Nathan Fillion Learned A Skill Just To Fend Off Zombies

By David Wharton | Published

Nathan Fillion

Nathan Fillion is awesome. This is something we can all agree on. (And if not you shall be shunned. Horribly, horribly shunned!) This is the guy who was Captain Mal from Firefly. Captain Hammer from Dr. Horrible. Plus, he’s rocked The Rookie for many years and has been in both the Marvel and DC Universe. The dude just kind of shows up.

But what you may not realize is that Nathan Fillion is just as awesome in real life. How so? He took up welding to better prepare for a zombie apocalypse.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a seething pillar of masculinity like Nathan Fillion would take up welding.

After all, it involves both metal and fire. If he could find a way to work in steak and a bikini model the testosterone fallout would sprout chest hair on everyone within a five-mile radius, women and children included. That just seems to be the way Nathan Fillion rolls.

But he managed to find a way to make his hobby even more manly with his explanation to Conan O’Brien back in 2012.

He started with, “One of my hobbies is zombie apocalypse preparedness. When you’re on a plane and someone comes from the cockpit and says ‘Can anyone here fly a plane?’ If the guy next to you says, ‘I can,’ you’re saying ‘Oh, my God. This guy…’ [applause]

Nathan Fillion continued, “Now, there’s gonna be, when the zombie apocalypse happens, like ‘We need to get from point A to point B. We need to somehow fortify this SUV so we can go and the zombies won’t get in. Can anybody here weld?’ That’s gonna be me. And I think it also works out too, because nobody wants that guy to get eaten.”

It’s not the worst way in the world to think. In the years since Nathan Fillion said this to Conan, we had some shutdowns and the whole world seemed to come to a stop for a time. Because of zombies? No, but it did show the fragility of our society and how quickly things can kind of go off the rails.

Learning certain skills in order to push disaster down the road, or even stave it off completely is just good forward thinking. Welding and other useful endeavors could have their place in a society trying to build back from the ashes. Nathan Fillion seems to get that more than others.