What’s the Matter with Kansas? Living Supremacism, Apparently.
(Naturally, the ZRC does not mean to condemn all Kansans for the actions of a distasteful few; the title is a reference to the famous and hotly-debated political work, ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas’ by Thomas Frank)
A story came into the ZRC’s inbox a while back about an Anti-Zombie militia in Kansas and it was disturbing. But the more we looked into it, the more disturbing the story became, helping illustrate the connections between Anti-Zombie prejudice and other serious social ills.
First, the militia:
The Kansas Anti Zombie Militia.
But the group is real and its members are pretty serious about it.
Once the Zombie Apocalypse hits, they’ll be ready for it and they want you to be too.
Naturally our misinformed fellow citizens in the KAZM got some of their bad information from the mass media, and were promoted by that media in turn:
Last month, the Discovery Channel featured the Kansas militia in a documentary that concluded that such a Zombie Apocalypse — or Zompoc — was possible. The program featured scientists who speculated some evolving virus is bound to jump to humans on our overcrowded planet.
Of course, scientists have been warning about pandemics such as bird flu that don’t produce zombies, but zombies are the hot monsters right now.
A packed house listened last year at St. Mary’s College of Maryland as a chemist, psychologist and student acknowledged the possibility of an epidemic, according to the school’s newspaper.
The panel pointed out that there already have been zombie-like symptoms dating back to 1594; they were eventually determined to be the first recorded human case of furious rabies — an especially serious form of rabies.
Of course ‘furious rabies’ isn’t Zombification. In fact, it’s the most common form of advanced rabies, and is arguably most noteworthy for its extreme lethality, rather than as some escape from death.
Another highly relevant fact that often goes unmentioned:
To date, there have been no reported cases of human-to-human transmission of rabies. However, it is theoretically possible, so anyone who has been in close contact with someone who has a rabies infection may be advised to have post-exposure prophylaxis as a precaution.
Oopsie.
And it gets worse: the militia is taking their Living Supremacism into public policy.
The site also notes as “a real-life threat to humanity” a biosecurity lab planned near Manhattan, Kan.
The biosecurity lab in question seems to be a long-discussed plan to move much of the nation’s research on highly contagious (mostly) *agricultural* diseases from the famous Plum Island facilities off the coast of NY to a new facility, yet to be constructed, in Kansas.
Regardless of the Anti-Zombie militia’s fears, construction seems to be going ahead.
Leaving aside the merits of this particular proposed research facility, the ZRC finds it deeply troubling that the pervasive, and unjustifiable, fear of a ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ should guide public debate on necessary medical research. Isn’t the real ‘threat to humanity’ that we don’t conduct this research, and get blindsided by new and untreatable disease? It’s more than a tad ironic that a group of people who are kept up at night worrying about fictional pandemics are working to block a research facility that would study the real thing.
Finally, and worst of all, the Anti-Zombie militia has some worrying levels of state support:
Kansas even used the militia to help promote general disaster awareness.
Members of the group were featured in a photograph with Gov. Sam Brownback when he signed a proclamation declaring October as Zombie Preparedness Month in Kansas.
No, really. Brownback actually did this.
Yes, it’s the ‘promote disaster preparedness by labeling Zombies a disaster’ ploy we’ve often discussed here on the ZRC blog. Only with the active assistance of a paranoid, weapon-loving militia group.
This cannot end well.
We worry for the Zombies of Kansas.
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