There aren't a lot of Zombie scenarios where the 'condition' is communicable beyond our own species. If that's the case and it's applicable to all living organisms then I don't think it's pretty much a moot point. But again, I'm not really aiming to discuss the plague of the undead again...
... in the other scenario, where in most of humanity has been wiped out over a short period of time, the motivation for collecting a comprehensive survival kit is not so that one can just up and head for the hills, ahem, but rather so that one can be prepared for whatever follows and is not inspired by any teet that I am aware of.
There are other reasons to vacate. One; health. Regardless of the cause, if humanity were to suffer a sudden and vast loss of life there are very real concerns to deal with and those concerns are, simply put, very closely tied to having hundreds of thousands of corpses laying about. Unless those corpses are properly dealt with (see; buried or burnt) you can expect a host of associated dangers. Aside from the immediate dangers such as contamination and predation I personally think it would be just plain unpleasant to continue hang around with a bunch of dead people. If you want to go poking around in peoples houses and such, that's fine for you but I'd just as soon avoid being constantly reminded of the fact that everyone I knew is dead and gone... dealing with isolation is hard enough, no need to compound that with visual and olfactory reminders of that on a daily basis.
Relocation and reestablishment would still be primary goals for me and the foundation of that ambition would, I believe, be better assisted having the necessary supplies readily available without immediately bogging myself down.
In my case I wouldn't be worried about starting a new civilization of any stripe or making impacting political statements. Nor would my personal exodus be based on any 'desire to be one with nature' but the imperative understanding that I would stand a better chance in vacating the city rather then hanging around inside of it. Note; I live in a dense urban center and enjoy doing so and as it stands have no desire to go off and be a hermit as it is, however, with a 99% loss of life I believe my chances would be better outside of the city rather then lurking around inside of it.
However, if a significant enough number of people were to survive the event that, in the long run, humanity might be saved and eventually repopulate the Earth then I think, personally, those survivors would be doing themselves and any future generations a great disservice by failing to learn from the event and resisting a paradigm shift.
The fact of the matter is that it takes a lot of people to sustain the lifestyle we, in North America, have become accustomed to. Without that vast number of people doing their daily jobs the cities of human kind will quickly become dangerously inhospitable places to be. Fighting to preserve whatever you can is fine as long as one does not compromise their own survival doing so.
I do think that, assuming 60 million people are still alive across the globe, that whatever remains of society is going to be based on the old feudal system. Who knows, maybe such an event would serve to bring the survivors closer together? Maybe we'd all end up seeing the light and singing kumbaya by firelight after the days hunt...
... or what I think is more likely is that those who remain would end up fighting tooth and nail for survival which, to me, is another good reason not to become too reliant on those survivors for your own survival.
"The Postman" might have been a pretty crappy movie, but it raises a valuable point. And I personally don't think I'd want to spend my time being hunted by Will Patton and his band of not-so-merry-men.
Ultimately I think that the diversity of replies to the concept of a dystopian cataclysm just goes to show that if even a small number of people survived the variation in their responses to such an event further enhance humanities chances of survival.
... in the other scenario, where in most of humanity has been wiped out over a short period of time, the motivation for collecting a comprehensive survival kit is not so that one can just up and head for the hills, ahem, but rather so that one can be prepared for whatever follows and is not inspired by any teet that I am aware of.
There are other reasons to vacate. One; health. Regardless of the cause, if humanity were to suffer a sudden and vast loss of life there are very real concerns to deal with and those concerns are, simply put, very closely tied to having hundreds of thousands of corpses laying about. Unless those corpses are properly dealt with (see; buried or burnt) you can expect a host of associated dangers. Aside from the immediate dangers such as contamination and predation I personally think it would be just plain unpleasant to continue hang around with a bunch of dead people. If you want to go poking around in peoples houses and such, that's fine for you but I'd just as soon avoid being constantly reminded of the fact that everyone I knew is dead and gone... dealing with isolation is hard enough, no need to compound that with visual and olfactory reminders of that on a daily basis.
Relocation and reestablishment would still be primary goals for me and the foundation of that ambition would, I believe, be better assisted having the necessary supplies readily available without immediately bogging myself down.
In my case I wouldn't be worried about starting a new civilization of any stripe or making impacting political statements. Nor would my personal exodus be based on any 'desire to be one with nature' but the imperative understanding that I would stand a better chance in vacating the city rather then hanging around inside of it. Note; I live in a dense urban center and enjoy doing so and as it stands have no desire to go off and be a hermit as it is, however, with a 99% loss of life I believe my chances would be better outside of the city rather then lurking around inside of it.
However, if a significant enough number of people were to survive the event that, in the long run, humanity might be saved and eventually repopulate the Earth then I think, personally, those survivors would be doing themselves and any future generations a great disservice by failing to learn from the event and resisting a paradigm shift.
The fact of the matter is that it takes a lot of people to sustain the lifestyle we, in North America, have become accustomed to. Without that vast number of people doing their daily jobs the cities of human kind will quickly become dangerously inhospitable places to be. Fighting to preserve whatever you can is fine as long as one does not compromise their own survival doing so.
I do think that, assuming 60 million people are still alive across the globe, that whatever remains of society is going to be based on the old feudal system. Who knows, maybe such an event would serve to bring the survivors closer together? Maybe we'd all end up seeing the light and singing kumbaya by firelight after the days hunt...
... or what I think is more likely is that those who remain would end up fighting tooth and nail for survival which, to me, is another good reason not to become too reliant on those survivors for your own survival.
"The Postman" might have been a pretty crappy movie, but it raises a valuable point. And I personally don't think I'd want to spend my time being hunted by Will Patton and his band of not-so-merry-men.
Ultimately I think that the diversity of replies to the concept of a dystopian cataclysm just goes to show that if even a small number of people survived the variation in their responses to such an event further enhance humanities chances of survival.
