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National and Global, United States

Saturday, August 22, 2009

When Zombies Attack


“The zombies are coming!” said Jacob Goldstein in The Wall Street Journal.

“Quick, call the mathematicians!” Specifically, you’ll want to call Robert Smith and his colleagues at the University of Ottawa, who crunched the numbers on how humans could survive a zombie attack, as part of a book on modeling infectious disease.

And the results aren’t pretty, said Tim Cavanaugh in Reason.
The pessimistic scientists concluded that unless the zombie outbreak were "dealt with quickly and aggressively,” it would “lead to the collapse of civilization.” But able-bodied people would never let themselves be bitten and "turned" by a slow-moving ghoul. "A zombie outbreak would result in a lopsided victory for the living, for purely tactical reasons."

You joke, said Chris Davies in SlashGear, This is a serious—this kind of zombie “plague” would be similar to a lethal outbreak of an unknown disease, like swine flu, and that neither quarantining nor curing the zombies would save us.

Sometimes I think of a consulting project in these terms. Some indentured groups within the client company see my entry as a 'zombie attack', an outsider to be dealt with quickly and aggressively. A 'plague' on the traditionalist. A disease not to be appeased, an infection not to be tolerated. They sit silently behind closed doors, waiting for five o'clock. Waiting for the mad rush to the parking lot. They can see it from their windows. They wait. They listen. They attempt to ignore, but can't. They want to run, but don't know where. They fear being 'bitten' and turned into..... thinkers, strategists, pro-active players in the economics of the company. Empowered to make decisions. Accountable for them. Interpreters of 'go to market' principles. They can't get away. They know it. There is no quarantine. No cure. Nothing can save them.
They are stuck with me. And now they have to think, to endeavor, to contribute, to rid themselves of the politics.

Hey buddy, would you pass that leg?

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