Zombie Identification Skills

A while back some people at work were talking about the movie 28 Days Later, which is essentially a zombie movie. (Although it's of the disease-induced zombie variety, instead of the all dead things are walking around now zombie movie.) They were criticizing the main character for the first time he encounters a zombie up close, the priest staggering in the hallway. "Obviously the priest was a zombie, he was stupid." Now, having seen the movie myself, I thought he reacted perfectly reasonable toward a person staggerring strangely in his direction: kept his eyes on him; asked if he was okay several times; backed away steadily; and when no reply was forthcoming, clobbered him over the head with a bag full of pop cans. Cautiously effective, overall.

The point is, YOU are in a movie theater, YOU are watching a zombie movie. It's all well and good for you to say "Well obviously that's a zombie." No shit, if there weren't any zombies it wouldn't be a very good movie. Your life, on the other hand, may or may not be a very good movie. That's harder to say. Please ask yourself "Have I ever been in a situation where I needed to identify whether or not somebody was a zombie? If the answer is no, then you've got a good chance of being one of those people who dies in the first twenty minutes, saying "what's wrong with that guy?" just before being bitten in the face.

Do yourself a favor. Go for a walk late at night, and each time you see another person in the distance, try to determine with 100% certainty whether or not he or she is a zombie. Take an average of your results and pay attention to your methods over the course of the evening. How certain are you? How close do you let them get before you're absolutely sure that they don't in fact have horrible wounds somewhere on their bodies, the bloodstains hidden by their dark clothing? Was that grunt a nonverbal hello or the only sound that decayed vocal cords are now capable of?

What's that? This sort of behavior is asinine, and thinking about whether or not somebody is a zombie is a total waste of time? Well, fine. Now you've been reminded how normal people act when they don't know they're in a horror movie, so shut the hell up about characters not getting it right away. You saw the trailers, the people on the screen didn't.

Incidentally, all this is giving me a great idea for a movie. Hmmmm...