Obviously, I've been convinced to hang around. Thanks to the followers of this blog who are willing to hang in there with me. ;) My wife's taking Design classes this semester, and her sculpting has taken up my gaming room. But I've been keeping my Zombie interest up with reading, 4th season Walking Dead, and a little writing in my spare time.
Something that's come to my notice is the idea of "Society Falling Apart"(TM) that's endemic to most Zombie fiction. How long do you think it would take for society to fall apart? The original Romero 'Dawn of the Dead' had the news guest Dr. Foster ranting about how the public hadn't listened to reason "...for three weeks! What does it take?". Of course, that was in the late 1970s. Today's technological society could collapse much more quickly than that.
Or could it? Would the Internet allow people to perform duties from home and thus actually extend that slow decline? This seems to be the tact that Mira Grant uses in her NewsFlesh trilogy. I'm still chewing on the pros and cons of each argument. Fiction is of little help, since depending on the author civilization falls within years to hours; depending on the needs of the plot.
Opinions?
Zombie Chow
5 comments:
I think that the choice of speed of decline is entirely yours. If you want it for a wargames point of view most players will not care too much and look on it as background fluff as they go scavenging for another tin of beans and a few shotgun shells.
I've always thought that the ATZ timeline is probably about right - 3 weeks.
The Discovery Channel's program life after man has some surprising and shocking statistics about how quickly things fall apart after man too.
There's the old adage that society is only '3 meals away from anarchy'. In the case of a zombie pandemic these meals would be the flesh of the survivors!! I guess the rate of collapse would vary according to regional factors such as climate, political stability and power supply. Big cities falling harder than small self sufficient communities is the standard apocalypse trope. For the last vestiges of significant civilization to crumble I'd give it a year or two. from there on it's Mad Max all the way.
Its a very interesting subject. i'd love to read more about it.
Thanks all. Iwas recently reading Goblinoid Games's RPG ROTWORLD and they give time period examples of both a Fast and Slow Zombie Apocalypse. While I don't necessarily agree with all their examples I'm gratified to see a rules set covering the concept with options depending on taste.
I'm thinking Zabadak and Hybrid Horde are right in that A) 3 weeks is probably good overall but B) Big cities go first. After all, that's where our delicate web of infrastructure is most prevalent and the largest concentration of people to "miss their 3 meals = Anarchy"! :D
Thanks for all the comments! Now that December is almost here I'll have my gaming room back (no project type classes for wife in the Spring) and can hopefully get back to some ATZ goodness.
ZC
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