Source: Rhino Times Greensboro

Yost%20Column
Feds Fail To Prevent Zombie Apocalypse

by Scott D. Yost

June 14, 2012

“CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead or one that would present zombie-like symptoms.”

– David Daigle, a spokesman for the Center for Disease Control (CDC)

Last week, I called a friend to talk about something, and that’s when I found out the horrible news. I started the conversation with a question but he interrupted me.

“Oh,” he said, “I thought you were calling about the zombie apocalypse.”

The news had just come out, and I hadn’t heard about the zombie apocalypse yet.

“No,” I said. “I don’t know anything about that, but, from the sound of it, it can’t be good.”

“No, it’s not,” he told me. “Not at all.”

He gave me the basics. He told me there had been several accounts of zombie attacks breaking out across the country, and the latest one, he said, was a naked man in Florida who was eating the face of another man, and, when the cops told the zombie to stop feasting on the flesh of the other man, the zombie wouldn’t stop. And the two cops had to keep shooting him until he finally went down, because zombies are very difficult to kill. There were related cases in other parts of the country as well, my friend informed me, and, though a lot of the details were unclear, all the signs seemed to indicate that a full-scale zombie apocalypse was starting up.

“My goodness,” I said.

“Just turn on the news or go online and Google ‘zombie apocalypse,’” he told me.

He added that the authorities said it was suspected to be caused “by some new drug or something.”

“Or,” I suggested, “the earth passed through the tail of a comet.”

“Exactly,” he said, because he and I both know you can’t believe what the government tells you, especially when it comes to a zombie apocalypse.

So, as soon as I got off the phone, I Googled zombie apocalypse and my MacBook showed hit after hit confirming exactly what I was afraid of.

I’m like, OK, that’s just fantastic. The economy is bad; the jobless rate is up; the black hole is coming on Dec. 21, but, if all that’s not enough for you – well, now the dead are coming back to life and feasting on the brains of the living.

You know, it’s always something.

And sometimes you could have seen the threat coming and done something about it, but, according to the internet pages I saw, the thing that was turning people into zombies was actually, of all things, bath salts.

Innocent little bath salts.

In the words of Wikipedia: “The term bath salts refers to a range of water-soluble, usually inorganic solid products designed to be added to a bath. They are said to improve cleaning, improve the experience of bathing, and serve as a vehicle for cosmetic agents.”

Now they will have to add to the Wikipedia bath salts entry, “Oh yeah, and they also turn you into flesh-eating zombies.”

Now, let me get this out of the way right at the start: I don’t like zombies. Not one bit. Zombies frighten me. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something about the dead coming back to life and feasting on the flesh of the living that I find really unsettling.

Zombies scare me like nothing else, with the possible exception of the creepy kid in the rear-facing seat in the car in front of you that you get behind who has that unrelenting eerie unworldly glazed-over stare, and who just keeps staring at you like those little girls in The Shining.

My phone call to my friend and his news of the zombie apocalypse caught me by surprise; however, I will say that, about two weeks ago – right before the start of the apocalypse – I had a horrible nightmare about zombies.

I mean, it was terrifying. It was one of those dreams where you wake up sweating and screaming in horror, and, then, when you finally do get back to sleep, the same dream comes right back at you, so, literally, all night long I was being chased and attacked and eaten by zombies. And the next morning I was like, thank goodness, daybreak is here.

The next day, I was talking to a friend of mine about it, and I told her it was rare that I had nightmares, but I told her about my experience the night before with all the zombies.

“Well,” she said, “What did you have for dinner last night?”

I told her it was just fish and pasta and vegetables – nothing unusual, I said.

“Well,” she said, “what did you do before you went to bed?”

I thought about it and told her. I had been clearing programs off my DVR and, for the three hours before I went to bed, I watched three back-to-back episodes of AMC’s The Walking Dead.

And, the moment I said that, it hit us at the same time that that might have had something to do with it.

But now, in retrospect, I know that wasn’t it at all. I know that instead my dream was precognition, a warning, a prognostication, an omen, a harbinger of things to come.

It was, to sum it up in a nutshell, a prophecy of a warning of the writing on the wall that spelled out the coming zombie apocalypse.

And to tell you the truth, I wasn’t really worried about a zombie apocalypse at all until the clincher came. I was fine until the CDC put out its statement that there was nothing to worry about. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that you can’t believe what the government tells you.

Here’s the rule to go by: The government people always tell you the exact opposite of the truth.

If the government people say there are zombies, they are only saying that just to scare you so they can round you up in one place for “your own protection” (read: so they can firebomb you); and, if they say that there aren’t any zombies, then there clearly are.

The other thing is that there will be no help in the zombie apocalypse. The government people will be all about saving themselves, and all of the rest of us can just fight it out in Raccoon City while the government people escape on the lifeboat spaceship arks they have been building in the Himalayas for years or whatever.

Anyway, so the question remains: What do you do about zombies and the zombie apocalypse?

Well, though the government will be no help, I might be. Because there are some things we can do and I will try to go into them. While you will not find any good government guidance, I have picked up quite a bit of knowledge from zombie movies and there are some that are very helpful for the current situation indeed.

Resident Evil is one of the scariest movies of all time and one of the best in my opinion and, most importantly for our current purposes, one that contains some very good advice when it comes to zombie killing.

Shaun of the Dead.

The 2004 Ving Rhames Dawn of the Dead.

I Am Legend with the fresh prince.

28 Days Later.

Zombieland with Woody Harrelson and the guy who invented Facebook. This one is particularly helpful and, throughout the movie, the main character even comes right out and gives you rules for fighting and killing zombies.

Anyway, from all these movies, I’ve found some good rules of thumb for zombie killing.

(1) The crowbar: It’s a good idea to always carry a crowbar or a tire iron with you. Guns are good, but if there’s one thing you learn from these movies, it’s this: When it comes to killing zombies, sometimes simpler is better. You never have to reload a tire iron.

Now, of course, I’ve never beaten a zombie to death with a tire iron, but I can tell you from an incident in Mexico one time that a tire iron does work well on drifters that you leave in a shallow grave. And before you come down on me with your judgmental attitude, you should probably just take a second and realize that, since it’s another country it doesn’t really count, not to mention that maybe he really, really had it coming to him because maybe you don’t know the whole story.

(2) Don’t fight if you don’t have to. If you see crowds of bloodthirsty zombies milling around, try not to call attention to yourself and, if possible, exit the area quietly. As it says in Zombieland, “Don’t be a hero.” If you see someone ambling toward you grunting and dragging a foot, preparing to gnaw on your flesh, simply don’t let them get hold of you. Politely excuse yourself and walk away.

(3) Zombies cannot swim and they cannot climb. So go to an island or the top of the Empire State Building. (I don’t think they can operate elevators very well either.) Also, they can’t run; Zombies are slow. So when all else fails, take some advice from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. even though it’s not a zombie movie. A good rule is, “Run away!”

(As the Facebook guy in Zombieland offers, as his number one piece of advice, “Cardio.”)

(4) When all else fails, just try to blend in. I learned this from Shaun of the Dead. That’s why I suggest you go to Party City and get a lot of fake blood and ghoul makeup. Practice reaching out your hands aimlessly in front of you while slurring the word “Brains! Brains!” over and over again.

(5) Be careful about Rule 4. Another uninfected human might mistake you for a zombie and blow your head off or beat you to death with a crowbar.

(6) When the person in your group says splitting up is a “good idea,” don’t take that advice.

(7) Don’t become turned into a zombie yourself. Remember, in the current zombie apocalypse there are other ways to become a zombie other than by being killed by a mob of zombies and then being reanimated.

As I said, it turns out the problem is bath salts. So play it completely safe: take showers, not baths.

I don’t really get it either, but at least the answer to this particular aspect of the problem is simple enough: When you bathe, don’t use bath salts. On second thought, you should just play it completely safe and take showers not baths.

Who takes baths these days anyway? I thought everyone had switched to showers in like 1962 right after showers were invented.

And the final rule is this: Don’t sweat it. Don’t worry too much about the zombie apocalypse. Remember, you only have to make it about six more months till the end of the world anyway: Dec. 21 is when the black hole gets here, and the good news is that, when it does, it will suck up and kill all the zombies just like it does everyone else.