Hi, kids–
Haven’t blogged about zombies in a while. I was traveling last weekend and I ended up reading the first 2 of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. I put that off, like, as long as I could so I wouldn’t be all part of the trend or something, but I read ’em and posted my thoughts over on my Goodreads account. So if you’re on Goodreads, you can go check out my thoughts over there. Fave character in that series thus far is, hands down, Lisbeth Salander. A woman I definitely would not want to be friends with, but also one I wouldn’t want to be enemies with and someone I’d hire in a heartbeat to track someone down.
Anyway, let’s chat about things to do and not to do during a zombie apocalypse. First and foremost, people, I think we just really need to get this out on the table: SEX.
Want some of this? Keep reading…
Okay, so for those of us who are following AMC’s Walking Dead, then the show we all just saw last Sunday was pretty freaking intense. But I want to discuss one of the subplots, and that’s the pregnancy of Rick’s wife, Lori.
Friends and I were discussing whether or not Rick is the biological father of this baby. After all, way back in Season 1, remember Lori and Shane were pretty hot n’ heavy, so he could realistically be the father, especially since chronology seems to be a bit unclear.
As those of you who are following the series know, Rick found out about the pregnancy in the show before last, and confronted her about it and she came clean about that and about her tryst with Shane. Rick seemed to have suspected that, and he seems okay with it, because after all, Lori thought he was dead. Then Rick tells Shane about Lori’s pregnancy and from Shane’s reaction, I figured he was thinking he might be the father, but didn’t say anything because he might have been assuming Rick didn’t know that he and Lori had a thing.
All right, fine. Lori’s pregnant and for whatever reasons, couldn’t bring herself to go through with the pills to terminate the pregnancy (an incident that may not have been entirely accurate) — the “morning after” pills are supposed to be used the day after unprotected sex, not weeks into a pregnancy. But, given that this is a zombie apocalypse and morning after pills may be a bit hard to come by, I can ride with artistic license in that regard.
Here’s what I’m really thinking about. Sex. As in, why the HELL would you have unprotected sex during a zombie apocalypse? Or ANY apocalypse, for that matter? Or at all? I understand the very human need for intimacy and release during a stressful time like that, and I can buy that people need to do the deed now and again for a sense of normalcy, but why the hell, if you engage in heterosexual sex, would you as a woman take the chance that you could become pregnant as a result? Lori flat-out tells Rick that. Why the hell would she want to bring a child into the world as they know it?
The same goes for Andrea and Shane. I don’t recall that Shane whipped out a condom before engaging in a little somethin’ somethin’ with her. About the only person who was remotely thinking along those lines was Glenn, and it was kind of an aside, as he was in the pharmacy on a medical mission with Maggie from the farm and happened to be in the area where condoms would be kept. So he picks up a box, and he’s looking at it like maybe he’s thinking back to more normal times, and then Maggie confronts him about it and he gets entirely flustered but they, too, do the deed (and hopefully, Glenn put those condoms to use).
Again, I totally get why people would need to be sexual every now and then during a zombie apocalypse. What I’m not getting is the lack of thought to consequences. Is that really something that would carry over from pre-apocalypse days? After all, everybody who has survived to this point is on high alert. Patrols, recon, personal safety, weapons use. Everything they do is about staying alive, and about consequences for the choices they make. Why do those thoughts not carry over to sex? It’s really not that difficult, now that they’re based on the farm (not sure how long that’ll last) to get a bunch of condoms from the pharmacy and have at, now that they have sort of a more permanent base. It’s also not that difficult to achieve sexual release without heterosexual penetration (shocking, I know. But you’ll have to believe me on that).
And what about STDs? I mean, seriously. Let’s just suppose you fall in with a group of survivors like this and you end up doing the deed with someone. It would really suck to get nailed with an STD when you can’t just go to the doctor to deal with it. Or, god forbid, what if you’re exposed to HIV? And if you get pregnant, that makes you a burden of another sort for survivors. And, sex might lead to weird situations/drama between the parties involved that spills over into the group, creating other problems.
On the flipside, maybe people just don’t care because maybe they don’t think they’re going to live that long, anyway. But getting saddled with a pregnancy during a zombie apocalypse? Okay, thanks for perpetuating the human race, but at this point, it’s another potential zombie, or another person you love that you’ll probably have to see die.
Regardless, there’s my survival tip. Think about consequences in every facet of your life if you’re caught in a zombie apocalypse, including the sex facet. To be clear, I’m not at all against sex. But when sex becomes something that could 1) endanger your health 2) endanger the health/overall cohesiveness of the group or 3) end in pregnancy that might also damage group cohesiveness, then it’s something that needs to be considered much more carefully than what I’m seeing among the survivors in Walking Dead. And frankly, needs to be considered carefully even without an apocalypse.
Sure, keeping a stash of condoms is helpful, if you engage in gay male or heterosexual sex. But remember, fallout from the sex act with another survivor in a very small group of people lends itself to other kinds of potential drama (as we’re seeing with Glenn and Maggie) on a wider scale beyond pregnancy or STDs.
We are all human, and the sex drive is part of our human needs and desires. But survival is tantamount in an apocalypse, and sex cannot be separated from that very basic and primal aspect of who we are and it should, thus, fall on our survival lists as something to be carefully weighed before we opt to do it. If we think about consequences of travel in a zombie-infested land and about consequences of whether we go out to look for food on a certain day, and consequences of where we even go to the bathroom on any given day, then we should be capable of thinking about consequences of an act of sex with another survivor.
Which might, actually, be a good lesson for us during pre-apocalypse days, as well. Think before you dink. 😀
Okay, friends! Happy reading and happy safe (apocalyptic) sex!
Andi Marquette 