The Zombie Genre Didn't Prepare you for the Coronavirus | Salari

we ever had a friend say to you I can't wait for a zombie apocalypse it'll be so much fun or have you even said that yourself did you or they think that traversing through the barren wastelands of a once bustling city scavenging for food and supplies while wearing elaborate Mad Max style leather armor taken down any zombies that come your way in a spectacular fashion maybe you even make a little quip after taking down a group of them in a supermarket perhaps I hate Black Friday or something equally terrible and yet your voice is super gravelly now for some reason in your mind is it a world where it's every person for themselves maybe you have a small group of people you travel with because they happen to also be healthy competent attractive and they fit the character types that balance you out like you could have a serious one that's seen some stuff the caring one a child who serves as a reminder that the futures at stake and don't forget about us the oneness more badass than you are and of course you wouldn't refer to them as zombies no that'd be way too obvious you'd have to change it to something less on-the-nose almost like every other product in the genre perhaps grabbers or chases or bitey boys this all might sound appealing and there's an ungodly amount of movies TV shows and games that do a great job of selling this lifestyle to audiences and I'll admit it does seem fun but let's be honest if it was possible to have a zombie apocalypse very few of us would be survivors let alone thriving or even enjoying the experience there's a good chance you get infected within a few days and then turn most of the world probably would especially if it was an airborne virus the cause dead sadly the majority of survivors would probably be the wealthy and perhaps a few weirdo libertarian Doomsday Preppers who would last until they were forced to leave their bunkers for supplies one thing you'll find him pretty much everything in the zombie genre though is that in a situation like a zombie apocalypse the real enemy is in the undead it's the other humans and their selfishness this however isn't a trait exclusive to the antagonists of the genre there's often decisions protagonists have to make that could be considered morally gray for example if they should encounter a person on their own struggling and with no supplies should they be helped on one hand they could be helpful to your need for survival they can help out by finding supplies there can be another pair of eyes to watch out for attackers and if they're capable they can aid with defense on the other hand they could just be another mouth to feed in a world where food and water is hard to come by there could be a liability should you come under attack or in more extreme cases they could be playing you like a damn fiddle and doesn't want to join you so they can eventually rob you kill you or even sow discord among your group causing more problems this is one of the problems with individualism as an ideology if a person is only alpha one self than is safe to assume that others are only out for oneself - and in a world where fear of the other is being sold to us on daily basis to the point where elections are won on the back of that idea it's easy to see that should a situation similar to a zombie apocalypse came to be then we as humans might indulge our worst instincts and refuse to help each other out in order to survive but if the end game of survival is solitude or restricting yourself to a small group of people for the rest of your life then what good is this as we're all very very very well aware at this point coronavirus AKA covert 19 has joined the list of existential threats though the human race has to deal with I personally am in self quarantine as I write record and edit this video not because I'm infected but because that's what we have to do now if we want to prevent it from spreading further my wife however does not have the luxury of staying at home since she works in the lab where they're actually testing patient samples for the virus so if you want to be kind maybe leave her a little comment at the bottom of this video saying you really appreciate the work that she's doing it goes a long way to be honest social distancing in germophobia have pretty much been my life story so it hasn't affected me too much but as someone who already feels see whenever I so much as leave the house to get groceries I get to experience even more of it now knowing that anyone could be carrying a potentially fatal virus I'm fortunate though in an in general I'm a healthy person who very rarely gets ill but of course there are many people out there who aren't and are immunocompromised such as the elderly disabled and those with weak immune systems many governments across the world have reacted to the existence of covered 19 and some amazing ways from coming up with methods of testing masses of people as quickly as possible extending sick leave decontamination booths putting a stop to travel preventing gatherings of large groups putting holes on utility bills including Internet and making it so that people can't be evicted during this time if they're unable to pay rent some corporations have also reacted to it as well such as movie theaters theme parks and concert venues closing down and stores limiting their hours of operation and the amount of people who are allowed in some Internet service providers such as Comcast and AT&T of suspended data caps to making people ask couldn't you've been doing this the whole time to which the answer is yes they absolutely could have and they should have they just choose not to don't get me wrong though there are many many things that every corporation could do to improve this situation like actually having the decency to give workers paid leave instead of waiting for governments to force them to which they more than likely won't because we live in hell and employees have no rights there's a lot of things the wealthiest people in the world could be doing like donating money towards a production of essential goods and improving and expanding healthcare facilities Elon Musk offered to make more ventilators if there's a shortage which there is so keep an eye on him and see if he follows through with it [Music] [Music] [Music] don't worry though in these difficult times we have celebrities helping us with this terrible and tone-deaf rendition of John Lennon's Imagine people are struggling to stay afloat since they're not able to work but at least rich celebrities are there to keep us grounded they don't have to worry about paying their mortgage for their luxury houses so their time in quarantine means that they have more time to entertain us given in a few weeks have passed since we started this nightmare we've all learned a few lessons about how to deal with a pandemic like this and in general were reacting to it quite well of course we could be doing a lot better and not only up we had some of the worst people give some of the worst advice or straight-up underplay how serious the situation is we've had decades of media teaching people how to react to situations like this in terrible ways so today we're going to look at why the zombie genre has taught us how to react to pandemics in the worst ways possible [Music] part-1 don't trust anyone in most zombie media we usually follow a small group of protagonist trying to survive the apocalypse more often than not they're a collection of character types like the ones I mentioned earlier and they'll have some form of leader one thing that's made very clear in almost everything in zombie movies so the zombie genre as a whole is that collective should be limited and larger collectives aren't to be trusted going along with the theme of human beings being the real monsters there always seems to be instances that whenever a new character is introduced there always happens to be one or more characters within that group that immediately distrust them sometimes with cause but more often than not it's simply because they're new to an extent distrust is understandable when you're trying to survive it's easy to bring yourself to think that other human beings might be a threat to you when you live in constant fear of dying but this is a two-way street between people for some reason the zombie genre is insisting on telling its audiences that distrust should be a natural part of survival and more often than not it is valid Intel tells The Walking Dead Season 2 distrust is a huge theme throughout the entire story one major instance of this is the plotline revolving around arvo a young Russian magnet Clementine and Jane encounter while scavenging Jane is a somewhat new member to their group and they already don't fully trust her especially Kenny and she's also extremely individualistic compared to many of the other characters we've seen in the game so far and she only trusts Clementine or at the very least she can manipulate Clementine into trusting her to suit her own ends when they encounter arvo he has a bag filled with valuable supplies which he tries to keep from them you as the player can choose whether to go against Jane's demands and let arvo take the supplies or do as she says and steal them regardless of your choice though our Beau and his people will later Rob and attack clementines group thus confirming Jane's distrust of strangers and leaving you as the person who made the disease be it good or bad to question whether there's any points in doing anything good for other people the zombie genre rarely tells us as an audience that we should try and trust other people from a storytelling perspective it can create a certain amount of tension and mystery by having the questions lingering in the air but media is also a teacher and having a me versus the world mentality can also be immensely harmful for all parties involved even when applying that mindset to everyday life look at this wonderful woman who just told me to go after myself and my my own effing business who just bought the entire store of paper towels toilet paper so that nobody else can have any talk two communities are a bad idea another thing the zombie genre teaches us is that even though small groups are okay other groups and much larger groups on to be trusted or that their success as a collective comes with a catch they might be ruled by a despot eliminating elderly or disabled people or perhaps they're cannibals either way in the message is clear that survival as a larger collective isn't worthwhile because there has to be a cost in our current real-life situation of course being in a large group is absolutely not recommended but when facing a threat like zombies is hard to argue against remaining as a collective you have more sets of eyes more people to help defend wider skill set available and more chances to socialize is the end of the world why wouldn't you want more than three or four people to talk to all the time the main argument that the zombie genre tends to put forward is that with large groups of people there's more mouths to feed but it tends to ignore the facts that the owner of those mouths can also contribute to the group effort also I don't know how cannibalism fixes anything you're gonna run out of people to eat soon enough and as far as I'm aware the closest analogue to human flesh is spam which even though I like I don't think I could tolerate more than a couple times a month you can always go vegan to you weirdos part three be selfish okay here's a hypothetical situation for you let's say you're in a zombie apocalypse and you found yourself a nice big stash of foods pick whatever you want for me I'll say Trader Joe's delicious chocolate-covered peanut butter filled pretzels however it turns out someone else has also discovered this food at the same time as you you're armed with a bat and they're armed with them - what do you do here do you get into a bad fight possibly maiming or killing them or even losing the fight entirely leaving you in a worse position than you were before or should you talk to this person perhaps explaining why you need the food ask them why they need them how much you both need maybe you simply agree to split the stash in half and go your separate ways you could even go a step further and ask this person if they want to team up and look for food together even temporarily of course the answer isn't so simple but given the decades of zombie media we've consumed and how we've seen characters react to these situations it's easy to think well how can I trust this other person I have to survive and for all I know they might be lying I may need to lie too in order to validate my need for this food so they'll give it to me and what if he finds out later that I lied about how many people I need to feed even if we did go our separate ways after splitting the food what's stopping this person from finding me and stealing the food possibly even killing me for it there are so many variables at play here and it's something that makes the genre interesting the need for survival introduces so many moral gray zones there is possible you'll need to do some downright awful things in order to simply stay alive but ask yourself this doesn't need to be this way of course it doesn't things may not turn out like we expected them every time but at the very least we can try and achieve an outcome that's beneficial to everyone you don't need all the chocolate-covered peanut butter filled pretzels you need friends at least that's when I tell myself every time I open the bag thankfully much of the zombie media we see doesn't portray selfishness as a good thing it tends to be the case that we're presented with a dilemma for the characters when it comes to scenarios like the ones I just mentioned I honestly can't think of the last time that I saw a movie TV show or game where more than one community existed and they had mutual trades of goods and services between them of course if you can think of any of them please let me know in the comments whenever we do see someone who's selfish to an extreme they're painted as the villain or cowardly you root for their demise take for example young sook in chained to Busan who is basically a real-life version of the trolley problem taken to the extreme there's also Joel from The Last of Us we saw what led to him making his decision to save Ellie but as a result he probably doomed the human race so it wasn't hard to be disgusted by his actions despite empathizing with him throughout the game look I get that a pandemic might make you think oh god I need to hold all the toilet paper I can if I'm gonna be stuck indoors you better believe I'll be moving but relax a little yes you should be prepared and honestly you should look into buying a bidet they're super easy to install affordable better for the environment a much cleaner it might seem weird at first but sorry I'm getting sidetracked we have an abundance of food to go around ludicrous amounts of it gets thrown away every single day despite the fact that people are going starving it's good to minimize the times you have to leave the house but next time you go out to get groceries and you see that there's plenty of meat milk and breads on the shelves don't take as many as you can take as much as you need maybe a little bit extra selfishness isn't a virtue in situations like a pandemic it comes at the cost of someone else's health you might be fit and healthy but you're one shopping trip where you buy up too much might mean that someone with a weaker immune system might have to go and endanger themselves also learn to make bread it's super easy and cheap and much healthier than a prepackaged stuff you'll buy in the supermarket zombie media has been a terrible teacher I'm not saying the genre is bad I've enjoyed plenty of things within the genre especially video games Telltale's The Walking Dead is probably one of my all-time favorite games and no other game has made me cry like that until seeing that ending The Last of Us is really good left 4 dead is tremendously fun as movies go train to Busan is probably one of the best zombie movies out there Zombieland was a nice departure from the stuff you typically see in the genre the sequel was a little flaccid but not terrible and of course this classics like Romero's Dawn of the Dead as for TV shows nothing really does anything for me The Walking Dead and fear of The Walking Dead is basically 10 seasons plus of people arguing but I haven't watched us in season 3 did you know the Walking Dead wiki actually has an entire page dedicated to the theme of distrust turns out there's quite a lot of it but this is my point really you don't have to distrust people to survive the zombie genre and the post apocalypse your honor in general teaches us that survival is contingent on being suspicious of everyone despite the fact that they all share similar needs I know that perhaps a zombie movie where everyone gets along might not have the tense atmosphere of your traditional one but isn't it worth trying to do something a little different after all we're more powerful when we work together but if someone out there does make a zombie movie TV show or walk game that shows a community working together please just call them zombies or bitey boys are behind monitor in all seriousness please stay safe minimize the amount of times you leave the house by only going out for essentials and if you're helped by a service worker like a grocery store employee if you can afford to do so please give them a tip they're working so hard right now wash your hands regularly for at least 20 seconds at a time maintain your distance from strangers and help people if you can remain safe while doing so this is a very real threat we need to work together to stop it in the meantime if you have some spare time while in quarantine please consider checking out my other videos and if you like what I do subscribing and liking really helps me out and as always take care of yourself but please take care of other people too

Channel: Salari

Views: 33,929

Rating: 4.9085536 out of 5

Keywords: zombies, coronavirus, covid-19, news, current events, pandemic, video games, movies, film, television, the walking dead, telltale games, the last of us, the last of us 2, dawn of the dead, amc, china, wuhan, italy, iran, trump, donald trump, essay, comedy, train to busan, analysis, review, deaths, death count, morbidity, death rate, survival rate, cdc, 28 days later, shaun of the dead, disneyworld, ellen, imagine, gal gadot, world war z, zombieland, zombieland 2, train to busan 2, celebrities, tv

Id: G2-hAAuuhek

Length: 19min 33sec (1173 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/rasburry97]

One thing is will hopefully help with is doomsday-prepper scam products that are finally being tested in this crisis. Power distrobution units, bulk food, private bunkers. All shit designed to take advantage of people who would in all likelihood never actually use it.

I hope they get exposed before they've completely run away with the money. Doomsday folk are weird, but nothing excuses predatory business practices.