By David Wharton | 8 years ago

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. And if we’re counting alternate, superior realities, he’s currently starring as both Nathan Drake in the Uncharted franchise and Hal Jordan in the blockbuster Green Lantern series. (Ryan Reynolds did the Flash movie instead.) But what you may not realize is that Fillion is just as awesome in real life. How so? He took up welding just to make himself better prepared in the case of a zombie apocalypse.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a seething pillar of masculinity like 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. But he managed to find a way to make his hobby even more manly with his explanation to Conan O’Brien:

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] 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.

I think my voice just dropped an octave simply from typing that out. Here’s the full interview with Conan.