We, the living, are locked in a war with the dead. The fate of the world, or at least the world of the living, is in jeopardy, and it is up to we few survivors to end the zombie menace. I realize that some of you are afraid. I know that some of you are unsure that we can actually turn the tide, much less win, this mortal struggle. And, if we’re honest, there are many who wonder if it’s even worth trying to fight anymore. After all, they are many and we are few. But, my friends, it is precisely that fact which is why we must find the resolve to win this war. If we, the living, fall… that’s it. The dead will rule the planet. Life – and the truth is that, as far as we know, Earth is the only life-bearing world in the universe – will be ended. Whether we believe in God or not, we all believe that life is precious. Life is incredible. And life, when given a chance, will endure great upheavals and cataclysms – just ask the little mammals who survived the end of the dinosaurs. But now, in this moment of our greatest despair, it is up to us to create that chance for life to endure. We have the knowledge necessary to end this threat. We have the tools to do what must be done, however unpleasant. And we, each of us individually, have the power to save the human race. The zombie threat must be ended, once and for all, if we as a species are to endure.
We have the knowledge. It’s something of an irony that much of the knowledge of how to fight this very real danger came from a creation of entertainment – the zombie movie. George Romero led the way, and many others shared his vision over the last half century. Little did we know that one day, fantasy would become fact. Thanks to the Internet – which still endures to this day – we have these resources from which to draw strategy and tactics. Odd as their unlife may be to us, zombies are still human-shaped, and vulnerable to many of the same injuries as we are. Not only do we have the resources of fantasy, we also have the resources of fact – humanity, you will all agree, knows many ways to inflict bodily harm. We must now turn this knowledge from a means to harm one another, to a means to save us all.
We have the tools. Man is a creature that has always been driven to invent. A fallen tree becomes a club. A tree branch becomes a bow. Charcoal, sulfur and bat guano become gunpowder. Much of the great industrial power in the world now lays fallow, but its fruits still dot the countryside. Warehouses, stores, caches all contain pieces and parts of the things we need to continue the fight. Libraries contain vast stores of data from which we can derive improved implements of zombie destruction. Armories, military bases, and militia camps across the country and around the world contain truly mind-boggling quantities of weapons and materiel. For centuries, generals and admirals and presidents and kings have ALL believed rightly that superior technology is a powerful force multiplier – and a force multiplier is exactly what we need in order to take back our planet.
We have the power. Though they are many, the zombie hordes are greatly limited in what they can do. Their mindless, instinct-driven hunt for the living does not allow for creativity. They shamble onward, seeking only to slake the insatiable hunger within them. They are slow. They are stupid. They are clumsy. We, the living, are fast, and bright, and nimble. We can literally run circles around them – our children play Ring Around the Zombie even now in order to learn basic evasion tactics. We have the power to build fortresses and other defensible positions so they cannot reach us, but we can reach them with tools of destruction. Here in Fortress Tampa, our walls keep them out, and the ground outside the walls is littered with the broken forms of neutralized zombies. But we cannot live in these walls forever – we cannot forfeit the bulk of our world to the hordes. We must take back this planet.
The only thing we lack is numbers. Unlike any war we have experienced as a species, in the war against the zombie menace, the attrition rate is significantly lopsided. When we kill a zombie, their numbers decrease by one. When they kill a human, not only do our numbers decrease by one, but quite often their numbers increase by one as well.
But numbers alone do not win a war. Resolve wins wars. Determination wins wars. Courage wins wars. Faith wins wars. We must fight smarter, with more tenacity and creativity, if we are to persevere. We must do this for our sake. We must do this for our family’s sakes. And we must do this for humanity’s sake.
Borrowing the words of the poet Dylan Thomas, we must not go gentle into that good night. We must rage against the dying of the light.
