11.04.2010

Anything you can do, we can do better

The worst part of having to cooperate with another person is always going to be the other person. Check out the bullet list.

  • Sneak away while they're sleeping
    • No tearful goodbyes, no violence, but terrible for a guilty conscience. You'll probably wonder what happened to them, and they'll certainly wonder about you. 
  • Kill them in their sleep
    • No tearful goodbyes, but it's not very nice. That's OK if you're OK with that, and there's some advantages, like not having to leave any food or supplies behind for the other person. 
  • Have a fight, leave in a huff
    • The trouble with this option is that you'll probably have to leave a lot of stuff behind. The person you're fighting with won't take kindly to you taking a fair share of the food and supplies. Try and make them leave, and you'll end up with the lion's share. 
  • Mexican standoff, last one standing keeps all the nachos.
    • This is a great option if you feel lucky. Be sure to count the shots beforehand; Dirty Harry taught us the importance of knowing whether or not there's one bullet left in someone else's gun.
Not liking your options so far? Consider the following, as Mr. Nye would say. 
  • Suck it up, hold your tongue, and work together.
    • No violence, or at least not between living people. Sure, they're an asshole, but as long as they're alive and not trying to kill you, you can use them to help you survive.


You may be familiar with the general idea of interacting with other human beings in a face-to-face context, where words are spoken, heard, and responded to, with or without gestures, facial expressions, or physical contact. It's possible that some IT infrastructure may survive for a time after the zombie outbreak, but it's pretty likely that most or all of the interactions you'll be having with other people will be of the in-person variety. Having at least some skill in this area will help you more than you might think. In fact, I will go so far as to say that it's going to be more important during the Apocalypse than it is now. Today, if someone annoys you to the point that you want to kill them, you have options other than killing them that will solve your problem. Later, when live humans will be as common as apples on an orange tree, your own survival will depend a lot on any people that happen to be with you, so killing one of them will only be a little smarter than suicide. You need to be able to have long-term interactions without causing so much friction that one or both of you decide that you aren't worth the food you're eating.

There's plenty of literature on that subject, but I will suggest, with a few qualifications and exceptions, the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In general I found the book to be annoying and occasionally misleading, not to mention bordering on cultish, but the bulk of its advice on personal interaction is fairly solid, provided that you use common sense about it and don't just swallow all the bullshit. He's a good ratio to remember (it also sounds clever and could easily be illustrated with a stupid looking chart, so it might easily have come from the book): 10 pounds of fresh hamburger + 1 pound of rotten hamburger = 11 pounds of food you can't eat (and live). So keep your bullshit filters up. I may even throw in some bullshit here from time to time, just to weed out the people too stupid to live, so be aware of that.


As far as surviving as part of a group, there's a great wealth of possibilities that are just impossible for one person alone. Most importantly we have sleeping arrangements. One person alone needs a certain amount of sleep no matter what; even if you can survive on maybe 3 or 4 hours at a time, you might be lucky to get 2 hours any given night thanks to your need to wake up at the slightest indication that a zombie might have found you.
Two people together can trade off a night watch.You draw straws or play rock-paper-scissors and the winner gets to pick either the early morning or the late evening. One person goes on to sleep, the other stays up and keeps an eye out; at midnight, you switch. The sleeping person gets better rest, since the watching person is there to wake them if there are zombies. It requires staying in one place a little longer each night than one person alone would need, though, which is why groups are going to move a little slower than individuals. Once you have three or more people the time you need to stop each night doesn't increase, since three is as many watch shifts as you'll ever really need.
Sleep is incredibly important. If you're getting proper rest, you don't want to fall asleep while you're moving and forget to watch for zombies. It keeps your strength up, or rather when you don't sleep enough your strength and energy just seep out of you like water in a cloth bag. There's all kinds of other side effects to not sleeping enough, and they're all bad, so for this, if nothing else, having people with you is going to be a key part of your survival.

I should point out something at this point. When I say that other people are a key part of your survival strategy, it seems like that would mean that not having other people leads to almost certain doom. That's not the case at all though. Even with other people, you're still facing almost certain doom. But more than that, this is the concept of fortification. You could, in theory, find a way to survive out in the wilderness with no food stores, no clothes, no tools, no nothing; our most ancient ancestors did exactly that, after all. But tools changed the game entirely. Just about any item we use today could probably revolutionize the life of one of our cave and/or forest dwelling ancestors, but we've come to rely on them even if we know how to get by without them.
To simplify it, would you rather live in a house or a tent? A house, probably; those who said tent probably are just contradictory or really love being outside. You don't need a house, or even a tent, but since you have one, it's one of the most basic foundations upon which your daily life is planned. So it will be when it comes to survival as a group; like your house, there will probably be things you won't like that you'll want to change, whether or not you're able, but you'll always choose a flawed house over sleeping in the street. That's the core of what Fortification means when I mention it; I'm sure by now you've figured out a better word than fortification for what I mean, but it's in the title so we're stuck with it now.


People are like a house; they can protect you, surround you, comfort you with their familiarity. People are also like tools too - you need to use them to help yourself survive. Not in a malicious way, I hope, and remember that they're going to need you in all the same ways you need them. You can use them to watch your back only because while they're watching your back, you're watching their back while watching out for your own front. It's selfish, but it's symbiotic. It's just as true for a group of two as it is for twenty; there's just more of you to do the looking.

Other than watching for zombies, you can help in other ways. More people means more efficient foraging, whether in the wild for edible plants or animals or in civilization raiding a warehouse or supermarket for dried and canned food. Larger numbers can also lead to specialization. When it's just you, you have to be everything and do everything; when you have ten people, one person is going to be better at sneaking around ahead to check for zombies, or cooking, or fixing your broken backpacks. They might have experience from before, or they might just find a talent for it they didn't know about. Or not, and maybe nobody in your group is any good at a certain thing, who can say; the more people you can bring together, however, the more skills your group will have available, and maybe one person with a skill can help teach the others.


Whether you start out with someone else, or meet up with a friend or a stranger later on, it's always going to be a good idea to stick with your fellow humans. Next time, we might go over some of our long-term concerns. Not "don't forget to being a towel", more "don't forget to plant the corn on time, don't forget to tell the kids not to play zombie hunter in the halls, don't forget to check the perimeter fences" kind of long-term. Big picture stuff, but we'll just kind of dabble a little for now.

No comments:

Post a Comment