Tonight I get to ask Max Brooks about the implications of seeing the world through a zombie apocalypse. Tune in!
A standard of IR theorizing is the notion of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. A zero-sum game in which you can either rat out your partner to avoid heavy costs in exchange for lighter costs, or you can both cooperate and stay silent for a payout to both parties.
This is often referred to as the PD, the Hobbesian world of all against all. It is a survivalist ethic where the suboptimal outcome is better than being caught with the sucker payoff. The scholars on this post frequently create games that reveal this outcome. See Simon Usherwood’s Post
The potential costs of this thinking are often hidden when thinking about a zombie apocalypse. Apocalypse preparedness is about ensuring that you are ready when global infrastructures fail. The Centers for Disease Control actually have a site dedicated to zombie disaster preparedness. However, zombie preparedness it is also strongly linked to survivalist behavior which can then be linked back to the PD and defecting rather than cooperating.
When we use this metaphor of zombies to think about 21st century security issues and global threats is this helpful or harmful? Does the fear engendered in imagining a Hobbesian state of nature accidentally give us excuses to behave poorly…. and if so, is a zombie apocalypse the wrong analogy for thinking about disaster? I previously considered this as a potential critical teaching assignment…
BUT….If you would like, tune in tonight at 7:30 on Al Jazeera America’s The Stream….as I ask World War Z author Max Brooks himself what he thinks the limitations might be?