It wasn’t as embarrassing as you might think, because the realization dawned so slowly. Sometime around 2017, although you could argue that it took a few years after that for the expectations to really die down, no pun intended. Certainly by spring of that year, even the most die-hard of the holdouts had deleted their Zombie 5k training apps and relabeled their emergency kits “Earthquake Supplies.”
The first thing to go were the movies. Everyone agreed on that. Then the organized zombie mobs, the zombie pub crawls, the zombie parties, the zombie marathons, the zombie games, the zombie-themed rifle targets, the zombie workouts. We all wordlessly and mutually agreed never to talk about Zombie Zumba again.
No one’s hard work finally paid off. No one got to say I told you so before throwing their supplies and rifle shells in the van and heading north. No one headed north at all, unless north was the direction their job was in. Everyone went back to work.
No one really wanted to admit they were so disappointed that something they’d only ever half-believed in wasn’t coming along.
The survivalists found something else to prepare for. They always do. You’d think it was silly, if you knew what it was, but they think the same things about you. The buried stayed buried, as they always had, and it was more than a little upsetting to realize that the promise of a bloodthirsty, decaying revival was the most any of us had come to expect or hope for after dying. It was a way of resetting the game, even if it wasn’t exactly a second chance. Immortality without responsibilities.
And that was it, really. Most discredited end-of-the-world scenarios had a specific end date in mind, so you could at least agree upon whatever day it became confirmed idiocy. This one we had to get rid of from our own volition, which made things harder. Trading a vague sense of expectation for a confirmed sense of sheepishness isn’t a tradeoff most people are happy to make. It was a reason to do pushups, to buy a flashlight and a set of freeze-dried meals to put in the back of the pantry, to make a checklist, to joke about your mile time.
There were the usual reasons for believing. It would have been nice, in a lot of ways, to return to a simpler, more rural existence. That’s why so many young people living alone in cities they didn’t grow up in were so excited for it. They all thought they’d be the likeliest to survive it, too, being young and relatively limber. It would have been kind of like a party. Sort of like a kibbutz, but with more free love. You and your closest friends, banding together on a collective farm, taking turns guarding the tomatoes from roving bandits and the moaning undead. You’d have a job you liked, finally, or at least a job with measurable goals and definable levels of success. Were anyone’s brains eaten today? Did the squash vines blossom? Great. You earned your hearty, simple meal. The metrics were all there, right in front of you.
So when it didn’t happen, and nothing changed, the general free-floating sense of disappointment in most major metropolitan areas thickened and condensed, for a few months at least, until the next end of civilization that never came.
We never realized how much we’d wanted civilization to come to an end, until it didn’t.
This day cannot come soon enough. I am all zombied out, you guys.
I’m apocalypsed out in general. I learned Old English in college by reading stories about the end of the world written before the turn of the 1st millennium, and they were pretty much the same as today, except people were like, “Well thank god I won’t have to plow this stupid field anymore.”
Can we go back to optimistic space operas now? I miss space operas.
Um except being killed immediately when the dead begin to walk is kind of my backup plan, soo…
So it was for us all.
My entire Apocalypse Preparation Plan is a can of black cherry Fresca in the fridge. When the end comes, I will drink my Fresca and wait to die, because I am temperamentally unsuited to scrappy survivalism. I’ll just drag you all down with me.
My buddy does a great Rick from Walking Dead impression: He simply turns his head to face you looking really intense, mouth slightly open before slowly saying, “Yeah, shit happens”. Or he just yells “LORI!” It’s uncanny and hilarious.
but will Walking Dead finally be off the air by then because my GOD that show is so terrible
I will very kindly allow you the first season but after that no more excuses
What I want to know is how come every time there’s an apocalypse where there’s no more electricity suddenly there’s just randomly horses in (former) metropolitan areas and everyone knows how to ride them (looking at you, Walking Dead)
What I want to know is why we go “back” to “traditional” gender roles after the apocalypse like limiting the ability of half of the population to fulfill its survival potential is a good idea (…also looking at you, Walking Dead)
Hahaha, I've never thought about it that way before! It really is a perfect solution.
You guys, I think about the apocalypse a LOT. For serious. But I at least try to keep my prep to things that would be useful in a, you know, plausible emergency. Less emphasis on the backwoods survival, more on the small hand tools and bottled water. (also I am aware that zombies violate all known laws of biology, and as soon as I convince my subconscious of that, I’ll stop having zombie apocalypse nightmares, which will be great)
Me too. Also earthquakes.
How about ‘The Road,’ though? More plausible, and maybe even more terrifying??
You mean regular apocalypse, not zombie apocalypse? Yeah that shit’s inevitable.
When they aren’t full of beer, I keep my growlers full of water, just in case.
I’m not taking a bath.
How about 'The Road,' though? More plausible, and maybe even more terrifying??
When they aren't full of beer, I keep my growlers full of water, just in case.
I'm not taking a bath.
My entire Apocalypse Preparation Plan is a can of black cherry Fresca in the fridge. When the end comes, I will drink my Fresca and wait to die, because I am temperamentally unsuited to scrappy survivalism. I'll just drag you all down with me.
I didn't take it that far, but for awhile my friends and I had a "if shit gets fucked, let's all meet at X's house" plan, where X's house was gigantic and far away from major cities.
I think this is more because we all were living in downton DC in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 than an actual fear of zombies (and it would probably be interesting to do some sort of study as to why zombie apocalypse movies have become increasingly popular) but depending on your life, I really don't think it's that stupid.
There’s an interesting note of truth at the end. We all secretly (some of us, not so secretly) hope to go back to zero, start the world over again. This time, however, the people who now have no power could more easily attain it. So many people are fed up with the way the world works that it is a nice thing to fantasize about tearing it all down and doing it all over again, but this time in a way that favors “me”