 Hello and welcome to what zombies can teach us about surviving the apocalypse, which is a super spooky event brought to you by Future Tense and the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. My name is Mia Armstrong Lopez and I am the managing editor at Future Tense, which is a partnership between Slate, New America and Arizona State University that explores tech society and the future through events like this one and also through articles that we publish on Slate.com. I would also be one of the first people to die in the zombie apocalypse so I'm very excited to be joined today by two people who would definitely make it out alive, and they are Athena Actapas and Colton Scrivner. Athena is an associate professor at the ASU department of psychology assistant director of research at the ASU global futures laboratory, the co director of the human generosity project and the president and founder of zombified media. Athena is also the author of the forthcoming book a field guide to the apocalypse which will be out in April of next year, and it's a really very delightful and useful guide to preparing for for many different sorts of in times it includes amazing sketches and art includes fun ideas for apocalyptic parties so she really has it all in there you'll definitely want to check it out. And Colton is a behavioral scientist at the recreational fear lab at artist university in Denmark, a research project manager at Arizona State University, and the director of the annual Eureka Springs zombie crawl Colton and the evolutionary and psychological underpinnings of our fascination with the darker side of life, including horror true crime and all types of scary play, and he's currently working on a book to come out mid next year about the science behind morbid curiosity it's tentatively titled Dark Minds soft hearts so Athena and Colton thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks so much for having us this is really fun. Well we're going to start I thought it would be helpful to start with some rapid fire definitions because I think we're going to be talking about concepts today that we all sort of have a handle on but maybe there are some nuances that you all might be able to to prompt for us in terms of the way that we think about these these sort of different terms or concepts that we throw around especially this time of year. And so I'm going to give you I and I also realize that the terms that I'm going to ask you to define might be terms that would merit seven paragraphs of definition in a research paper so I'm going to do the challenging thing of asking you to define them in 20 seconds I'm going to have my timer ready. And Athena I would love to start with you and ask you to define for us the term apocalypse. Well, a lot of people think the apocalypse is like the end of times. But as I like to say I don't think the apocalypse has to be the end of the world. In fact if we look at how ancient Greeks defined apocalypse, they defined it as a revelation of sort of the underlying reality. And so if we think about the apocalypse as like, you know, an event that actually tells us about the landscape of risk that exists like reveals that. And then I don't know that really changes I think how we approach the apocalypse. Okay, I love it. 30 seconds but we'll give it to you because apocalypse is a large term. The second, the second term that I want to ask you to define for us here is zombies. Okay, zombie is an entity that is fully or partially under the control of an entity that is genetically distinct from it in one way or another. Okay, excellent. That one was 15 seconds so you made up for time there. Colton I want to turn to you and so as we mentioned a lot of your work focuses on this idea of morbid curiosity so can you define that for us. Yeah, I think a lot of people when they hear the term morbid curiosity think that it's a bad or pathological curiosity because that's what morbid means and medical settings but really I'm just referring to an interest in or curiosity about things that are dangerous or Okay, excellent. 15 seconds very good. And then the final term that I want to ask. And this is another thing that you explore a lot in your work and through also activities like the Eureka spring zombie college we're going to talk about a little bit later. But this idea of scary play. Yeah, scary play is pretty much exactly what it sounds like it's engaging with scary things in a playful way and it kind of that playful framework allows you to approach these things that might otherwise be scary and kind of learn about them learn how to deal with them and have fun while doing it. Okay, excellent. 15 seconds again so so very good. Colton one Colton one Colton. I wanted to be I wanted to start off nice but Colton did. I also didn't I also didn't have to define the apocalypse which is kind of hard to. That's true. That's true. Maybe it was it was a little bit rigged from the beginning. But thank you for for humoring, you're humoring me with those definitions I do think it's really helpful. Dig into them a little bit more as the conversation continues. And now that we've done definitions I want to do a little bit of history and I want to look specifically at the history of zombies. And I think this is particularly interesting but because it's often left out I think from the way that we engage with like modern pop culture zombies. You know the original archetype of the zombie has been traced back to slavery and the 1600s and Haiti where it was representing kind of this idea of being trapped and when one's own body without having control over it the idea of not being able to return home, kind of the sort of cruelty wrapped up in that whole system and you know after the Haitian Revolution the idea of a zombie began to shift, getting picked up and incorporated into Buddha religious traditions and then we have movies like in the 1930s the white the night of the living dead in the 60s the dawn of the dead in the 70s then we start to get the walking dead and we inch closer toward, you know this sort of zombie industrial complex that we have today. And so Athena as someone who is engaging with with all of this thinking about zombies. A lot I would love to kind of start with you. What meaning would you say that all of this history gives to the way that we engage with zombies today. That's a great question and you know if we do look at the original idea of the zombies. People were not afraid of zombies. They were afraid to become zombies right they were afraid to have their autonomy taken from them. And so I think the very original idea of sort of a zombie as an entity as an individual that is somehow hijacked is actually very close to the way that I like to use zombies as you know both a metaphor and also as a description of things that are actually happening in the world right so there are a lot of organisms in the natural world that get hijacked by entities that are different from them right so, you know, in the last of us right, there was the cordyceps fungus right that took over humans now in the real world. Humans are not susceptible to cordyceps fungus but there are hundreds of species of insects that are and they're like different species of cordyceps that specialize on different insects so there's a whole like zombie ecosystem happening. With, you know, just this, you know, one, you know, genus really of, you know, it's one taxonomic class of potential agents of zombification. So, I think that really when it comes to thinking about like what are zombies, yes, like they've kind of come to be this like broader thing that we're like afraid of because maybe they also like represent contagion they also represent our fears about like dangerous humans or there's like all of these things that kind of get wrapped up in this zombie idea, but the original notion of just like an entity that's autonomy has been taken away by some other entity that maybe has something to gain from controlling them. That's I think a great place to start that has lots of biological and social parallels. I'm going to like also like punt this over to Colton because like we've chatted about, you know, our zombies like the perfect monster, which kind of ties in with all of this really. Yeah, Colton I would I would love to hear to hear your answer to that. Yeah, so a lot of my work on morbid curiosity has suggested that there are sort of these four broad domains of things that we're interested in that could be dangerous to us. So one of those are the potentially dangerous people right finds of dangerous people. So typically who are sort of plotting to to address or harm us. Another one is the this related is the paranormal this idea of sort of disembodied agents or agents that we don't have a lot of information about like demons or ghosts or aliens or monsters or other kinds of things that we just don't really quite understand but we think are out there. A third one would be violence itself so like engaging in acts of violence and kind of the consequences of that. And the fourth one would be injuries that occur to us due to some accident or due to some incident was something dangerous to sort of bodily injuries right. And what's interesting is zombies kind of tap into each of those four domains in different ways so a zombie is sort of human, and they sort of want to harm us so we get that kind of minds of dangerous people aspect, but they're also kind of paranormal in a way because they're dead but also still kind of alive and moving around and so we don't fully understand why they're there, what their intentions are how to stop them necessarily. And of course they're filled with injuries so they kind of tap into the bodily injury and of course they engage in violence and sort of prey upon us and so it really hits kind of all four of those domains of morbid curiosity and so it's sort of a zombie story or a zombie apocalypse sort of has something interesting for almost everyone. Yeah that's fascinating and would you like is there, does it depend on the person like what sort of morbid curiosity they're going to be most drawn to or is one of those stronger than the other three. Good question so it does depend on the person so people who are, you know, high and morbid curiosity tend to be somewhat high and all four. They vary right you can be much more curious about serial killers than you are about ghosts, for example, or you can be much more curious about bodily injuries than you are about serial killers. And so yeah there's kind of this up and down a little bit depending on the person, but of course zombies, regardless of what thing you're interested in they have something for you whether that's bodily injuries or dangerous people or the paranormal or violence itself. Yeah and so that intersects with sort of another question that I wanted to ask you which is like, why like what if someone finds themselves very interested in like why are we morbidly curious if someone finds themselves very interested in serial killers like what is the psychology behind that. So it's not it's not just humans right humans have a lot of opportunities to kind of indulge in their mid curiosity you actually see something like it across the animal kingdom, especially in prey species. So prey species if you think of like a zebra or gazelle or something like that. They actually will inspect or try to learn about the whatever their local predator is, which is pretty advantageous right if you're a prey species, you're one of your number one goals in life is to not be. The way to not be eaten is to learn something about the things that want to eat you right the things that want to kill you. And that way you can be prepared for them. Now the problem is, you know, gazelles and zebras can pretty much only learn about lions if they see them right they don't have stories they don't have anything like that. When you get to humans, we can tell all sorts of stories about possible dangerous things even dangerous things we've never experienced, like an apocalypse for example. We can indulge in kind of these stories and learning opportunities about these potential dangers, and our mind kind of sees that as a really good opportunity for learning because those stories are very low cost right it's not, you know for a gazelle to learn about it's local predator is kind of costly you're putting yourself at risk of being preyed upon. But for a human to do it you know we can sit in the comfort of our home and watch it on a TV, and there's really no cost to us but the learning benefits are still there. And that makes a lot of sense and the second I actually I want to bring some of our audience members and with that with a poll to kind of because I would love to kind of gauge the way that they think about how morbid curiosity plays in their own lives but before we hop over to that. I think I did. I didn't want to ask you you know one of my other questions for you was like, why have you found zombies to be useful to help people think through some of this other like preparation for for other risks that they face in their lives. And you know maybe it comes back to this idea of zombies being the perfect monster but are there other factors in there that you think make zombies particularly useful for these these sorts of like imagination and risk exploration that Colton was mentioning. Yeah, sure. Well, I think that the fact that they are kind of this, you know, perfect storm in terms of the features that they have means that they are kind of universal as like oh yes this is a threat. And it's a threat that I can engage with with some aspect of my curiosity right like so and maybe for some people. You know, they're still like too scary like I have close colleagues who are like, I can't I can't do the zombie thing it's like too scary for me right. So maybe for some people there isn't like an in still that's like with the curiosity but I think for a lot of people, there is a way to be, you know, interested in them. That's fun and playful. And so I think that's really. I think that's really important for kind of creating a tone and an environment where people can engage without being stressed. Right so if you can explore possible futures possible scenarios with a sort of creative playful improvisational kind of mindset like oh could I survive this like what would I do. Then you're just in the like a in a mental space where you can consider possibilities you don't just go into sort of like fight or flight mode. And so, you know when it comes to considering alright, like, you know, what would we do in a flood or in a wildfire if there was an earthquake. Like those things can be very scary and almost like triggering to even just imagine that happening. But if instead you're like well what if it was a zombie apocalypse where like the zombies had features that actually set up a scenario that's like it would be if there was a wildfire right so you can you can do that you can like play with this, you know how the zombies are to like create these scenarios that then let you think through how you would deal with certain things in a playful way without, you know, necessarily having that fear response of you know imagining something genuinely or you know horrific happening to your neighborhood. Yeah I think that's so helpful and it was one of the things when I was thinking about this conversation today is like, you know, in some ways like some of the, we're kind of trying to have fun with some of these apocalyptic scenarios and I was like, I don't want to you know I don't want to be nonchalant about like the consequences or like the urgency of like these very real disaster scenarios that we might run through but it's almost like, you know like you're saying it's like our brains are like so traumatized that what we do. And what I do is I like think about those things and then I just like shut them into this closet in my brain and I closed the door and I like never want to engage with it again and so if there's like a way through these kind of more imaginative more fun kind of explorations to like open the door and be like oh no these are actually things that it is better if they're not shut off in the closet it is better for thinking through them and being prepared but but it's almost kind of like hacking your brain to be able to do so it feels like other animals do that too right they have to practice you know how to hunt and how to escape from being hunted. And, you know, being in that sort of playful frame helps them do that in a way that's, it's entertaining so they learn a lot but also not too scary for them. Yeah, yeah. And so I would love to kind of gauge how the audience feels about some of these things so for those of you who are joining us online. We're going to go ahead my colleague Alex is going to launch a poll question for us and so if you go to the right of your screen you should see kind of like a column for q amp a and then you should also see a column for a poll and right now we have a poll question that is live for you all to be able to vote in. And the question is when I engage with true crime podcast, zombie movies haunted houses vampire fiction, etc. My primary motivation is to escape from the real world, learn about myself and how I respond to scary situations, or learn about dangers in the world. And if you're like me like you're probably like, Oh where's option be all of the above but we purposely set it up to try and get you to engage with your primary motivation you're like 34% answer here so I'll give folks just a second to vote. All right, I'm going to give folks like 10 more seconds. And then we can talk through some of these answers. Here's Colton I don't even know what yours is. We talk about the stuff all the time. Primary motivation. Well I think it's tough because when you talk about motivation sometimes are often our motivations are not known to our true our true our true motivations are not always conscious to us. Yeah, we can become aware of them right but they're not they're kind of running in the background and we can kind of tap into that and and figure it out but you know if there's someone. Why did you go watch the new Halloween movie, right, they're going to say, because I like Halloween movies and it was fun right that's the motivation that's their motivation. But that doesn't that doesn't say, Why do humans seek out scary stories in general right that's also there's a motivation for why we do that. I think my conscious motivation would be well it's fun and I enjoy it and it's, you know. Yeah, I enjoy it that would be the simplest one but, but the real motivation I think is that it's you know my brain sees it as a cheap way to learn about things that are dangerous right. That's fascinating and I think that's actually reflected Colton and I think I don't know if you can see the answers here but the so 70% of folks said that they use it to escape from the real world. 22% said that they use it to learn about themselves and how they respond to scary situations and 7% said to learn about dangers in the real world. I think that's perhaps like reflective of what you're saying right Colton is like, there is like sort of an evolutionary motivation and then there's like the way that it manifests itself to us and the way that we're interpreting it. Athena if you think, oh sorry, go ahead Colton. Oh, I was just going to say it's kind of a, it's a funny thing if you know if it really is, you know, ultimately about escapism then why would we escape something scary or even pleasant some of us have pleasant lives. It doesn't make a pleasant life to dive into a story that's unpleasant. That doesn't feel like escapism right that feels like something else. Yeah. Well, and Athena, I want to hear what your answer would be in a second but but just that kind of raises another question for me which is, like, sometimes I think when I think about true crime in particular right so Colton I know you do some work on true crime and why we enjoy engaging with that and I think, you know, things have gotten much more nuanced lately but sort of the traditional true crime narrative seems to be like, there's a violation of justice there's like a pursuit of an investigation a pursuit of justice and then at the end there's like, you know, the, we're achieving justice right it's like the one order narrative arc and you know some some part of that seems like when I think about the chaos of the world like something about these like clean predictable narratives like feel very satisfying to me. But so I wonder if you think like that's part of folks attraction to some of these things and like if so, how does that kind of shift our ability to like transport some of these cleaner and imaginings within cleaner narratives to like the sort of messier realities of our world. Yeah, I think I think for a lot of people unless you're kind of an adrenaline junkie for a lot of people if you do if you have an unresolved story, and that's, that's, that's more unsettling, right. I mean, part of part of what probably goes on when you engage in scary plays that when you finish it when it's complete, your body's parasympathetic nervous system the the rest and digest the one that helps you relax, sort of kicks into high gear and helps you do that kind of relaxing feeling and you get this you hear this a lot with people they'll say oh I turn on forensic files to relax or go to sleep at night, which just sounds crazy right like you turn on true crime to go to sleep to relax. That part of what might be going on is that you know you actually do get a relaxation feeling from some of those towards towards when the when the story finishes and it's wrapped up neatly, right. And that has some to do with it. But what's interesting is some of the really early to like right when the printing press was invented some of the first things that were printed off were essentially stories of true crime for as we would recognize them today. And those stories didn't always have these justice heavy endings right they would sometimes just be very descriptive account like one of the earlier ones was a woman who murdered her four kids and then killed herself but there was no like real justice or into it was a story about this horrible thing that happened. And so I think that you know justice definitely has something to do with it, certainly for some people more than others. But I think a lot of that has to do with to you know if you're learning about something if I tell you a story and there's no resolution. I don't really feel like I learned as much right because I didn't learn how to overcome or defeat the thing or I didn't learn like how to stop it I just learned that it's really bad, which is still learning something but it's not quite as good as learning how to overcome it right or how to see it through to the end. I know that makes sense. Athena, I'm really curious what you would say like when you think about the ways that you engage with some of this content, maybe in particular zombies like do you use it as an escape. Would you say you use it as an escape do use it to learn about yourself do you learn it to learn about the world how do you kind of think through that question. To be perfectly honest, I like never was really into like horror or zombie stuff until I kind of like started getting interested in it as like a tool for engaging with things and like a tool for science communication and all that so like it's kind of like come like I've come around to like oh actually this is really fun like kind of through like the back door of it. So I appreciate that it's like fun and that you know you do kind of get transported to a different world that you can engage in. But for me, I mean I think it's a I think it's a combination of the last two probably like, you know, learning about myself and how I respond like that's fun to kind of challenge myself I also like, you know, I like to do things that are like physically challenging and kind of like see you know where my limits are and I think like, you know, horror is like, you know, it mental emotional cognitive version of like kind of pushing yourself a little bit. And then, you know, I also do think that like there are a lot of horror movies that are actually really great at kind of like painting a picture of like, you know, okay, if this and this and this happened, you know, here are like, you know, there are like potential things that could happen in human society or in like, you know, in medicine or, you know, like if they're if they're well done stories then they're they just like, you know, bring one or two like new things in and then kind of and I think that like those are really, like those are really compelling and interesting because they do, you know, bring you into an alternate kind of world and help you to kind of like fill that world out in a way that lets you reason about things like what, you know, what things might be like what problems might exist, how you might solve them. Is there like, not to put you on the spot, but is there, is there like an example of like a movie, a TV show, a book, like some piece of work that you think in particular does a really good job of that? Well, one of my like favorite zombie movies of all times is train to Busan, which is, you know, it's like really this story about, you know, how, how like people can be sort of very invested in sort of like appearances and like, you know, social class and sort of, you know, differences. But that like, you know, ultimately when there's a threat like zombies, like the aspects of human nature that have to do with like helping each other and working together, like those kind of like come to the fore and start to transcend like all of these like, you know, other things that we usually sort of like divide ourselves, you know, on. And I think it's, it's a really brilliant movie that, you know, like there's just like a very good intuitive understanding of like very complex things with human nature in terms of like cooperation and like kinship and it, it like paints this really great picture of sort of like, you know, fundamental social challenges in times of disaster, using the zombie apocalypse as a backdrop and it's like, it's kind of a serious zombie movie. It's not like, you know, silly horror movie, but like there are also lots of moments of like humor and lightheartedness like within it. So, and it's just, it's beautifully shot too. So it's kind of, you know, it provides like a lot of like really like entertaining and engaging things while at the same time taking you through sort of like, you know, social and cultural and class kind of issues that might arise in a disaster situation. Yeah, no that's really interesting and I think it's, you know, when folks were registering for this event we kind of asked them about what they thought was like the biggest vulnerability in their community like in a sort of apocalyptic situation. And, you know, the most common answer there was like a lack of cohesion and civility like people worrying about it would be every person for themselves polarization and you know I think I really shared that worry too. But then then I think also about like the sort of like disaster situations that I've been in like earthquakes wildfires like these, you know, I mean, I was going to say pandemic like obviously there's like big exceptions right like there's big exceptions. But it's like you definitely can find these pockets of like human resilience that that do feel like like sort of sort of inspiring or that they might kind of break with this pattern that that we often have kind of in our minds about how how humans will react under pressure. Absolutely. And, you know, if you look at historical examples like, you know, after the great earthquake in San Francisco at the turn of the century, there's just a huge amount of spontaneous cooperation. You know, people helping each other without expecting anything in return. Sorry, even, you know, like public transportation or, you know, the transportation system was just like running for free stores and restaurants were giving food away for free. I mean, everyone was just, you know, trying to help everyone else and you see this often in the week or two after a disaster that people are just sort of like in a mode of like helping anybody they can anybody who needs help and not really, you know, operating in the standard kind of like market transactional way that we usually operate in. Yeah, I mean it's interesting like it almost feels like in the maybe like when I'm thinking back through the pandemic like if you think about the first few weeks in like March of 2020 was like everyone was, you know, applauding nurses and doctors at a certain hour and like kind of coming together in this way and then it seems like maybe there's like maybe there's like apocalypse fatigue after a while and things kind of start to deteriorate but this idea that you're mentioning of like kind of building up like, or like kind of communities coming together like spontaneous community resilience or kind of community interdependence. Do you think like can we, I'm curious Colton for your perspective on this like, can we train that can we like train our communities, so that that is a more likely reaction after different apocalypses. I think it's easier for certain things than others, you know, with something like an earthquake or a hurricane or tornado or a fire. I think everybody is in agreement that those are dangers that dangerous and they are dangerous right. And so it's very easy for us to come together and help each other. When we all agree what the threat is and that it is a threat. I think what we see happening sometimes with infectious diseases for example like with the pandemic but also probably just any kind of pandemic. Certain people are going to I think everybody saw it as a threat initially because it was new and scary and we didn't know a lot about it and so we were all on the same page that this is something that is very threatening, and that helped us kind of come together. I think as the pandemic wore on I don't know if it was there were certainly some fatigue going on. I think everybody felt that. Something else that was happening was that people's perceptions of what was most threatening and how threatening it was changed right some people thought now the lockdown was more threatening to my personal, you know, economic situation or my family situation or some people thought well the pandemic is still the virus itself is still more threatening and it's more threatening than I thought it was before. And so people began to diverge a little bit I think on both their perception of how threatening it was and what the what the real threat was right. And I think that's what divides us right that's what began to divide us and I think still sort of divides us. So I think you know. Can we teach it maybe but I think it would require us to essentially get on the same page about what the threat is and how threatening it is and I think that's really hard to do it's not impossible but that's definitely obviously the real threat is the zombies. The zombies. Yeah, that's why zombies are great. Everybody agrees that zombies are the threat right. So it's kind of interesting and this is one of the things that I wanted to ask you about as it relates to like scary play. And, you know, it reminds me of the events like zombie crawls right like as I mentioned you're the director of the Eureka spring crawl which I read online brings up to 20,000 people to a small town of like what 2000 people something around there. So like 10 to one zombie ratio pretty impressive zombie to human ratio that's that's pretty impressive. And I'm wondering like for the uninitiated if you could explain like what a zombie crawl is and like what it actually helps people do in terms of like when we're thinking about community preparedness for different risks. It depends, you know that there are lots of different zombie walks and zombie crawls that that happen around the US and each one's a little bit different. Some of them are pub crawls. Some of them are just walks where people just dressed up as zombies and walk. In our case it's kind of an all day event where people come dressed up as zombies or they have makeup artists like help them out the day of and there's music and all kinds of things that people are dressed up spooky and acting spooky all day and then there's a nighttime parade or sort of a dusk parade that happens where they parade through the streets with zombies and zombie hunters and people dress up their cars as these apocalypse vehicles. And I think you know they're not every place has like a zombie walk or a zombie parade or zombie crawl right in our case I think what it does is it helps us understand what happens when there's a 10 to one ratio of anyone in the town right it's a huge influx of people that puts a lot of strain on the infrastructure. But I think you know you can get this in different kinds of ways like you know if your town doesn't have like a zombie crawl or a zombie parade or something. Surely there are haunted houses or other kinds of things that you can engage in you can even watch you know watch these apocalyptic apocalyptic movies and it's because you know human imagination is very rich like we can easily imagine these kinds of things without necessarily having to have an event like that itself in our town. I can add on to that like you know this this idea of you know having a zombie invasion in your town and then using that not just as like a fun you know festival event that's like Halloween themed and a party but that can actually like leverage that to engage people in like well how do we manage the risks of disasters this this is something that Colton and I are starting to explore as part of our work and our research on collective risk management so it's a new it's a new area it's a new approach. But you know there's a lot of evidence that you know if you engage people with stories and with play that you know those are good tools for getting people to engage and then the question becomes well how do you create. Stories and play that are collective that help get people so they have their shared attention on threats right and like what are the right way of framing those threats and so. So yeah so we're really using this as kind of like a jumping off point for you know seeing like how. You know how much we can engage the community like in the aftermath of an actual zombie invasion right actual zombie invasion in the question of you know how would your town survive right does that get people like interested and like. Wanting to you know get their shelter in place kit together so that they're ready for you know any disaster that would maybe keep them from leaving their house. So a lot of open questions and I think a lot of you know fun opportunities in the future for you know doing things that are related to disaster preparedness that are just you know more fun and more social and you know maybe you know give people a greater connection to their community in the process as well. Yeah yeah and well just quickly before before we move on I did want to remind the audience members that we are going to have some time for audience questions. At the end so there you if you're joining us on site oh you should see a little column where you can type in your questions and we'll be taking a look at those and just a little bit but. You know kind of building off of what you're mentioning Athena and Colton. You know one of the things that you all are going to be doing after the zombie crawl is like having an event which is like. And could Eureka Springs actually survive the zombie apocalypse and and this is like a question that I know that. In your work you're going to be kind of deploying in different towns so if someone has is like wondering like if I'm wondering if my hometown can survive a zombie apocalypse like. What questions do I go through to like arrive at the at the answer to to that kind of dilemma. If you know you want to take that one. Yeah sure I'll start and then you can you can jump in too if you want. So I think there's a couple of different sort of levels of preparation so you know one question is how how how ready our households to be able to shelter in place. So it you know essentially if every household has what they need to stay indoors for 72 hours either because you know they themselves have the resources or we have like. You know ways of supporting people maybe who don't have the resources to put those in place because not everybody right can just put together a kit that's going to cost you know 200 bucks or something right that will allow them to be ready. So we have to think of you know how do we support households and being ready but by framing things you know in in terms of you know the zombie apocalypse right that could be like OK well you know get yourself shelter in place kit together. Make sure that you're ready so in case the zombies come you can stay in your house for 72 hours so that would be you know one really important thing is to what extent our households ready. And then you can start to sort of look outside of households and say OK you know how is the infrastructure like how you know would people be able to get to a safe place that they needed to leave their homes. Would they be able to walk would they be able to bicycle would they be able to drive right of evacuation needs to happen essentially you know is is their infrastructure that will allow that to happen and happen safely. And then you can start asking questions also about you know trust right among neighbors in you know your community in your region. Also trust with you know government agencies and law enforcement right who might be giving instructions to help coordinate activities. So you know those are just some examples right of things that would be potentially very important in a zombie apocalypse but also are very relevant to being able to survive and thrive in any number of disasters that could occur. Yeah I think that's that's really helpful and both of you wrote an article for firstly for future times kind of before this event where you walked folks through like the different questions that they should ask themselves to prepare for the zombie apocalypse but like more more concretely to prepare for for these sorts of other apocalypses and and it was it was interesting to me because I grew up in a place where there were lots of wildfires and so it was like, we always had this idea that like yes we should have like a shelf, a go bag right where you or, you know something that you can grab where you have food and water and and your important documents they should all be in one place and then like, inevitably it's like every time there's a wildfire it's like, ah wait but the birth certificate where is it like this, like if these sort of things that it's like a broccoli type of thing because you're like yeah I know that I should do this, but it's hard. So, when I was starting to think about it as like, Oh, no wait okay the zombies are coming like okay I can be in my house for 72 hours if I have these things but then eventually I have to leave my house because you know there's no more water so then I have my bag and you know how how well am I going to be able to how quickly can I bike away from the zombies like you know these sorts of things like what is the route that I would take to avoid the zombies. And while I'm trying to get to the you know the hospital or the train station or whatever. So, anyway, I think that that was like a really kind of helpful way to get people to kind of again think through these things through these situations and get ourselves prepared and actually kind of sorry. I was just going to say it makes it more like a fun thing rather than like eat your broccoli. Yeah. Exactly. And I think, so I actually wanted to ask both of you, you know thinking about so this idea that we should all have like an apocalyptic go back right so there's there's two things that we should have from from my understanding right it's like, you have your shelter and place kit which is what you need to survive in your house for 72 hours say right so food, water, you know the different if the electricity grows goes out you know flashlights batteries etc. And then there's like the kind of to go version of that which is your your go bag. And so I wanted to ask both of you like beyond sort of the obvious things that that we know right like your passport or your food and water, like thinking through each of your apocalyptic go bags, like what are five things that you really said there so those could be like actual objects or they could be like fuzzier concepts that that you feel like you have need to have prepared to survive the apocalypse Colton I would love to start with you. Sure. Yeah I think I'm probably this is true of anybody's go back but you need a first aid kit right because you're going to be out the doctor you know you can't just go to the doctor if you get a cutter a scrape or something right so definitely a first aid kit. Yeah, I think you need a flashlight because I think humans are not used to just not having lights, and if the grid goes out. It gets really dark at night, especially if you're in a rural place. So flashlight definitely a good knife, because it's just a good utility tool for a lot of different things. Athena talked me into duct tape as being a good one. So duct tape is good. You can use it to repair almost anything like or if you need to make a quick shelter and you can't like you can it's really useful like in a lot of different ways. And then my fifth one I thought about this I think it would actually be a really good pair of like work gloves because if you're in the apocalypse and you're out and about. You're going to be using your hands a lot that's building shelter or trying to pry open a door or whatever it might be. Your hands will get beat up really quickly if you're not used to that kind of thing. If your hands get beat up when you're out in the apocalypse you're going to be at a huge disadvantage. It's a huge vulnerability because as humans we use our hands for almost everything. So good pair of gloves to protect your hands I think would be something that would be useful. Okay noted and the duct tape if there's a hole in the gloves and the duct tape can repair the whole. I think the duct tape is for I mean I would imagine it's for like building shelters or anything like that your bag gets a hole in it like you have your actual bag and it rips on something your shoes. Yeah I mean there's just so many things you could use. You can also like use it use duct tape to like essentially like old school 3d print like anything you could like make like a little like water you know carrying thing you could make yourself a hat you could make yourself like you could use it to like make almost anything. I love it. The duct tape has not sponsored the segment but we are so dedicated. Athena what about you like what are things that you would kind of draw on in your apocalypse to go back? Yeah yeah so I'm going to start with like the basics. So I'm a big fan of schwa fai fu which is shelter, water, fire food is just like a great like place you start for like you know what you need. So shelter that could be like you know like a really good jacket right or it could be like an emergency blanket right so like the emergency blankets are like tiny. Or you know if you have more room it could be like you know thin wool blanket or some layers right so like shelter could mean a lot of different things. But yeah like an emergency blanket I would say would be like the best like version of shelter because you can also like use it to like block the sun if you need to like be under it or like there's many different things you can do with it and it's like so small and so light it's like the size of a credit card you know so you could just like easily have that like with you really anytime. Water, so in my go bag I have like a little bit of water but then I also have a life straw which you know basically allows you to drink out of anything for quite a while. You can also get like iodine pills and like you know so that you basically so you can drink water so some ability to drink water fire so you know I have both matches and a lighter. I have some very very remedial understanding of how to make a bow drill. And I've never actually started a fire with a bow drill I've seen it happen. I would definitely start working on those skills if I knew that you know my time with a lighter and matches was limited. And then food so like I have a brick of like extremely dense. It's like it's basically like shortbread it's like emergency rations. Okay. So that way you know I know that I would have food so I would say those four and if I'm you know with Colton and he's already got the duct tape then I'm going to take my ukulele is number five so. Amazing yes because I you know one of the things that you all put in this list that you prepared for the article on site was like something to pass the time right is like this. Something to make you feel like you're not just surviving the apocalypse like physically but you're also like you're still there you're you're kind of still yourself. And just to kind of continue through here I think one of the imagining these sorts of different apocalyptic scenarios right and one of the parts that I really enjoyed about your forthcoming book Athena was you kind of walk people through different potential. Apocalypses that are on the horizon and you walk them through like the things that they should should think about and potentially prepare there. And so I want to kind of walk both of you through a similar activity and so I have a list of different potential apocalypses and I want to have you ranked them on. A scale of one to five right like one being like yeah we're okay like no need to stress too much about that one and five being like yikes this is probably it this this might be like the capital T apocalypse. And just we can kind of give people a guide of what sort of what sort of apocalypses they should they should really be thinking through so the first one and I'll just have we'll just do the numbers without explanation right so the first one is infectious disease or pandemic Colton I'll start with you one to five. And one is low five is one is low one is like we're probably okay five is like probably not okay. And no explanations why no explanations to. Okay, Athena for. Okay, asteroid. Colton. Maybe one. Okay, Athena. Yeah, at the moment one. Okay, good. Good. That's a good one. Nuclear war Athena. Four plus. Colton. Now that varies that varies by the by the year I feel like I'll give it I'll give it a three. Okay, biological warfare Athena. Two and a half. Okay, Colton. Two. Okay, climate crisis Colton. One. One. Okay. Athena. Three. Okay. AI take over Colton. Three and a half. Okay. Athena. 1.5. Okay, and then last one zombies Colton. Like real zombies. Real zombies. I got to go with the one. Okay. Athena. Well, if it includes like any kind of entity that can hijack another entity that is genetically different from it, then I'm going to give it a five. Okay. Okay. Well, so I wanted to explain your highest answer. So Athena explain why. Yeah, so I mean, if we think about zombies, as you know, anything that hijacks something else that could include infectious diseases, right? That hijack their hosts. It could include, you know, somebody getting a like wrong idea in their head that makes them like push the nuclear, you know, button. It could include, you know, AI takeover. It could include like so many things. It could include just like, you know, memes that go viral and then polarize society and create a civil war, right? Like, there's so many things that could happen that could create, you know, real zombies in that sense of, you know, the word zombie. So. Okay. That's pretty convincing. Colton, I think your highest one, if I'm not wrong was AI. Yeah. And yeah, I think I chose that one because actually my highest wasn't mentioned. My highest to be aliens. I think I think we're in trouble. Well, why don't you? Yes. Let's do aliens then. Yeah. That would be like a five. Okay. Because, because I think that for a lot of the same reasons I ranked AI a little bit higher. I don't think that I think we would all be on the same page that there are threat, which is good. That's a plus one means we would probably cooperate. The problem is I think we would cooperate and try to take them out. And I don't know that that would necessarily be the best decision. I think we would be, we would be a little bit trigger happy when it came to aliens. And I think that could lead us down a bad path, maybe. And I think that with AI, there's something similar where we're not really, I think we're not in agreement about like countries are not in agreement about how much of a danger it is. And I don't, I don't think anyone really knows, right? But the problem is some countries think it's not a big deal and some countries do think it's a big deal, which means we are not aligned on what we should do. And so I think there's just more uncertainty with, with AI and with aliens than there are with other things. I mean, you know, humans have, I think experienced a lot of those other exception zombies, maybe, but I think this definition maybe not, but I think, I think humans have experienced a lot of those other situations before and we've, we've found ways to overcome them, especially infectious diseases. I mean, that's something that, that life in general has, you know, always battled with. Yeah, I think AI and aliens are the things that we know the least about and the things that we'd be least prepared for. Yeah. So Colton, are you just worried about like, humanoid intelligent alien life or like also like, you know, microscopic alien life that could, we wouldn't even know that it was. I think that one, that would be the most dangerous pandemic one to me, because again, we just don't know how to deal with it, right? We can kind of fumble our way through things that we know a little bit about until we figure it out, but if it's something brand new and we saw this with, with COVID a little bit, it was, and COVID's not brand new, right? The coronavirus itself is not brand new, but this, you know, version of it was sort of new and we fumbled around a lot, right? We, we made a lot of mistakes. We got some things right, but if we had something entirely new that we had never seen before, I think it just is inherently much more difficult to know what the best route is. It's more difficult to know how to manage our costs and benefits and the risks of taking, making certain decisions. Yeah. It's really interesting. And this is another one of the things that we asked folks for when they were kind of registering for this event and kind of the consensus as much as we could tell among folks answers was like, lots of folks were very worried about climate, right? And the way that that kind of intersects and occasions, many other kind of kind of disasters. And, but, you know, at the same time, we had another event a while, a couple of weeks ago where we were kind of gauging people on this. And similarly, like people seem very, very concerned with climate, but also at the same time, like when you asked them, like, do you think that human resilience, like do you think that we're going to be able to, to kind of get it together and correct and work together to like people's, many people had like a high level of confidence in that. So, so I think, you know, that's, that's like a really, another like really interesting way of like imagining these scenarios is like, what are we most afraid of, but like, okay, what, what skills do we have and like, how can we kind of bring them together? Like Athena, you call it like your Z team, your zombie team. Like, so what, what skills do we have as like a species that we can maybe bring together and like try and overt these, these sort of apocalyptic threats. And so we're coming up on the hour here, but before we kind of transfer over into just a couple of audience questions, I want to bring folks in one more time with a poll question. And this one, you know, Athena and Colton, y'all were talking about assessing your individual vulnerabilities and kind of addressing those through like your, your go kit or your shelter in place kit. And then also looking at then your community vulnerabilities, right? So like how far is a hospital? How reliable is transportation, et cetera. And so I have a poll question here, asking folks for their community's biggest vulnerability to future disasters. So here are the options we have are a lack of natural resources, a lack of infrastructure, environmental conditions and human selfishness slash a lack of coordination and cooperation. So I'll give people just a second to vote there. All right, we'll give folks about five more seconds to get their votes in. What were the options again? Yeah. Human selfishness slash lack of coordination, lack of natural resources, lack of infrastructure and environmental conditions. I know what I'm choosing for what do you choose for the environmental conditions? Okay. Colton? Um, maybe infrastructure. Okay. I'm not sure. Yeah. Maybe it would depend on the kind of apocalypse it was. Eureka springs is a pretty good place to survive the zombie apocalypse is the thing, right? Like, I think so. Compared to here, for example. Yeah. If Phoenix already feels like the apocalypse sometimes. Sometimes. Um, so here, uh, just, I'll read out the kind of explanations that we got here. So 57% said, uh, human selfishness, a lack of coordination or cooperation, which was a little bit what we, we talked about before that was kind of reflective in some of the things that people mentioned when registering for the events. 19% say a lack of natural resources, 14% say a lack of infrastructure and 10% say environmental conditions. So maybe we have fewer viewers in Phoenix. So we might think, um, but I actually did, um, I'm want to transfer over now to, to some of the audience questions. And there was actually a question that came in here, like related to what we were just talking about before we transferred over to the full, which is, um, like the, both of you kind of ranked in your list of apocalypse, um, apocalypse scenarios, climate change or the climate crisis, like on the lower side compared to some of the other threats. So what is it about it? Um, maybe Colton will start with you that kind of give you, gives you hope there. Or maybe it's not as apocalyptic just quickly. Yeah. Uh, I mean a couple of things. One is that, uh, the world is very focused on that right now. So we are, you know, to the extent, we do just, I think people and countries still disagree on it, but we are very focused on it. It's on a radar, right? Of things that like could go wrong and things that we need to address. And so I think that that's a, that's a plus one for me that makes it seem less like, uh, like something that will lead to the apocalypse. I also think that, um, certainly there's been, you know, accelerated climate change recently, but the climate has also changed a lot. I think over the eons and, um, is it going to wipe out like all of humans? That seems, that seems unlikely to me. It doesn't mean that it wouldn't cause something really, like awful to happen over the course of a hundred years, 200 years. Um, but I just don't think that the climate changing would wipe out, uh, the species wouldn't be an apocalyptic event. It would be a really terrible event, but maybe not an apocalyptic event. If you know, is it, is that similar for you? Yeah. I mean, I would say, so I ranked it like solid like in the middle and partially because, you know, I do think that there is attention being put on it now. And there is like the potential for more effective coordination and cooperation around dealing with it. Um, you know, there are also other strategies that are like, there are many strategies that are available for dealing with it. I mean, many of them will take like resources and they'll be like tradeoffs and like, you know, issues of inequality. So it's like a lot of like social complexity around solving the problem. So that's why I, you know, like put it in the middle. Cause I think still like, there are things that we have to figure out in order to be able to deal with it in a way that won't be catastrophic for lots of people, frankly. Um, but I do think that there are ways, there are routes, um, to, to dealing with it. And, um, you know, I mean, it's, it's very, it's very close to home. It's not even close to home. It is home for me because I live in Phoenix. Like a few days ago, it was still 100 degrees here. You know, like, it was like 95. And I'm like, oh, thank goodness. Like it's cooling down. Right. So, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's real. And in the summers here, if there's a power outage, you know, thousands of people could, you know, just like need hospitalization and like, you know, it's, it's really, it's intense. So I think, uh, you know, and it disproportionately affects people who are more vulnerable, right? Like who are lower income, who have less ability to like leave, you know, the city, right? So there's, um, I mean, there are a lot of, there are a lot of issues that need to be, need to be dealt with. Um, and yeah, I mean, I think that that makes sense. And I think it's like what you're saying is like directing attention, right? Like what you're both saying is like, we have some attention directed toward it. We need to direct more attention toward it by like imagining these different things that can go wrong. And so we're kind of like moving there. And the, the last question just before we sign off here is another audience question. And Athena, I'm going to direct this one towards you. They say, what are the most useful real world applications of studying a zombie apocalypse? Military war games, pandemics, other. Hmm. Most useful. Um, I mean, I think that pandemics are a sort of an obvious one where you can use, you know, like the dynamics of a zombie apocalypse to just talk about the dynamics of disease transmission, the dynamics of infection. And that's something that it's hard for people to wrap their heads around those like, you know, exponential kinds of dynamics, right? Early on. Um, but the idea of like a zombie and then it's like it bites someone and then they turn into a zombie, right? Like that's a very like visceral, um, and visual way of representing, you know, exponential growth dynamics, which like I said, very hard just into it is not very intuitive for us. So I think that that's one of the really great applications. Um, I think it can also be really useful for thinking about, you know, how like, you know, how is the infrastructure in your city or town for evacuation if that's necessary? Um, because, you know, you can imagine zombies that mimic different aspects of different kinds of disasters. So I think that there's a lot of potential there. And, you know, I know it's also been, you know, used by the military as a way to, um, you know, engage, um, you know, soldiers and people in training about, you know, complex scenarios. So I don't personally know much about that other than the fact that, um, it apparently was a lot more fun for everyone who was doing it, including like the instructors and the students. So, yeah. Well, thank you so much. Unfortunately, I think we're going to have to wrap it up here. We could continue talking about the many different apocalypse that we face for many more hours. And luckily, um, that's something that I think you all will continue to do in your work. So Athena and Colton, thank you so much for, for your time and for helping us think through these things. Um, I know that I'm walking away feeling better prepared, uh, for confronting the zombie apocalypse or many other, uh, apocalypses. And I'm finally going to, uh, make my, make my go back. It's going to be a goal between now and Halloween. So you've inspired me. Um, and I hope that, uh, for the audience members to, this has been useful. And I also hope that you will, uh, stay in touch with us here on future tense. You can follow our work, uh, at future tense. Now, uh, on X, which is its own sort of apocalyptic world these days. So enter with passion. Um, but you can also access all of our, uh, content on slate.com slash future tense. And, um, until next time, thank you all. Um, happy Halloween and happy, uh, apocalypse survival to all of us.