Time to get to know the Escape Velocity Collection’s curators! How? By asking them the questions that really matter! Let’s see what our curators have to say…
This week’s question is:
How well would you survive in a zombie apocalypse?
Undoubtedly inspired by The Walking Dead series and Telltale video games, I used to have dreams about this scenario quite often. These dreams occurred in a period my lucid dreaming skills were at an all-time high, meaning I had enough control over my dreams to not be intimidated by armies of zombies. Dressed in my stylish long wax coat and armed with my Orcrist replica, I’d hack and slash my way through my hometown being awesome. Till this day, these dreams still belong to my favourite dreams ever.
They were dreams however. In reality, I doubt I’d have the skills to survive a zombie apocalypse for long. I might be clever enough to outrun most zombies for a time, but I’d probably lack the relentless survival instincts needed to thrive in such a world. Some nasty group of human survivors is going to be my downfall. I’d die looking fabulous, though! They won’t take that away from me.
Jop
Peter
My skills relate to standing behind a desk all day trying really hard to come up with smart things to write to judges about corporate and commercial catfights between multinationals (and every now and then I get to wear a long black gown and tell them in person). It is pretty tough to come up with a skillset that is less useful when society breaks down.
I have absolutely zilch survival experience. So the honest answer is that I would probably die a horrible death pretty soon, and even if I managed to survive the initial onslaught, I would probably starve in a month because my body is terribly inefficient with energy.
Having said that, if I managed to actually find a community of survivors where other people took care of, like, actually surviving, I could possibly make a decent warrior-type – guns are rare enough in the Netherlands that my longsword fighting (H.E.M.A.) skills might actually be of use. And the idea of chopping zombies shoulder to hip with well-placed and neatly executed Oberhauen in a 500-year old German tradition is unsurprisingly rather appealing…
Let’s be real you guys: I just wouldn’t. For me to have any chance at all, I’d need to have some notice of there being a zombie outbreak. I wear contacts and never have my glasses with me. I’m definitely never dressed for survival. When I wore my most practical shoes to hike up a mountain in Austria, a man complimented me on climbing a mountain “in heels”.
Most importantly, I don’t really see the point of living in a post-apocalyptic society. Sure, maybe some crazy survival instinct would kick in, but I’ve seen my share of zombie movies, and they’re NOT FUN!! I love life, but I love it because of all the nice things in it. I genuinely think fighting zombies wouldn’t be the worst thing in this situation: it would be the drudgery of life without any of the good stuff that civilised society has given us.
All things considered, I probably wouldn’t survive day one.
Lotte
Robin
I guess it depends. If we assume that the zombie apocalypse will be caused by a virus as is the case in many scifi stories, then I think we can also assume that just as with real world pandemics, rich countries will be affected very differently than poor countries. I’m not saying that we would be capable enough to stop the spread of the virus here (COVID certainly has taught us that), but experience also teaches that rich countries have no problem buying up all the world’s available vaccines and such. So perhaps I would be one of the lucky ones to survive at least the start of the apocalypse – not because of any particular skill or talent on my part, but simply because I was lucky enough to be born rich and white.
That’s it: another soul-searching question answered!
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