Zombie HORROR!!
Yesterday, of course, was ‘blog like it’s the end of the world’ day. Several people I know were caught a bit off guard, especially when reading the better-written entries. I’m interested that most of the zombiepocalypse bloggers posted as if they expected to survive all this, and with convincing feeling rather than easy melodrama. Frankly, this was more fun than NaNoWriMo as far as I’m concerned.
But I wrote in mine about ‘going mad’ with the shock of what’s happening. I tried to imagine the other day a horrific event that would ‘drive me mad’. There’s not a lot I can imagine – I mean, I can imagine being terrified, sickened, appalled, but not driven insane by an event. The very sight of Cthulhu was supposed to do this, or the reading of his forbidden books; but I suspect that had more to do with the awful realization that such things could exist in a universe of which we’d pridefully assumed we were the supreme center.
Last week I read about a story involving a 100-foot-long house with a 110-foot-long hallway inside!!! For a while, i thought that might be my road – how would my scientific, skeptical mind embrace this physical impossibility? It might DRIVE ME MAD!
But maybe not. I have a built-in error-protection routine for these situations, which is to simply say “There’s something going on here that I don’t understand.” If I “know” that you can’t fit 110 feet of corridor in 100 feet of domicile, but I am forced by the evidence of my own measuring tape to concede that that’s what seems to be happening, I don’t need to shriek “That’s IMPOSSIBLE!” and run from the building, I need only admit that I can’t explain this, and start looking for answers.
A zombie can scare me, might consume me, but can’t make me admit there isn’t an explanation somewhere 🙂
Tags: philosophy, writing, zombies
Is that what that was? Nuts! I missed it!
*goes to retropost*
I guess part of it, too, would depend on what you saw as “mad.”
I can imagine myself being driven into catatonia by the sight of my children either as zombies or being ripped apart by zombies.
You could also argue that characters like the Punisher or Jon Sable were driven “mad” by the loss of their families. They lack concern for their own well being and they can kill coldly as a result.
House of Leaves, eh? Tell me if you like it, I’ve heard mixed reports.
I have to say, that the reason that I couldn’t blog properly about it all yesterday was because I’m too much of a writer. I was sitting here thinking about the completly impossibility of a consistent, worldwide, all-at-once outbreak. So then I started thinking about the different flavors of zombies, how they would react, what I could do, and I just couldn’t really write properly without being analytical about it all.
The thing that threw it all off course was thinking about back home. My hometown would be one of the last places hit, so actually I would try to evacuate to Southwest VA as soon as possible, or try to get into downtown D.C. which is overpopulated to be sure, but one fo the first places to be saved I’d wager.
But then I start thinking about my materialistic nature and wanting to save my stuff, and then I have NIGHTMARES (I’m not exaggerating) about packing up my stuff and trying to rescue my photos before something hits and freaking out and it’s not worth it.
My long explanation of why I didn’t blog ; )
An Open Mind
I like the idea of an open mind as a “built-in error-protection routine”. Going mad from witnessing a strange event could only happen to someone who is locked into a belief and cannot imagine the monstrosity/impossibility before his or her eyes. I hear people talk on television about the comfort of having a solid foundation of belief, but I think that is too limiting. I would rather step through shifting sands of ideas and beliefs about what is the world. I like to consider the seemingly impossible; I like to process the myriad ideas and beliefs I come into contact with.
I imagine that zombies like open minds…
I started to take part, but once I figured out how to hijack the Bradley and get into the Congressional Bunker, I realized I was being way too rational and pragmatic for a horror movie.
Oh, and in the best Ellen Ripley tradition, I even managed to save the cat…
Well, *any* zombies are pretty much impossible, which I kind of alluded to; the question, given a seeming impossibility, is how one reacts. When I had free moments I’d be worrying about what was going on, because how best to survive depends on figuring out what the source is.
If we assume that it *was* a world-wide outbreak, that implies strongly that it was either actively spread by a hostile force, or that it was dormant for a long time and then triggered. Both of which tend to imply alien nanotech terror weapons, black government projects gone awry, or the like rather than, say, chemical spills or indian burial grounds.
If we consider that “June 13” isn’t a simultaneous worldwide event, that tends to imply either something like high-altitude UFOs spreading stuff worldwide, flying West with the sun targeting morning rush hours as a good way to estimate population concentrations; or perhaps something that’s a multi-stage trigger, one of which is sunlight. The fact that the majority of surviving bloggers tended to be people working in office buildings with artificial light and little sunlight exposure might be considered supporting evidence, albeit tenuous.
Oddly enough, the other obvious “people aren’t dying everywhere” possibility is the classic “god(ess) of the dead isn’t doing their job for some reason” bit. Distracted, captured, disillusioned, dead themselves, fighting in a distant dimension, caught in a time loop, whatever… there’s a whole lot of fiction across multiple genres where when the boss of the dead isn’t collecting, the should-be-dead don’t stop.
re: Cthulhu
I dunno, literature from between 1850-1930 seems to automatically assume a surprisingly low threshhold for sanity. Maybe it’s a funciton of mental health diagnoses of the era, but “went mad” seems to be about as common a phrase as “got arthitis”.
I posted as if I hoped to survive, but there was doubt. The mental state was also deteriorating (or at least I hope that was somewhat obvious — the “you all thought I was mad…” type opening is usually a good clue. :D)
It was a lot of fun to write, but I had to FL the entry since my family reads my blog; no good in having them think I had really barricaded myself in with Alex. ;D
I dunno, James, I just figured it was a Brooksian Class 4 Outbreak, the likes of which he describes in The Zombie Survial Guide and on which World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is based.
Good books, both of those, and definitely what were on my mind for this.
As for the hallway- my assumption is that it had at least one corner or bend in it?
That’s a good point, but it has more to do with the personal horror than the “OMG, zombies” situation. Nevertheless, I’d agree with you on that one.
Yeah, I find zombies low on the monster plausibility scale too. So, in the great B-movie tradition, I made sure to harp on the fact in my post. 🙂
I read about House of Leaves, I’m not sure if I want to actually read it. Kinda sounds like the Art far overpowers the storytelling.
See, now I’d really have enjoyed reading that 🙂
Nope, apparently the hallway is razor-straight, which is part of what drives the book’s narrator around the bend. Me, I think my working hypothesis would be that one of you had finally perfected Relative Dimension In Space.
So when Cthulu does rise up from the depths, the only ones to retain thiir (relative) sanity will be fans. Appropriate, since we’ll probably be the only ones who will know how to avoid being eaten. 😉
‘Pecial Relativity
You can fit 110 feet of hallway in a 100 ft house if the tape being used to measure the hallway is moving at relativistic velocities along the direction of measurement. There are practical difficulties with that, but it’s not physcially impossible.