Zombies!

Photo by Nathan Wright on Unsplash

When the zombie virus outbreak starts, you’re going to freak out. That’s okay. Acknowledging the feeling will make it easier to control. Panic. It will hit the major cities and travel hubs first. The zombies will be slow, but the virus will be fast and their numbers will explode. You’ll follow it on the news and on social media throughout the days. Soon the cities will be overrun. The airports and all inter-city travel will have shut down a day or two after we realize what’s happening, but that isn’t a solution. News anchors are going to speculate about origins, politicians are going to point fingers. But zombies will have already spread across the country.

You’re going to want to run and hide. But once society and communication channels break down, you’ll have only three real options.

You’re going to want to head for the woods and keep everyone away. That’s one approach. Not a good idea, though. Have you ever tried to keep yourself alive in the wilderness, without access to a grocery store for re-supplies? Even experienced survivalists struggle to survive. They lose too much weight. One day you’ll be trying to untangle a handmade gill-fishing net and you’ll get frustrated and decide to cut the offending cord. Maybe it’s the cold, or maybe it’s that it’s been days since your last meal that will make your hands shake. When you drop the knife in the lake you’ll have to dive in after it, because without it you’ve got no hope. Then you’ll try to thaw out over your fire, but you just won’t get warm. Hypothermia. Game over.

Or you might stay in your community, build barricades, lay in weapons. Hunker down and wait for the first zombie to shamble into town. That’s another approach. You’d hide, patrol the streets, and stay hyper-alert to any sign of the undead. As soon as you see one, you’ll be able to neutralize it, you think. Keep the town safe. That’s the idea. Batten down the hatches and weather the storm.

But the way it goes, it won’t always be just one zombie, or two, that walk into town. One day you’ll see them coming across the fields by the high school, or around the corner by the library—forty or fifty at first, but more behind. When the patrols realize they can’t stop the herd from entering the town, they’ll retreat to fallback positions, pick off zombies from safety. But some will be cut off, surrounded by the slow-moving tide. Lost. And then you’ll be inside, somewhere safe, watching the zombies move through town like a tide. The problem is, once the zombie wave starts, it’ll ebb and flow, but won’t stop. Eventually, people are going to have to venture out for things like food and supplies. How long are those going to last? You’ll be living on constant high-alert, always fighting, or ready to. It’s not sustainable. It will be just a matter of time.

Or you can take a different approach. Maybe you find yourself in a small town, and you realize that you and the neighboring towns are still uninfected at first. So you send emissaries to those other communities to plan and collaborate. You’ll still need to set up patrols in the streets, but you’ll work together, focused more on the outlying areas to create a ring of protection around one central town.

By flooding support to any area that reports a zombie invasion, you’ll be able to stop or head off threats before they reach the safe center. It won’t always work perfectly, but when zombies do get to the center, it will be a smaller number. Manageable. Helping the towns in the outer ring will keep the center clear and more prosperous—will make life sustainable. Through the partnership you’ll be able to keep producing food and materials, give patrols a chance to rest, create space and perspective to organize and flow supplies and helpers to where it’s needed. When the zombie infestation finally ends, those will be the towns that remain. The ones that sent strategic aid out to keep their neighbors safer, so they’d be safer still.

This is a story about why countries like the United States should invest in global health out of self-interest, even if we won’t do it out of altruism.