As much as I found rumors of it to be funny at first, ridiculous as it occurred, and horrifying when I realized the truth of it, the zombie apocalypse has happened.
The infection began in whispers. Gen X talked about it casually, the movies were brought out of the closets of Baby Boomers. All the Day, Night, Dawn, Day After..the Living Dead started in the late 60s and poor George Romero never even thought to copyright the term “Zombie” that he practically reinvented from the antediluvian lore of the island cultures.
There it was feared and utilized as a reality among Haitian slaves from West Africa. Used as a tool to keep slaves “in line.”
‘Many people who follow the voodoo religion today believe zombies are myths, but some believe zombies are people revived by a voodoo practitioner known as a bokor. Bokors have a tradition of using herbs, shells, fish, animal parts, bones and other objects to create concoctions including “zombie powders,” which contain tetrodotoxin, a deadly neurotoxin found in puffer-fish and some other marine species.
Used carefully at sub-lethal doses, the tetrodotoxin combination may cause zombie-like symptoms such as difficulty walking, mental confusion and respiratory problems. High doses of tetrodotoxin can lead to paralysis and coma. This could cause someone to appear dead and be buried alive – then later revived.” (https://www.history.com/topics/folklore/history-of-zombies)
The true zombie would become humanized if allowed to eat meat or salt. With the transformation of the lore to a classic monster on screen they became more of a “ghoul” than an actual zombie.
“...A Ghoul is a mythical creature originating in pre-Islamic Arabia, often described as hideous human-like monster that dwelt in the desert or other secluded locations in order to lure travelers astray. It was not until Antoine Galland translated the Arabian Nights into French that the western idea of Ghoul was introduced. Galland depicted the Ghoul as a monstrous creature that dwelt in cemeteries, feasting upon corpses. This definition of the Ghoul has persisted until modern times, with Ghouls appearing in literature, television and film, as well video games...” (Al-Rawi, Ahmed K. (11 November 2009). "The Arabic Ghoul and its Western Transformation". Folklore. 120 (3): 291–306.)
The zombies are here.
They are among us.
No one is truly safe from their impact anymore.
Granted, they aren’t the ghoulish, rotting dead depicted in movies and television, but the nightmare is real and they thirst for brains. I see them everywhere now. Shuffling, mumbling, staring down at their technology; sightless to the world around them, feeding on the terabytes of the virtual world in which they believe they exist.
They seemed their usual selves for a time, the slow, shuffling gait began first. They grew more quiet, short clipped speech, fewer human interactions. They began to change their looks, their faces altered by digital remapping of their actual features. Then as decades progressed, there were jokes about common sense having become a thing of the past, it seemed like a joke anyway, then it became a reality.
The extension of their arms were phones, used less to communicate via speech but through visual cues. A third eye to view their world, fractals were more trusted than retinas. Cell phone cameras became better eye witnesses than their human counterparts. Body cameras and drones began to appear. Watches began to disappear, along with answering machines, compact discs, a whole world of technology was replaced with newer technologies, such is its bane, and there were eyes everywhere.
Eyes that were ever watchful but eyes could be fooled, human and closed circuit. Ghosts began to reappear in more and more media as we sought to explain what our eyes saw but our brain couldn’t explain because we didn’t understand the flaws within our own technology. It didn’t matter because the brains were getting numb and dumb. Common sense began to dwindle even further. Virtual life began as entertainment, a lark, a frivolity or luxury for gaming.
Still, there were whispers, whispers that grew louder, the apocalypse was coming. Where the source of the rumor began, I didn’t know. Then the pandemic hit. I was skeptical that it was going to be as serious as it was, and I was wrong. It was the 100 year plague that our ancestors had warned us about in 1918. It was happening again. (My theory that it has to do with global warning was heard by a few but that’s another blog post.)
The Covid-19 pandemic killed over 6 million people worldwide. The reality was at war with the conspiracy theorists and deniers. Still, people died. The zombie apocalypse took hold entirely then. No, it was not the dead revived, I make no jokes nor mean disrespect to anyone who suffered loss or illness to this horrific disease. Instead, I mean those of us who had to shelter in place and for two to three years became cave-dwellers within our homes and faced a reality we’d never before imagined.
We faced a presidency, government, health, and cultural crisis in this nation that we’d never before imagined either. Nor one we’d care to repeat, in my honest opinion. We weren’t sure what happened to everyone else in the privacy of their homes, we could only guess. When we emerged, we could only blink our sun-blinded eyes and look around at what had happened in our absence.
The earth had started to try and right itself for a momentary breath of relief. (again, another blog, another time.) When we began our slow resumption of our former schedules and tried to return to our previous lives, we found huge changes had occurred and discovered zombies among us.
They aren’t deteriorating on the outside, they're decomposing on the inside.
They don’t know how to drive; they simply see an opening and take it – whether it’s legal, allowed, fair play, defensive driving, or not. They don’t know how to have polite interactions with others. They’re rude, entitled, believe that their needs are above all others, and seek only to emerge from their dwellings to grab, obtain, and retreat, at the expense of any and everything else. They will cut in front of others in queues, they seem to be blind to anyone else’s existence but their own. They can’t count change, or tell time, balance a bank statement, address an envelope, operate much of anything without a computer to do it for them.
They couldn’t survive an actual, ghoul-shuffling apocalypse because they can’t drive stick-shifts, they don’t know basic survival skills, they can’t cook, bake, garden, harvest, or know most domestic skills. Most cannot read handwriting, or spell, but they can decipher emojis and app icons with ease. They don’t believe grammar or writing rules apply anymore.
They can order things using their phones, they can have things delivered. They cook by pictures or from boxes. They can’t seem to think outside of the box, they don’t even know there is a box unless something is left on their doorstep in it. Some of them even believe the earth is flat.
Their women are lovingly called Karen, by others. These are some of the older, original zombies that are possibly the carriers, but that’s still unknown. The hypothesis is that the lack of brains plus the sense of entitlement may have spawned the next generations that began the shuffling, mumbling, unthinking, unfeeling, zombies.
Either way, I hope I survive long enough to see that the generations evolve out of being virtual, bloodthirsty, non-thinking, savage ghouls and become thinking, feeling, communicating, sensitive beings again. I believe it can happen!
Until next time - Write on.
TTFN
Faintly~
The infection began in whispers. Gen X talked about it casually, the movies were brought out of the closets of Baby Boomers. All the Day, Night, Dawn, Day After..the Living Dead started in the late 60s and poor George Romero never even thought to copyright the term “Zombie” that he practically reinvented from the antediluvian lore of the island cultures.
There it was feared and utilized as a reality among Haitian slaves from West Africa. Used as a tool to keep slaves “in line.”
‘Many people who follow the voodoo religion today believe zombies are myths, but some believe zombies are people revived by a voodoo practitioner known as a bokor. Bokors have a tradition of using herbs, shells, fish, animal parts, bones and other objects to create concoctions including “zombie powders,” which contain tetrodotoxin, a deadly neurotoxin found in puffer-fish and some other marine species.
Used carefully at sub-lethal doses, the tetrodotoxin combination may cause zombie-like symptoms such as difficulty walking, mental confusion and respiratory problems. High doses of tetrodotoxin can lead to paralysis and coma. This could cause someone to appear dead and be buried alive – then later revived.” (https://www.history.com/topics/folklore/history-of-zombies)
The true zombie would become humanized if allowed to eat meat or salt. With the transformation of the lore to a classic monster on screen they became more of a “ghoul” than an actual zombie.
“...A Ghoul is a mythical creature originating in pre-Islamic Arabia, often described as hideous human-like monster that dwelt in the desert or other secluded locations in order to lure travelers astray. It was not until Antoine Galland translated the Arabian Nights into French that the western idea of Ghoul was introduced. Galland depicted the Ghoul as a monstrous creature that dwelt in cemeteries, feasting upon corpses. This definition of the Ghoul has persisted until modern times, with Ghouls appearing in literature, television and film, as well video games...” (Al-Rawi, Ahmed K. (11 November 2009). "The Arabic Ghoul and its Western Transformation". Folklore. 120 (3): 291–306.)
The zombies are here.
They are among us.
No one is truly safe from their impact anymore.
Granted, they aren’t the ghoulish, rotting dead depicted in movies and television, but the nightmare is real and they thirst for brains. I see them everywhere now. Shuffling, mumbling, staring down at their technology; sightless to the world around them, feeding on the terabytes of the virtual world in which they believe they exist.
They seemed their usual selves for a time, the slow, shuffling gait began first. They grew more quiet, short clipped speech, fewer human interactions. They began to change their looks, their faces altered by digital remapping of their actual features. Then as decades progressed, there were jokes about common sense having become a thing of the past, it seemed like a joke anyway, then it became a reality.
The extension of their arms were phones, used less to communicate via speech but through visual cues. A third eye to view their world, fractals were more trusted than retinas. Cell phone cameras became better eye witnesses than their human counterparts. Body cameras and drones began to appear. Watches began to disappear, along with answering machines, compact discs, a whole world of technology was replaced with newer technologies, such is its bane, and there were eyes everywhere.
Eyes that were ever watchful but eyes could be fooled, human and closed circuit. Ghosts began to reappear in more and more media as we sought to explain what our eyes saw but our brain couldn’t explain because we didn’t understand the flaws within our own technology. It didn’t matter because the brains were getting numb and dumb. Common sense began to dwindle even further. Virtual life began as entertainment, a lark, a frivolity or luxury for gaming.
Still, there were whispers, whispers that grew louder, the apocalypse was coming. Where the source of the rumor began, I didn’t know. Then the pandemic hit. I was skeptical that it was going to be as serious as it was, and I was wrong. It was the 100 year plague that our ancestors had warned us about in 1918. It was happening again. (My theory that it has to do with global warning was heard by a few but that’s another blog post.)
The Covid-19 pandemic killed over 6 million people worldwide. The reality was at war with the conspiracy theorists and deniers. Still, people died. The zombie apocalypse took hold entirely then. No, it was not the dead revived, I make no jokes nor mean disrespect to anyone who suffered loss or illness to this horrific disease. Instead, I mean those of us who had to shelter in place and for two to three years became cave-dwellers within our homes and faced a reality we’d never before imagined.
We faced a presidency, government, health, and cultural crisis in this nation that we’d never before imagined either. Nor one we’d care to repeat, in my honest opinion. We weren’t sure what happened to everyone else in the privacy of their homes, we could only guess. When we emerged, we could only blink our sun-blinded eyes and look around at what had happened in our absence.
The earth had started to try and right itself for a momentary breath of relief. (again, another blog, another time.) When we began our slow resumption of our former schedules and tried to return to our previous lives, we found huge changes had occurred and discovered zombies among us.
They aren’t deteriorating on the outside, they're decomposing on the inside.
They don’t know how to drive; they simply see an opening and take it – whether it’s legal, allowed, fair play, defensive driving, or not. They don’t know how to have polite interactions with others. They’re rude, entitled, believe that their needs are above all others, and seek only to emerge from their dwellings to grab, obtain, and retreat, at the expense of any and everything else. They will cut in front of others in queues, they seem to be blind to anyone else’s existence but their own. They can’t count change, or tell time, balance a bank statement, address an envelope, operate much of anything without a computer to do it for them.
They couldn’t survive an actual, ghoul-shuffling apocalypse because they can’t drive stick-shifts, they don’t know basic survival skills, they can’t cook, bake, garden, harvest, or know most domestic skills. Most cannot read handwriting, or spell, but they can decipher emojis and app icons with ease. They don’t believe grammar or writing rules apply anymore.
They can order things using their phones, they can have things delivered. They cook by pictures or from boxes. They can’t seem to think outside of the box, they don’t even know there is a box unless something is left on their doorstep in it. Some of them even believe the earth is flat.
Their women are lovingly called Karen, by others. These are some of the older, original zombies that are possibly the carriers, but that’s still unknown. The hypothesis is that the lack of brains plus the sense of entitlement may have spawned the next generations that began the shuffling, mumbling, unthinking, unfeeling, zombies.
Either way, I hope I survive long enough to see that the generations evolve out of being virtual, bloodthirsty, non-thinking, savage ghouls and become thinking, feeling, communicating, sensitive beings again. I believe it can happen!
Until next time - Write on.
TTFN
Faintly~
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