The Crazies – A Movie Review from Survivalist Perspective

This is a guest post by Ranger Man of SHTF blog.
I’m not a big fan of television or movies, but when 2 different people that know me and my SHTF tendencies said, “you need to watch The Crazies” I paid attention and ordered it up. If you’re looking for a movie that will give you lots of TEOTWAWKI knowledge, The Crazies isn’t it. Approach the movie as SHTF entertainment and you probably won’t be disappointed. I wasn’t.

Generally speaking, I’d put this movie on par with 28 Days and 28 Days Later both in plot and genre. Without giving away movie secrets, generally what happens is a military plane carrying some bio-chemical agent crashes in a town’s drinking water supply. The agent flows down stream and adds a new meaning to “there must be something in the water.” The unnamed agent essentially makes people … crazy – zombie-like crazy, where your only purpose in life is to kill others.

The friends that recommended the movie both told me “you watch it and think – that’s exactly how the military would respond.” They were right; you are left with that impression. The military cuts communication to/from the town, seals all roads out, and swoops down on the town, rounding up people and separating those with high temperatures to determine who might be infected, and tagging/segregating the rest. What starts as a systematic approach to containing the situation goes to hell when a few hillbillies ram the fence and start firing at military personnel, either because they’re infected or because they want to release loved ones. The crowd then bum rushes the fence and everything goes downhill. Let me say this, though – if this chemical agent was real, how the military responded to this incident is exactly how I’d want them to – take no shit, because otherwise the world would certainly end.

Movies like this are not typically something that rank high on my “must watch” list, because I don’t like the suspense/thriller/horror movie-induced heart racing feeling when you know something bad is about to happen, but you’re still going to jump anyway. I handled it better than my wife, though. When the movie ended she promptly proclaimed, “I get to pick the next movie, and it’s going to be a romantic comedy.”
There ARE a few SHTF bits of knowledge you can walk away with, though …. well, two:

1.      Police tire spike strips (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_strip) are pretty freaking cool when you need to get a vehicle stopped. Unlike in the movie, I doubt they send a high-speed vehicle flying in the air, however. If you had to secure the driveway to your home, a tire spike strip might help.

2.      Don’t walk the highway when killers are looking for people. Why do people do this in the movies all the time? I know why, because they’re easy to follow and provide a direct, fast path from point A to point B. The downside is everyone watches them.

Since watching the movie I’ve discussed it with a number of non-preparedness minded people and I often hear “that could really happen.” I wouldn’t go that far, but to the extent The Crazies might scare someone enough to take a few rational preparedness steps toward self-reliance, perhaps that’s the best way to use it from a SHTF perspective – convincing spouses to gear up!

-    Ranger Man the author of SHTF blog