How would China parse the Zombie Apocalypse?

So, the Zombie Apocalypse, we know it's coming. When it gets here, how does China react?

Blame foreigners?
Make out like it's not happening?
Lead international coordination efforts?
Other?


Just curious because zombies are the test case for everything important, and on this one, I don't know.

There are of course several questions to ask first. For instance, type. Do we get Rage Zombies or the Living Dead? The Rage Zombie is fast moving, aggressive, and angry. Whatever causes it generally needs next to no incubation period. The apocalypse arrives quickly. Zombies of the Living Dead variety are by contrast slow moving and for the most part unperturbed. They do get hungry and will gather. But since it takes time for victims to turn and needs quite a large number of zombies before the normal healthy person can be surrounded and brought down, it is something of a mystery how the critical mass needed for an apocalypse gets started.

The second question is origin. Does it start in a laboratory or in a never-before explored cave? That's to say, man-made virus or prehistoric mutation? (Or, for a variation on the natural source, we could even get some modern mutation. After all, zombie viruses that are apocalyptic will tend to select themselves out of existence fairly quickly by exhausting the hosts populations.)

And in the case of China, there'll be the question of where it starts. If it starts overseas, we might fairly well expect some gloating in Global Times and nannying in China Daily. But if it starts at here?


And so on.

It can't start here, I think. Zombies are a kind of technology. They're largely irrelevant without sophisticated populations of tool users. They do however enjoy a large population. Truth be told, there aren't that many loner zombies. They rarely if ever want to head off and do their own thing. They seek out, ahem, like minds. Is there any sense that China can develop and sustain a technology of this kind? Imma say no. Just a feeling. They can do hunger and environmental degradation. They can do basely organizational technology, such as lots and lots of tallish buildings that need to be taken apart from time to time to add in actual functions like plumbing and lights. It's all coarse-grained and high-speed.

It doesn't start here. Nor does it start anywhere poor. Why would it? Entropy and mutation are not themes of poverty. So....

Perhaps I am detecting a lack of preparedness thinking. BUT YOU KNOW IT'S COMING! YOU THINK YOU'RE GETTING ON A FLIGHT HOME?! BODY TEMPERATURE SCANNERS, MAN! WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU'RE ROOM TEMPERATURE?!

A critical feature that would have a massive effect on China is whether the apocalypse starts with a single infection and only spreads to those bitten and/pr freshly killed vs a general rising from the graves of the last 10-100 years dead (Night of the Living Dead or Return of the Living Dead style).

If the former, China's in the same boat as the rest of the world.  If the latter, the predominance of cremation over burial in China will give the country a considerable early advantage over countries with a large ratio of burials over cremations.

Further, the way many buildings here are well secured (heavy doors and bars in all windows) against criminals would give China another incredible advantage in dealing with virtually any style of zombie outbreak.  An American subdivision is a zombie's idea of a lunch buffet.  A Chinese village or a fully gated garden community could easily shelter most of its population against a wandering group of zombies.  Only very active and agile style zombies who can work together (like World War Z) or intelligent, tool using living dead (such as the Nazi Zombies of Dead Snow) would have much of a chance in those environments.

All they will do is add zombie to the menu of the supposedly good meat you see on the street bbq.

Unless several families have been keeping their dead relatives on display for a very long time, there's a string of coffin makers along a road about 45 minutes bike ride from here. Chinese coffins look damn heavy. Rather than rectangular, they flare at the ends and have a lot of curved wood. They look like buggers to break out of:



The ones around here have peaks on the top at either end, like traditional roofs.

I suppose that could all be pine, or even plastic. There's still earth to dig out of, and for the contagion to seep in to. The uprising could be supernatural in origin, I suppose, but all bets are off in that case. How do you prepare for the supernatural? (Damn. I bet Chinese folklore has an answer for that one. Maybe they will be the only ones to survive.)

Hmmm, given this:



It seems like they're not sooo heavy.

Howevaire.... Chinese bury on hillsides. Your traditional zombie gas is thick, green, and heavier than air.


Also, while it's true bars on windows will defend against the traditional problem of the porch zombie arriving to feast on your mortal remains and brains, the China-wide security measure of locking both fire escapes and all alternative exits in most buildings, will, I think, tell.

Furthermore, Chinese routinely participate in massive migrations. Spring Festival, for instance, seems like an ideal time to spread even a Living Dead scenario effectively. And if its a Rage zombie event, then it's all over, man. People packed close together, in the cold, their immune systems already under pressure, and worse, they expect to sit close packed possibly even for days. Worse still, mass demonstrations of anger and aggression are becoming de rigeur in airports. The outbreak could be well underway before anyone realises they're at risk of even more tarmac delay.

Private cars then. Private cars will save us.

So, once it gets going, what do they call it? Who responds, and how? Does it trend on Weibo or does the internet stop altogether? Is there any quarantine? Is the Army mobilised, and are their good efforts televised? Vinegar, you know, is a folkloric remedy. One wonders why it got so popular at the start of SARS. What do people say? That's possibly the problem with the zombie apocalypse: it's over too soon. It doesn't become an item in the culture. Perhaps the original question is flawed.

And if its a Rage zombie event, then it's all over, man. People packed close together, in the cold, their immune systems already under pressure, and worse, they expect to sit close packed possibly even for days. Worse still, mass demonstrations of anger and aggression are becoming de rigeur in airports. The outbreak could be well underway before anyone realises they're at risk of even more tarmac delay.

I think there were several outbreaks like this during Spring Festival.  Once it was over, guess what happened to all the evidence?

All they will do is add zombie to the menu of the supposedly good meat you see on the street bbq.

Soylent Grey.  The tasty solution to zombie pollution. 

Water, water, water.

If there's a zombie invasion where will all the holed up folks get clean water? I think the threat of leaving will in itself create a host of other health problems, eventually become as great a threat in and of itself.

It does beg the question of survival strategies. American strategies involve automatic weapons, bouncing zombies off Dodge trucks, and holing up in malls. (British strategies call for holing up at the pub.) A perhaps shallow peek at history suggests the Chinese strategy with respect to marauding invaders is to die in large numbers and/or assimilate the invader.

But on a day to day basis, Chinese people have been willing to gather around the dead and stare at them. This approach to trauma is perhaps, pardon the pun, dying out. I don't know how it works in the deeper countrysides still, but these days creeping urbanisation seems to bring with it a sense of I'm too busy for gawking.

Come to think of it, it would seem the middle classes have been stocking up on SUVs. Perhaps that's the strategy: adapt a handful of fireworks and go about exploding the dead or running them down with large vehicles. Seems a bit aggressive and perhaps not quite in keeping with ancestor worship.

Are you sure anybody would notice?

That is indeed the question. A zombie incursion in any US city with suburbs traditionally involves much running and screaming. It seems like Chinese would be more phlegmatic. During the first assaults perhaps we'd see a lot of histrionic remonstration and discussion. There'd be issues of face and public reparation. And then....