In a hypothetical zombie apocalypse, would it be right to kill an unarmed zombie that poses no threat to you? Eg. In a secure cage. For sport or perhaps food? In this scenario there is and never will be a cure. Just so that the debate doesn't get muddled in technicalities.
I think it would depend on many other factors. If the zombie is infectious, I'd say kill it. It may be of no threat to you, but who's to say it would be a threat later on to someone else? Also, if there is any amount of human consciousness left, I'd say no. But if there isn't, then fire away. I'm not sure how something like that would be determined, however.
If we're going by traditional zombie tropes--ie the mostly brain-dead monsters from The Walking Dead--then yeah, killing it is not only the safe bet, but it's also putting the poor thing out of its misery.
Even if the zombies weren't infectious, which they usually are, they still eat living people. Blow their frigg'n heads off!
Bear have eaten living people. Mosquitos eat living people. Sharks eat living people. A plethora of bacteria eat living people. Does that mean we should kill them all too?
Yes..when bears and mosquitos and sharks and bacteria threaten to eat humans we kill them. It's a standard practice in every culture that I know of.
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"Harmless" zombies? The pre-Romero kind, of Haitian and African folklore, were used as slaves. Lacking any will of their own, and possibly limited in degree of consciousness, I suppose they might be considered the equivalent of robots. Even conventional thralls seldom had any rights, going back to ancient Greece. In a post-apocalyptic scenario, the survival and potency of contemporary human and animal rights activism would, of course, be dubious indeed. So even though one could make the case from today that innocuous zombies should deserve better treatment because of either their anthropoidal appearance or "former life" as an ordinary human, the members of a resource challenged and philosophically crippled society might at best only domesticate them as slaves. While either exterminating or driving-off the wild ones that were pests (digging into garbage cans, breaking into grain / food storage areas, ambulating aimlessly about in public areas reeking stench, etc). And yes, the field-hand drunks shooting at them for sport and the wealthy landowner releasing the hounds and blowing the horn to commence the zombie hunt.
That's what I was thinking about while creating this thread. Zombies, while portrayed as dead, are still living biological entities, just like animals. If animal rights activists want to say animals have rights, then do they say the same about zombies? I'm not sure what they would say obviously, but it's something to ponder over. In my opinion, human rights outweigh animal rights no question, and I would urge anyone who wants to donate to animal charities, to donate to human charities (science charities perhaps that effect our future) instead as they always need help. We can do no works at all if we are all dead because we didn't research a certain technology in time or something like that. Today's animal charities are no more ridiculous than a zombie charity in a world where there are zombies with no chance at a cure.
Or contribute to both, as many of us do. Just because human rights outweigh animal rights does not mean that animals have zero rights, and contributing to animal charities does not imply a disregard for human charities. Good advice. It would certainly be silly to claim that someone didn't care about human rights because they contribute to technological research instead of feeding starving children, eh? Well, except animals exist.
Let's say every $1000 saves 1 life either animal or human, of course hypothetically. You have $3000 you want to give to a charity. By splitting up that money, perhaps $2000 to human, $1000 to animal, you are denying a human a life. Sure, an animal would die, but you just admitted that it outweigh's an animal's. So even though you saved 2 human lives, you purposely denied the life of another human to save an animal. In this aspect, could you say you still recognize human rights outweigh animal rights in that you saved 2 humans and only 1 animal instead of 3 humans? Of course it's not that simple, but it proves a point. By contributing to an animal charity with money you could have used for a human charity, you are in some way saying animals are sometimes more important than humans. Sure, you can counter this and say, "Well, what if I were to just keep the money instead of donating it to anything? Isn't an animal charity better than nothing?" And you would be right, but if you can, it would be better to save the cash and donate it to a human charity. Especially if you eat chicken or fish (etc.), because then you'd just be a hypocrite. People somehow think that because some animals we keep as pets and grow a bond with, their species outweigh the lives of other species and there is no scientific reasoning to justify that. I have no idea what your point is with this. Technological research is still a human charity and could save lives in the same way as a charity that helps starving children. I actually think it is more helpful, as like I said, no good works can be done at all if we are dead. It's just harder to mentally justify, as you feel like you are contributing directly to saving lives, whereas technological charities are more subtle in how it helps. /NoContext Full quote:
It would depend entirely on the state of the economy/stock prices, implications on franchising and pre-existing copyright issues that the act may breach
