S
Security
42 FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014 www.vanguardcanada.com
colonel (ret'd) Bruce Jackson
served in a number of positions dealing with
information operations. He consults in the
areas of strategic planning and IT security.
"they who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
— Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Assembly Reply to the Governor, 1755
The Walking Dead is a popular TV show about zombies. Sort of.
Certainly, unthinking, ravenous, relentless zombies are a constant
presence and the threat they represent frames everything that the
survivors now are trying to do, but the show actually spends more
time dealing with the survivors, and this means that The Walking
Dead is really about us.
Sometimes fiction is just about telling a good story. Like much
other art, however, often the story is intended to tell us some-
thing about ourselves. Science fiction, in particular, has the great
advantage of allowing the storyteller to make up a completely dif-
ferent society that illuminates something about our society, but
allows sufficient distance that we can see the issue from a clearer
perspective. So what, if anything, is the show's message?
For those unfamiliar with the show, the general plot runs some-
thing like this:
• A Very Bad Thing (the release of a virus that reanimates dead
SeCurity, privACy And zombieS
Image: AMC
