Field Manual
Strain notes, starting with the outbreak and moving back toward the person.
The outbreak has many strains. Each one begins where witnessing stops and something else takes the wheel: alarm, shame, algorithm, readiness, attachment, usefulness, authority, hunger, or certainty.
Core launch strains
Outrage is the outward bite. Shame is the inward bite. Algorithm is the environmental bite. Preparation is the reflective bite.
How Outrage Zombies Work
When moral alarm outruns self-witnessing.
Outrage is not the infection. Unwitnessed outrage is. This strain tracks the moment alarm becomes sovereign and starts recruiting a horde.
How Shame Zombies Work
When the self tries to survive by disappearing.
Full field notes on inward collapse, self-erasure, and the way shame turns witness offline before the room can stay human.
How Algorithm Zombies Work
When attention becomes externally piloted.
Full field notes on feeds, recommendation loops, and the machine that learns your reaction before you do.
How Preparation Zombies Work
When becoming ready replaces being alive.
Full field notes on the seeker bite: courses, frameworks, healing delays, and the life that keeps getting postponed behind one more gate.
Expansion strains
These remain visible in the taxonomy so the field guide keeps its shape while the later notes stay deferred.
How Relationship Zombies Work
When attachment panic overrides consent.
Full field notes on attachment alarm, reassurance hunger, and the way panic starts operating the bond while claiming to protect it.
How Productivity Zombies Work
When usefulness replaces being.
Full field notes on output as permission, usefulness as identity, and the way performance starts replacing personhood.
How Authority Zombies Work
When borrowed power replaces perception.
Full field notes on deference, borrowed certainty, and the way guidance turns into substitution when the witness goes offline.
How Consumer Zombies Work
When hunger gets mistaken for identity.
Full field notes on acquisition as self-repair, symbolic upgrades, and the market habit of packaging personhood as a product.
How Certainty Zombies Work
When explanation replaces contact.
Full field notes on model possession, conceptual closure, and the moment explanation stops serving contact and starts replacing it.