They Are Coming For Us!

If there is one thing I fear almost as much as robots, it is zombies.  Unlike the cold, murderous efficiency of robots, zombies are driven purely by hunger. Hunger for brains. There is no subverting their internal logic with clever riddles. There is no introducing a computer virus that disables the central robot brain (a la Jeff Goldblum’s world-saving heroics in Independence Day). And most importantly, if you are bit by a zombie, there is no way to stop yourself from becoming one (excepting of course the honorable act of blowing your own brains out).

Perhaps it is the stark contrast between the two threats that drives my terror. While a robot takeover would be brutal, there would probably be fewer human casualties. It’s far more likely we’d be conscripted into slavery, perhaps as robot batteries like in The Matrix. With the undead, if the threat becomes too large we’d simply have to board up cities and let the zombies feast, a chilling prospect indeed.

On the other hand, robots would be far more difficult to resist and are already in control of the world’s major financial networks, transportation networks, communications, and anything else that operates using computers. A zombie outbreak, if caught in the early stage, could be disposed of by a posse of tough nosed former convicts and their leader: a retired Army sergeant who, while gruff on the exterior, has a heart of gold.

The most dangerous threat of all, as depicted in the above picture from RobotZombie.com, is, of course, the Robot-Zombie hybrid. Can you even begin to imagine the sheer terror of a Zombie’s bloodlust with a robot’s cold internal logic and vastly superior strength, speed, and efficiency. It is a truly devastating and horrifying combination.

I don’t think there would be any stopping a large and organized robot zombie army. There is simply no precedent to deal with that kind of threat. The only way to even begin planning for such a terrifying assault would be to memorize Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide and Daniel H. Wilson’s How to Survive a Robot Uprising, and combine their advice into some kind of super encyclopedia of defensive tactics.