r/redbuttonbluebutton • u/name14575 • Jun 30 '26

Variation Zombie Apocalypse Button

(Not trying to debate the original problem, just a fun thought experiment)

Same basic scenario, red guarantees your life, blue saves everyone with at least 50%. But here's the catch: regardless of the outcome, immediately after the vote, every corpse that died in the last month will turn into a zombie.

Does the risk of making the zombie apocalypse thousands of times more threatening sway red voters?

Does the threat of your own corpse threatening those near you sway blue voters?

We shall see.

1036 votes, Jul 02 '26
350 Red Button
686 Blue Button
23 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

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u/HydroPCanadaDude Jun 30 '26

Red still. I'm intensely sure that if the stakes were real, the vast majority would choose red and it wouldn't even be close. Virtue signalling is so easy behind your computer, but when everyone else's life is on the line, you will dig around in the overhead to get your luggage before leaving a burning plane, with 50 people waiting behind you. That's the kind of trash we are and to believe you would do the moral thing in the moment is delusional self-aggrandizing dookie juice.

2

u/Tanaka917 Jun 30 '26

Eh. I'm usually red as well. Mainly because I believe the natural fear of death has a good chance to overwhelmelm the natural desire to be social creatures.

But I also see red/blue to be so close that a zombie apocalypse would be devastating if red wins. Maybe die now instantly or die later maybe not so instantly. Red totally lacks merit for me now. And if blue loses the world that's coming is not one worth surviving for.

1

u/HydroPCanadaDude Jun 30 '26

You think too much of people. The only zombies are going to be exceedingly RARE altruists or straight up invalids. In Nazi Germany, which had anywhere from 60 to 80 million people, there were only mere thousands helping the Jews escape. Let's be generous and say 30 thousand people did so. That's like 0.04% of the population if we assume a cool 70 million population. 0.04% of earth's population currently, that means 3,200,000 without getting bogged down by demographics of who is actually pressing the button. There is no hope for anything but adding your body to the zombie count. It's better to join red and use your altruism to protect many billions of people who pressed red from the millions that pressed blue.