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Black powder vs Zombies

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The solution to the problem of multiple zombies and one man with a musket:

Bayonette-p1000740.jpg


Same as it ever was.
 
Of course zombies are metaphor, always have been. Romero said back in '68 or '69 that the dead weren't the problem, the living were. I think the spookiest thing is that the zombie craze has lasted so long, actually reemerged, in the Zeitgeist. Personally, I suspect we are the "zombies" and the movies / books / video games are meant to desensitize potential enforcers to wiping out large groups of people.

But then, what do I know..?

I do think it's pretty cool to consider the use of our charcoal burners - underrated as they are - in a cataclysmic event. I thought it was something that the makers of that goofy TV show included them, if only briefly.
 
Having never seen the show has got me wondering if any progress was made against the Zombies. Lets hope at least a few of the "bad guys" were taken down by the MLs. I'm hoping a viewer can keep us updated.
 
That whole genre is nuts, of course, but I've gotta admit that when I saw the first movie back in the '60's it caught my attention. It's always about the breakdown of society from whatever cause, as most of you said. Zombies are a stand-in for EMP, tsunami, earthquake, central bank failure, world war, nuclear war, endemic disease, whatever...
 
So.... it’s the end of the world and my FDC is now practical instead of a toy. When a Zombie bites you you turn in to a zombie. But what happens if you bite a zombie? I mean I don’t want to get snake bit, but have had a snake or two for dinner. Same with shark. It would be a lot easier to survive Armageddon if you could gobble up the zombies after you uh er killed(?) then. I got my copy of ‘To Serve Man’around here some where.
 
"Beat 'em or burn 'em; they go up pretty easy."

Clubbed muskets and bayonets...
Recall that the origins of the zombi arose during the age of muzzle-loading, black powder arms on that third of the "Isla Española/ Hispaniola" occupied by French slave plantations, "St.-Domingue" now Haiti. Slaves labored in ways injurious and oppressive to body, mind, and social relationships, subject to life under the lash in a squalid barracks or hut. For them, nothing was more terrifying than the idea that the slave master might control one's mind and body, even after death.

Fast forward, and one has the constantly evolving, ever more novel "zombie film" or "zombie genre" combined with the last-man-on-earth nightmare fantasy. Cold War-era anticommunism led to hits like the sci-fi "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and so on. I've watched the "Walking Dead" franchise until they killed off my favorite characters and the show--predictably--descended into another iteration of the pornography of violence. The problem all along is that everything is so utterly stock serious and grim... How the actors keep a straight face is a wonder! There is no "gallows humor" or black humor to enliven the show, and so it becomes ever more ridiculous and silly as it self-possessedly-if-absurdly plods on. The best of the genre dispense with the idea that the zombies are living dead... So, for example, I rather like "28 Days" because it is some sort of hideous biological weapon that turns people into hyper-violent asocial fiends bent on murder and mayhem, combined with the irony and yes, black humor, of animal rights activists/ "eco-terrorists" attempting to "liberate" infected test primates that unleashes it...

It might be interesting to contemplate what sorts of projectile weapons would be available for people to make or manufacture in an emergency or reversion to pre-technological eras or limited manufacturing base. Underhammers are über-simple, but of course rely on caps. Crossbows? Catapults? Bows and arrows? Pellet bows and stone bows? Plumbatae and atlatl darts? Matchlocks? Snap locks? Flint locks?

As for zombies, the all-purpose zombie disposal mechanism would have to be the Medieval Flemish goedendag or one or another feudal-era Japanese polearm.
 
bow and arrow. You can make a bow starting with absolutely nothing on hand.
 
Pointy stick....


My other half is Romanian, and if it's one group of people in the world that know how to use a pointed stick, it's Romanians.

There are a few brainless zombies I can think of that driving a pointed stick in their brain won't work because they act and argue like they don't have one.

No brain, no pain.
 
There are some brainless guys walking around who could very much benefit mankind by receiving a pointed stick to the head. We called them supervisors at work. But unfortunatley they are the "good guys" in this zombie/ apocolyptic scenario , I think. The true zombies had the rotting remains of a brain but at least they had a brain.
 
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