Since The Wretchedness Hyland has revisited a previous love of behaviourism in an attempt to figure out whether, and how, we can train the undead.įrom his early observations Hyland realised zombies don’t feel pain, so training them via punishment seems impossible. I eventually located him holed up in an old stable block throwing scraps of brain matter to a chained-up zombie while scribbling frantic notes. Pre-apocalypse Dr John Hyland worked at Dublin Business School as a psychology lecturer. And of course a leader doesn’t need to be an individual… there could be a distribution of leadership across multiple people in your community.’ They also need to be sensitive to the group’s dynamics – inevitably there’ll be politics, and your leader should be able to navigate conflicts and resolve them, but they will need to be sensitive to the way things get done. They need to be someone who wants to develop people, looks out for opportunities to draw on the strengths of community and help them get better at what they do. The kind of person who says “pull yourself together, get over it” won’t perform well. ‘Your community leader will need to be someone who appreciates the need for managing people. The leaders of communities in these films are often egomaniacs: bad idea, says Clements. It’s hard to believe that in the old times people watched zombie films for entertainment, but Clements said we can learn leadership lessons from them. But it’s not exactly a time for a lengthy process and psychometric testing… you’ll probably hire the majority of candidates as long as they’re reasonably competent and haven’t been bitten.’ The apocalypse has thrown together people who may not have previously associated with each other, so the ability to manage conflict and difference is going to be crucial. There will need to be a focus on development of new community members.’ This may involve a shift in our focus from skills to more general personality characteristics: ‘with the long-term stress bracing just outside the walls, you need people who can maintain composure during stressful situations, get on with others and be fairly agreeable and altruistic. A community needs a wide range of job skills but has a smaller pool of recruits who may not have obvious skills. Long-term it’s worth thinking about who will educate the next generation, who might be good for law enforcement. You will want to recruit people who can perform maintenance work, people who can grow food and mend facilities. ‘While organisations pre-apocalypse often said they were looking for creative thinkers, people who could be managers or those who had the potential to grow within an organisation, a community now has quite different needs. But Clements feels we can’t afford to be choosy. The only downside, of course, is these may need to be updated with new information or locations at potential cost to the existing troop.
And if you’re low on recruits, how can you recruit the ‘right stuff’ to join you?Ĭlements first suggests traditional ‘We need you’ posters displayed around small pockets of surviving civilisation. Getting selected to join a group of survivors is life or death – unsuccessful applicants are literally cast out into the hordes. In the post-apocalyptic era, selecting a merry gang of nomads is a world away from the adverts and search engines of the before times. He has now turned his hand to advising the myriad ad-hoc gangs that have sprung up. Before The Wretchedness, Clements was a lecturer in organisational psychology. After a three-day hike swerving the growing masses of undead in Northampton, I found Dr Andrew Clements in what is left of his office in the University of Bedfordshire – a workaholic even as the end is nigh.