Pick your apocalypse; zombies or robots, which is scarier? ZOMBIES

By Daniel Donan

Well, almost a semester has passed and we have covered some real issues here in the Great Divide. Save for a few naughty topics, though, nothing has been done for the sake of comedy and the odd-ball. So despite the protestations of my editorial board this week the Great Divide will cover the topic of which is scarier; a zombie apocalypse or a robot apocalypse? Enjoy the absurdity of this read.

I assert that a zombie scenario is far more frightening than robots taking over the world for three reasons. One is my belief that the forces unseen in this universe are far more powerful than the scientific ones. Second, my belief in the effects of entropy on machines and lastly the power of the allegory between the living and living dead.

Admittedly, a robot take-over is right around the corner at the rate we are headed. Robots are faster and stronger and more easily repaired than human beings. All it takes is A.I. Soon the average cell phone will be smarter than the average astrophysicist. Believe me when I say they passed the point of being smarter than the rest of us years ago. Robots would master our tools and then master us. Sure it is a totally scary scene, but it is no zombie apocalypse.

The dead rising is some seriously mythic ideas. How many major world religions have some kind of reference to some kind of undead action going down? I can think of three. Robots are probable and zombies are impossible. It is the impossible that really scares us. It takes fact to defeat the improbable monster, it takes faith to defeat an impossible one.

The fact is that machines break down. Mankind would find a way to exploit this. One good world-wide E.M..P. and then enemy is defeated. Fry everything with a circuit board and we turn technology back into our tools instead of our masters.
The real scary part of zombies comes from the allegory between what life and un-life really mean. Zombies were once people. Consider the horror of having to fight off our own son as he tries to eat your face. It could be your boyfriend really does want to take things to the next level, the one where he eats your brains.

The things we the living do for survival might make us no better than the monsters we fear. After enough time has passed in a zombie apocalypse it might be hard to tell who the real walking dead are.

In the end both zombies and robots should be marked off on the things we should mess with column. There would be no easy fix for either problem. But it is a simple truth that dead flesh reeks more than motor oil. For the olfactory horror in itself I am going to have to say a zombie apocalypse is the more bleak and hopeless future. Just ask yourself which movie was scarier; I, Robot or Dawn of the Dead? What movie offered more hope; the Matrix or 28 Days Later?