The Zombie Factor
The bottom line is that one-to-one an armed person should be able to kill a slow-moving zombie. In films we’ve seen zombies dispatched with screwdrivers, the broken handle of a croquet mallet, clubs, tire irons, and a variety of blunt objects and edged weapons. They can be destroyed.
The difficulties come from mustering the courage to go mano a mano with a ghoul, being competent in close-quarters fighting, remembering where to hit, and avoiding blood spill during the fight.
Swords, spears, long-range clubs, a chain mace, baseball bats—all of these are practical for fighting zombies while at the same time keeping out of biting reach, and avoiding contamination.
THE FINAL VERDICT: ZOMBIE CHOP-SOCKY
In a world where zombies were a real threat, martial arts would become an even bigger business than it is now. Everyone would be learning how to throw a few basic kicks and to swing a sword.
* * *
Zombies…Fast or Slow? Part 8
“I don’t care as much for the newer zombies. The fast ones. They’re cartoonish. It’s too much. Adding speed to zombies is overkill.”—Tony Todd, star of the Candyman movies and Night of the Living Dead (1990)
“Zombies are slow but relentless. That is scarier than fast.”—John Lutz, Edgar and Shamus Award-winning author of Single White Female (Pocket, 1992)
“I want both, if I can. The old school part of me enjoys the slow, relentless march of the slow zombie, a force as inevitable as the tides, society itself lumbering along making victims randomly, the sheer numbers (not one individual) finally overwhelming you. That said, I have to admit, the fast zombies in 28 DAYS LATER were frightening as hell. Each presents a different dynamic.”—Paul G. Tremblay, author of the short fiction collection Compositions for the Young and Old (Prime Books, 2005) and the novella City Pier: Above and Below (Prime, 2007)
* * *
In a few of the zombie stories, there’s been a twisted little subplot of “zombie games.” including gladiatorial combat of humans against zombies (e.g., the cage fights in Land of the Dead). Though these scenes are played either for laughs or to make a cynical statement about the extent to which the entertainment industry would go, I don’t think they’re all that far from what might happen. Whether legal or illegal, there might actually be some cage fights with zombies; and some of the folks I’ve talked to about this think it would actually be “cool.”
Josh “the Viper” Gallagher, a practitioner of mixed martial arts and avowed lover of all extreme sports, had this to say: “If there were zombies and people could capture some, they’d be like the ultimate X-game challenge or maybe ‘Z’ games. Imagine the stones it would take to go into a ring with a zombie. You got nothing, no weapons, no armor. Just you and one of them. Man, I’d sign up for that right now. I mean right this minute.”
A colleague of his, who preferred that I used only his competition name of “Ratt,” adds, “You’d have rich guys buying zombies on the black market and setting up illegal safaris. Think about it: a guy with a pistol and maybe one bullet and having to get out of a cave or off an island or whatever that has a zombie on it. What a rush that would be. You want to try and tell me that people wouldn’t pay big bucks for a chance to try something like that! Are you nuts?”
On behalf of most of the human race, let me just say: “Yikes.”
10
Live Feed
Reporting the Apocalypse
Live Feed by Jonathan Maberry
“The apocalypse will be televised.”
There’s an old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” On the surface that doesn’t sound too harsh; even sounds kind of nice; but if you take a big picture view of the world and consider the “interesting” events that fill up our history books and—more to the point—every single newspaper headline and TV news broadcast lead story, well…you get the point. If you’re the person to whom these interesting events are happening, then to use a popular catch phrase: “Sucks to be you.” If you’re the reporter who is working on one of these stories, then the appropriate comment is: “You hit the jackpot.” It’s all relative.
For reporters a major calamity is very much hitting the jackpot. Careers are made by it. The Kennedy assassination put Ted Koppel on the map. Vietnam (the first “TV war”) and Walter Cronkite are inextricably linked. Watergate made superstars of Woodward and Bernstein. Desert Storm turned Wolf Blitzer into a household name. Hurricane Katrina transformed Anderson Cooper into the news equivalent of a rock star.
I remember on my first day of Introduction to Journalism at Temple University, way back in the 1970s, my cynical journalism teacher wrote these words on the blackboard: “News is entertainment.” After he let us digest that for a few minutes, he picked up the chalk and added: “So bloody well be entertaining.” And added a half dozen exclamation points.
JUST THE FACTS
Live from the Apocalypse
If the dead rose, the news media would not be deserting their posts and heading for the hills as they did in Dawn of the Dead. No matter how bad things got, they—like just about everyone else—would assume that this, too, will pass and that if they keep right with the story, right there at the front lines where things get hot and bloody, then they will get that story (or for photojournalists—that picture) that will make them a star. They’ll get the scoop, or the exclusive. They’ll land the story that will be the hook and the headline. Their names will get printed above the fold in the paper, or they’ll get a shot to do a live stand up from the field. They will become the story, and we will want them, specifically them, to be the ones to keep us informed. I mean…you don’t think reporters ask to be embedded with combat troops because of the size of their paycheck. I’ve worked in the field…the paycheck isn’t that hot, and certainly not big enough to risk being blown up. No, the reward is career advancement or a place in history, or for the idealists it’s that rare “great story.” It will be a long time before the general public and the history books forget Cronkite, Koppel, Woodward and Bernstein, Blitzer, or Cooper. Hell, they’re still talking about Edward R. Murrow, and he died in 1965.
This rising of the dead would be a massive story, maybe the biggest ever. Careers would be made, immortality would be assured for whomever got the best footage or was able to report the story from as close to the front lines as possible. The cops and military would have to spend half their time pushing reporters out of the way of marauding zombie. But man oh man how well that story would be covered.
“If the dead started rising,” observes Jack Spangler, a freelance feature writer and former Chicago TV news reporter, “I’d be there with my photographer up to the point where it started trying to take a bite out of us, and even then I’d have my tape recorder in his face trying to get a sound bite out of his unearthly moans. You couldn’t chase me off a story like that. No way, José.”
In Day of the Dead, there’s a terrific scene in which a newspaper blows down the deserted street of a town that we think (hope) is deserted. The paper blows up against a wall, and we can read the headline: “The Dead Walk.” Soon after that, we start hearing the moans of the living dead as they stagger out into the street. It’s an absolutely compelling moment. Years later the film Resident Evil built a scene around the main character, Alice (played by a marvelously vicious Milla Jovovich), walking through a ruined and deserted city street where terrible violence has obviously raged. She walks past a newspaper with the same headline. In both cases, there is the suggestion that reporters were following the story all the way up to the end. They are, in fact, reporting the apocalypse.
In the zombie movies, there is a standard plot device of showing us snippets of TV news coverage of the growing disaster. The directors never give us the full story because in film less is more when it comes to exposition, especially early on…and besides it’s a wonderful tease. I always loved those TV news snippets. I always wanted more coverage. I wanted to know what the reporters were saying—right or wrong. In
the remake of Dawn of the Dead, there is an almost comedic parallel storyline early on where Ana (Sarah Polley) keeps walking past radios and TV screens, distracted by her duties as a nurse or later during lovemaking with her husband, so that she never hears the coverage of the developing catastrophe. It makes us wonder how she might have otherwise acted had she known—and that’s great movie storytelling because it means we’ve been drawn into the creative process by imagining the what-if scenarios.
From a reporter’s view, however, it shows that the story is being followed everywhere it goes; but since the new Dawn deals with the fast zombies, which results in a lot of sudden attacks, we also see reporters becoming a bit too much a part of the story.
Let’s explore how real-world reporters work and what they say about reporting the raising of the dead.
Expert Witness
In Night of the Living Dead, the story starts in rural Pennsylvania, somewhere near Pittsburgh, which means that it would probably fall to small-town newspapers to begin the coverage. Nancy Barr, author of the Page One1 mystery series and former journalist explains how stories are developed by small-town papers: “Most small newspapers get their news tips one of four ways: The standard issue press release; an anonymous person calling or writing a reporter or editor; someone calling, walking into the office or e-mailing the newspaper; or the reporter attending a meeting where something of interest is mentioned. Let’s say someone called a reporter or editor and said, ‘I heard from someone over at the hospital that three people have died in the last week of some bizarre illness. How come there’s been nothing in the paper?’ The reporter would try to get some more details such as who the people were, how old, when it happened, what type of symptoms, etc. Realizing all this could be nothing but a silly rumor, the reporter would then call the hospital for confirmation. If she dead-ended there, she’d call the local health department, then the CDC, and the local university for background. Hopefully, if there is any truth to the story, someone will be able to go on the record. Taking this a bit farther, an enterprising reporter will find out at least one of the victim’s names and then contact the family, etc. An editor is going to be very concerned about causing a panic, so confirmation from several sources on something like this would be of the utmost importance.”
* * *
The Worst Zombie Films of All Time, Part 1
Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958): The plot has something to do with aliens, a vampire, the rising dead, and…apparently a total loss of storytelling sense. Ed Wood—may he live forever!
The Dead Pit (1989): Slow to get started, slow to build a story, and slow at the end.
Die You Zombie Bastards (2005): Great title. That’s it, just a great title.
Flesh Freaks (2001): Devious worms from out of space turn people into zombies. Starring no one you ever heard of.
Ghosts of Mars (2001): John Carpenter, who should have known better, gives us Martian zombies in what appears to be a weird rip-off on Road Warrior.
Gore Whore (1994): I’ll say this once: It’s about a penis-slicing zombie prostitute.
Hot Wax Zombies on Wheels (1999): Another example of a title that has all the good stuff and a movie that has none.
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies (1963). No.
Junk (1999): Calling your movie Junk is asking for it. There’s nothing original here, and what is there…is, well…junk.
The Laughing Dead (1989): Not a chuckle, not a shiver.
* * *
According to Joe Student, editor for Philly EDGE (newspaper) in Philadelphia, “A story (such as the attack on the research center guard in our scenario) would most likely have its genesis through the ‘cops’ reporter’s monitoring of the local police scanner. If it was a full-out zombie attack, since there would ostensibly be multiple victims and an apparent homicide, the reporter would be sent to the scene with other crime-beat reporters added as the case/story became bigger. On the most local level, the decision to run the news of a murder would be instantaneous; the decision to associate the attacks as zombie-related would have to come from someone within law enforcement or the coroner’s office suggesting and substantiating the claim.”
* * *
Gregg Winkler’s Decaying Zombie Quiz, Part 3
1. The Cranberries’ 1994 single, “Zombie,” is a song protesting what?
2. What 1941 movie depicts an Austrian doctor-turned-spy using newly created zombies to obtain war intelligence?
3. What was the name of Peter Jackson’s zombie movie?
4. Which of the following will not make a zombie?
a. The bite of a zombie
b. A voodoo ritual
c. Drinking a zombie’s spit
d. Combine rum, crème de almond, sweet and sour, triple sec, orange juice, and 151 proof rum into a Collins glass over ice.
5. Tetrodotoxin, which is a potentially lethal toxin said to have been found in relation to Haitian vodoun practices that can leave a person in a “state near death,” can be found in all but which of the following?
a. Puffer fish
b. Starfish
c. Jellyfish
d. Some flatworms
* * *
I asked these reporters how this process might change if an outbreak was suspected. “Even small newspapers have someone who is particularly interested in health stories and has the contacts,” Barr says. “That person would probably break the story. However, if the story is of a large enough magnitude, the entire staff would be put to work covering various aspects of an outbreak (financial, health, society, etc.). Associated Press would likely send someone to the area to provide coverage to the entire state and beyond if the outbreak is large. Again, the reporter would check with hospital officials, doctor offices, the local health department, local university (they might have students impacted or the faculty might be able to speak about diseases and their impact on society, i.e., how people react), even the person on the street. In a small town, the best news tips are found in the local diner. The police would play a secondary role, perhaps keeping the peace at the hospital. I imagine a larger community would have a bioterrorism unit within the police department. The state police in Michigan have such a unit that might be called into action.”
Student adds, “Most likely whichever reporter covers the town/area in which the event happened, the more significant the outbreak, the more reporters assigned. Also, if it had a national scope, AP and other national, and international agencies and press could potentially send staff. Of course, there would be some vetting because there is a health risk; it would be more similar to the coverage of the Iraq War than the 9/11 attacks. Not every reporter would just be sent in to cover news as it happens.”
When asked how reporters know what’s reliable information and what’s hearsay or gossip, Student observed: “Insiders at hospitals, in municipal government and public safety offices. Not those giving the press releases but those talking directly to people at the scene. Some rumor and exaggeration makes it through, but a good reporter can check it out before alleging something outlandish in print.”
“There would be some doubt about a story with zombies,” says Elaine Viets, a novelist2 who reported for the St. Louis Post Dispatch for twenty-five years. “If a story just sounded too fantastic a reporter would need more than one source because there are plenty of folks, even experts, who will say anything just to get into print. Good reporters get at least two sources before they put their name to the story.”
Outbreaks and epidemics are newsworthy. At what point, however, does the story get moved to the front page? Student remarked, “It’s all about the size of the story, or how big it might get. Scope, immediacy and interest are all factors, but once casualties can be counted, the story is played larger. Best example is the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia. If the wave had claimed as many lives as the 2007 Minnesota bridge collapse, the story probably doesn’t make the first page in the U.S., but as a result of its scope it goes above t
he fold; the bridge story was as significant domestically though there were less lives lost because of its developing nature. This story had great potential because it had a local angle in nearly every U.S. community where there was a structurally deficient bridge.”
Barr says, “In a small town, it would probably start below the fold on the front unless it was clear we were dealing with a serious outbreak. In that case, it would be top story and would remain above the fold until the crisis was on the decline.”
In fiction and film there’s always talk about “preventing a panic” when a truly epic story is about to break.