a store and saw a book about the Pacific Coast Trail. An answer took hold. She was drawn to it. A gut feeling told her that the PCT would rescue her. 

I don’t like to use the words 'hunch' or 'gut' in this situation. It makes it seem like I’m watching NCIS and Leroy Jethro Gibbs has a gut feeling. It’s the Commander in the galley with an envelope full of Ebola. He’s probably right, but he has to prove it. That isn’t the case here. Cheryl knew. She had prophetic certainty that her salvation was somewhere in that 1100 miles. 

 I think all of the lessons she learned along the way are amazing and invaluable. However, the wonder and awe of this story for me is her decision to go, her complete inexperience, and her tenacity to keep going.

How many of us would have stopped to ask “why”? And then analyze our own idea to death, until we effectively eradicated it as an option? (Just me?) How many of us would have tried to figure out how it would change our lives before we left? How will it make me a better person? Who do I want this journey to make me? How many of us would have disregarded our own intuition without a guarantee of desired results?

Thousands of people set New Year’s resolutions this year. As a whole, we idolize our goal driven ideology. We want qualitative results directly correlated to our effort in order to feel successful. I want to weigh 125 pounds. That means I have to lose 15 pounds. That means I have to do this list of things to get to that point. We almost refuse to start something without knowing what we want the outcome to be.

Back to Cheryl (we are on a first name basis – she just isn’t aware of it).

So she gathered up the things she thought she would need, planned as best as she could, and went. This whole thing didn’t hit me in the book until she was in her hotel room the morning she started the trail and she couldn’t lift her pack.

She’s outdoorsy. And not like I’m outdoorsy. I like to sit outside and drink. She grew up in a tar paper home in Minnesota. She wasn’t by any means pampered. She could make fire and stuff all on her own. But she wasn’t prepared for this. She didn’t train. She took gear with her that was completely useless and didn’t have other items she actually needed. She had no actual hiking experience. The day she left she couldn’t lift the pack she carried for over 90 days and 1100 miles.

I enrolled in college in 2008. It was the year I turned 30. Everybody asked me why. Why do you want to go back? What are you going to do with your degree? What are you going to major in? I had answers prepared. I knew they were coming. None of them were true. The truth was, that I woke up on the cusp on

turning 30 and thought, “Yep, it’s time for me to do this.” It wasn’t out of urgency. I didn’t feel like I had to. In fact, for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like I needed to prove anything to anyone. I just wanted to do it.

After I received my Associates of Arts, I transferred and started pursuing my Bachelor of Liberal Arts. And the questions started again. What are you going to do with that? For starters, I’m going to avoid shooting myself in the head or dropping out, one of which would be the result in me being a business major as suggested. No one appreciated that answer. I decided to major in Liberal Arts. When anyone asked me what I was going to do with it, I would snarkily answer, "teach." If you haven't figured it out yet, molding young minds isn't something I should be employed to do.

One of the concentrations I chose was writing. Another decision I didn’t question.
 
At this point, my thought process wasn’t even in the realm of writing for any other reason than academically. It was something I was decent at. Years prior to this, I loved to write. I had given it up. I didn’t have direction. I didn’t have the tools to help myself improve. I enjoyed it. I loved it. I lacked confidence in it. I had lost hope in it. I let it go.

Enter the esteemed Dr. Charles Anderson. I took Nonfiction Writing without having a clue what it was about and I struggled like hell through it. Not because it was hard, but because Dr. Anderson challenged me in that way that makes you obligated to be better. “I know you can do better, Kristin.” Shit. You mean half-assing this isn’t what you wanted me to do? How terribly inconvenient. I didn’t come close to acing that first class. However, I did improve a little. I started to realize I was better than I had given myself credit for.

So, I took another one of his classes. It was something to do with editing. Enter doom and dread. I had that class with Jennifer and Wendy - who I still depend on for writing advice. Dr. Anderson took to calling us the Terrible Trio. He assured us that he meant this in the best way possible, but the word "terrible" implies otherwise

It was an amazing experience. We learned so much from each other through collaboration and playing with styles in that class. I took three fundamental lessons from that class. (Sorry Dr. A – none of them have to do with tropes) I was passionate about this. I could do this well. Editing is just as much a part of writing as writing.

Dr. Anderson recommended I read a book called Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott. This is also an amazing book that is an essential part of my life. There are certain books that I am so attached to they are literally part of my personal ideology. Bird by Bird, Wild, and Harry Potter make up a massive chunk of this collection. Anyway, my second favorite quote in Bird by Bird is this:

“E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”

I’m quoting Ms. Lamott quoting someone else. I’ve noticed us writers, my friend Cheryl included, love to quote other writers. We love words, both our own and others.

Writing is such an essential part of my life now. I’m not sure how I ever functioned without it. I had no idea when I enrolled that summer that it would lead me to this. Not knowing got me here.

I realize my story and Cheryl’s have very little in common. I suffered no great loss. It’s been YEARS since my last heroine experiment (I’m kidding, Mom). I'm not 26. Cheryl went on a grueling 1100 mile hike. I started a blog.
 
Cheryl started her journey broken, unprepared, and totally unaware of where she would end up. She could have quit a million times over. Her journey revealed her to herself. At the end she says, “It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That is was enough to trust that what I'd done was truth.”

At 30, I started college because I knew I needed to. I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. I wanted to quit AT LEAST a million times over. My journey has revealed so much of myself to me. At the end of it, I still don’t know what my life holds for me in the future. I do know that I have so much more of me than I ever have before, and that is invaluable.   

The moral of the story (both of them) is that you don’t have to have all the answers to accomplish great things. You don’t have to be perfectly prepared to find pieces of yourself along your journey. Deal with the two feet in front of you. Write the shitty first draft. Decide to take the journey. Your destination is just the destination. The two feet in front of you is your journey. Let yourself be revealed. Trust what you do is truth. Nobody has to believe that but you. That is what the journey is about.