Our topic of conversation keeps looping around to post-apocalyptic fiction and suppositions of how our society would end up in such a place. What roles would we play in the destabilization of civilization that gets us there? Would we last very long? What sort of weaponry would suit us?
Mr X got me into watching the Walking Dead a little over a year ago. I like to imagine that in the dismal after-world I'd be the Carol character. People would assume I was just an invisible pushover, and I'd let them do it until it became time to be a stone-cold killer. Then I'd do my job. Mr X would be the sneaky strategic planner. Daughter number one would be the hero at the front of the charge. Daughter number two, well, I just don't know yet. All I know is today she proclaimed, as we sat at a 5 Guys, that after the fall of civilization, the things she will miss the most will be the cheeseburgers. I suspect she would last long enough to feel that loss keenly. She's a lot tougher than she looks.
Sometimes these conversations are pop-culture jokes. Sometimes they're gloomy predictions of how little faith we have in humanity. None of us particularly wants to see the world burn. We just wonder out loud in groups what would happen if it did, and what are the chances that it would actually happen in our lifetimes. It surprises me sometimes how entertaining this sort of gallows humor can be, even when the tone is more "this is inevitable and already in progress," rather than "defies the laws of biology and physics" magic of zombie movies.
Maybe it's just a reflection of how rough 2016 was for us that we keep finding ourselves in this conversation. We are just too battle scarred to feel like viewing the upcoming new year as the cute little cherub of traditional imagery. It's more like riding the broken-down near-corpse of 2016 into the hellscape of the beyond. Whatever the cause, it seems fitting that we are winding down the year watching zombie movies. I do like to stick with a theme.
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