Welcome to the latest installment of Don’t Be That Guy, my recurring feature that prevents you, humble reader, from becoming That Guy.
In today’s edition, we’re going to tackle Mr./Ms. Fantasy World, the wannabe survivalist who’s realized it’s more fun to prepare for the preposterous than the practical.
Like a zombie apocalypse.
Reality Check
Zombies aren’t real. Say it with me. Zombies. Aren’t. Real.
Tornadoes, earthquakes and fires are real. Our $26.5 trillion national debt (as of the day I wrote this) is real. And COVID-19 is real, which is one of the reasons why our national debt has skyrocketed to more than $80,000 for every American.
The threats of terrorist attacks, or other pandemic diseases, or an EMP attack or coronal mass ejection frying our power grid extra crispy, are real.
Zombies are fiction. And a whole lot of other civilization-ending cataclysms, such as humanity going the way of the dinosaurs courtesy of a large asteroid, aren’t likely to come to fruition in your children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s lifetimes.
Yet there are people out there who call themselves preppers who are, pardon the Infantry language, preparing for stupid shit that can’t happen. Do a web search if you don’t believe me. Heck, even the CDC has gotten into the zombie apocalypse act. But that doesn’t make it any less ridiculous.
I Have a Bridge to Sell You
The old National Geographic show “Doomsday Preppers” was a who’s who of people preparing for the flat-out impossible.
I remember one episode with some poor sap who uprooted his family from the Gulf Coast so they wouldn’t fall into the sea when the continents rearrange after a polar shift of Earth’s magnetic field. One, the continents suddenly rearranging is about as scientifically plausible as driving off the Earth’s edge, and two, pole shifts occur over many, many years.
I hope that this guy’s children found it in their hearts to forgive him for turning their lives upside down for a fairy tale. Alas, their plight was one of many on that show.
Get a Life
Zombies and vampires make for great entertainment. So does “Star Trek,” but I’m not learning to speak Klingon in the event they invade. That’s because Klingons, like zombies and vampires, aren’t real. We will not be assimilated, and resistance is not futile.
Zombie preppers like to say that if you’re ready for a zombie apocalypse, you’re ready for anything. That doesn’t make preparing for a fictional event any less ridiculous. A family in Kansas that practices zombie head shots at the expense of practicing what to do when a tornado warning is issued is setting themselves up for removal from the gene pool.
Again, prep for the practical, not the preposterous. Knocking down your stairs is great at stopping shambling fictitious zombies, or so Max Brooks says. It won’t do squat to stop the real-life COVID-19.
If you want to live in a fantasy world, take up Dungeons and Dragons rather than prepping. It’s cheaper, minus the cost of buying weirdly shaped dice and manuals with a metric buttload of rules. And as an added bonus, moving back into your parents’ basement will offer the added bonus of protecting you from tornadoes and nuclear fallout.