Is Humanity Preparing for a Real-Life, "Walking Dead", Negan World?

We pass by them all the time...the sign posts. You know, the ones telling us which direction we're going in and about how long it will take us to get there. As long as we don't pass one that reads 'The Twilight Zone; 0 miles ahead,' we can assume we're heading in the right direction. The only problem is, our sign posts into the Twilight Zone, may not be as obvious as that! The latest sign, in fact, could be construed as a testament that we subconsciously know exactly where we're heading.

I'm talking about the show, "The Walking Dead." Each new season is proving to us that 'walkers' aren't the real threat of our hero's apocalypse and they're not the ones we're going to have to worry about when whatever world-changing event/s happen to throw us into dystopia, either.

"But it's just a show..." You might be screaming at the screen. Indeed, it is just a show, however, according to the New York Times, The Walking Dead was the highest rated television premiere of the season. It isn't the first time the show's broke rating records. Is that saying something about where society's thoughts and concerns are leaning? It's my opinion there's a bigger reason than the creep and gore that's driving people to watch it.

There is little doubt that our world is heading in a different, yet similar direction as the world of The Walking Dead. I don't think there's a single one of us who hasn't heard at least one news story or read at least one article about the polar ice caps melting, or the several bee species that are now on the endangered species list. Over the course of the past 46 years, 52% of the planet's wildlife population is gone (http://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/the-state-of-our-planet). Is this something no one knows about, or are we in denial of how serious this is?

Yes, we're slowly but surely destroying the one and only place that can sustain us, but it's beginning to look more like we won't be around long enough to suffer the consequences of destroying the planet. What threat against humanity could possibly be greater than the destruction of our home world?

Imagine you had to live in a capsule your entire life because outside of the capsule there was nothing but empty space. In order to survive you'd need a few very important things. You'd need a replenishing water source and purification system to filter your pee, you'd need plants that produce food continually, and you'd need a small forest of trees to create and clean your air. Aside from a toilet and shower, you'd do pretty good with just those things. But wait, someone else just magically appeared in your capsule! Will there be enough food, water and air for another person? Yeah, maybe, but it will definitely put a strain on what's available.

Your capsule now has ten people in it. You don't have enough food to feed them all, and your water supply has dwindled down to next to nothing. The air is stuffy and filled with methane and other gases that are poisoning all of you because your forest has been cut down to make room to grow more food. None of you will survive for much longer.

Our planet is that capsule, and it's filling up.

According to the Daily Mail, the current population of the planet needs 1.5 earths to sustain it. By the year 2030, we'll need the equivalent of two (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1320419/Humans-using-half-planets-worth-resources-need-Earths-2030.html). Just where are we going to get another Earth in 13 years?!

You may be looking around yourself and asking how can this be possible? There's plenty of food on the table and the grocery store's shelves are always stocked full of anything your heart desires. Everything's coming up roses on this end of the field. What we can't see from the windows of our developed countries, is the 800 million people in other parts of the world who don't have enough food to eat (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140920-population-11billion-demographics-anthropocene/).

As the population increases, so will our need for resources. The planet is a biosphere capsule. All that's here is all that's ever going to be here, just like in the capsule you were in. It too can only handle so much. Eventually our numbers will exceed the amount of resources available to sustain us, and that number is estimated at 9-11 billion people, depending on what study you're reading. We are over 7 billion people now. The estimates of when the 9-11 billion numbers will be reached can be projected, but is really unknown. National Geographic quoted a source predicting we'll reach 9.6 billion by 2050, so passing the 9 billion mark could very well happen within the next thirty-four years!

The significance of overpopulation isn't about the amount of land the Earth has for us to live on. It's about how much of that land will be able to afford us resources when there'll be billions upon billions of us to sustain. The more people there are to feed, the more land we'll need for agriculture. Unless every farmer becomes organically conscious, more pesticides and herbicides will be used, and the more these chemicals will poison us, pollute and contaminate our water and air, and ruin the ecosystem by destroying our important pollinating insects (http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/effects-of-pesticides/). There will be an ever increasing need for energy in the form of coal and fossil fuels which will become more expensive as they become limited in supply. The resources that take time to acquire will not be able to keep up with demand. Those who are unable to produce enough food for themselves will steal or rob from those who can.

According to an article written by The Intercept, the U.S. government is already preparing for urban war they expect will begin in 2030 (https://theintercept.com/2016/10/13/pentagon-video-warns-of-unavoidable-dystopian-future-for-worlds-biggest-cities/). Yes, it's the same year another article I mentioned warned we'd be needing two earth's to sustain us.

What The Intercept article and accompanying Army training video suggest is that a Negan-esque future is very close at hand. It's a world where gangs and terrorists rule over everybody with a cruel and vicious hand. They'll make their own rules (probably make them up as they go along and change them whenever it suits them), and the strong will pray upon the weak. All the resources will go to these people or groups while everyone else struggles for survival. It will be an out-of-control society created out of the sheer fact that the population had grown too great for the military and governments to control.

Though Negan isn't a real person, his character is alive and well in people who breathe the same air as we do. We've seen them kill in mass, and we've seen them behead helpless hostages to make a point that they'll stop at nothing to get what they want.

If our population continues to exponentiate the way it is and these 'Negan' types take over the world, we could be in a lot more trouble than the folks on The Walking Dead. I don't know about you, but I think I'd rather go against a gang of flesh-eating zombies, than even a single Negan.

So should we just sit back and let it happen? What difference can one person make when we're facing global catastrophe? There's a lot each one of us can do to help save ourselves and our children from this bleak forecast.

The number one thing we can do is to stop over-breeding. Two children per generation (each parent reproducing themselves no more than once) will keep the population from growing. If each couple has only one child, that's considered negative population growth and if enough people do that, the population would eventually decline. We can also invest in alternative sources of energy that don't require coal or fossil fuels. We can recycle every bit of plastic, glass, cardboard and aluminum we use. We can support local, organic farmers by purchasing their produce. We can go vegetarian or vegan. We can educate others about the dangers of over-population and the consequences of being complacent about the condition of our planet...there are dozens of little things we can do to help change the direction we're heading in. Even if we only breed less and do a few of the other things to lessen the impact of our carbon footprint, we'll be doing something great.

Now that the U.S. has a president in office who seems to be accelerating the warnings, we must open our eyes to the problem. If The Walking Dead's popularity is because we're reading the sign posts leading us directly into a dystopian world, maybe we're ready to face it and change it before it's too late.

What do you think? Take the poll below!