In many of the zombie films, starting with Night, retreating from the ghouls is the basic plan everyone seems to be following, hence the holing up in a deserted farmhouse and the subsequent nailing of boards crookedly across the windows. It’s really only after the zombies attack en masse that the humans retaliate with lethal force. In the opening scene, when the character Barbara and her brother Johnny are attacked in the cemetery, Barbara wants nothing more than to retreat. The zombie chases her, attacking her again and again. If there was ever a case of justifiable homicide that would be it.
Ben, the hero of the piece, is in the process of fleeing when his truck runs out of gas. The cellar of the farmhouse is filled with folks who have fled from the ghouls.
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Justifiable Homicide
A killing without evil or criminal intent, for which there can be no blame, such as self-defense, to protect oneself or to protect another, or the shooting by a law enforcement officer in fulfilling his or her duties. This is not to be confused with a crime of passion or claim of diminished capacity, which refers to defenses aimed at reducing the penalty or degree of crime.
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By any legal standard the requirements for retreating are certainly fulfilled. The zombies, however, are persistent, and the trapped humans have no choice but to use deadly force in order to survive.
“In all such cases the question of the amount of force is always looked at as well,” Campbell says, “and you won’t be surprised to know that there are different schools of thought here too. How much force is reasonable depends on the circumstances of each situation and there are two tests: the subjective standard of reasonableness, which is another way of saying, the jury places itself in the defendant’s own shoes. The objective test, embraces the idea that the jury is supposed to place itself in the shoes of a hypothetical ‘reasonable and prudent person.’ In general though, the battered woman syndrome of self-defense is an example and has held up where women have had to use deadly force against the assaultive or homicidal offenses of men, in order to protect their own lives.”
This suggests that humans trapped by zombies have a reasonable right to defend themselves. Campbell points out, however, that the issue of self-defense, especially where a horde of flesh-eating ghouls is concerned, is viewed in a bigger-picture sense by our federal government. “One only has to look to the Patriot Act to see that the United States is not going to tolerate any intrusion. I believe that Zombies would meet a clear definition of terrorists.”
The PATRIOT Act states: “The Act creates new federal crimes for terrorist attacks on mass transportation facilities, for biological weapons offenses, for harboring terrorists, for affording terrorists material support, for misconduct associated with money laundering already mentioned, for conducting the affairs of an enterprise which affects interstate or foreign commerce through the patterned commission of terrorist offenses, and for fraudulent charitable solicitation. Although strictly speaking these are new federal crimes, they generally supplement existing law by filling gaps and increasing penalties.”
Granted the PATRIOT Act does not mention zombies by name, it’s pretty clear that terrorist atacks of any kind will not be tolerated. One particular section of the act nails this down very securely: “With respect to terrorism definitions, for example, section 802 of the Act created the new crime category of ‘domestic terrorism.’ According to this provision, which is found in the U.S. criminal code at 18 U.S.C. § 2331, domestic terrorism means activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the U.S. or of any state, that (B) appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping, and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S.”
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Art of the Dead—Alan F. Beck
In the Land of the Dead
“I have always been an avid reader of science fiction, fantasy and horror novels, movies and TV. They say as an artist you should paint what you know and these worlds have been a part of my life since I can remember. It’s a natural extension of my being.”
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Campbell is very clear on this point: “I think we can safely say that an attack involves dangers to human life. Hordes of zombies would apply.”
Aside from self-defense the zombie films and books also describe counterattacks on zombie hordes. Max Brooks’s World War Z details how different world governments mobilized their armies (with varying degrees of success) against the zombies. Joe McKinney’s Dead City brings it home and shows how police officers fight back. The Resident Evil films, books, and games involve mercenaries and private armies in pitched battle with the dead. And most of the major entries in the genre have military, police, or civilian defense as part of the backstory, often seen in news clips on TV. In fact Night of the Living Dead (both the original and the 1990 remake) ended with a mixed group of sheriff’s deputies and local hunters working together to systematically hunt down and destroy the ghouls. In the first movie Romero had a bit more optimism because the ending of the film suggested that the humans were turning the tide and would likely prevail—a stance he recanted by the time he wrote the screenplay for Dawn of the Dead.
None of the films have so far described a coordinated and effective military response to the zombies, though the film version of World War Z will touch on that since the story takes place after the zombie war is won.
Dan O’Bannon’s gruesome and hilarious Return of the Living Dead took an approach somewhere in the middle of the issue by suggesting that the events in Night of the Living Dead were true and the result of a failed military research project; and the events were covered up and fictionalized for the movie. Because of a “typical Army screw-up,” canisters containing bodies of zombies from that incident were shipped to a medical supply warehouse and are then accidentally opened by a couple of boneheads who work there.3 Through a series of mishaps, the chemical from the canisters leaks out, and the dead from the nearby cemetery rise. Mayhem ensues. One of the characters sees that the canisters have a number to call if there is a disaster and he makes the call to the Army…who then nuke the entire town.
Though the movie is a comedy, no one I know who has seen the film thinks that the military response depicted is either unwarranted or unlikely; and it brings up a point that is both disturbing and comforting. If a disaster of this kind was happening and containment was likely to fail, then extraordinary measures, however horrible to imagine, might be justified. It’s the “fire cleanses” view of national self-defense; a preemptive strike to save the whole world from being overwhelmed. In its effect it’s no different than a biological research facility going into permanent lockdown if there is an otherwise uncontainable viral breech. Innocent people will die in either case, but in the absence of other options, it comes down to the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few.
That doesn’t make it any less horrible, though. Not even a little bit.
To a degree what we’re talking about here is a kind of euthanasia. In zombie pop culture this concept is explored in a variety of ways because of the nature of the plague. If a person is bitten by a zombie, there is a 100 percent certainty that they will ultimately die of the disease and reanimate as a zombie.
In the first Romero films all the recent dead rose, bitten or not; but as the series continued this aspect wasn’t explored and instead the bite-and-reanimation concept was given a lot of play. In many of the films and books this is also a scene of great drama and tragedy. The little girl in Night of the Living Dead is the model for this. We know early on that she’s been bitten and is sick; though in that film we don’t yet know that she will reanimate. I remember when I first saw that I was creeped out completely when her mother went downstairs to find the makeshift cot empty and the little girl standing in the shadows with a gar
den trowel. Later, when her wounded father goes downstairs (after being shot following a tussle with Ben), his daughter takes a chomp out of him.
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Art of the Dead—Ken Meyer, Jr.
Zombie Rot
“I think zombies forming cohesive thoughts, overrunning the living, even forming political parties, new religions and such, might be interesting.”
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In Dawn of the Dead Romero really amped up the emotion on this. He takes one of the central characters, a tough and resourceful SWAT officer (Roger, played by Scott H. Reiniger), one of the characters we were pretty damn sure was going to make it to the final reel, and late in the film has him get bitten. Unlike the little girl, who had no lines and so we empathized without actually knowing her, Roger was someone we got to know, came to really like, and when he got bitten, we ached for some cure. Romero, never one for a Disney ending, showed him getting sicker and sicker. And with the skillful direction, we found ourselves deeply afraid for Roger, and terrified by the choices left open to his best friend, Peter (Ken Foree): Let Roger die and then have him revive as a murderous zombie, or have Peter kill him and end the torment before it escalated beyond control? Roger swears to Peter that he is going to try not to come back, and that scene always brings a tear to my eye. I’m not as cynical as Romero—I wanted that Disney ending. But Roger dies and Peter sits there, watching him, hoping that his friend’s will is stronger even in death than the virus. But this is a Romero film. Roger wakes up and Peter shoots him.
This scene is echoed in a number of films. In the remake of Dawn of the Dead, we have several different takes on this. First, a pregnant young woman is bitten early on and we—the audience—know what’s going to happen even if the characters don’t. Her husband Andre, played with tragic understatement by Mekhi Phifer, tries to keep her safe even after she dies, just as she’s giving birth. Sadly the infection must have crossed the placental wall, and the baby is born as a monster. His friends, reacting in horror, shoot the zombie wife and child, but Andre, insane with despair, opens up on his friends and kills one of them.
Later some refugees enter the shopping mall where our heroes have holed up, and among them is a father, Frank, (Matt Frewer) and his teenage daughter. Frank has been bitten and Michael (Jake Weber), who is an everyman in the process of becoming a true hero, insists that they execute the victim before he can turn. Ana (Sarah Polley), a nurse and the heart of the survivors, freaks and won’t allow the euthanasia, leaving it for Kenneth (Ving Rhames) to stand vigil as the father sickens, dies, and reanimates. We hear the gunshot, and we feel it in our guts.
Still later a fellow survivor—a gun shop owner named Andy (Bruce Bohne)—is infected during an aborted attempt to send provisions to him; the heroes get to him too late and are forced to kill him. As the heroes flee back to the mall, one of their numbers is injured—a broken leg rather than a bite—and the fleeing good guys are unable to drag him fast enough to escape the pursuing zombies. One of the survivors, CJ (Michael Kelly), shoots him rather than letting him suffer the pain and torment of the cannibal attack and likely reanimation. Of course when the film’s resident total jackass, Steve (Ty Burrell), is bitten and becomes a zombie, Ana shoots him without remorse and pretty much everyone in the theater cheers. Compassion is relative to patience.
At the film’s close, Michael is bitten during the great escape from the mall. This is a devastating moment because he’s someone we really, really want to survive this mess. He helps everyone else get onto a boat and then opts to remain behind. A heroic Michael tells Ana to go with the escapees, insisting that it’ll be all right.
“No,” she says, “it won’t.” As the boat sails off into the dawn, the zombies close in around Michael and he shoots himself. Again, we feel it.
In Shaun of the Dead, when Shaun’s (Simon Pegg) mother (Penelope Wilton) is revealed to have been bitten, the madcap comedy takes a weirdly tragic turn, and even the fact that the scene where the survivors are arguing over whether to kill her or not is more or less played for laughs, the surrounding humor makes the tragedy and loss more poignant.
These films all explore a variety of complex issues that, taken out of the context of the film, would amount to desecration of the dead, felony murder, euthanasia, and suicide. But within the context of the films…are they even crimes?
The issue touches on a number of legal areas:
Euthanasia: the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit. (“The key word here is ‘intentional.’ If death is not intended, it is not an act of euthanasia,” points out Campbell.)
Voluntary euthanasia: When the person who is killed has requested to be killed.
Nonvoluntary: When the person who is killed made no request and gave no consent.
Involuntary euthanasia: When the person who is killed made an expressed wish to the contrary.
Assisted suicide: Someone provides an individual with the information, guidance, and means to take his or her own life with the intention that they will be used for this purpose. When it is a doctor who helps another person to kill themselves it is called physician-assisted suicide.
Euthanasia by action: Intentionally eausing a person’s death by performing an action such as by giving a lethal injection.
Euthanasia by omission: Intentionally causing death by not providing necessary and ordinary (usual and customary) care or food and water.
Expert Witness
I put this question to my experts: If a person were dying from a zombie bite, and it was known to a high degree of medical certainty that once that person died he/she would reanimate as a predatory and infectious zombie, would the law permit assisted suicide?
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Common Sense During the Apocalypse
One way to bottom-line this whole thing is to consider the big picture view and worry about the legal issues later and at the moment shoot the zombie who’s trying to chew on your leg. Or, to put it in simpler terms: “I’d rather be tried by twelve than carried by six.”
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Campbell sees this as an enormously complicated issue: “This is not Holland.4 In as far as I know, aggressive euthanasia is illegal in most of the United States. Patients retain the rights to refuse medical treatment and to receive appropriate management of pain at their request (passive euthanasia), even if the patients’ choices hasten their deaths. Additionally, futile or disproportionately burdensome treatments, such as life-support machines, may be withdrawn under specified circumstances. Many States, for example, now permit ‘living wills,’ surrogate health care decision making, and the withdrawal or refusal of life sustaining medical treatment. At the same time, however, voters and legislators continue for the most part to reaffirm their States’ prohibitions on assisting suicide.”
Retired California civil rights attorney Allen Steingold believes zombies would require a change in the laws. “As the laws currently read we don’t allow euthanasia, assisted or not, and we certainly consider suicide to be a crime. This is funny when you consider that old wry comment that suicide is the only crime they can’t convict you for if you’re successful. However, if we consider the concept of zombies—I think it would take congress no time at all to draft legislation not only legalizing euthanasia for persons infected with a zombie disease, but they would likely go a step forward and make it mandatory. Understand, that there would be a lot of tragic misuse and misinterpretation of such legislation, but it would almost certainly be drafted and passed. The only time things are done quickly in congress is during a time of crisis. Look at how quickly everyone on both sides of the aisle ratified the Patriot Act, despite some hasty and questionable phrasing.”
Rabbi Shevack says, “Euthanasia of someone dying from a zombie bite, is the same problem of euthanasia in general. However, if in extinguishing someone from dying from the zombie bite one can prevent further spreading of zombieism, then such euthanasia would be warranted as an act of self-defense for the enti
re community.”
A sticking point here is whether the victim should be allowed to die first, which would then necessitate the killing of a zombie rather than a living person; or whether assisted suicide or active euthanasia would be permitted.
“There is no euthanasia unless the death is intentionally caused by what was done or not done,” observes Campbell. “Thus, some medical actions that are often labeled ‘passive euthanasia’ are no form of euthanasia, since the intention to take life is lacking. These acts include not commencing treatment that would not provide a benefit to the patient, withdrawing treatment that has been shown to be ineffective, too burdensome or is unwanted, and the giving of high doses of pain-killers that may endanger life, when they have been shown to be necessary. All those are part of good medical practice, endorsed by law, when they are properly carried out.”
Campbell insists that the general population would probably accept this. “A recent Gallup Poll survey showed that 60% of Americans supported euthanasia. Attempts to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide resulted in ballot initiatives and legislation bills within the United States in the last 20 years. And Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Act.”
Dr. Gretz brings up this point: “I think the Catholic church (and many others) would say, ‘yes, it is immoral.’ As long as the person’s spirit is still in the body, it would be important to make them as comfortable as possible while dying and then cremate the body or something ASAP after their heart stopped beating.”