#43 Last Stand on Zombie Island: Why Guns Are Basically Balls During A Zombie Apocalypse

This week I’m turning Chris Writes About The End Of The World into an open forum for debate. Please welcome another Chris Who Writes About The End Of The World, Christopher Eger. Christopher Eger’s new book, Last Stand on Zombie Island, aims to take a more realistic look at the zombie apocalypse. One of the areas Chris is able to be particularly accurate about is the description of guns and the way they’re used, being a self described “recovering gun nut”.

On hearing about this, I asked Chris to respond to the self-evident truth that, should the zombie apocalypse actually happen, guns would actually be totally useless.

Here’s my argument:

Why Guns Would Be Useless During A Zombie Apocalypse
Let’s get one thing clear from the outset. We all know that the double barrelled shotgun is the second coolest weapon for killing zombies, being only just beaten out by the chainsaw. The Bruce-Campbell-Combo is still unmatched in the annals of zombie killing awesomeness.

However like the chainsaw, the double barrel shotgun, and indeed, any firearm, will inevitably get you killed in an actual zombie apocalypse. With the chainsaw, the reasons behind it killing you are obvious- within thirty second you’ll have accidentally chopped your own legs off because you’re an idiot. With firearms it’s a little more complicated.

Firstly, in the interests of full disclosure, I’m not a big fan of guns outside of the NERF variety, and the computer generated variety. I live in a country with no second amendment, where the only people with guns are farmers, and farmers’ mums. When I see police officers with guns I get nervous, because historically they’ve not proven completely trustworthy with sticks.

However, all of this is irrelevant to the fact that when law and order breaks down and our neighbours turn into blood thirsty ambulant corpses, even if you’re well trained a gun will get you killed faster than being the optimistic, cheery character who gives the other survivors reason to believe there is still hope in the world. This is for three reasons.

One: Guns Break
Guns have moving parts. Moving parts can go wrong. Even if you clean and maintain your gun properly on a regular basis, every piece of that weapon is going to subject to Murphy’s Law and it’s just waiting for the absolute worst possible moment to go kafooey.

Two: Ammo Runs OutThe reason the zombie apocalypse, and here we’re talking about a true, George Romero zombie apocalypse rather than anything based on “infection”, is that everyone who dies becomes a soldier for the other side. Given that everybody dies, this means that barring destruction of the brain sooner or later every single human being is going to be playing for the other team. Now I’m sure that bullets actually outnumber humans by now, and should we feel the need we could probably all shoot ourselves in the head and leave plenty of bullets left over, but you don’t have that many bullets. However many zombies you kill, more are going to keep coming, and eventually you’re going to have to make a decision about what to do with that last bullet.

Three: Your Gun Is A Dinner BellAs I mentioned, in a zombie apocalypse everyone who isn’t you or your merry band of survivors is probably a zombie. Now zombies are very stupid. They pretty much walk directly towards the nearest thing that’s moving around or making noise.

You know what makes a shitload of noise? A gun going off.  Even say you’re super-well equipped for the zombie apocalypse, and have silencers, you know what a silenced gun sounds like?


You hear that sound a bit like a gun going off right after the sound of the gun going off? That’s an echo.

You kill one zombie with a gun, you’ll attract three. You kill those three, nine more have turned up. Sooner or later you’re going to go back to point two of this list.

So What Should You Do Instead?Which is all very well, but zombies have got to die, right? What sort of hippy, liberal wusspants solution would I suggest? Hugging them to death? Blowing bong smoke in their faces until they need a sit down? That wouldn’t work, it would just give them zombie munchies!

Actually, my solution is very straightforward. The only weapon you need for the zombie apocalypse is a sturdy shovel with a sharpened blade. It never runs out of ammo and there’s far less that can go wrong with it. The lengthy wooden shaft allows you to stay out of arms reach of the zombies, with the handle letting you put some force behind it as you jab it into the necks and faces of the approaching horde. Yes, there is a risk the zombies will simply grab hold of the shovel and start biting it, but if you’re smart enough to bring a spare you can beat the zombies to death with that while they’re chewing your first one.

So that is why when the dead begin to rise you should ignore the hunting and fishing shop and instead head for the garden centre.

Why Guns Would Actually Be Totally Awesome During A Zombie Apocalypse

Thanks to Chris for the invitation to visit your choice of armament against the seething hordes of the shambling and running undead. I agree wholeheartedly that any weapon at all is better than the hippy hug-a-zombie approach. We started hugging the Soviets a few decades ago and you see where that got us! What I do disagree on, is that firearms are the go-to weapon of choice over shovels in the upcoming zombie apocalypse.

Let us look briefly at the history of weapons. From prehistoric times to the dystopian future, there have been roughly two types of weapons: melee and ranged

Melee weapons are anything that has to be held and engaged with at extreme close quarters. Examples of these are axes, machete, swords, chainsaw, clubs and bats, brass knuckles, tins of soup, shovels, golf clubs, bayonets, et al. The other Chris is a fan of the melee weapon. Sharpened shovels indeed.

I wish him luck.

I, on the other hand, am a ranged weapon proponent. Ranged weapons are something that can be fired accurately further than a melee weapon can be thrown. Examples of these are bows, flamethrowers, some javelins, and projectile weapons (i.e. firearms)

The advantage of ranged weapons of melee weapons is the key of the reactionary gap. It has long been accepted fact, verified by studies and experiments that there is a '21-foot rule' as far as reactionary gaps. For the record, the 21-Foot Rule, says that in the time it takes the average firearm-equipped law enforcement officer to recognize a threat, draw his sidearm and fire 2 rounds at the center mass of an attacking subject, said average subject charging the officer with a melee edged weapon can cover a distance of 21 feet. If the shooter is slower than the average trained law enforcement officer or the attacker (zombie?) faster, the reactionary gap is more. In short, with a ranged weapon it is possible to engage a zombie from a safe distance.

With a melee weapon, you have to get bad-breath close, which is close enough to infect. In addition, as proven by hundreds of films, books and graphic novels on the undead, zombies tend to congregate in large swarms or hordes. If presented with having to defend against a group of twenty undead with either a shovel or a firearm (with more than twenty rounds,) I would take the firearm all day.

With melee a weapon, their prime advantage is in the short training period required. You can impart the techniques needed to turn a fireplace poker into an effective weapon to the average person in less than a minute. Granted, I would prefer a melee weapon to no weapon at all, but it would not be my first choice if a firearm were available. It should be recognized, however, that with a firearm, you have to give the user basic weapon's nomenclature, safety, and manipulation training, which, even under pressure, cannot be skipped. If you plan on the zombie apocalypse (and who doesn’t, right?) then this training needs to take place before hand.

Classic ranged weapons such as bows and javelins are often not too high up on the list of zombie apocalypse survival tools. It is just too hard to justify becoming efficient enough with a ranged weapon that it is often impossible to carry more than 10-20 projectiles for to justify it. Flamethrowers are just a bad idea (who wants to have flaming zombies running amok?) This leaves the firearm as the superheavyweight champion of ranged weapons.

A melee weapon needs to be wielded by an arguably young and fit person. Both young and old, sick and well, can use a firearm, providing the would-be zombie assassin is trained in its operation. Example given, your 80-year old grandfather may not be able to hold his own against five zombies in his front yard with only a garden hoe. However, this same hardcase, who had spent his youth battling Rommel in North Africa before Germans knew of techno music, could come out on top if he had an old shotgun and a pocketful of shells.

Even in countries with very strict firearms registration laws such as the UK and Australia, it remains possible to own modern shotguns and other firearms with a certificate. According to figures from the Guardian, in 2011 no less than 1.8 million legally held guns were on record just in England and Wales alone. Granted this is still only about 3300 guns per 100,000 populations, but can you guess to reason which 3300 people would be better equipped in the event of a zombie apocalypse?

*For the record Christopher Eger also recommends nuclear depth charges for use against mermaids, weaponized spider monkeys against aliens, and 84mm antitank rockets with hyperbaric warheads against most bigfoot/yeti type creatures, (provided, of course, that the above prove hostile.) Hey, if they ask for it, they get it.

So there you have it, the case for and against guns as the weapon of choice during the zombie apocalypse. Now you have the information, you can make your own mind up that this new, interloping Chris is wrong!


Still, it's worth checking out his book, which you can find here.

Thanks for taking part Chris, and I wish you well before your imminent, painful death at the hands of the Undead.

#42 Juan of the Dead: Cuban Shaun of the Dead, No Really

First, a disclaimer. Reviewers are really, really lazy people. This is why we spend our time, as it’s often been observed, criticising the work’s of others rather than doing anything productive ourselves. This is why you will so often read reviews that include the phases “An action-packed thrill ride!” or “Fun for the whole family!” And those phrases will always include an exclamation mark, not because the review is particularly enthusiastic about what they’re saying, but because the full stop is smaller and thus slightly harder to find on the keyboard.

This is why when you read the quote “A cross between Indiana Jones, Blade Runner & Star Wars” you should expect not the most mind-blowingly awesome film ever made, but Super Mario Bros, the movie.

A lot of geeks first became disillusioned with the world when they saw The Phantom Menace. For me it was when I was 10 years old and saw this on video for the first time.

I wanted to acknowledge that, because in the face of Juan of the Dead a lot of people have been using the phrase “A Cuban Shaun of the Dead”. On reading that phrase you most probably made the assumption “So it’s a zombie film with jokes in, and it’s set in Cuba, and the reviewer was writing this before knocking off to the pub early”. Firstly- yes, you’re right, every single one of those things is true. It is a zombie film, it is set in Cuba and the reviewer is gasping for a pint, it’s got to be, what? Three PM already?

It's their own fault for using a vaguely similar font.

But aside from that, it’s also true. Juan of the Dead is exactly a Cuban Shaun of the Dead. I’m going to explain how in a second, but first I just want to put our their some of my ideas for “Things that rhyme with ‘Dawn’ Of The Dead” movie ideas.

Prawn of the Dead- Finding Nemo but with zombies.

Porn of the Dead- Obvious.

Pawn of the Dead- The lowly Pawns finally realise they have more in common with each other than the aristocratic chess pieces on either side of the board, and rise up against them.

Gorn of the Dead- The giant lizard aliens seen in the original Star Trek episode “Arena” get infected by a zombie virus.

Juan of the Dead stars a likeable but essentially deadbeat guy with a loveable, chubby and bromantic sidekick. They learn about the zombie apocalypse through the TV and respond in apathetically, not really realising that the world has gone to hell until far too late. Over the course of the film Juan has to overcome his slacker-ish nature to win back an estranged loved one (in this case a daughter, rather than a girlfriend).

And to be clear, none of this is meant as a criticism of Juan of the Dead. As I love mentioning, writers are thieving bastards, and if you’re going to steal, steal from the best. But more than that, Juan of the Dead steals blatantly from Shaun, and then makes it its own.

Ooh, wait, I’ve got some more!

Quorn of the Dead- Vegetarian zombies.

Faun of the Dead- Getting bitten by the infected inexplicably gives you the legs of a goat.

Lawn of the Dead- Zombie grass. More frightening than it sounds.

Forn(ication) of the Dead- See Porn of the Dead.

Corn of the Dead- Sequel to Lawn of the Dead. Zombie ears of corn can only be defeated with hot oil, resulting in weirdly disgusting scenes of them popping on the spot.

Bjorn of the Dead- An outbreak during a production of Mama Mia with terrifying consequences.

Juan of the Dead owns the Cuban Shaun of the Dead label by making the most of the Cuban part of it. Just as Shaun of the Dead makes the most of its London setting, every scene of Juan of the Dead is firmly grounded in Cuba, from the relationships between the neighbours in Juan’s block of flats, to the news’ original description of the zombies as “dissidents” (and in keeping with the “Don’t call them zombies” rule, the survivors refer to zombies as dissidents for the rest of the film).

Even in cases where jokes were lifted entirely wholesale from Shaun of the Dead, Juan pushes them further and puts its own twist on them.

Juan of the Dead is also willing go further and darker with its jokes than Shaun of the Dead. While Shaun was very much set in the version of Britain seen in our sitcoms and romcoms, where you can be a bit of an arsehole but must essentially be an alright guy, in Juan of the Dead there are characters who really don’t think too much about using a zombie apocalypse as a chance to off a couple of people they don’t like too much anyway.

Hey, I just realised something! Rhyming dictionaries!

Yawn of the Dead- Sleepy people rise up and bite people. They people they bite become sleepy. The people they bite become sleepy, until soon nobody can be bothered to get out of bed.

Fawn of the Dead- Bambi’s dad is back from the grave, and he’s pissed off.

Spawn of the Dead- Zombie tadpoles will fuck you up.

Drawn of the Dead- Zombie stick-men.

Awn of the Dead- Hair or bristle-like appendages on plants spread a deadly zombie virus.

Bourne of the Dead- Matt Damon has amnesia and fights zombies.

Horn of the Dead- An adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist play Rhinoceros, only done accurately in a way that’s nothing like its previous movie adaptation, Zombie Strippers (true story).

In the end, Juan of the Dead reminded me why I keep coming back to zombie movies over and over again, and it’s not just because I’ve set myself up to have to keep a blog about them updated on a semi-regular basis.

Even when you can tell, really obviously, where a zombie film is getting its inspiration room, that comes side by side with seeing what new things they’re bringing to the table, and how they’re interpreting the things they steal. In an age of remakes and reboots zombie movies are telling the same story over and over again, and every time there’s something new to say. I think there’s something kind of brilliant in that.

Have I already done “Porn of the Dead”?

The Winner of the Brand New Apocalypse Competition

As promised, today we’re announcing the winner of our tickets to The London Dungeon! But before I tell you the winner, can I just add: You disgust me. All of you. Seriously.

This guy is also ashamed of you.

Still, nobody seemed to put quite as much thought into the obliteration of our entire species as one Alex Labram. I’ll let him explain our terrifying but inevitable downfall himself:

“So these days a lot of people get pacemakers. And a few people have even got proper wired-in cybernetic limbs. And scientists are getting better at understanding brain neural behaviour, so full-on implants are only a matter of time.


I don't think we've thought this through. After all, these things aren't exactly nuclear-hardened, are they...


You see where this is going. The cyberisation of society is pretty much inevitable at this point - look how fast smartphones took off. And once they're actually *wired into our skulls and bodies*, we're going to start outsourcing more and more functions to them. Imagine a world where you rely on your adrenal implant to kick you awake in the morning, or you use silicon storage space to juggle extra thoughts in short-term memory. Now imagine if you suddenly lost that.


Once we reach that point, just a handful of nukes detonated at high altitude (Or, alternatively, a non-nuclear phenomenon. I imagine a sufficiently big solar flare could do it, for example) would be enough to obliterate society. People would have to re-learn how to *wake up in the morning*, for chrissakes. Every part of our economy would instantly fall apart. People would have no food, no water, no skills, and when they go to look up survivalist info on Wikipedia... argh.


When that happens, I give Homo Sapiens one month, of which the last two weeks will involve substantial cannibalism. Because the only thing too stupid to run away from a hungry semi-lobotomised human... will be another semi-lobotomised human. (Or possibly a dog. Dogs have it coming.)


And then the world will be silent. At least until the next species sits up and thinks "hey, what would happen if I rubbed these sticks together?" It's downhill all the way from there, folks.”

Alex, you’re getting tickets. I am sure you deserve everything you get in the London Dungeon.

#41 The Hunger Games: Winning Strategies

If you’re anything like me then when you saw or read The Hunger Games, there was one thought on your mind. “How could I kill that many children?” See, like most geeks, I have drawn up detailed and infallible plans in the case of a Romero-style zombie apocalypse. Zombies, after all, are stupid and easy to outrun, even if in practice they do end up killing everyone.

But The Hunger Games presents a more dangerous challenge. Here your adversaries aren’t just wandering around aimlessly, they’re actively hunting you down, and they’re crafty and quick and can fit in small spaces.

This worried me a great deal, so, much like Batman compensates for his lack of super powers with detailed and unstoppable contingency plans to take down everyone in the Justice League, so I have decided to compensate for my complete lack of physical strength, speed or agility by finding the deadliest Hunger Games strategies I could, and developing ways to defeat them.

These are the results of this study. Hopefully the writers, bloggers and Tom I got to contribute won’t actually read the blog, otherwise all this effort will have been for nothing.

Adele Wearing
One of the minds behind Alt.Fiction and the Unbound Blogzene but notably she is also one of writers for The Girls' Guide toSurviving the Apocalypse, meaning she’s spent a great deal of time coming up with survival strategies.

Special Abilities: Kickboxing

Strategy: “Faced with a grand game of murderkilldestroy I have a fundamental problem. I'm an idiot in a fight. I kickbox competitively and so this is a proven fact. I am not especially fast, or skilled, I always get beaten and I keep going forwards no matter how hard or how often they hit me. My team think I'm fearless, I suspect I just don't know any better.

Now this is bad enough when dealing with one girl who has gloves on, I've had black eyes and a busted nose in spite of safety equipment, but go a bit Hunger Games and it gets a whole lot worse. I have no weapons skills, well, I did archery at school and I wasn't a bad shot IF I could remember which eye to close. That was some 20 years ago now.

I'm average weight, height and fitness for a woman in her 30's, I am not naturally athletic in any way and I haven't climbed a tree for those same 20 years. Katniss I am not.

So where does that leave me? Largely I suspect, if I'm smart enough not to join in any initial melee, slinking away until I can form an alliance or two. I am, actually, pretty smart and not an entirely bad strategist. I can also, when my livelihood and therefore presumably my life, depends on it, pull a little charm out of somewhere. My strategy then, if I'm not among the first to fall, is pretty simple, identify the strong but dumb ones, manipulate them into being my defensive circle and when the field is a little smaller, start setting them on each other. I pretty much have to get through this thing without going toe to toe with anyone, coz I'll lose. So that's it, not very honourable or dignified, but sometimes it's survival of the sneakiest and any anthropologist will tell you, it's in our DNA.”

Plan to Defeat: Form an alliance with her early on. When she’s least expecting it, stab her in the back of the knees.

Grant Howitt
Grant Howitt, as the designer of Drunken Bear Fighter and one of the organisers of Zombie LARP is clearly no stranger to brutal death arenas where nobody gets out alive. On the other hand, he has neither seen the film nor read the books of The Hunger Games, making him something of a wild card.

Special Abilities: He can be very shouty.

Strategy: “Despite my proven success rate with surviving the undead, I'm not as skilled at actively murdering living human beings for sport. They move around too much. They hold weapons, can run, and use advanced tactics like "standing behind walls so to not get shot" and "not chasing hungrily after thrown glowsticks."

Basically, all my normal avenues of approach (including, to an extent, sending wave after wave of "team-mates" against them) are useless. Also, I haven't seen the film. Or read the book. Or even watched a proper trailer, really. There were some posters on the tube, so I guess I'm going to have to go with that for research because I'm a BUSY* MAN. Here's my findings, condensed into some tips:

1) GET A GUN. That girl in the coat, her with the hair and the face - she uses a bow and arrow a lot - that's her first mistake right there. A quick examination of current military forces shows that only a fraction of a percent use bows rather than guns (that fraction of a percent being made entirely of John Rambo and no-one else) as guns are easier to carry, shoot further and faster, and don't require you to carry around a backful of weaponised chopsticks in case trouble comes a-knockin'.

Plus, they're cooler - there's a reason Neo doesn't unfurl his leather trenchcoat to reveal a dizzying array of compound sports bows, mainly because they would jangle around the place and get stuck on things - which brings me to my next point.

2) IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU ARE COOL AS SHIT. SLA Industries was a formative text in my upbringing, and it taught me the art of stylish ultraviolence. So it's important that you give the viewers what they want, if ratings are anything to go by (these things are televised, right? I half-watched an advert on telly, it looked like it had Lenny Kravitz in it or something) but, and this is the important thing here, don't be a dick about it. Be incredibly violent, but also self-effacing and really down-to-earth. If you break someone's arm against a future-tree and artfully dash their brains out with a rock, try not to grin while you do it but make sure that any camera operators get your absolute best angle at all times.

Also, look a bit sad after you kill someone. Like how Spider-Man must feel. In fact, point three:

Sad like that! Perfect!

3) BE SPIDER-MAN. He's the scrappy underdog everyone loves! Plus he has magic glands under his wrists that kick out sticky fluid at a moment's notice, and the proportional strength and speed of a spider, and their famous powers of precognition which explains the rise of wholly authentic but unintelligible spider psychics in the late Victorian Era. Did you know how many innocent psychics were stepped on, just because they were spiders, or perhaps because they were chasing after a tasty-looking fly mid-seance? Lots, I bet.

Although being Spider-Man is probably fairly tricky, because you need to get bitten by a spider and not inherit the super powers of cold sweats, excruciating pain and death, like most bite victims do.

4) DO NOT GET BITTEN BY SPIDERS. I can't stress this enough, even in light of tip number 3. Spiders are either dangerous (vis Black Widow) or useless (vis Daddy Longlegs) and getting bitten isn't going to help you any, especially if you're fighting a number of other photogenic teens to the death in a post-apocalyptic woodland setting (is it in the woodlands? It looks a bit woody from all that performance gear they're wearing).

SURE, it seems like a good idea NOW to carry a tupperware full of venomous spiders and radioactive material in your backpack next to your Colt .45, but it's going to be distracting popping it open during a fight and shaking the spiders down your top in an effort to get on some of that superhero goodness. Plus we all know it takes a WHOLE NIGHT for the powers to kick in, at which point you wake up and no longer need glasses.

Anyway, that's probably enough words. In summary - get a gun, break people's arms and then look a bit sad about it, something about spiders. Great."

* LAZY

Plan to Defeat: Put spiders in his hair.

Kim Curran
Kim Curran writes science fiction for young adults, including her soon be released novel Shift. Writing young adult fiction means Kim is familiar with The Hunger Games’ genre, and has no scruples about subjecting children to horrific death. A worthy adversary.

Special Skills: A crack shot sniper (In videogames and paintball)

Strategy: “I’ve always fancied myself as a sniper. Ever since taking out Sniper Wolf in Metal Gear Solid 1 with my first shot. And then there was that time I went paint balling and I hid up a tree and took everyone down without them seeing me. That was fun. Till I couldn’t get back down and I had to call for help and I was pummelled with paintballs as punishment. But bruises the size of dinner plates aside, sneaky sniper would definitely be the way forward for me.

So, that would be my strategy. Run. Hide. Get a weapon. A Dragunov SVD if there happened to be one handy (my sniper rifle of choice). If not, I would try and jury-rig a cross bow or a blow dart with darts tipped with juice from those poisonous berries. And then I’d run and hide again and slowly, patiently, take everyone out one by one.

I certainly wouldn’t go running off looking for some boy who might or might not have a crush on me. And as for any small Rue-like contenders, sorry, sweetheart, you’re on your own. I’m here to win.

Once I’d won, I’d take the rifle or dart or crossbow and use it to take President Snow out, thereby ending the Hunger Games once and for all. And then I would declare it Kim Day. The day where, instead of killing each other, children would be chosen from all the districts in Pan Am to make me cake. And I would award the winning cake bakers with more cake!

So I would win the Hunger Games with a Russian semi-automatic sniper rifle. And I would win their hearts with cake.

Where do I volunteer?”

Plan to Defeat: Sneak up behind Kim with a big rock. Hit her with big rock.

Tom Harvey
Our blog’s favourite buttmonkey, Tom Harvey is the bassist of post-sadcore fun pop rock band Hello Bear, who this month released their first album. If you Google Tom’s name and his band’s name, this picture comes up:

I did that

Special Abilities: Is able to eat lead paint without any apparent side effects.

Strategy: “I would initially run to safety, without trying to grab supplies. I would wait for the initial carnage to grind out, from a safe distance (possibly up a tree), and then pick a target from the survivors. I would track them, and attack them when deemed appropriate, using some sort of blunt object (branch, rock etc.). This would be the basis of my general strategy - sucker punching. Pick off individuals tactically by not letting them know of your presence until it's too late. The Barcelone tactic of waiting out the opposition, people will fall to complacency, and then i shall pounce. Alternatively I'll just follow the hardest one, let them kill everyone, then brain them when they're not looking.”

Plan to Defeat: Paint the mouth of a tunnel onto a rock face. Hide behind a boulder. Wait.

What’s your Hunger Games winning strategy? Write it in the comments below and I promise not to use it against you!

Competition Time: Can You Think Of A New Apocalypse?

Yes, it’s competition time at Chris Writes About The End Of The World. We have been given the shiny prize of free tickets for two adults and two children to go to The London Dungeon, where you will be taken underground, shown various horrific and gruesome things and then get a chance to go on various rides that will scare the poop out of you, because here at Chris Writes About The End Of The World we’re still kind of fuzzy about the meaning of the word “prize”.

See the haunted terror in his eyes? That could be you!

“What could I possibly do to deserve this?” you’re probably asking right now.

Well, it would have to be something pretty bad, let’s be honest. We’re thinking, apocalyptically bad. Yes, to get these four tickets to darkness and terror, we want you to come up with a brand new apocalypse. Killer zombies, killer asteroids, killer aliens, killer plagues, killer robots, killer plants, killer words, killer apes and killer dolphins, all the grass dying, nuclear war, global flood, the earth being obliterated to make way for a hyperspace bypass, everything randomly turning into crystals, greygoo (although technically that’s robots), all the men on the planetmysteriously dying, all the women on the planet mysteriously becoming sterile, and whatever it is that’s supposed to happen in the book of Revelation are all pretty played out. I want you to wipe out all human civilisation, leaving nothing more than a few desperate survivors, in the most imaginative and creative way possible.

Suggestions can be as brief as you want (For instance, “a terrifying disease that turns everyone who comes into contact with it into a mime”- OH you can’t have that one now!) although obviously the more detail you put in, the more impressed our panel of judges will be.

The winner will not be burned alive at the stake. Actually, I should probably check that...

Entries will be judges on Originality and Awesomeness. The panel of judges will be made up of me, and some random person I rope into judging the competition once I’ve got all the entries in. The decision of the judges is final and cannot be bought, although this should not stop you from just randomly sending them cakes filled with money.

Send your entries to: chrisfarnell at googlemail.com with the subject line “A Brand New Apocalypse”.

You’ve got two weeks (Until the 24 April) to get your entires in, and the winner will be announced the week after that. So, GO!

#40 La'Beth: Apocalypsing Shakespeare

 Hello! Today we’re going to be getting all cultural at Chris Writes About The End Of The World, looking at an adaptation of a play by William Shakespeare (Who you’ll know of as that guy who appeared in Doctor Who that one time. It was the episode with the witch aliens in it).

A theatre company in London has taken the play Macbeth and put on a version of it set in post-apocalyptic Haiti.

Now, I don’t ask much of my readers because, quite frankly, you’re all pretty obstinate and a unhelpful, but I would ask that you all go and see this play, so that it’s a huge success and they put it on again at a time when I can come and see it.

In the mean time, here’s an interview I had with Georgina Sowerby, who directed the play:

So, before we start, without giving away too many spoilers could you explain what this play's about?
This version is about a bunch of women who've survived a massive disaster and created a new colony on a strange island. One of them, La'Beth/MacBeth has secret fantasies about being in charge, so she and her girlfriend murder Du'Cann/Duncan - the woman who rescued and set up the colony in the first place. Bad Move.

A few men have survived in the surrounding jungle-, They were soldiers who committed terrible acts of violence and have since gone feral taking on the magical properties of the forest. La'Beth/MacBeth goes to visit them, partakes of their mystical poisons, has hallucinations and visions of her future. They seem to promise power and she becomes a killing machine. But beware fortune tellers is all I can say!!

I understand that the play is a reboot of an older play set in medieval Scotland. What was it about medieval Scotland that made you think of post-apocalyptic Haiti?
The Scotland the play was written about was a country of violent tribes all vying for power. The original King MacBeth had power for a fair few years - normally you'd get horribly murdered way before that! Also, in the play, a mix of Christian and pagan religions abounds and nature/fate overtakes all best attempts for humans to control their lives.


My initial motivation was to set it in a place that has a history of suffering turmoil and experienced a mixture of military violence and lawlessness, natural disaster. Also to find a place with a fusion of very potent religions and that's an island containing a great mix of cultures .. Some of our key actors have Afro-Carribbean routes and I was interested in playing around with accents and dialects.

Finally... Zombies. There's a massive theme of possession in the play and there's an interesting thought that zombie stories appear in countries/cultures that have been colonised - where the soul of the people has been abused and stolen from them..

In the original play virtually all the characters were male, save Macbeth's wife and three "weird sisters". In your version you say the cast is all female apart from the "weird brothers". Does that include Lady Macbeth- Is Macbeth a lesbian in this version? Whether or not she is- Why did you decide to make these changes? Is it because political correctness is finally, after all this time, going mad?
The play is super macho - its all about maleness and shame and violence and not being a girl.. the only girls are outsider freaks (witches), an ambitious woman who commits suicide (don't get too ambitious girls!), and a pissed off wife who gets murdered (just stop nagging for christ's sake)... Its interesting to hear all this misogyny now coming out of womens' mouths... And yeh, there's a couple of lesbian angles going on in it - some of the characters would have been gay before the disaster and some of them have been thrown on each other, so to speak.. But mostly I wanted to build this idea of a tight community and the risk maccers takes in wrecking it.


Given the changes you've made to the setting and the characters, have you had to make any changes to the actual text? Will this be a verbatim version of Shakespeare's play, or have you had to make a few rewrites?
We've rewritten some of it - We worked with this amazing writer called Brenda Garrick who's parents are from the Domenican Republic and she's redone all the witches stuff and a bit of the Porter.. I'd have her do more because its brilliant and so lively! But for that we need to raise more funds: its a hell of a lot of work! Plus I changed all the 'he's' to 'she's' and some of the character titles ('sir' becomes 'girl' or 'sis' - 'kinsman' becomes 'woman' - 'lord' becomes 'love' etc) I think it really works - purists will turn in their graves... or walk out of the auditoreum.. Shakespeare however, won't give a shit!!!

Tell us a bit about your cast. Are they all prima donnas who insist on elaborate riders for their dressing rooms? Any huge clashing egos during rehearsals?
There are big egos but they are very motivated by the project. Plus we've worked hard to create an environment which is creative and supportive. It helps having a few males I must say (something about donkeys in the stable;-)?) We do have the fabulous Nikki Kelly who played Sylvia in Hi-di-Hi as our porter. She is very game and a one-off - she's given us some good laughs and laughter is very very important when you're messing with a monster of a play like this!

What's been the highlight of putting the play together?
Seeing something I thought I knew in a totally fresh and dynamic way - thinking things just couldn't work and being surprised when they did. Also seeing Nikki Kelly going into full splits and ripping the arse out of her trousers will remain with me for the rest of time.


And the biggest challenge?
The bloody short time frame!

Finally, let's assume La Beth 2012 is a massive critical and financial success, to the point where you get completely typecast and are only allowed to make sci-fi retellings of Shakespeare plays. What play would you do next, and where would you set it?
I am quite obsessed by having dead characters walk on stage, emerge from under the earth, crawl out of suitcases (see some photos on my website www.dirtymarket.co.uk). Maybe A Midsummer Nights Dream where the lovers fall down rabbit holes and go underground when they get lost in the forest - kinda Pan's Labyrinth style lost amongst the roots of trees... maybe keep with Blighty this time but create a site-specific event where we take the audience under the earth. Anyone know of any potential locations? You got me thinking now!


And one more question (I lied about the finally). As a rule we ask everyone we interview what their zombie survival plan is- so what is it?
This is my single motivating factor for learning to drive.(*books BSM*) Wait a minute aren't they already here? Marxist revolution - start with Cameron/Landsley and Osbourne...  I'm sharpening heavy instruments...  Hang on, how do i know you're not one of them?- I shouldn't be telling you this - now you know my plan... there's someone at the door... aaaaaaarrrrrrrghgghghghghghghghghghghg...

La'Beth is on at the John Lyon Theatre from March 29th to March 31st, you can see their blog here. You can also follow them on twitter.

#39 Gay Marriage: The End of Civilisation

So there’s been a lot of argument kicked up this week on the subject of gay marriage, mainly following an interview and piece in the Telegraph by Catholical cardinal Keith O’Brian, no relation to Richard O’Brien. Keith has upset a lot of people, by comparing the introduction of gay marriage to a return to the slave trade, and by failing to reach a Key Stage 3 level of reading comprehension by being unable to tell the difference between “Men and women have the right to marry” and “Marriage is defined as between a man and a woman”.

O’Brian and his ilk are being left pretty much out in the cold on this one in the UK. First David Cameron, leader of the party that brought Section 28 in all those years ago, is backing gay marriage. Secondly, a survey by a leading market research company has shown 61% of Christians now support gay marriage, results which Richard Dawkins has chosen to interpret as meaning all those people aren’t really Christians, because that’s helpful. Thanks Dick.

Now I’ve been openly bisexual for coming up to half my life, and always hoped that when I met the person I wanted to marry their gender wouldn’t be a legal factor. A few years ago I was extremely proud to be a best man at a civil partnership blessing in a Quaker church, an event which everyone called a Wedding, and ever since we have all referred to that couple as married.

I’m telling you this because I want you to know where I’m coming from when I say that the current opposition to gay marriage isn’t homophobic, and sadly, it’s right. Because recognising gay marriage in this country or elsewhere will bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.

Let’s begin by addressing my first point, surely O’Brian, former Arch Bishop of Canterbury George Carey and, on the other side of the pond, Rick Santorum, hate gays, that’s why they want to stop us from marrying, right? But let’s look at the language they’re using.
They aren’t calling us fags, or talking about how we’re going to burn in hell, or pointing out how when they see two men kiss it makes them feel funny in their tummy and it’s totally gross. Not once have any of them mentioned how much we love to eat the poo poo. If they were using arguments like that, we could all immediately tell they were being homophobic, and then it would be safe to ignore them.

But let’s look at what they’re actually saying. The Coalition for Marriage says “There’s no need to redefine marriage”. Keith O’Brian says “...this proposal is not about rights, but rather is an attempt to redefine marriage for the whole of society at the behest of a small minority of activists” and worries that “the teacher who wants to tell pupils that marriage can only mean – and has only ever meant – the union of a man and a woman” will be called a “heretic” (and when a senior member of the Catholic church starts worrying about people being labelled as heretics, something serious is going down). This piece by the Christian Institute claims a survey showed 70% of people are against redefining marriage. Rick Santorum, who knows a thing or two about redefinition, has said “The Judiciary cannot create life, and it did not create marriage, and it has no right to redefine either one.”

At this point things should be becoming clear to you. This isn’t about adherence to an extremely literal interpretation of a flawed translation of an ancient religious text. This isn’t even about the fact that some people have sex with their bums, and that’s icky. I’m revealing here, now, that the campaign against gay marriage is a front for an ancient brotherhood. Let me make it absolutely clear. When I first started to suspect, I drew an ancient tome from my bookshelf. There I found the words:

“marriage n. 1. Condition of man and woman legally united for purpose of living together and usu. procreating lawful offspring; act or ceremony or procedure establishing this condition;”

That tome was the 1964 edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary. Do you see now? The real masterminds behind the anti-gay marriage lobby?

The Lexicographers

Language is expanding at an incredible rate, and these brave men and women are barely keeping up with the neologisms, and we want them to go back and redo the words they’ve already finished? And bear in mind, this isn’t the first time that lovers of man-on-man or woman-on-woman action have done this to the Lexicographers.

Once upon a time, as confused old people never hesitate to remind us, “gay” just meant “happy”. “Batty boy” just meant “Boy who looks kind of like a bat” and Sodom was just a town’s name!

"We're gonna need to rewrite a shit load of dictionaries after this..."

Is it really that much of a surprise that that Lexicographers are striking back? And if we force them to redefine this last word, say to something long-winded and politically correct like “a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship”, they will snap, and strike back at us where it hurts, our language.

This is how our civilisation will end. We’re looking at a nuclear winter of redefinitions. Soon, egregious will mean abstract. Triangular will mean purple. Pineapple will mean Tuesday. The Lexicographers will rip the guts out of our language, so that words lose all meaning and it becomes impossible to have a sensible, rational discourse on any subject.

You need only look at the opposition to gay marriage to see it’s already started to happen.