Sock: I think you’re just trying to find a reason not to talk.
You: No I’m not.
Sock: Yes you are.
You: No I’m not.
Sock: Yes you are!
You: Of course I am! I just had to shoot my Aunt Mildred in the head because she got bitten! It’s very upsetting!
Sock: It is upsetting, but I’m sure you feel better now after talking about it.
You: I had my first sexual experience with my Aunt Mildred.
Sock: OK, whoa there, you freak!
You: I feel so much better now.
A FEW KEY POINTS TO SELF-COUNSELLING:
Always try and use a clean sock – you wouldn’t want to talk to someone who smells.
Never get angry with your counsellor and hit or stab him – it’ll hurt you more than it hurts him.
In the absence of socks, other items of underwear CANNOT be used as a substitute. If people catch you tking to a bra they may lose confidence in you as a leader.
CRYONICS
Before we go into this in any great depth it is worth noting that there is a difference between cryonics and suspended animation. However, purely to save time, energy and space, I am going to cover both subjects under one heading.
In its simplest form, cryonics is the science of freezing a person so that they may be revived at some stage in the future. Although this may seem like a good way to avoid the apocalypse, there are some key points to bear in mind when considering this option. Although scientists have perfected the technique of freezing a body, they have not yet worked out how to revive one – and should the apocalypse occur I would imagine it would be quite low on their agenda to continue their research. Add to the equation the diminishing resources of humankind and chances are that once frozen you will remain a popsicle for ever.
The law also states that you are not allowed to be cryonically preserved until you are legally dead. This may seem like a perfect way to counteract the effects of a zombie bite should you be infected, but although being frozen until a cure is found may seem like a good idea, it all depends on how fast you will rise from the dead. Scientists cannot begin the procedure of freezing you until you are dead – by which point you will be a zombie. And although they may be able to cure the zombie virus, it is highly unlikely that science will have advanced so far as to cure death.
The other alternative is suspended animation. This is a procedure whereby your blood is replaced by a low-temperature fluid. Tests have been carried out on dogs as to the viability of this technique. In some cases they were successful, in others they created ‘zombie dogs’. I think at this point we can see the problem with putting our trust in this particular science. If it could possibly turn you into a zombie, it really isn’t much safer than staying alive and attempting to survive without the aid of nitrogen in your veins.
In conclusion, the idea of using any science that freezes your body is a bad idea – and when the apocalypse comes, Walt Disney is going to be extremely narked off.
CURE
There is no cure. Once you are bitten you become a zombie. So stop thinking there is a cure, because there isn’t. Even if there is, you need to think there isn’t. Because thinking there’s a cure will give you hope and hope will make you weak and weakness will make you lose and losing means you die and dying means you rise and rising means you become a zombie – for which there is no cure. So stop thinking there’s a cure because that will give you hope and hope will make you weak and… You get the message – THERE IS NO CURE!
CUTLERY
This is the easiest and most accessible form of weapon. Most houses, flats, apartments, shops, farms and florists boast at least one of the three basic items of cutlery. They are also small, light, easy to carry and multifunctional too (should the need arise you could even use them for eating food).
Contrary to popular belief, the most effective weapon in a cutlery set is not the knife. These can often be blunt with rounded edges (unless it is a posh cutlery set with a steak knife, but don’t bank on that). If given the option of only one implement, we advise on choosing the fork. The blades will o be extreointier and they can also be bent and used for picking locks, prying open cupboards, cleaning fingernails and drawing three equal-spaced lines in sand.
If left with only a spoon, reverse the item and poke the handle through eye sockets for maximum effect.
OTHER USEFUL ITEMS OF CUTLERY
SPORK – spoon/fork
SPIFE – spoon/knife
KNORK – knife/fork
SPLAYD – all three
FLUDPT – don’t know
One wonders if the person who invented these should not have spent their time more wisely. Perhaps by killing themselves and thus doing their family and the world a favour.
DANCE
You may be the kind of person who wants to dance with somebody, (and invariably someone who loves you) or you may really not feel like dancing at all when that old Joanna plays. Either way, dance cannot be discounted as a frivolous pastime. Look at Billy Elliot. He took up ballet and then had a major film made about him and a musical by Elton John (mind you, Julie Walters was his ballet teacher so he already had the contacts in the business to get him started). But despite the associated fame, dance is a tough occupation and dance training will most certainly be beneficial in a zombie apocalypse.
Ballet dancers go through a great deal of physical discomfort in their training. As well as being accustomed to pain, they can contort their bodies into strange and unnatural shapes and are also capable of bounding thousands of feet in a single leap (unconfirmed fact).
If you don’t have the time to learn ballet yourself then it would be extremely useful to have a ballerina on your team. As well as being capable of accessing unreachable places they also eat very little so will not be a drain on your resources. Female ballet dancers are also very light and suitable for use as a throwing weapon. Both male and female ballet dancers wear very tight outfits all the time so bites will be easy to spot and the little pink-ribboned shoes they wear have wooden blocks in the toes so they could be used to kick in a zombie’s head.
Ballet is not the only form of dance that can come in handy during a zombie apocalypse, so it may be worth learning the most relevant moves from each form to keep you prepared for all eventualities.
Tap dancing
The basis of this dance is to make a noise with your feet. Although under normal circumstances this would attract the undead, shoes with metal plates attached to the base will also make perfect weapons. You can either hold the shoe in your hands and strike, or if you have supple enough legs, you can wear them on your feet and kick. At any rate, they’re better than a leatherette moccasin.
Street dance>
Not, as some may believe, purely dancing in the streets à la Jagger and Bowie. Street dance incorporates movements specific to the beats of a given song. Often aggressive in its choreography, it is the closest dance to a form of martial arts and incorporates elbows, fists, knees and floor work which can be useful for incapacitating and avoiding foes.
For those unfamiliar with this form of dance, look out for it in modern hip hop music videos – which is ironic as street doesn’t include an awful lot of hopping (although some hip movement is necessary).
Morris dancing
A dance that involves grown men attempting to hit each other with sticks. You may wish to dispense with the bells around your ankles, the hanky-waving segment and the skipping, but this is a dance involving hitting things with sticks. The value is immeasurable.
Pole dancing
There may be time during the apocalypse when the need arises for you to make a quick escape up a greased pole in a sensual manner whilst wearing hardly any clothes. This is why we fully advocate pole dancing as part of a zombie apocalypse training regime.
Line dancing
No.
DARKNESS
Not the now defunct UK rock band that boasted high-pitched vocals from frontman Justin Hawkins (he
would attract too much attention). Nor the Top Cow comic book (although having the power to create anything you desire at night time would be most useful during a zombie apocalypse). The darkness I’m referring to in this entry is actual darkness – the time when there is no light.
In normal warfare, darkness is advantageous as one can use it to move around without being seen, or carry out covert attacks or operations. But in the war against the undead it is a complete hindrance.
The problem with having the undead as an enemy is that they could be anywhere – standing around aimlessly, sitting in cars, under tables, in fridges, in ponds or up trees. This means that when travelling from a to b you have to always be alert.
Darkness can affect your ability to see and therefore affect your vigilance. The use of lights and torches is a bad idea too as zombies will acclimatise to their surroundings and a moving light will attract their attention (whereas during the day, movement could be attributed to anything: other zombies, animals, curtains flapping in the wind, collapsing buildings etc., so a zombie would be less likely to react).
You could use night-time goggles, but although these are useful in some situations, they will restrict your peripheral vision.
In the darkness, zombies will head for you – whether it’s through sight, smell, sound, body heat, who knows? – but they will lock onto you as a target and move in. You won’t be able to see anything. You will be disorientated, lost and a sitting duck with no idea where to head for safety. Do not go out in the dark.
It is much wiser to stay secure during the night-time hours and sleep. It may not duch safer in the light but at least you will be able to see your surroundings, your enemy and all escape routes and will have a better chance of sensible reaction and survival.
FACT 1: If you are in an urban area that still has power and streetlights, it is marginally safer to go out at night. We still recommend saving your scavenging times for the daytime though, as who knows when the power will finally go off.
FACT 2: The closer you are to the North and South poles, the longer the periods of night, and therefore darkness, so you may have to come up with a way of braving the darkness or prepare for a long-haul buckle down in your safe house. For example, Barrow, Alaska has 720 hours of darkness in one period. That’s 30 days of night – and in that area you’ll also have vampires to worry about. Bummer.
DECAPITATION
The only way to kill a zombie is to destroy the brain (see Brain) and it is a common misconception that decapitation does just as good a job. Chopping off a zombie’s head does stop it from advancing towards you because it has no body – but it does not kill the zombie. What you have left is a zombie head that can still infect you – as it can still bite. So although you have technically neutralised the threat, do everyone a favour and finish the job. It will only be a matter of time before you forget you had that head in the corner and you stub your toe on its teeth. Or it could pull itself along by its chin until it manages to reach you while you are sleeping. And if you are lying down with your legs spread, heaven knows where it might choose to bite! Decapitation may seem like fun, but not when you have a severed head attached to your gonads. Destroy the brain.
Also note that it is unwise to collect zombie heads to create your own puppet theatre.
DECISIONS/DELIBERATION
Generally speaking, human beings, particularly the British, don’t like to rock the boat and prefer to avoid conflict. That’s why it’s common to hear ‘I’m easy’ or ‘You decide’.
But I’m here to tell you No! No! And thrice NO! The time for social niceties must cease at the rise of the dead. If you are to survive you must be able to make decisions in a split second and not rely on the opinions or preferences of the rest of your group. Sometimes immediate action is needed in order to stay alive. Imagine a stranger comes to the door of your safe house looking for sanctuary. He is covered in blood. This could be from killing zombies or it could be from wounds…a bite! You could hold a meeting to decide if this stranger is allowed to stay. In the meantime, he has died, risen and infected half of your team including your aged, infertile but quite doting mother who was tending to him and making him a lovely cup of lemon earl grey. Alternatively, you could take it upon yourself to make a quick decision without hours of deliberation and stick a pickaxe in his head. The problem is now gone and you can continue worrying about your own survival rather than random, possibly infected strangers who are liable to sink their teeth into your mother.
Becoming a person who acts in this way can be quite difficult to master so it is wise to start practising now. It doesn’t take much and it won’t require sticking a pickaxe in someone’s head (unless you really want to). All you have to do is start making decisions. So, should your partner ask what you want for dinner, don’t say: ‘I don’t mind, whatever…’ Instead reply with a forceful cry of ‘PIE! And now!’
Also start making split-second decisions on your own. If you are walking down the street, suddenly decide to cross the road. Don’t stop and think, just step out into the oncoming traffic. Make the decision to be on the other side of the road and go for it! If you get hit, you’ll heal, and should you die, who has to live with the consequences? Not you!
Obviously your friends and family will start to notice a change in you – a change they may not like. To them you may seem impulsive, selfish and rash. Bear in mind, though, that these people may rely on you when the apocalypse comes and if you don’t make the decision to change right now, what’s going to happen to your mother when that stranger comes calling? You know I’m right. Sit down and think about it for a while.
DEMOGRAPHICS
Population statistics are scrutinised by marketing companies to find out basic information about their customers (e.g. age, social standing, sex, race, shoe size – generally only shoe marketing companies insist on knowing this last piece of info). You too should be paying attention to these stats as knowledge of basic demographics and common sense can give you incredible foresight in a zombie apocalypse.
Once the apocalypse is in full swing you need to be able to use good judgement to decide on the best places to attain supplies and set up safe-havens. In order to do this you need to guess which locations nearby are likely to be less infested than others. This is where simple demographic knowledge comes in handy.
If, at the outbreak of the rise of the dead, a Chippendales concert was taking place at a local theatre we could surmise that this specific theatre would be full of female zombies between the ages of 18–50 and a few twenty-something male zombies in various states of undress. It would be unwise to attempt to enter this area as theatres have limited exit points and the Chippendales are relatively popular. This means you will have a building full of zombies, some of whom are younger and therefore stronger.
Using the same process of demographic analysis we can assume that if an old folks home is infested, this will give rise to mostly older zombies who will be easier to defeat due to brittle bones, bad hips or being wheelchair bound (congenital ailments from life pass on to zombies – see: Physical Ailments). It will therefore be easier to scavenge there.
This process can be applied to most areas (gyms = young and fit zombies; schools = child zombies; garden centres = families and middle-aged zombies who are stuck in a rut and feel their life has been one long waste).
The only areas we cannot apply this to are panic zones (see Panic Zones) – the places most people rush to in times of crisis. These include hospitals, police stations, airports – the areas that we know are the most dangerous. Although there will be a high mix of age, sex and race, we also know that the demographic ratio for panic zones will be 100% dumbass.
DRUGS
The School of Survival does not advocate the use of any recreational drugs, especially when the apocalypse has finally begun. You may think that taking illegal substances to enhance your mood or physical state would be a good idea when battling theundead (and due to the collapse of society and its moral values, previous
ly banned substances will no longer carry a usage penalty), but the cons far outweigh the pros when it comes to drug use. Although you will feel euphoric, strong and possibly fearless for a period of time, after the effects of the drug have worn off you will suffer a longer period of comedown which will leave you more susceptible and less able to cope with attacks.
Addiction is also an issue and the supply of any recreational drugs during the apocalypse will be short at best, so should you become addicted and then be forced into cold turkey your mental process will become erratic, putting yourself and your team in danger.
Not all drugs are bad, though. We wholly endorse the use of steroids during an apocalypse in order to get yourself in peak physical condition as quickly as possible. Although the same rules apply regarding the legality of this issue – do not use prior to the apocalypse, but afterwards anything goes!
There is also the very interesting possibility of using psychotropic drugs as weapons against zombies. Drugs like LSD, Cannabis and Ecstasy are all mind-altering substances which affect the brain. As the brain is the only operating organ in a zombie, would these drugs be useful? Depending on the dosage, it probably wouldn’t kill a zombie but it may disorientate them for a while giving you a chance to escape (this could be particularly useful when faced with large crowds of the undead).
Dr Dale’s Zombie Dictionary Page 5