Are We Prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse? Actually, Yes
The U.S. military has a detailed plan to save the living, or at least outlast the dead.
It’s only a matter of time.
Photographer: Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty Images
Are we properly prepared for the zombie apocalypse? OK, you’re thinking that’s just science fiction. It could never happen, so why bother getting ready? But after watching some of the frenzied television coverage of this week’s sudden snowstorm that paralyzed the Eastern Seaboard, I’m not so sure. Reporters kept asking each other, in all solemn gravity, who’s to blame for the fact that cities and states were so poorly prepared.
The usual academic wisdom is that if we prepare for every low-probability event, we’ll bankrupt ourselves. Only hindsight bias insists that the signs of every unlikely catastrophe were always there. But it’s a hindsight bias to which we cling, venting our fury at those who didn’t put the clues together. So in the highly unlikely event that the zombie apocalypse happens, journalists and commentators, from their fortified redoubts, will certainly be demanding to know why nobody planned for this eventuality.