On the BBC News website today there is an article about preppers. It includes this definition:

'Zombie - The name for the unprepared and aggressive masses who may want to steal a prepper's resources'.

Is that what people here mean by zombie?

I always assumed we used the zombie apocalypse as a way to discuss EOT scenarios without it getting bogged down in discussions of the cause.
It's such an absurd idea no one is going to bother arguing 'but how is something going to heal whatever killed them? repair all the damage done by the body rotting, make muscles and cartilege miraculously re-appear......"
qjs

I think the term is used in a wide variety of ways. Each particular group will have a preferred usage. If I was to try to define it I believe it would be simple - those who are clueless and unprepared.

Main Stream Media like the BBC will always try a depict 'Preppers' as nutters especially weirdo dangerous racist nutters obsessed with deadly weapons.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p036bwsq

I believe your assumption is correct. "Zombies" are commonly used as a planning and training substitute or generic cause when no specific cause of disaster is stated. For example, I recently completed CDC training on distribution from the Strategic National Stockpile (of antibiotics, antivirals, vaccines, anti-radiation treatments and other disaster medical supplies). We used a "zombie outbreak" as a generic causative event, including targeted medical screening with questions about, e.g., rotting body parts and a recent appetite for raw flesh.

'Zombies' are also used as a term to dehumanize. A term which should be avoided especially by Government Organizations for real world training.

That's an interesting notion, and one I haven't heard expressed before. I'll have to think on it.

But my initial reaction is that most people involved in disaster medical care are professionals who have imbibed deeply from the well of humane compassion and caring, and possess the core medical ethic of respect for the individual. I will also note that much of the conversation in the class I mentioned was how to reach and aid under-served people, like the homeless, the poor, the elderly, the disabled and the incarcerated. Indeed, this is also a common focus addressed in most such training and planning.

Still, if this use of the zombie meme is dehumanizing, it's something certainly worth reconsidering. Thank you.

[quote=Am_Fear_Liath_Mor]
Main Stream Media like the BBC will always try a depict 'Preppers' as nutters especially weirdo dangerous racist nutters obsessed with deadly weapons. ""

There are many forums ("fora" is the correct Latin plural) with numerous posts that fully support that characterization. Fortunately ETS is NOT one of them.

Using the Z work is just an example of sloppy thinking, a salient characteristic of the above cited web sites.....

We do much better here.....
















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There are advantages to using the zombie meme, or something else like it, in planning, training and exercises. First, the topic of a catastrophic epidemic and the possibility is very daunting and difficult to contemplate, especially for those who will be in the front lines and most responsible for containing it, stopping it and treating its victims. The facts, figures and projections are depressing enough by themselves, without rehearsing them. Second, it allows the maintenance of a focus sufficiently broad to encompass the full range of such disasters, otherwise, there would be too much of a natural tendency to over-focus on preparing for a specific type of incident, typically the last one, and unconsciously exclude consideration of elements found in other possibilities. Some of my CDC instructors were just returned from Africa, where they were working on the Ebola outbreak there. But they still avoided what would have been understandable tendency to utilize to their recent awesome experience as a primary teaching tool. Third, using something unrealistic allows for just a bit of psychological distancing that, in turn, promotes objective reasoning and open thinking about all rational possibilities.

I believe, "Zombie" always used as an allegory to a massive and deadly threat non responsive to any civilized reasoning or simply not interested in any kind of compromise.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment...-zombie/412264/

"The original brains-eating fiend was a slave not to the flesh of others but to his own. The zombie archetype, as it appeared in Haiti and mirrored the inhumanity that existed there from 1625 to around 1800, was a projection of the African slaves’ relentless misery and subjugation."

"For a brief period, the living dead served as a handy Rorschach test for America’s social ills. At various times, they represented capitalism, the Vietnam War, nuclear fear, even the tension surrounding the civil-rights movement. Today zombies are almost always linked with the end of the world via the “zombie apocalypse,” a global pandemic that turns most of the human population into beasts ravenous for the flesh of their own kind."

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in need of more brains"

Good news for those of us looking for training films about the imminent zombie apocalypse (I can particularily recommend: Strippers Versus Zombies)

Seth Grahame-Smith and Jane Austens collaboration in 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' is due out on film next year.

qjs

don't forget "scouts guide to the zombie apocalypse"

Using "zombie apocalypse" as a generic, tongue-in-cheek stand-in for the "worst case scenario" is harmless. Using it to refer to specific groups of people is boorish -- if you disagree with people, do so on the basis of specific concerns (otherwise the zombie may be you -- check in the mirror).

That said, and purely for your amusement, I can't help but relate this gem, which I believe I purloined (appropriately) from a zombiehunters post somewhere:

Leader: What do we want?
Mob: Brains!
Leader: When do we want it?
Mob: Brains!

Doug talks a lot of sense!

http://www.livescience.com/52642-scouts-guide-zombie-apocalypse.html

"...
The Boy Scouts-vs.-zombies lineup isn't so far-fetched in the "thought experiment" kind of way. The advent of an undead apocalypse, as reliable groups like the U.S. military and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have argued, would require the same basic emergency skills as any disaster.
...
Zombie societies and fictional Scouts aside, some very sober experts have taken the idea of zombie survival at least semiseriously.
...
Last year, a 2011 U.S. military document outlining a zombie contingency plan came to light. The so-called CONPLAN 8888 document describes the military's response to reanimated threats, from "pathogenic" to "evil magic" zombies.
...
Not to be out-planned, in May 2011 the CDC published its own zombie-preparedness guide. The agency doesn't foresee a plague of Walkers, either, but instead aimed to teach general emergency preparedness to the public."

Those were done as "tongue in cheek" documents which use the popularity of the zombie genre to gain interest in basic emergency preparedness. It is just a ploy to get people to pay attention to things. It is a shame that it is necessary though.