JAMIE SUE AUSTIN

I am afraid of zombies.

Trust me.  I have fully rationalized the likelihood of a zombie incursion and have pinned down the mathematical probability of a real life 28 Days Later to being slightly less than the probability of a Serpent and the Rainbow encounter… which I determined, through complex permutation of the facts at hand,  was naught negative nill to the third power.

But I am still afraid of zombies.

Well,  not zombies so much as the concept that they represent.   Zombies symbolize the collective fears of a rapidly growing industrial population, pared down, packaged, and regurgitated in an easily digestible media bits.  Served with popcorn.  Zombies call into essence the evils of human interaction, entropic societal crash, pandemic disease, and the base nature of group mob mentality.

More correctly, I am not afraid of zombies…but of people.  What is there not to fear from a uniform lack of coherent will among the populous— a thronging mass of gelatin minded, goose-stepping, slack jaws imposing military rule on the few thinking upright walking mammals left on the planet?  Why exactly shouldn’t I be concerned about the demise of civilized culture and the beautifully intricate systems of scientific categorization and governmental safe guards that have been painstakingly developed over centuries?  After all, it is this structure that keeps the brutality of man in check. 

That is to say that I am afraid of the shear violence each individual is inherently capable of, or more precisely the inflection of such violence on my person.  I fear being pummeled into oblivion by hairless apes unable to evolve past physical solutions to intellectual dilemmas.  To be precise… I am afraid of oblivion….the utter nothing that awaits us at the end of the trail…the total lack of destination…the eventual and ineffable end of existence and all things…  of death.  Of death without answers.  Of death without knowledge of the purpose of life.  Of death sans 42.

And spiders.

I’m afraid of spiders.