How you equip yourself for a zombie apocalypse depends largely on your personal belief systems. Are you going to focus solely on self-preservation? Or is restoring order to your country a transcendent objective? How willing are you to share your resources with strangers? And how discriminating will you be in shooting other human beings?
Author Daniel Drezner tackles such moral dilemmas on a global level in his book Theories of International Politics and Zombies. Drezner is the real deal, by the way, a professor of international politics at Tufts University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Here’s how he breaks down America’s potential responses to a global zombie pandemic by ideology:
Realists would not risk American blood and treasure being the world’s zombie police. In fact, they would take advantage of the outbreak in other countries to advance our own political and economic strength. It’s every country for itself, especially under these circumstances.
Liberals would focus on global cooperation to quell the problem through international bodies like the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Even if not every country pulls its weight, we will be better off by at least trying to coordinate our policies with other governments.
Neoconservatives would take swift, unilateral, military action and start establishing strong anti-zombie bastions worldwide. There’s no time to haggle with second-tier players about what the best course of action is. Zombies are an evil threat and must be dealt with decisively.
Constructivists would use the zombie epidemic as a means of uniting humanity’s differing worldwide cultures. They would emphasize what we all share in common as people and establish a moral peer pressure for nations to act bravely and nobly in the face of the zombie crisis.
I find it interesting that these philosophies are also relevant on a micro level as they pertain to the individual person facing a zombie apocalypse – where every man’s home is his castle, and his land his kingdom. What would your approach be?
