Give Up: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse

We’ve been hearing a lot about zombies over the last few years. The moaning, lurching harbingers of societal decay are more popular than ever according to the success of zombie-related television and film. What we’re seeing, though, is a biased look at the issue of zombie proliferation. Most depictions of the so-called “zombie apocalypse” focus on how humans can combat the walking scourge. They seek shelter, stockpile food and weaponry, and band together with other survivors. One technique for overcoming the zombie menace is consistently overlooked, though: We should just give in and become zombies ourselves.

Sure, zombification seems like a tough road to hoe. Your flesh rots. You crave fresh meat and human brains. Your every movement reveals the stumbling ineptitude of a 16-year-old drunk on keg beer for the first time. But really, is that so different from how we live now? We, as humans, constantly fight the natural decline of our bodies. We work out. We wear makeup. We shave and shower. We need nutrition at regular intervals. We feel embarrassed over physical and social gaffes. I submit that in many ways, zombieism would improve our condition.

If you look at it objectively, zombies live healthy lives. It’s in vogue right now to grow your own herbs or farm your own eggs, as a return to a slower, more integrated way of life. But who’s more of a locavore than a zombie? Zombies only eat what they can collect and kill with their own hands and jaws. Zombies are foodies by virtue of necessity. Farm-to-table is nothing compared with groping-fingers-to-bloody-maw. Plus, if you have the good fortune of becoming a zombie in a health-conscious community like Berkeley or Boulder, you’ve got a ripe supply of organically fed, locally sourced brains at your fingertips. It’s a dream come true for anyone sick of genetically engineered food from factory farms. Yes, like a recently converted vegan, the other new zombies will talk about brains 24/7, but you won’t notice, because you’ll be right there with the others, cracking skulls and reaping the benefit of a raw brains regimen. It’s the Paleo Diet taken to the extreme. You’ll be lean and natural in no time.

Outside of the physical benefits of zombiehood, there are myriad psychological advantages. I’ve never seen a zombie freak out about money. No zombie has ever contemplated selling her eggs to pay off her student loans. Zombies never get into fights over whose family they’re going to spend Thanksgiving with. Zombies don’t celebrate imperialist holidays. They live off the land, meeting their needs in real time. Every zombie, as Oprah might say, is living his or her best life. Don’t think of it as a zombie apocalypse. Consider it a zombie cleanse or retreat. Sounds pretty good. Like the kind of thing people would pay a lot of money for. But all you need to do is put down the baseball bat and let it happen.

Zombies aren’t great for the human population, but it’s impossible to argue the salubrious effects they have on the rest of the environment. Right away, they cut down on the world’s overpopulation problem. Zombies don’t produce new, greedy life forms like humans do. Plus, they use next to nothing in the way of fossil fuels and other, non-renewable resources. Zombies’ inability to cultivate agriculture reduces global production of methane gases. Not to mention, it’s probable that their rapidly decomposing bodies add nutrients to the soil. (Though, admittedly, very few studies have been conducted that would back up this claim.) A planet full of zombies is infinitely more sustainable than a planet full of humans. Do the right thing for our Earth. Go green by letting a zombie bite your head.

Maybe you’re still not convinced of the positive elements of a zombie conversion; perhaps you have some arrogant notion about the nobility of the human race and the value of its preservation at all costs. Okay, hotshot. Let’s say you manage to destroy the rapidly multiplying onslaught of unthinking (but ultimately content and self-actualized) monsters. What then? You’re going to have to repopulate the planet so humanity doesn’t die out. Let’s say you and your lover are the last survivors, or at least the last ones you know of. Can you handle that kind of responsibility?

Repopulating will be fun for the first few weeks. Lots of unprotected sex with no fear of coitus zombieruptus. But then, thirteen years later, you’re going to have to convince your children to have sex with each other. Yeah. That’s the part of repopulation that no one likes to talk about. Maybe your offspring won’t have a problem with this plan. After all, they were raised outside of our puritanical, incest-averse culture. But you probably won’t enjoy giving history’s most uncomfortable birds and bees talk. Here’s an estimation of how it would go:

“Hey, son/daughter. There used to be these things called birds and bees, but they’re gone now seeing as we laid waste to the planet in our efforts to fend of the zombie menace. Anyway, when a man and a woman love each other very much, they have to do what’s right for the good of the species. I guess what I’m trying to say is… you need to have sex with your sister/brother. Seriously. Otherwise everything I’ve strived for my whole life has been in vain. No pressure or anything, though.”

Pretty grim, right?

You know who never has to give an awkward sex talk?

A zombie.

I rest my case.