What always amazes me about these zombie movies is how, well, the zombies win in the end. If humans do one thing well, it's killing other beings, whether they're alive or undead. I can obviously imagine panic and confusion at the beginning, big losses, but not the complete collapse of civilization.
I’ve always found this passage from George A. Romero’s novelization of ‘Dawn Of The Dead’ intriguing.
“I know WGON is out by now,” Steve said with animation. “It was a madhouse back there . . . people are crazy . . . if they’d just organize. It’s total confusion. I don’t believe it’s gotten this bad. I don’t believe they can’t handle it.” He looked around the room proudly. “Look at us. Look at what we were able to do today.”
A few feet away, still in a slumped position by the pyramid of cartons, Peter’s eyes blinked open. He had been listening to what he wanted to hear, and now this statement by the kid really made him take notice. His eyes moved slightly to the side so that he could watch Stephen. The young man was gesturing wildly with his hands, going on and on about their exploits as a team. The other two didn’t realize Peter was awake. Roger nodded his head, but didn’t seem as if he were really listening to Steve’s ramblings.
“We knocked the shit out of ‘em, and they never touched us,” Steve exclaimed. “Not really,” he said in a quieter tone.
The rumbling voice erupted from the other side of the room.
“They touched us good, Flyboy. We’re lucky to get out with our asses. You don’t forget that!”
The two men looked at Peter. Steve’s face colored at being caught mouthing off about something he really hadn’t contributed to. The droning of the radio, announcing more disaster reports, was counterpoint to Peter’s speech.
“You get overconfident . . . underestimate those suckers. And you get eaten! How’d you like that?”
He spoke in a low, unemotional tone, barely turning his head so that Steve could see the expression. Peter hadn’t moved a muscle except for his eyes and his mouth. Steve was transfixed.
“They got a big advantage over us, brother,” Peter went on. “They don’t think. They just blind-ass do what they got to do. No emotions. And that bunch out there? That’s just a handful, and every day they’ll be more. A couple hundred thousand people die each day from natural causes. That’ll prob’ly triple or better with folks knockin’ each other off the way it’s goin’.
“Now say each one of them comes back and kills two, and each one of them kills two more . . . you know about the Emperor’s reward?”
As if they were children at story hours, the two grown men shook their heads.
Peter went on, “Emperor tells this dude, ‘I’ll give you anything I got, name it’ . . . dude puts out a chessboard . . . says gimme one grain of rice on the first square, two on the second; four on the third; eight . . . double for each square on the board. Dude got all the rice in the kingdom, baby. Wiped the Emperor out!”
“Yeah,” Steve interrupted. “But these things can be stopped so easily . . . if people would just listen . . . do what has to be done – “
Peter swiveled his upper torso and faced Steve.
“How about it, Flyboy? Let’s say your lady gets killed. You gonna be able to chop off her head?”
Steve stopped midsentence by the last comment. It was meant to sting and it did. He stared at the big man, his mouth open. He was about to answer yes when he stopped himself again. All he could do in response was stare.
I don’t think this made the North American cut, but a portion of it might have made the Argento cut.
I think it lays out a plausible scenario about individuals response to an outbreak. We’ve even seen in the last four years the nation’s response to COVID-19, with widely differing responses from state and local governments about how to stop the spread of the disease.
Here in Washington State we had local officials and sheriff's openly defying enforcing the Governor's mask mandate and social distancing rules. I have no doubt that an outbreak similar to the one depicted in ‘The Walking Dead’ would elicit a similar response from local authorities.
