So yes, I suppose we’d have to have an OB-GYN onboard. (Also, about 100,000 condoms.) To make this work, I’d have to make a list of certain indispensable professions – people whose skills are indispensable. For instance, a boat captain might be nice. And a dude who actually knows how to handle guns and can teach the rest of us. Ideally, these people would be on staff – that is, we pay their salaries, in exchange for them helping to get the boat ready. The OB-GYN is a weird case. We don’t actually need her skills until the boat launches. However, we want her within 10 miles of the boat at all times, so we’re relatively sure she’s going to make it onboard. Maybe she can stay in private practice until the zombie apocalypse, but we pay her some sort of retainer to live close to the boat and to carry a zombie beeper.

Anyway, this is the kind of thing that just destroys your budget. For each indispensable crew member you need on staff, you have to pay not only their salary, but you’re sacrificing all the thousands of dollars their stateroom would be worth if you sold that extra insurance policy. And certain highly educated positions, like Solar-Panel Engineer, might be expensive to fill. A lot of your staff members may very well think the job is crazy and a waste of time, which is fine as long as they do their work. They’ll see. Oh yes, they’ll see.

Awesome work here. So long as it didn’t become an exercise in Poseidon Adventuring, I’d say you’d be pretty set on a cruise ship modified to your specifications. And I dare say, you could do things to its shape and paint job to make it look more like a military gun ship than a cruise liner in order to scare off the smaller pirate groups, too.

For some reason, this nugget popped into my head, probably because of the vague discussions about who will be on the ship. We see stuff about the arks and whatnot in these apocalypse movies, and we sometimes get allusions to the myriad professions secured, doctors being emphasized. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard of obstetricians or OB-GYNs being a priority. And this bothers me, not just because I’m a woman, but because of the sheer fact that these survivors are going to be doing it with each other, so some babies are going to be made. And if babies are going to be made, they’re going to need to be delivered. Wouldn’t securing the future of the human race depend, at least partially, on having people skilled enough to bring them into this world close/safe at hand?

So, Mr. Belinkie, would you make sure there were some OB-GYNs aboard, or would you risk the women die in childbirth? ;p

Here’s something to consider – any survivors in this world are going to have to become very comfortable with watching innocent people die horrible deaths. There will be adorable orphans on makeshift rafts, begging to be let aboard. And sure, maybe we DO let some aboard. But we can only carry so many. I think a lot of people are not going to be psychologically prepared to abandon so many screaming, crying people to horrible death. And maybe one of the side effects of conditioning yourself to that life is that you get really good at stabbing people in the back. You just stop caring about morality. I’m not sure we can count on a general spirit of fraternity to make sure all the boats stick together as a fleet.

Incidentally, I hear the World War Z movie is still slowly chugging forward. Fingers crossed!