The whole "Zombie Apocalypse" thing has finally achieved patent absurdity.

The BBQ Pit
1

For years there has been a meme, particularly among gun owners (but certainly not limited to them), where someone asks about what guns you would like to have in case of zombie attack, also known as “Zombie Apocalypse” or “SHTF” (Shit Hits The Fan).

Initially it was somewhat amusing in that it was a whimsical way of asking what your favorite guns are. Then it took off, and now at any given time on a gun forum you can find a large number of these questions along with endless references to it. It has long since become annoying, almost grating. The proliferation of first-person-shooter zombie games has helped spread this to kids, so now they discuss in earnest what guns would be best even though a good number of them only know what they’ve gleaned from video games, which is hardly the best way to learn about guns.

Companies have also jumped on the bandwagon with novelty products that people eat up, again in an attempt to be whimsical but instead making themselves look silly.

I object to this now, and have for a long time, because such silliness has no place in a genuine discussion of weapons. They are serious business, and this makes them somewhat less serious. After all, zombies do not exist and will never exist, but adults and children are discussing them at around the same level, which is something that should never happen, especially with firearms. It’s not a game, it’s not a joke.

Lest you think I am overreacting, I present to you the logical end result of this tomfoolery:

Hornady’s “Just In Case!” Zombie-Max ammunition

I want you to carefully note the verbiage on the box:

WARNING: THIS IS LIVE AMMUNITION
THIS IS NOT A TOY

Something like that should go without saying. Yet when you look at the package and read the sales rap, you can see why they would have to say that. Here, let me post their disclaimer on the product page:

Hardy har.

Oh, and did you look at the cost? $25.91 for 20 in .40 S&W. You’re paying premium price for the joke. Looks like the joke’s on us, in more ways than one.

This has got to stop. Seriously. Gun-related stuff is not a joke. It’s OK to find some humor, like the yahoo who gave his wife a Desert Eagle, which proceeded to pop her in the nose with the recoil (the guy was an ass, but what gun owner hasn’t had an experience like that?), but this is just too much and too far.

2

What a total rip-off.

Everyone knows that .223 or 7.62 are simply unsuitable for killing zombies. Shotguns and small-caliber long guns are the way to do. Anyone selling large caliber ammunition for killing zombies is OF COURSE trying to rip you off.

3

I agree with the OP, stop with the Zombie hate, it is grating.

4

The “zombie apocalypse meme” is a bit scarier than your OP, Doors. I’ve been doing a little looking into it for Cecil and as a strange fetishized movement it’s gone way past being just an internet joke taken too far. I believe I’ve mentioned before, but Cecil receives a lot of mail on zombies and zombie-related topics, and columns and staff reports about zombies receive a disproportionate number of page hits. I’ve found message boards and sites where people talk seriously about a zombie conspiracy which dates back to…well, any number of waypoints.

  • Zombies were an offshoot of the top-secret Clinton “super soldiers” program, originally bred to do house-to-house gun sweeps for the ATF.

  • Zombies are being made by Obama for when he starts his house-to-house gun sweeps after declaring nationwide martial law the day after the next election.

  • Zombies are being made by Al Qaeda, “proven” by a fake news report that the US intercepted containers of white powder they thought were anthrax, but were really zombie dust from Haiti.

  • The concern about the border with Mexico? Fear that a pandemic of zombie virus will turn Mexicans into shambling ill-dressed hordes crossing the borders looking for food. The “chupacabra” legend is of course really about a zombie.

The most disturbing thing of all is reading people’s postings where they practically wax poetic about sex with zombies, and the eroticism of eating others/being eaten alive during sex. They make the vampire gawth cults look almost normal.

And you’re right, this whole mania feeds into the separatist/survivalist mentality, the same people who keep a dog-eared copy of The Turner Diaries by their bedside, sitting on top of crates of 7.62x39 they’re using as bedroom furniture. And they’ll say things like “Did you know blacks are TEN TIMES MORE LIKELY to become infected by the zombie virus? Just like music and basketball, it’s in their blood!” Yes, the plantations of the Olde South? Staffed largely by zombies, and the Civil War was not about slavery, so much as zombie eradication. :rolleyes:

Surely some are just going with the joke, but others really don’t seem to be.

5

Grrrr… Arrrrgh…

6

It’s silly, but…

Geeks have for a long time collected swords. Sharpened swords. Very lethal weaponry. I have at least one sword I would feel very comfortable attacking someone with whom I meant to kill. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a display piece.

The premium pricing actually works in its favor; this isn’t ammo you’re going to want to purchase to use, just to collect. If you’re stupid enough to believe these are somehow better than regular bullets, you shouldn’t be allowed near guns anyway.

Maybe they shouldn’t have made it real ammunition (okay, probably they shouldn’t have), but as gun-related equipment goes, this is pretty low on the risk list. At worst it’s parting fools who truly believe in a coming zombie apocalypse with their money.

7

If a vegan gets zombiefied, do they crave cauliflower?

8

Grains.

People really believe this? I mean, I am a zombie/PAW fan, and I cruise the Zombie Squad website forums from time to time, mostly for the fiction writing, but even there, the members recognize that they are using the idea of zombies to stand in for a breakdown of civilization of some unknown type.

9

Graaaaaaaaaaaains…

10

You win the thread.

11

If a vegan gets zombified, how can you tell?

12

Well played.

[QUOTE=Kolga]
People really believe this? I mean, I am a zombie/PAW fan, and I cruise the Zombie Squad website forums from time to time, mostly for the fiction writing, but even there, the members recognize that they are using the idea of zombies to stand in for a breakdown of civilization of some unknown type.
[/QUOTE]

I am forced to believe that it has taken on some sort of evolved meaning, because, as Una points out, it has gone well beyond what one would expect from a joke.

Like I said, the variation is “SHTF”, which is only slightly more plausible, yet that is taken very seriously by a lot of people. I mean, come on, a civil war or massive civil unrest? An invasion of the United States? Right. I suspect that “zombies” is used as a proxy for that. The problem is that kids are getting into the act, and that is a line that should not ever be blurred when it comes to firearms.

13

That’s it, I’m invisible around here.

14

Yours was on target but a little too subtle.

15

I think the SDMB is the wrong place to look for empathy on this, Airman Doors.

During a zombie apocalypse, the liberal core of this community will be arguing that ‘zombie’ is a racist term, and that ‘raised Americans’ are being discriminated against left and right. Ironic that the pubbies are all for raising from the dead when it’s Jesus, but as soon as a liberal effete rises from the dead, it’s OK to gun them down.

Before you start in on the ‘attacking breathers and eating their brains’ shtick, that’s painting a huge group with a broad brush. Besides, breathers attack each other too, and have been known to eat their brains.

16

Undead-American, please. Unliving abominations against nature deserve the same political correctness as everyone.

17

Invisible vegan zombies??? We’re doomed!

18

Be fair though: you have to give Hornady kudos for this innovative new campaign tapping the ever lucrative “idiot” market.

19

I’m afraid that this particular liberal, who has softened his stance on gun ownership during his years in the United States, doesn’t see what the big fucking deal is.

Gun owners are constantly telling us that guns are just another tool, that they are safe in the hands of a responsible and informed user, that they don’t just “go off” and kill people by accident, and that there’s nothing wrong with teaching kids to shoot as long as it’s done responsibly.

If i accept that all of this is true (and, for the most part, i think i do), then why are a few jokes about the zombie apocalypse suddenly such a big fucking deal? There are plenty of “deadly serious” topics that spawn insider jokes and stupid consumer paraphernalia and collectors’ items.

Intelligent and responsible gun owners—the sort of people who, you constantly assure us, constitute the vast majority of gun owners—surely understand the difference between joking about taking out zombies, on the one hand, and discussing proper firearm use, on the other. They know that, while the actor on The Walking Dead might blast away at zombies with impunity, they should never aim a real gun at a real person unless in self-defense.

As for the crazy fringe groups discussed by Una, surely you recognize that people this fucking loony will always find something to be paranoid about, or some imaginary danger to guard against. It’s not the “zombie apocalypse” rhetoric that makes these people scary and dangerous, or that is the cause of their separatist or survivalist mentality. What makes them scary and dangerous is that they are fucking whack jobs, and if there were no “zombie apocalypse” thing to latch onto, they’d find something else quickly enough. The “zombie apocalypse” is, in this case, merely a symptom and not the cause of the problem.

In short: Yawn.

20

I collect weapons, though don’t own any guns, and I think the zombie apocalypse meme is amusing. Personally, I think it’s at least more interesting than how those discussions would go before it became popular, like dealing with a post-nuclear holocaust world or the like.

Of course, anyone who takes it too far, as in seriously believing it or sexualizing it or whatever is, at least creepy, and possibly crazy. But the bullets mentioned in the OP just seem like a company capitalizing on the meme to get a few extra bucks out of people who believe it’s a real possibility or just want to collect zombie stuff. I don’t see any real harm there.