Moral Choices with Zombies
Zombie Thursdays is a weekly feature with guest blogger, Miranda. You can read more about her here.
I'm really interested in hearing what you all think... sort of an "open dialogue" per se about different moral situations and what you would do or what you feel would be best for a group of survivors.
I've talked in the past about how you might handle killing a family member or friend who had made the full transition into a zombie. I personally think it would be difficult, but completely necessary. At that point, I know my conscience would flinch, but in the end, I would value my own life above a zombie's, even my zombie mom.
But what if you weren't sure of someone's fate... This is the question that has been brought up in recent Walking Dead episodes. A member of their party goes missing, and of course the search begins. But as hours of searching turn into days with only small hints of the person's possible survival, the desire to continue searching wanes in part of the group. Some argue it is foolish to keep looking, for a couple of reasons-- 1. the person is most likely dead (or bitten) anyway 2. even if the individual is found, that's just another mouth to feed, another person to look after and take care of.
One character argues that the unofficial group leader needs to make the "tough decisions" and choose to give up on the search and move on. The leader argues that the tough choice is to keep looking while the easy decision is to just give up.
What do you think? I'm torn. On one hand, of course your first choice is to protect and save those close to you, the people you care about. Even if the person isn't a relative, in a survival situation, the group becomes your family, all you have left. In that respect, I would keep looking, provided the group's immediate safety wasn't being risked by doing so. On the flip side though, survival is important. If the group has an opportunity to pull up their "roots" and move on to perhaps a safer spot, but thereby abandoning one, that might be the best option for everyone else.
The needs of the few (or one) versus the many....
What would you do? (To be fair to others, try to not refer to the specific character examples being used in the show right now. General answers/situations only. We don't want to give anything away to people who are behind. Thanks!)