The Zombie Apocalypse

If ‘The Walking Dead’ arrive, some of us’ll be prepared, even if others aren’t.

The concept of the ‘zombie’ has been around since Noah was in nappies. We’ve all got a fascination with ghoulies, vampires, the undead and all the other monsters, with a plethora of kids cartoons glamorising the concepts and making them quite humorous. Zombies have featured in (too) many books, TV series and movies in the last decade or so, with the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ signalling the end of the world as we know it. In just about every new story about them, small bands of isolated humans try and rebuild their lives, after the zombie influence saw a world come about with no power, no phones, no internet … sometimes it sounds like a blessing.

With the world back to looking like “Little House on the Prairie” after the zombies take over, those of us who weren’t prepared for the arrival of this terrifying apocalypse in at least some way are the ones who just won’t make it. Back when we first moved out to Millthorpe, we looked into chucking a little windmill down in the back corner of the property. They were a bit of a flavour-of-the-month thing back then, with quite a few vendors spruiking their advantages at places like the Field Days, etc. A shiny new one that would have powered everything at our place (and a little bit more going back to the grid) was going to set us back about 25 grand. Sounds really steep, but doing the maths it really made sense in the long term, we’d have reaped the benefit back in spades. We planned to throw some solar panels on the roof too – retro and innovative at the same time. Then we found out we could only get a ‘rebate’ on one of these renewables … so that put paid to the windmill idea. Go figure, we were happy to invest in renewables, but the powers wouldn’t let us get into both. We’re not sure if the neighbours would have loved our windmill, what with all the hullaballoo made about them, but we didn’t get that far anyway. So … solar power it was. The generous rebate is now long gone, but our little sun-farm investment paid for itself plenty of times over in that first half a decade and it’s still delivering the goods. The game of checking ‘how many suns we made’ each day with the kids was really fun.

So, let’s assume the zombies have arrived. As you’ve seen on TV shows like The Walking Dead and others, the undead can’t climb fences, open gates or crawl through holes, so as long as we keep the gate shut we should be sweet forever. We’ve got solar power to keep the bore running, meaning the vege gardens will be watered. Those sheeps we have down the back and the fruit trees that really don’t produce very much have just become a whole lot more important to us now that everyone’s lives have returned to one of subsistence. I guess we can build our own windmill now.

I’m not sure how our former onion-eating PM (segue into politics - it took me 500 words, but I got there) plans on keeping his habit going once those rotting walkers have taken over. His coal-fired power plant will run out of fuel pretty quickly and his onion crop will need more than rainwater. If he wants to run the gauntlet from wherever he’s holed-up and come over to our place to grab a solar-fuelled freshly-grown bore-watered onion, he’s welcome. I guess on the bright side once the zombies are here we won’t have to vote anymore, or put up with the infighting and selfishness. From anyone. Ever.