Survival of the fittest

The world turns into a post-apocalyptic setting, zombies invade... what will you do ? who can survive ? Today I am gonig to see if role-players are capable of surviving in such a setting.

Why could role-players be more apt than others to survive in a dangerous post apocalyptic world ? because they role-play in such settings ! Of course, by saying this, I exclude all players who only play medieval games or any other games that don't involve such a setting. However, I believe that most role-players have played many games so they have already played in a similar universe.

The characters played by role-players (PCs) are faced to plenty of different situations, involving survival, treason, fights... so theoretically, a player is able to think through certain situations, since he is more or less "trained" into these situations. People who don't role-play don't have any sense of how to react in such a situation any other way than just donig the obvious. Of cuorse, there are still people who will have read books such as the zombie survival guide or other books concerning necessary knowledge, but the readers are a minority. Therefore, role-playrs have a theoretical advantage in suriving than other people.

However, role-players only have an outside view of things. The ones who know how real pain feels like or how one would react under a huge stress are quite rare. Therefore, role-players only have a theoretical experience of the situation, but in reality, they could be as helpless as anyone else. Also, most role-players are quite fit like their characters. It's easier to say that the character runs through the street to the next house dodging the monsters and throwing a dice than actually running across the street when there are monsters, especially when the player hasn't done any physical excecise in the past 5 years. Other factors that doesn't come into the player's equation is other people's reactions and stress. As players, we do not panic like our characters, and manage to stay calm, analyse the situation precisely and do the correct choice or say the right thing to the other characters. In real life, panic blocks the way of thinking, so we are not as apt as if we were around the table. Other people, also under stress can do actions that no-one can predict, or some could turn out to be the leader or try to use everybody.

So are role-players more apt to survive than the average joe ? they have the theory, but they could, in my opinion, hardly do what they think of doing. Therefore, players could be the brains while other, more physical people could act. It's all about teamwork.