Dear Zom­bie Hunter,

I mar­vel at your drive. I mean it. Your pre­pared­ness in the face of dan­ger is some­thing to behold.  You have con­sid­ered your weapons, exam­ined the vec­tors, mapped out your escape routes and pur­chased spe­cial ammu­ni­tion. You have stud­ied the ways of the enemy and engaged in thought exper­i­ments to best craft your response for when IT hap­pens. The Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse. It looms in our movies, out lit­er­a­ture, our web browsers.

And you, my friend, you have never been more ready for any­thing in your life. That’s the prob­lem. The Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse is…a fic­tion. It will never hap­pen. I know you know this. I know you know this because I remem­ber a time before the re-purposing of catcher’s pads as body armor.

I remem­ber when you tried to build your own Star Trek Com­mu­ni­ca­tor, or when you made your own chain mail bag for your dice. Zom­bies are funny. They are creepy. They are an excel­lent boogey­man. And they don’t. Actu­ally. Exist.

I tell you this because I hate to see you pour­ing money you don’t have into toys for some­thing that will never hap­pen. I am con­cerned about how much time you spend think­ing about plans for an event that will never come to pass. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a place for fun, and sure, this started off as fun; but after watch­ing the hours you spend online dis­cussing sur­vival sce­nar­ios and the best places to find your­self when the dead come to eat your brains, I’ve real­ized that this has become more than just fun for you. The “fun” has become an obses­sion and is keep­ing you from accom­plish­ing greater things in your life.

I want you to use that cre­ativ­ity to solve real prob­lems; help the space pro­gram, take on cit­i­zen sci­ence or jour­nal­ism, study and advances dis­ci­pline of math or com­puter sci­ence. Look the world around us; chal­lenge the real prob­lems and help solve them instead of sink­ing time into a fantasy.  Rediscover the joy of life with­out the taint of the undead.

You have such poten­tial. Use it to solve the real prob­lems, not the fic­tional ones. Because when the robot over­lords finally come for us, we need to be ready.

With Great Affection,

Chris

Christo­pher T. Miller

Christo­pher T. Miller is a soft­ware devel­oper by trade and a writer by neces­sity. He is one of the co-founders of Podiobooks.com and is the Over­lord of The Secret Lair. He has not yet been eaten by a grue.