It’s as if the AP has never seen a zombie movie. (Here’s one of those news pieces from a source of the fifth kind.) Convention cleary has it that, in a disaster, you’re specifically allowed to break into:
- Grocery stores, to get food,
- Gun stores, to get weapons,
- General stores, for other supplies and weapons,
- Gas stations, to gas up your (possibly stolen) vehicle and get sweets to eat if you skipped number 1, and
- Malls, for safe harbor and amusing montages where you’re watching large televisions, playing with sports equipment, and sleeping on very large beds.
Not a single horror movie to my knowledge has ever condemned people for such things. In disaster situations, society pretty much thinks it’s okay to break and enter for your own safety. Who’s going to argue with this?
Apparently the Associated Press. If you’re white, you “find” food in a grocery store. If you’re black, you “loot” it.
Interestingly, there’s lots of stuff in Night of the Living Dead and its sequels about race. Black characters are heroes and white people get eaten. The smartest zombie movies have lots to say about how civilized society breaks down in crises. The horrifying thing is to me is that there are times, like now in New Orleans, where stuff like this actually happens. Turns out you don’t need a plague of undeath. Just lots of rain.