4 Ways Zombies Can Save the World
It’s a scenario we’ve seen time and time again in films, books, and video games. Panic ensues when the flesh-hungry undead rise from their graves to feast on the living. As the infection spreads, the death toll mounts. Urban infrastructure collapses. Civilization falls apart. It’s the end of the world!
Or is it? From a different perspective, it could be said that zombies stand the best chance of saving the world. If anyone’s destroying the world, it’s us. Call it pessimistic. Call it misanthropic. But I think zombies can save the world. They have to get rid of us to do it.
1.) Zombies Will End Environmental Exploitation
How would you feel if you got up this morning and no water came out of the tap? Or the lights wouldn’t turn on? Or your wifi connection was down? If like me, you’d be pretty pissed that you couldn’t shower or retweet your favorite comedians. What we don’t realize, however, is that the simple act of taking a shower or logging into Twitter requires a vast and expensive infrastructure that’s taking a heavy toll on the Earth. The Earth is being trashed to create all the raw materials in our technology, power the servers behind our online interactions, and divert the resources needed to keep us in creature comforts.
Face it: mankind is destroying rainforests, draining lakes and marshes, and eroding the Earth’s mountains and forests at an unsustainable rate. And we produce a lot of wasteful, toxic plastic junk in the process. But when the zombies rise up and eat us, all that environmental abuse will stop. When we’re gone, only the dead will fill our streets and shopping malls. You won’t see them wasting electricity. You won’t see them tearing up forests for lumber to build houses. You won’t see them mining for coltan, a vital mineral needed in electronics that is being mined uncontrollably in places like the Congo, contributing to the erosion of land and pollution of water in that region. Zombies don’t need coltan for cell phones, DVD players, and computers. Nope. It will all stop. In our extinction, the world will catch its breath. As the zombies rot away, the Earth will begin its slow recovery without us there to make things worse.
2.) Zombies Will Help the Ozone
Like the bald spot on the head of a middle-aged car salesman, the hole in the Earth’s ozone isn’t getting much better. For years, scientists and environmentalists have been warning about the dangers of ozone depletion. In recent decades, humankind has done a lot to phase out ozone-depleting CFC chemicals, but there’s still a big honking hole above the arctic letting unfiltered UV radiation through to bake the Earth and contribute to Global Warming. Surprisingly, zombies will help the ozone by doing what they do best: turning other humans into zombies.
How will zombies help the ozone? By becoming food for plants and trees! Once the majority of Earth’s population is turned into zombies, it’s inevitable that these zombies will wander out of the cities in search of more food. There, they will wander amongst the trees and plants, eventually succumbing to rot and decay and returning to the soil as delicious compost. As zombie mulch, the undead will feed the trees and plants that are vital for keeping the ozone healthy by absorbing carbon monoxide and producing oxygen. In a very small and indirect way, zombies
3.) Zombies Will End the Pet Industry
Now, there’s nothing wrong with pets. I have two cats of my own. I love them. On the other hand, the pet industry and the cultivation of animals for companionship may be killing the world.
In Robert and Brenda Vale’s book *Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living*, it’s argued that a medium sized dog helps contribute as much greenhouse gas as large car. The dog’s not producing the gases directly (although I’ve known some pretty gassy dogs in my time). Rather, the greenhouse gases are created during the cultivation, production, and transportation of the meat in the dog food that little Lassie wolfs down every day. Never mind the fact that you create your own emissions when you drive to the store to pick up the pet food after it’s already been trucked across the country. Vale and Vale claim it takes 0.84 hectares of land to keep a medium-sized dog fed whereas the average citizen of Vietnam in 2004 had an ecological footprint of 0.76 hectares. The zombies will put a stop to all this nonsense by letting your pets free.
Since zombies have no need for pets, and don’t seem interested in eating them, your cats and dogs will end up entering back into the food chain.After you’re dead, your pets will turn to hunting mice and rabbits and even start preying on each until they become food for the bears, coyotes, or cougars that live at the borders of civilization. The end will probably not be very happy for your pampered little purse Chihuahua, but all will be right with the world and some starving wolf is going to be very happy.
4.) The Only Species Zombies Will Exterminate is Humanity
As a result of human carelessness and Global Warming, Earth may be on the verge of experiencing its sixth mass extinction. In 540 million years, there have been only five mass extinctions, but another one might be around the bend if not already upon us. If nothing changes, Earth stands to lose three-quarters of its species. If we wanted to, we could put off this blow to biodiversity before we hit the tipping point by saving endangered species and restraining from abusing and misusing the environment. How likely is this? Most people can’t stay on a diet for longer than a week. Perhaps the only way to put off this mass extinction is if we’re the ones who are wiped out.
When the zombies sweep over the Earth, ridding it of those pesky humans, endangered species will be left to live in a world without poachers, without human industry gobbling up animal habitats, and without irresponsible countries polluting and contributing to the melting of the ice caps. There’s going to be a mass extinction one way or the other. However, if we’re the ones who have to go the way of the dinosaurs, maybe Earth will be all the better for it. We fear zombies as a horrible menace, but maybe they’re just maggots cleaning out the world’s dead weight. Us.
Really interesting perspective. You’ve made some valid points, especially when it comes to the general pollution and how when the zombie apocalypse hits, we’ll have to go back to our roots – which means no electricity, no flowing water, no cell phones, no nothing. So in that sense, it’d be like a cleansing process.
I don’t necessarily agree with #4, though. We have no idea if zombies will attack animals or even if animals will be able to become zombies of their own. In the wild right now there are fungus and bacteria that latch onto ants and other insects forcing them to become a type of zombie, literally taking over their body. So what’s to say that the virus that effects humans won’t effect animals and insects? We have no idea how the virus will mutate.
Very thought provoking article!
I was basing my concept of the zombie on Romero’s model, which shows zombies eating animals only rarely (Night of the Living Dead; Survival of the Dead)