What I've learned from The Day of the Triffids, The Walking Dead, and 28 Days Later

I recently finished reading The Day of the Triffids, a science-fiction novel by British author John Wyndham published in 1951, about man-made carnivorous plants-the triffids-that begin to attack humans and kill them following a night-time meteor shower that blinds those who have watched it. Up to this point, they were aggressive in the sense of being able to sting people with their poisonous stingers, but after the meteor shower, they begin to move about and to kill humans. They are mostly localized to gardens, so that it remains safe for the most part to traverse city streets, but deadly to try to enter homes and dwellings that have any sort of garden attached to them. The opening scene, where the protagonist wakes up in a hospital bed (his eyes covered in bandages after having been splashed with triffid poison) to find himself almost alone, is one that has been borrowed by zombie apocalypse shows and films such as The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later.  The book is excellent in its portrayal of how people adapt to and cope in the new world of mostly-blind people wandering about in London and the rest of England, searching for food and for people to help them. As always in these types of stories, The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later included, the threat from monstrous creatures, while real, pales in comparison to the threat from the human monsters who take advantage of the situation and who try to control others with brute force. In other words, it becomes possible to shoot, hack at, and kill the zombies and triffids, but it is more difficult to do that with other human beings, because you don't always understand their motives until it is too late. In all three of these stories (book, TV series, and film), survivors band together in the search for food and safe lodging. It is not always smart to stay put if you first have found safe lodging, because at some point you will have to go out and find food, and that puts you at risk. You learn to kill the monsters, but you don't always know when they will appear. In The Day of the Triffids, those who can see (and who have a heart) try to take care of the blind people they run across, whereas other seeing people brutally shove them aside to let them die alone. Good people versus bad people, or are the bad people just the ones who have seen the grim future and understood that mankind has to make some hard choices? But we are human, and humans have hearts and empathy, and it is not easy to root that out. You will always have 'the every man for himself' type of people, and you will also have the altruistic people who always put others first. Both are extremes, because in a time of crisis, you need to have the middle-ground people, those who can see ahead and try to plan for the grim future, at the same time as they take care of the less fortunate.

Why do I bring up these apocalyptic themes? Because it is my contention that during times of crisis, you will sort into one of three groups of people: those who poo-poo the situation, ignore the seriousness of it and go about their lives as though nothing has happened (the 'hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil' type of people); those who panic and begin to hoard foodstuffs and household products ('the every man for himself' type of people); and those who understand the gravity of the situation and who try to keep a cool head in the midst of chaos (the 'common sense-we will get through this' type of people). It is the latter group that the world needs more of. They are the people who understand that there is safety and efficiency in numbers, that our spiritual values require us to help others especially in times of crisis, and that to use reason and intelligence is necessary in order to find workable solutions that will ensure survival. I'll put my money on them any day. That much I've learned from apocalyptic literature, series, and films.