Gnawing At Me

Today the Doomsday Clock moved two minutes closer to midnight. According to the group of very clever scientists who are in charge of this curious timepiece, we now stand - symbolically - at eleven fifty-five. The clock ticked forward amid fears over what the scientists describe as "a second nuclear age" prompted largely by standoffs with Iran and North Korea. In addition to the world going boom, they were also concerned about the world melting, citing global warming as another threat to our home planet.
This is all well and good, but they failed to mention zombies. Nowhere in their published statement did they address the mounting concerns about the walking dead. Recently, I was sent a book by my good friend and co-conspirator on the right coast that blew the lid off this whole ghoul issue. "World War Z" , by Max Brooks, is an oral history of mankind's finest hour, telling the true story of how dangerously close the human race came to extinction. It gave me pause primarily because of the way that it presented an eventually unified globe, coming together to fight a common enemy. When it comes to dealing with zombies, ideology becomes unnecessary, since their first and last concern is eating human beings. There isn't a lot of debate over philosophy, just about technique: How Best To Kill Something That Is Already Dead. In hindsight, after hostilities have ceased, Brooks helps us remember the hard won lessons of the last great conflict.
Okay - maybe it is fiction, but the book reminds us all to be watchful and ever vigilant, and to never let our guard down. Zombies are among us now - jut turn on the television if you don't believe me. I know that reading stuff like this will rot my brain, but I'm okay with that. When the zombies come, they won't want to eat mine.