They are us

Nope, not real

From Huffingtonpost:

Security firm HALO Corp. announced yesterday that about 1,000 military personnel, police officials, medical experts and federal workers will learn the ins and outs of a zombie apocalypse, as part of an annual counter-terrorism summit , according to the Military Times.
Sure, the lesson is tongue-in-cheek -- and only a small part of the summit's more serious course load -- but a zombie-like virus outbreak is a good training scenario. Visitors will learn to deal with a worldwide pandemic, where people become crazy, violent and fearful. Zombies will roam the summit grounds in San Diego, Calif. harassing troops and first-aid teams that will be participating.
Further details are unclear, but the Military Times made sure to note that zombies are not real.

Do you get the feeling things have gone too far? One of Hollywood's many functions in our political system is to keep as many people scared out of their wits as much as possible. But I don't recall preparations for asteroid collisions being made by the state security apparatus when Deep Impact and Armageddon were released. I do however, recall being dumbstruck by the riot scene in Soylent Green when garbage trucks just scooped up protesters by the shovelful and dumped them into the trailer, apparently to be carted off to the Soylent Corporation's processing plant.



My first thoughts after reading this article were along the lines of "oh good, one of the frankenstein 'private security' companies unleashed by the bush wars has figured out a way to lever fat government contracts even after the bush wars are petering out." Then I started skimming the comments, and oops, it seems most people analyzing this article have decided that "zombie" is code for the hopeless, unemployed members of the "lost generation" detailed a bit in this NYTimes article. Zombies may not be real, but desperate people are very real. It may just be coincidence that Max Brooks patterned the zombie survival and response plan of World War Z on the South African government's contingency plan to save the white Afrikaans population in the event of a full uprising by the black majority.

Given that the R(money) campaign has officially written off 47% of Americans as losers, publicly. And the tea party co-opting manuver has pretty much run out of steam. The plutocracy may have decided to make contingency plans of it's own.

Not to jump into bed with the conspiracy theorists, but the idea of government or the class controlling it ordering others to shoot at civilians is not unheard of in our history. Bacon's rebellion, Shay's rebellion, the Whiskey rebellion, the Civil War, pinkerton's shooting strikers during the long gilded age, the Palmer raids, Kent State, the difference being duration and purpose. The zombie apocalypse exercises seem to be preparation for an indefinite culling of "useless eaters." Let us not forget that Social Darwinism as an ideology had it's height when the population of the Earth was about one billion. With a bona fide Social Darwinist on the republican ticket, is it any suprise that the plutocracy has rediscovered so much Spencerian and Sumnerian rhetoric as humanity has zoomed past seven billion?

As a character in Dawn of the Living Dead remarked upon seeing zombies wandering around the mall; "They are us."