[lbo-talk] On the Zombie Apocalypse

[shag carpet bomb]

we had survive norfolk, started by one Whitney Metzger, who just want to 
play a game with her friends. The announcement went out on facebook and 
soon 10k people had signed up - or some ridiculous number. The city flipped 
out, made Whitney cough up $5k to pay for the cops needed to protect and 
serve, had to do all sorts of organizing that she wouldn't have otherwise, 
etc. From what I understand the Survive X games have been popular on campus 
for over a decade.

She's subsequently held a Star Wars light saber game and, at one point, 
wanted our group to be the fulcrum for some sort of fitness games designed 
to help us "survive" the coming apocalypse. It was just a bid for getting 
us involved, to tap into our organizational resources, not so much because 
anyone was interesting in truly surviving anything. Here, all  it is an 
elaborate game of tag with the opportunity to dress up.

I don't really think its emblematic of anything other than people wanting 
to meet people in places other than bars. It's telling that Whitney had to 
form an LLC in order to pull off that year's Survive zombie game and she 
called it Urban Playground. I think what's going on is simply that there 
are more and more single young people, staying single for longer than they 
did pre-50s, when it was typical to get married in your late 20s. Back 
then, though, you lived with your family or in boarding houses, and there 
were social institutions and rituals around dating. Today's heterosexuals 
don't have that, outside of college.