Are You Selfish?

[SRP76]

This should be fun. In this "what would you do in an outbreak" installment, let's focus on just one specific thing: your capacity for throwing people under the bus. In short, how ruthless can you get? Watching a stranger get mauled while you hide? Only ditching people you hated in life? Or would you use dear old Grandma as a meat shield?

[blind2d]

Good topic! Okay, for me... yeah, any stranger who doesn't seem particularly useful or fun would be ignored... on a scale of one to ten, I'm probably around seven... so... yeah, people I don't like would definitely be ignored... close relatives and friends are really the only people I would consider helping...

[krakenslayer]

I know if someone actually asked for my help, and it was possible to help them, then I would. Other than that, I have no idea, no fucking clue, how I would react. I can't even begin to imagine what I'd be like in that situation.

[clanglee]

My close family would get me killed. I would have to secure the safety of my wife and parents, and then actually get way across town to get my daughter. (No way I'm leaving her with her mother) And then of course I would feel bad about leaving her little sisters behind and would have to offer my ex and her husband and their kids asylum. Which vastly reduces my chances for survival. Everyone else can suck it tho. I might not like it, and I might feel bad about it, but anyone else that has nothing to offer me would be turned away

[Mike70]

anyone who isn't my son or my dad can fuck off and die - literally. they are the only two people that i would stick my neck out for. my siblings would make useful decoys and i would probably shoot most of my extended family just for shits, giggles and target practice.

[SRP76]

Guess we could call this the Rhodes Scale. 0 for a saint who riskes his life for a stray cat, 10 for the guy who shoves Grandma into a ghoul to buy time. I won't lie; I'm about a 9. The only life I can't afford to lose is my own. If I croak, nothing else will matter as far as I'm concerned. So I must do everything possible to keep myself alive; I can live with anyone else croaking. Only thing that keeps me from getting a 10 would be that I wouldn't refuse to help someone just for the hell of it. If the risk to myself is minimal, I'd help someone else.

[AcesandEights]

It's impossible to say for certain. WWCED?

[Mike70]

WWCED? please, please tell me that this stands for "what would clint eastwood do." if so, that is a winning philosophy all around. ---------- Post added at 08:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:18 PM ---------- Guess we could call this the Rhodes Scale. 0 for a saint who riskes his life for a stray cat, 10 for the guy who shoves Grandma into a ghoul to buy time. an 8 for me. like i said above, other than my son and my dad (who is deadly with firearms) i gots (sic) no time to play the hero. i'm not saying that i'd go all khardis on people, just that i wouldn't take any risks attempting to help other people out.

[bassman]

Family first. No matter what I would take care of them. Other people? Depends on the situation, I guess. If it's in any way iffy....nope. Taking care of the family.

[Mike70]

Family first. No matter what I would take care of them. Other people? Depends on the situation, I guess. If it's in any way iffy....nope. Taking care of the family. where do you draw the line at family? do you mean your wife & daughter, along with your parents? or family in general? family in general is a mighty slippery slope.

[SRP76]

Don't ever takes sides against the family, Fredo.

[Wyldwraith]

I cringe to say this, Yet I'm about a 4-5. My mother, badly disabled grandmother and stepfather have sacrificed so much, been there for me all my life, and on a daily basis since my health went into the toilet 12yrs ago that I would stand by them to the very end. For me there's a particularly insightful comment made by the scarred creepy pirate who keeps/arbitrates the meaning of the Big Book of the Pirate Code in Pirates of the Caribbean: World's End. He's talking to Jack Sparrow and says "The trick isn't to live forever. It's to be able to live with yourself however long you live." Trite/cheesy source, yet it sums up my feelings perfectly. I can so easily imagine my advanced-emphysema-having grandmother, who needs to be on a home oxygen machine at least a few hours each day, while she sleeps, and on her portable tank of oxygen when she leaves the house first urging, then DEMANDING I leave her behind, and knock my mother out to keep her from staying with her. All she would ask of me is that I do my best to protect my Mom/her daughter, my brother and watch my Uncle's/her son's back. That, and to put a bullet between her eyes so she isn't at risk of becoming a THING that might try to harm the very loved ones she has labored for nearly 7 decades to nurture, aid and protect. How do you bring yourself to mercy-kill a woman whose been much more a 2nd mother than a grandmother, that's done so much for my whole family? Yet if I don't/didn't, I betray her most fervent convictions by signing the death warrants of her children, who would either stay too long and die, or refuse to do what was necessary to survive when it meant leaving her behind. If I didn't end it, they all die by Day 2 at the very latest (our home being completely indefensible) So, now I'm on the road with the blood of the person I love more than anyone but my Mom on my hands, and I have the mountain-sized weight of responsibility to her family on me. And it would be on me, because she knows I'm the only one enough like my late grandfather to see the necessity and step up, no matter how horribly it crushed me inside. I'd be a dead man walking, because one by one, assuming that somehow we avoided all dangers, my family members would begin dying off one by one as their critically-needed meds ran out. My much older stepfather would probably stroke out, but a third heart attack would be just as likely once his blood pressure zoomed through the roof and stayed there due to his health and the stress we'd be under. Then my Mom would basically be hanging onto sanity by her fingernails, holding it together solely for me and my brother. She'd keep coming apart at the seams under stress, but she'd do her damnedest to live for me and my bro. Of course she has half a dozen health conditions that...nm, you get the picture. So, assuming I'm STILL alive. I've almost completely failed my grandmother and its been less than a couple months. My uncle has terrible knees, my brother has a bad hip and knee, and I've got hideous back & spinal/nerve issues. Basically a crapshoot what order we go in, but it'd be like dominoes, because those that remained just wouldn't have enough left to abandon the next-to-last surviving loved one. Morality, guilt, devotion, shame, conviction, weakness, determination, widespread fragile health. Love and morality would slaughter my immediate family to the last one of us. The only possible alternative would be if we somehow had to split up to accomplish some necessary objective, and one or more of us became aware of the deaths of the family while I/they were away. Maybe, just maybe, whoever was left might find the drive to motivate them in the idea that our late family members would want me/they to live. Under those circumstances I couldn't refuse help to any family or survivor of a similar tragedy I came across. Would be the easiest kind of mark for an amoral manipulative Khardis-type. Bitch of it would be KNOWING that emotional baggage was going to get me very dead/undead. So yea, a 4 or 5. Apologies for the depressing tone to my response.

[JDFP]

Just for the hell of it, Let me be completely up front... I hear word of the dead coming back to life, and I'm at work. Of course, if it's a Monday - Friday during the day, I'm going to be at work. Come hell, or snow, or high water ("Lord willin' and the creek don't rise") I'm at work. I get word 'cause we're all on the net at work that the dead start rising I'm high-tailing it to my apartment. Once at my apartment, my locks on my door and my kitchen table against the only window they could get into on my second floor apartment window they could get into at my apartment, I'm calling all my loved ones. I'm calling them and I'm saying if they love living, if they love the value of life, to get their asses over to my apartment. Because fuck if I'm leaving once I'm secure inside. If loved ones show up at my apartment, I'm going to let them in as they come by one by one. Depending on the gravity as the situation, as I realize it, I'm going to look outside to appraise the situation. If my downstairs neighbor is still around and hasn't moved on to a different locale, I'm going to do what is necessary to deal with him. Read that: What is necessary. The last thing I need to worry about is a week later him coming up trying to break in begging for food. To hell with him, he's not family. Better to kill him as quickly as possible, by whatever means necessary, than to have to deal with his needs later onward. Unless you're someone I love, I don't really give a shit what happens to you. The center doesn't hold, the beast is born in Bethlehem, and all that, I don't have a concern in my mind except for the people that mean something to me in my life. Unless you're part of that clique, I don't give a shit about you and don't get in my way. Honestly, in all reality, the way it would boil down would be me (probably alone, naturally) pissing off my balcony on the heads of the dead below until I ran out of food and water and eventually passing into my own death from starvation. They wouldn't take me, that I could guarantee, the sleeping pills, however, probably would. And that's probably about as brutal and honest as I could be about it. The only thing that could keep me going any further would be if family members were here with me and kept me going in some way or another. Otherwise, I'd probably make the best of it while I could, and then say to hell with it all. j.p.

[krakenslayer]

If my downstairs neighbor is still around and hasn't moved on to a different locale, I'm going to do what is necessary to deal with him. Read that: What is necessary. The last thing I need to worry about is a week later him coming up trying to break in begging for food. To hell with him, he's not family. Better to kill him as quickly as possible, by whatever means necessary, than to have to deal with his needs later onward. Unless you're someone I love, I don't really give a shit what happens to you. The center doesn't hold, the beast is born in Bethlehem, and all that, I don't have a concern in my mind except for the people that mean something to me in my life. Unless you're part of that clique, I don't give a shit about you and don't get in my way. That's mighty Christian of you JD. I'm getting a depressing vibe of ratty cowardice from some of these posts. I'd rather die trying to give someone else a chance, if you're gonna go then better to get it out of the way early and in a blaze of glory rather than cowering alone in some hovel filled only with your own shit, the starved corpses of your elderly parents, and a crushing sense of guilt and regret. People didn't get through the Blitz, the plague and an ice age by immediately stabbing each other in the back and pissing on the corpse at the first sign of trouble. A bit of ruthlessness is good, but it should happen when unforeseen circumstances call for it, when Plan A fails and there's no other option; it shouldn't be something you gleefully plot in advance. There's survival instinct, and then there's psychopathy.

[Rancid Carcass]

I'm with Krakenslayer on this one, do what you can for people as long as it is practical to do so. If you were in that situation you'd hope that someone would do the same for you, and lets face it, if you're going to start indiscriminately killing people you might as well be a zombie.