In earlier work, Brooks identified additional problems that affect the organizational competency and culture of the military: the inevitable logistics and morale gap. “Unlike its human counterparts, an army of zombies is completely independent of support,” we read in his Zombie Survival Guide (2003). “It will not require food, ammunition, or medical attention. It will not suffer from low morale, battle fatigue, or poor leadership. It will not succumb to panic, desertion, or out-and-out mutiny.”12 Human-run security institutions would undoubtedly confront these problems.
At this point, libertarians no doubt feel secure in their convictions about the rank inefficiency and incompetence of government bureaucracies. It should be noted, however, that private-sector organizations perform just as badly in these narratives. As previously mentioned, for-profit corporations are often responsible for triggering the initial zombie outbreak. In Dawn of the Dead, a news station broadcasts out-of-date emergency information to keep up ratings. In World War Z, entrepreneurs develop quack remedies for the zombie infection as a way to make a quick profit.
The Resident Evil franchise's Umbrella Corporation is the apotheosis of corporate ineptitude in the zombie canon. While the political power of this multinational corporation is obvious, its organizational competence is highly suspect. In the film series, Umbrella outsources internal security in its research labs to balky and unstable artificial intelligences. Low-ranking employees display minimal loyalty to corporate goals. High-ranking corporate officers make decisions that accomplish little but accelerating the spread of the T-virus farther than intended. This occurs even though the corporation—unique among zombie narratives—already possesses a cure for the undead infection. As a corporate actor, Umbrella's only tangible success appears to be covering its tracks in the mainstream media.
It would seem that flesh-eating ghouls would lead to organizational decision making ranging from the rote to the catastrophic. However, an organizational perspective cannot stop with that observation. While bureaucracies will inevitably make initial missteps, it would be foolhardy to predict persistent mistakes. When put under extreme duress, or threatened with extinction, government bureaucracies can adapt and overcome. Indeed, the failure to recognize this possibility is the biggest blind spot in the zombie canon. If humans can think faster than zombies, then their greatest comparative advantage in a future conflict will be their ability to develop innovative tactics and strategies. Many long-running zombie stories presume the evolution of zombies. Curiously, however, very few of them discuss how human individuals and organizations would adapt.
World War Z provides the best example of human adaptation. After the disaster at the Battle of Yonkers, the military begins to alter its doctrine. Most major governments quickly adopt a grand strategy of securing a geographically well-defined safe zone; U.S. forces retreat to the west side of the Rocky Mountains. The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff develops the “resource-to-kill ratio” (RKR) in order to maximize military efficiency. In the process, there are some clear bureaucratic losers,13 but the stress of scarcity forces a rationalization of resources. As one character recounts in Brooks's narrative, “What was so amazing to see was how the culture of RKR began to take hold among the rank and file. You'd hear soldiers talking on the street, in bars, on the train; ‘Why have X, when for the same price you could have ten Ys, which could kill a hundred times as many Zs.' Soldiers even began coming up with ideas on their own, inventing more cost-effective tools than we could have envisioned.”14
An organizational perspective would therefore predict that government agencies would misstep and err at the initial stages of a zombie attack. This same perspective would also argue that ecological pressure on these organizations to survive and thrive would lead to adaptation and improvisation. This prediction is probabilistic, however. In Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's 28 Weeks Later (2007), for example, a NATO expeditionary force reoccupies Great Britain after the rage virus has exterminated the population. Even though the commanders are fully aware of the dangers of infection, they abjectly fail to prevent its reemergence.
The policy recommendations that such a perspective offers are straightforward, and consist largely of ways to avoid the worst organizational pathologies and turf wars. No doubt the battle over which agency or bureaucracy would have the “lead” over how to defeat the undead would be fierce. National governments should consider designating a lead agency before rather than after flesh-eating ghouls start chomping on citizens. In Mira Grant's Feed (2010), for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention becomes the lead agency, amassing considerable amounts of operational and security capabilities in the process.
Perhaps the organizational perspective's strongest recommendation would be to exploit technologies that flatten organizational hierarchies and make information more readily available. Networked structures have the capacity to collect and disseminate information more quickly. If both national and international organizations relied on more networked arrangements, information from operators about the resilience of the undead can move up the hierarchy as soon as possible. This would accelerate rapid responses to zombie emergencies, and allow the best counter-zombie tactics and strategies to diffuse across the globe.15
There is a tragic irony to these predictions and recommendations. Recall the discussion of how domestic politics would affect counter-zombie policies: government institutions would be able to act in an unconstrained manner at first, but politics would impose a stronger constraint over time. The organizational perspective offers the reverse narrative—bureaucratic competency will improve over time. If both domestic political pressures and bureaucratic politics play a role in affecting government policies, their combined effect could be doubly disastrous. Government agencies would have the most autonomy when they are most likely to make bad decisions. By the time these bureaucracies adapt to new zombie exigencies, they would face political hurdles that could hamper their performance.
WE'RE ONLY HUMAN:
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESPONSES
TO THE UNDEAD
Zombies are often assumed to lack intelligence, but it should be noted that humans frequently respond to new undead situations with confusion and ignorance. Indeed, even a cursory glance at human behavior in zombie films highlights puzzling or seemingly irrational actions by the human characters. In Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004), the protagonists insist that safety can be found in the local pub even though it is located in a densely populated urban area. In Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland (2009), some of the characters are oddly certain that a Disney-style theme park will be zombie-free. In George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), marauding bikers pelt zombies with cream pies, acting as if that will incapacitate them. In Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead (1985), the zombies are smarter than most of the human characters. There is no shortage of stupid or self-defeating behavior in zombie films.
This should not be surprising. A zombie outbreak is perfectly designed to prey on powerful emotions—fear, disgust, revulsion, and dread—that can cause deviations from prudential behavior.1 Zombies occupy the lowest depths of the “uncanny valley” of human likenesses, which means that they resemble humans enough to trigger instant disgust and revulsion.2 The spread of zombies encapsulates the elements of an epidemic that should arouse the greatest amount of dread and anxiety from individuals. Fear and suspicion are much more severe in their effects when the source of danger is new, as any review of first reactions to AIDS, SARS, or HINI will reveal.3 The canonical responses to the zombie threat suggest that human beings cannot be reduced to bloodless calculating machines, despite the assumptions of rational choice theorists. All individuals have fears, foibles, and failings that cause behavior to deviate from how a dispassionate, rational decision maker would behave. First-image theorists look at these tendencies in human behavior and see whether they translate into recurrent patterns in world politics.4
There are a cluster of cognitive attributes hardwired into all humans that might
affect policy responses to an uprising of the living dead. Perhaps the most powerful is the tendency for confirmation bias in processing new information about a phenomenon.5 All individuals have ideologies, cognitive heuristics, or rules of thumb they use to explain how the world works. When confronted with an unusual or anomalous event, most people will focus on the bits of information that correspond to their preconceived worldviews. They will use historical analogies to guide their actions—even if these analogies are imperfect.6 At the same time, they will ignore or suppress information that contradicts their beliefs. Only if their preconceived ideas lead to radical policy failures will most individuals be willing to rethink their worldviews.
Indeed, confirmation bias helps to explain why first responders would likely fail to halt an initial zombie outbreak. Preventive action would require these people to logically conclude that the dead are walking the earth—a fact that contradicts most logo-centric worldviews. As Jonathan Maberry observes, “the zombie has to be seen and identified as a disease-carrying hostile vector. That's not going to happen quickly or easily, and probably not at all during this [early] phase.”7 Max Brooks is even more emphatic on this point: “Governments of any type are no more than a collection of human beings—human beings as fearful, short-sighted, arrogant, closed-minded, and generally incompetent as the rest of us. Why would they be willing to recognize and deal with an attack of walking, bloodthirsty corpses when most of humanity isn't?”8
A prominent form of confirmation bias in international relations is fundamental attribution error. When interpreting the behavior of other actors, individuals will often treat allies and adversaries in different ways.9 If an ally does something positive, individuals will attribute this behavior to his internal character. If an adversary acts in a constructive manner, however, that is attributed to pressures by the external environment—that is, he was forced into being good. Conversely, if an ally acts in an unproductive manner, that is explained away as a situation in which external circumstances forced a good actor to behave badly. If an adversary acts in the same manner, however, then it is because he is inherently wicked.
Another type of behavioral trait common to individual decision makers is their tendency to act differently when confronted with gains or losses relative to the status quo.10 Rational choice theory assumes that individuals have constant attitudes toward risk. According to prospect theory, however, people tend to be more risk averse when operating in a world of gains, and more risk loving when operating in a world of losses. To use some numerical examples, imagine you face the following choice:
Option A: The certain destruction of 500 zombies
Option B: A 50 percent chance of destroying 1,000 zombies and a 50 percent chance of destroying 100 zombies
In a July 2010 online survey that yielded 1,238 respondents, I found that more than 61% chose option A, even though option B offered the greater expected value of destroyed ghouls. Indeed, numerous experiments demonstrate that when individuals have to choose between a guaranteed prize and a lottery offering a prize with a slightly higher expected value, they will take the sure thing.
Now, consider a different choice:
Option A: A certain increase of 500 zombies
Option B: A 50 percent chance of creating only 100 new zombies and a 50 percent chance of creating 1,000 new zombies
In this case, more than 57% of respondents chose option B, even though the expected value of option A is better. If people must choose between a sure loss or a lottery in which the expected value is worse but the possibility exists of returning to the status quo, they will gamble for resurrection.
The policy implications of prospect theory are clear. Compared to the status quo, individuals will act in a more cautious, risk-averse manner when they believe that they are gaining ground. When they perceive themselves to be losing ground, individuals will be more willing to take risky gambits in an effort to resuscitate their fortunes.11
First-image theorists argue that this cluster of psychological attributes leads to a “hawk bias” in foreign affairs.12 When confronted with a possible adversary, the psychological response by individual policymakers will lead to more confrontational policies. Aggressive actions will be interpreted as intentional. When threatened with a possible loss, policymakers will be more willing to take risky actions to preserve the status quo. Other psychological traits—such as optimism bias and the illusion of control—will reinforce aggressive policies.13 Leaders will be supremely confident that proactive measures can address whatever threat emerges from beyond the grave.
Oddly enough, while the hawk bias might be a bad fit for human international relations, it would provide the right frame of mind for how to respond to flesh-eating ghouls. The revulsion caused by zombies would make it easy for individuals to label them as the enemy. Confirmation bias would ensure that any new data about zombies would simply reinforce their enemy status. Prospect theory would guarantee that leaders, when faced with initial losses from undead attacks, would double down with risky strategies designed to reclaim the status quo. The hawk bias might exaggerate conflict with humans—but it would appear to promote just the right attitude toward the living dead.
The zombie canon suggests two important caveats to this generally positive assessment, however. First, confirmation bias and fundamental attribution error will also lead individuals to treat their zombified relatives differently than others. As previously noted, a staple of the canon is for people to refrain from killing relatives who turn into flesh-eating ghouls. In Survival of the Dead, for example, one family patriarch refuses to kill any zombie in his clan, arguing that it would be tantamount to “killing our own kind.” The living dead would exploit this misperception, allowing the army of zombies to increase through an un-dead form of social networking. Family members would infect other family members, friends would infect friends, and so forth.
Second, it is unclear whether the perceptual response to zombies would be limited just to the un-dead. It is entirely possible that the hawk bias would cause individuals to distrust and fear other humans as well. In situations of flux, it would be easy to envisage humans accusing other humans of being bitten by a zombie. This internecine conflict among humans—and among human governments—could paralyze efforts to maintain a common anti-zombie front.*
First-image models would provide three concrete policy recommendations to combat the scourge of the living dead. First, it will be crucial for governments and international organizations to quickly and effectively proffer new rules and methods for coping with the undead. Individuals can adapt quickly to new circumstances, provided that those circumstances provide for some stability over time.14 If individuals know what the “new normal” looks like during a zombie outbreak, panic will be much less likely.
Second, policies should be implemented that “nudge” individuals into pursuing the right kind of counter-zombie tactics.15 These policies should have default options that lead to prudential counter-zombie behavior rather than assuming that individuals will adopt their own active counter-zombie measures. For example, after a zombie attack, a new component of any driver's license exam might be a demonstration of evasion tactics—or how to perform a hit-and-run on a flesh-eating ghoul with minimal damage to the motor vehicle.
There is one final, risky gambit—but it just might work. This section has focused on the psychological attributes of humans—but what about the psychology of zombies? One of the biggest puzzles in the zombie studies literature is why the living dead are compelled to devour humans even though there appears to be no biological reason for flesh-eating activity.16 Given the tendency of zombies to travel in packs and mobs, first-image theorists would hypothesize that this decision to eat humans is a classic case of groupthink, the tendency for individuals to prioritize group consensus over a thorough vetting of alternative ideas and proposals.17 This phenomenon has been observed in humans—but perhaps it explains zombie behavior as well. Based on their grouping behavior, it could be argued that
the living dead care the most about reaching a consensus among themselves about their social purpose. This could lead individual zombies not to question the assumptions behind the decision to eat humans.
A risky but intriguing policy option would be for human governments to use psychological operatives to engage in “cognitive infiltration” of the undead community. Such efforts have already been proposed for extremist and terrorist groups.18 Through suggestive grunting and moaning, perhaps these operatives could end the epistemic closure among zombies and get them to question their ontological assumptions. If zombies threw off their cognitive shackles and recognized that they did not need to eat human beings, then the crisis of the undead would be much less severe.
Of course, it is also possible that the living dead would devour the agents before they could perform their tasks. As prospect theory suggests, however, desperate times lead to desperate measures.
* * *
*It is interesting to note that a feminist perspective might provide some policy leverage at this juncture. In Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004), for example, the contrast between the governance structure of the mall when the security guards are in charge and when the female lead (a nurse) and her compatriots are in charge is quite stark. Decision making is both more consensual and yields superior results under the latter regime. It is possible that a gendered perspective would counteract cognitive biases against cooperation.
CONCLUSION
…OR SO YOU THINK
Theories of International Politics and Zombies Page 7