You know how I always talk about the zombie apocalypse and how I say I’m trying to get ready for it? After all, when it happens, I don’t want to be eaten in the first wave of attacks, that’d be sad, and I would miss all the fun.

You know how this goes (or at least, how films and series are telling us it will go), someone will get infected by some strange experiment, or travelling to a far away country, or being bitten by some animal. That person will get flu-like symptoms, which will ignore, until it’s too late, maybe going to a hospital just before dying and becoming a zombie. Let’s say someone at the morgue will examine the body, usually when there’s no one around, and will get bitten. Or something like that.

Before you know it, we’re surrounded, scavenging for food, and trying to survive.

I don’t want to be that person who doesn’t know what’s going around, the one that dies first in every film and series. That one that everyone thinks dude, how can you not see you’re about to die? That’s a zombie, run! God, you’re stupid; because, you know, when it’s you against twenty, thirty zombies, if you die, it was sort of expected; but when it’s just you, walking your dog (which is barking like crazy, by the way), and you just decide to investigate… Well, you probably deserved it.

So, I’m working on it.

Last night, my brother and I decided to watch some new The Walking Dead episodes. I have no clue what season is on now, 4.2.5? Something like that!

At some point, characters are doing their thing: suffering, fighting, dying, crying, whatever, and mainly looking for food. There goes Carl, searching some random kitchen, and he finds a jar of pickles. At this point, I was watching from my own (rented) kitchen door, as I was getting dinner ready, while my brother was in the living room. My first reaction was to say seriously? Pickles? Ugh, I wouldn’t pick that up, dude, gross!. If you didn’t know, I hate pickles… not every pickle, but mainly the gherkin ones. Carl was picking a couple of massive jars of pickles.

My brother looked at me like I had just landed on Earth from another planet… He said something along the lines of so you’re in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, you are trying to survive, maybe have had nothing to eat for a few days, and then you find a jar of pickles which, mind you, can probably stay edible for months; and you decide not to take them because you don’t like them? As in ‘you can shoot me in the head now instead’?

I did consider it, ‘shoot me because there’s no way I’m eating that’, but I guess he had a point. If you’re trying to survive, you would eat pretty much about anything, but in the remotely unlikely event of being in that sort of situation, my first-world brain said hell, no, and it didn’t even have to be something weirdly gross.

I guess training for the zombie apocalypse doesn’t just involve being physically ready and in good shape. It isn’t about survival skills, being able to run long distances, being able to track, hunt and what-not. I guess it’s also about pushing the limits of what you would be ready to do in order to survive, and what you would be willing to eat.

Where would you draw the line in a situation like that? Would your will to survive overtake everything else? Is there anything you would never eat, no matter what?

Let me know, I’d love to pick your brains…