If your Soviet neighbor is trying to set fire to your house, you can't be worrying about the Arab down the block. If suddenly it's the Arab in your backyard , you can't be worrying about the People's Republic of China and if one day the ChiComs show up at your front door with an eviction notice in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other, then the last thing you're going do is look over his shoulder for a walking corpse.
In "World War Z," Max Brooks emphasizes the importance of prioritizing immediate threats over distant ones. He uses the metaphor of a neighbor attempting to set fire to your house to illustrate that when faced with a direct and imminent danger, your focus should be solely on that problem. Worrying about other threats or incidents that may be happening elsewhere is counterproductive when survival is at stake.
Brooks further elaborates that...