Thorfinn Skullsplitter - Zombie Apocalypse Now!: Why the Collapse of Civilization is Nigh

Zombie apocalypse

now!

why the collapse of civilization is nigh

thorfinn sKuLLsPLitter

Thorfinn Skul splitter

978-0-6484996-6-4

Manticore Press, Melbourne, Australia, 2019

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or by any other means, except as may be expressly permitted by applicable laws, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Neither the author, nor the publisher, assumes any responsibility for the use or misuse of the information contained in this book, and they shall not be held responsible or liable with respect to any loss or damages caused, or alleged to be caused, either directly or indirectly by the use or misuse of the information contained herein. Nor do the author or publisher make any representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the accuracy, completeness or fitness for purpose of any of the information contained in this book. Further, neither the author nor publisher have any control over the contents of third-party websites, and other third-party information sources, and thereby assumes no responsibility for their contents.

This work is for education and entertainment purposes only.

Thema Classification:

SZV (Survival Skil s), VXQM3 (Zombies & Undead), RNR (Natural Disasters), JBFF (Social Impact of Disasters), RNPG (Climate Change) m a n t i c o r e p r e s s

www.manticore.press

contents

Discourse on the Metaphysics of the Zombie Apocalypse 30

The Coming Col apse of Civilization

of

the

Zombies 47

In Post Apocalyptica Will People Real y Be De Facto Zombies?

But Wont We Be Able to Rebuild?

Conclusion: Kiss Liberalism (and Almost Everything Else) Goodbye 72

81

Complexity,

Chaos

and

Col apse 93

The

Mechanisms

of

Col apse

Nothing to Sneeze at: Plagues, Pandemics and Social Breakdown 113

Ecological Col apse and Looming Resource Shortages 115

The

Climate

Cataclysm 130

chapter 4

All You Need Is Lead(and a Few Other Things)

149

The

Philosophy

of

Survivalism

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse 101

Bug

Out

and

Survival

Retreats

Wilderness and Blackwoods Survival Philosophy

Disaster

Preparedness,

Philosophy

Self-Reliance and Self-Sufficiency Philosophy

Tools

and

the

Craftsman 206

Zombie Apocalypse Preparation and Survival Philosophy 209

Conclusion Of Book 1

215

Brothers will fight

and kill each other,

sisters children

will defile kinship.

It is harsh in the world,

whoredom rife

an axe age, a sword age

shields are riven

a wind age, a wolf age

before the world goes headlong.

No man will have

mercy on another.

Vlusp, The Poetic Edda (Stanza 45).

PrefaCe

This Thing of Darkness

Although zombies and the intrinsicaly related zombie apocalypse are cultural commodities worth billions in the global economy, cultural critics have argued that there is a serious message to be found in the mythos of the modern zombie, conceived as a relentlessly aggressive, reanimated humancorpse drivenby a biological infection.1 These threshold creatures,

standing in the apocalyptic wasteland between life and death, are

antisubjects, ultimate symbolic Others who may be attacked and destroyed without violating increasingly rigid canons of political y correct behavior and utterance.2 And, in their mindless apocalyptic fury they signal the end of the world as we have known it.3 Zombies are a power pack of English lit. meat, albeit rotten.

Zombie films, especial y works of intellectual substance, such as George Romeros Night of the Living Dead (1968), function as contemporary morality plays, where existential anxieties about social disorder, death and civilizational decay can be safely explored without bringing an even colder and more brutal reality home to the viewer, and breaking now well-established thought and speech 1 Matt Mogk, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Zombies (Gallery Books, New York, 2011), p. 6.

2 Brian Anse Patrick, Zombology: Zombies and the Decline of the West (andGuns) (Arktos, London, 2014), p. 48.

3 K. Paffenroth, Gospel of the Living Dead: George Romeros Vision of Hell onEarth (Baylor University Press, Waco, 2006), p. 13.

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE NOW!

taboos. The zombie, as an anthropomorphic plague, where man has become the pathogenic agent of man, a consumer object of our own devouring drive,4 represents our own dehumanization in an oppressive and mechanistic social order, where most of us have been reduced to the level of meat-machines, less than nothing.

Zombie outbreaks in film and literature are general y, but not always, associated with the victory of the rampaging hordes over civilization, so that a col apse of civilization occurs. Peter Dendle has said that this too is part of the mythos of the zombie as a barometer of cultural anxiety:

In twenty-first century Americawhere the bold wilderness frontier that informed American mythic consciousness for four centuries has given way to increasingly centralized government amidst a suburban landscape now quilted with mall strips and Walmartsthere is ample room to romanticize a fresh world purged of ornament and vanity, in which the strong survive, and in which society must be rebuilt anew. Post-apocalyptic zombie worlds are fantasies of liberation: the intrepid pioneers of a new world trek through the shattered remains of the old, trudging through shel s of buildings and the husks of people.5

The zombie, in inchoate, rampaging hordes, stands for anything and everything that threatens to tear down civilized culture and/or the established order.6 Indeed, in this book it will be shown that this is an accurate description of how in the near future, people in this so-called real world, will face the same fate.

4 Jorge Assef, The Zombie Epidemic: A Hypermodern Version of the Apocalypse,

LCExpress, vol. 2, no. 7, 2013, pp. 1-21, cited p. 6.

5 Peter Dendle, The Zombie as a Barometer of Cultural Anxiety, in N. Scott (ed.), Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil (Rodopi, New York, 2007), pp. 4-57, cited p. 54.

6 Andre Austin, Cyberpunk and the Living Dead, in S. Boluk and W. Lenz (eds),