Boyfriend said something disturbing

[spottedpjs]

I changed name for this and would love responses especially from people who watches / likes movies showing an apocalyptic world

We were talking about The Walking Dead. He watched a few years ago and I’m just watching now.

So I asked him if he was leaving in a word like TWD:

• Would he kill any zombies? He said yes
• Would he lie, cheat, deceive, kill any humans so he can get their supplies? He said yes if he wanted to keep / thought it was worth keep surviving

• Would he kill a baby? He said yes because they are easy to kill and are just there doing nothing
• Would he eat the baby? He said yes, it would taste like veal

If you don’t know, there is a baby in TWD and people go to great lenghts to protect her and help her survive so his answers were very shocking and disturbing to me even though we were talking about something that is totally not real and will never ever happen

What does it say about his personality?

And to ask some questions in advance: he has no children, doesn’t show any signs of violence, has his life together and a good job, good social life, comes from a normal family and as far as I know has never been involved in anything bad, unlawful.
He seemed well adjusted until now.

I know him for nearly 2 years and live separately.

I just thought of another way his answers could be framed! That all the points could be construed him trying to protect you and help to keep you alive. Even eating the baby if you were starving. And if you both die because you starved to death, you wouldn't be able to look after the baby anyway. And he needs to eat to keep up his strength to protect you, because you'd be weaker from not eating the baby. Then he can use the energy from eating the baby to go out and forage for berries for you.

He really loves you OP, he's a keeper!😄

OP, how old are you both?

Oooh yes, I like your take on this. It made me think of Outlander, where Jamie and Claire face all sorts of challenging situations, but both of them always stick to their underlying moral values.

And then the benefit of doing that comes to fruition as they are seen by others as natural leaders and they create a thriving community in the US.

So you'd be the leader, and the person who is able to create a functioning society after the immediate chaos has subsided.

I'm a vegetarian so wouldn't want to be eating any kind of meat in any situation.

However, the will to live can overcome beliefs in live or die situations and your boyfriend has simply made practical observations.

In 1972 there was a plane crash in the Andes and the survivors ate the dead so that they could live.

The tastes like veal comment is an obvious pointer that he wasn't exactly taking the scenario seriously, and that he wasn't exactly expecting you to take him seriously either.

And to be honest, in the universe of the walking dead, his answers make sense. A baby in that universe is going to get you killed. Maybe not in a safe haven like Alexandria, but out in the wild, where any loud noise is a death sentence, noone with a baby is going to be surviving long.

Some people are incapable of even joking about doing something horrific, because of the images it conjures up in their mind. On the flip side, I have aphantasia, the inability to picture anything in my mind. So I could claim I'm going to to something utterly horrific, and the act of saying it wouldn't bother me at all (I wouldn't, because it would bother other people).

That doesn't mean I'm capable of doing any of it though, I struggle to finish off mice when the cat brings them in half dead, let alone anything more disturbing!

100% this! It's not real!!

Great example about the Andes plane crash. And one of the survivors was able to make the trek over to a tiny village when the snow started melting in the spring. Thanks to keeping himself alive by eating the body of his friend.

I was fascinated by that book as a teenager (called Alive funnily enough). And also fascinated with this thread haha!

This whole thing is vile, questions and answers YUCK

This.

Tbh, he's probably just being more realistic than most.

In times of extreme famine, cannibalism is a human reality and one that all too often stands between the difference of surviving or not surviving.

Think about it this way, if he didn't do the killing, then who is the prey? Would he kill to protect you? The eat a baby question, falls in line with giving an answer to the above. If you have such pressure on resources that cannibalism is on the cards, why WOULDN'T you eat the baby? Otherwise they are competition and potentially a threat to your own survival and are unlikely to survive because of those same pressures. If the scenario is dying or eating the baby and the baby is going to die regardless, you may as well eat the baby. At least the baby isn't being wasted either.

We don't talk about this in a civilised society because we don't have to. A post apocalyptic world will be uncivilised for a period. That's the point. It will eventually regain civilisation as things stabilise but in a period of that level of chaos humans do all manner of appalling things to each other. There's a long long history of this - don't think you can opt out of this.

I don't get the point in getting het up about it for this reason. He's clearly given the reality more thought than you. You are trying to apply the rules of now to a 'never' situation and are getting upset when he points out the grim reality of that situation which you hadn't previously adequately considered.

It's not real, so why go with the grimmest, amoral response?

I don't mind a bit of dark humour, but I'm not keen on edginess for its own sake.

Why choose to be the bad guys and the ones making the world worse, not the ones trying to hold onto ethics and compassion?

Those two end up in America? Haha that's a twist. But then again I think only saw the first season.

Hmm...I recon I'd not want the responsibility of leadership but if no one else stepped up I would...maybe back up leader? If the group would accept me as such (Let's be honest, they'd probably be more likely to look to a man). I would have said I'd be the person, solo, on the fringes who hopefully finds the nerve to step in and do what's right if people need help but realistically, being solo might not be best during a zombie apocalypse. That being said, if the alternate choice was to associate with freaks who eat babies though, solo it is! Haha.

You raise a good point. We know that narcissists and psychopaths have their use in tribes with regards to having no qualms about fighting off enemies etc.

I guess only you OP can know whether he exhibits other traits like this. If you haven't seen any other red flags then I would give him the benefit of the doubt. But if your gut is saying something to you...

I think he's more honest and realistic about human nature in desperate times than most people are.

Ask stupid questions you'll get stupid answers.

Asking daft hypothetical questions based on fantasy television shows was never going to get you anything but daft hypothetical answers.

You might as well ask him if he’d feed you to a dragon if you were in Game of Thrones. It makes as much sense as zombie questions.

Ahhh, so in that case your partner would be the main leader, and you'd be the supporting act and help maintain harmony in your new community. I would like to join your tribe if that's ok. I really enjoy doing diy and cleaning, so could help build the camp and keep it in ship shape.

Hahaha re. Outlander - I apologise for the spoiler! They did quite the world tour in later seasons.

It sounds like he's thought about the actual reality of that kind of life rather than the tv version of it. I think we'd all surprise ourselves with things we'd do if our survival was at stake.

If you want to dump him you can just dump him without having to come up with tenuous reasons like this.

If it's not real, why ask the question?

History shows cannibalism is the last resort of humans to an inhuman situation where death is the alternative. Why should we pretend this isn't the case? Why should anyone sanitise a post apocalyptic hypothetical scenario?!

The Andes crash is one example.

Another is the Franklin Expedition to the arctic in the 1850s:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin's_lost_expedition

A series of scientific studies in modern times suggested that the men of the expedition did not all die quickly. Hypothermia, starvation, lead poisoning or zinc deficiency and diseases including scurvy, along with general exposure to a hostile environment while lacking adequate clothing and nutrition, killed everyone on the expedition in the years after it was last sighted by a whaling ship in July 1845. Cut marks on some of the bones recovered during these studies also supported allegations of cannibalism reported by Franklin searcher John Rae in 1854.

There are other examples.

There's also the terribleness of the Holodomor... where thousands resorted to it.

Humanity has a grim history. Somewhere in your past it's more than likely an ancestor resorted to it, and if they hadn't you wouldn't be here now.

I told a friend of mine that if the Quiet Place movie was real life I would've gotten rid of the baby to protect my oldest children and husband. He was horrified by my answer but if I had to choose between children I've known for years and a newborn, the newborn would have to go. So I can see where your DH's coming from, but then we don't know what we would really do in those types of situations.

Plenty of people say things in the abstract which they would never act on. And basing your discussion on Judith from TWD... the amazing non-crying, non-tantrumming Judith (because obviously to have her screaming would attract hordes of zombies when it wasn't convenient to the plot, so as a consequence she barely bloody cried!!).

Also the Jamestown colony.

We're animals at the end of the day and will do anything to survive.

I was going to say this too 🤣🤣

I think he's pulling your leg.

I thought we tasted more like pork.