It started out simply enough. I was perusing the National Post online when I came upon a curious graphic. Their graphic artist had created a massive spread of how each and every zombie had been killed in the first 2.5 seasons of AMC's The Walking Dead.
"What on earth is this?" I thought to myself.
The graphic detailed, in sequence, how each "walker" had been dispatched, by whom, and with which weapon. The methods included pistol, rifle, crossbow, shotgun, bat, axe, pry bar, tire iron, machete, knife, rock, screwdriver, pipe, scythe, golf ball, fireplace poker and sword.
I had seen The Walking Dead appear high on the suggested list on Netflix for a while. Never, ever having been one for horror movies of any type, I thought I would give it a shot.
Watching the first episode, I was hooked. I burned through the rest of seasons one and two in a few days, with the show on a secondary monitor as I edited photos on my main computer.
It's not so much that I like the gore of shattering skulls of the undead (the only effective way of neutralizing a zombie is to destroy its brain), but rather I have a hankering for the post-apocalypse movie.
It started with Red Dawn. I couldn't get that movie out of my head for years. How does one fight off a Russian invasion if it were to happen here? When you spend two-and-a-half hours cutting the acres of grass on your dad's farm, going in mindless circles, or 10 hours at a time on the tractor harrowing, you have to keep your mind occupied. So I had every possible contingency planned out - where to seek refuge, ambush tactics, food supply. I had a full insurgency planned more than a decade before the term once again became common with the Iraq and Afghan wars.
So it is in this vein I fell in love with the post- apocalyptic scenario. Movies like Independence Day, Deep Impact (but not so much Armageddon), The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, I am Legend, The Road, Book of Eli, the Red Dawn remake - all have been catnip for the survivalist in me.
That's ironic, however, since as a diabetic with a heart condition, the absolute longest I would live in such a scenario would be 180 days, likely much less. No matter. This is fantasy, after all.
In recent years, the life-after-the-world-ends movies have largely tilted to the zombie craze, fuelled by the incredibly popular The Walking Dead.
In April, Wired.com had a story about an author, Max Brooks, doing presentations to the U.S. military on surviving zombie attacks. The idea is to get soldiers thinking about dealing with extremely difficult scenarios in a fun way, so that when something really bad does happen, like a hurricane, they have already put some thought into dealing with disaster. Preparation and logistics are key.
It was noted that this June a new Brad Pitt movie is coming out - World War Z, based on Brooks' novel of the same name. The trailers were so awe-inspiring, I bought the ebook on the weekend, because I couldn't wait for a hardcopy to be delivered. I went cross-eyed reading it on my iPhone, but polished it off in record time. Then I got the audio book version of the book by the same author that served as the foundation for World War Z. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead has now prepared me for the coming zombie apocalypse.
I've since sketched out detailed plans for the defence of Estevan, should the need arise - 14 pages and counting. Given a couple days preparation, this city could be fortified and prepared. It's amazing what you could do with a few hundred 400-bbl. test tanks, RVs, semis, rail cars and shipping containers.
If we had to, we could even build a micro-refinery to process crude oil into diesel and gas, using oil produced within a few miles of the city. This town possesses the skills and technical capability to do it, even if the result is extremely crude. If the hordes are coming - I'm your man. I might even post my sketches on my Facebook page, just in case others need to mount a defence after my inevitable demise. They'll want to reference this "Estevan Zombie Survival Guide" before the Internet goes down, however.
All of this may be fantasy, but as I wrote a few weeks ago - the coming ice age - that could very well be real.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
