Dr Dale’s Zombie Dictionary

by Dr Dale Seslick

  Although I have been extolling the virtue of the humble garage I would not go so far as recommending it as a safe house. Although they are generally secure, should the main entrance beome compromised it is a very large opening for a lot of zombies to pour through at the same time, leaving you little time for response or manoeuvre. Also, they are on the ground floor and as we all know the higher up you go, the safer you are. No, just leave garages for your shopping trips – you’ll be surprised at what you find.

  TURNING GARAGE JUNK INTO ZOMBIE WEAPONS

  I would use my carp as a stabbing weapon after first sharpening the nose to a deadly point. The record I would use to lift the spirits of my comrades in times of hardship. There is nothing like the uplifting Swedish melody of ‘Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley’. And if we didn’t have a record player we’d just look at the sleeve photo – the Herrys could cheer anyone up.

  GARDEN CENTRE

  The perfect place to find weapons during a zombie apocalypse. Who needs guns when in these veritable goldmines you can pick up shears, strimmers, axes, chainsaws, pitchforks, scythes, and electric lawnmowers? Those who like to be inventive in their zombie-killing methods could spend hours filling up their vans with all manner of damage-dealing tools.

  For the non-lethal minded there is also the option of stocking up on seeds and plants with which to grow your own foodstuffs to aid your survival. Of course, these should be saved for when you have found a secure location for a long-term stay (but if the worst comes to the worst you could always just eat the seeds – I am assured that plants will not grow in your stomach as a school friend informed me they would when I swallowed an apple pip as a child – the fact I don’t have an apple tree sprouting from my head should be proof enough for that).

  Be warned though, a garden centre will not be a safe haven in the apocalypse. Firstly, there will be other people who will have thought of the possibility of finding weapons and food there, which means you may have a fight on your hands to get the best hardware – who’d want to take out a member of the undead with the 300mm Sarel Spiker lawn aerator when you have the option of using the 900mm?

  As well as the living there is a high possibility that you will have to face the dead too. These days garden centres boast coffee shops, gift shops and all manner of other non-garden-related paraphernalia so people tend to spend whole days in these places. There is one consolation to this – but refer to the entry under Demographics for more information.

  Finally, do not think of using a garden centre as your base of operations. The buildings are primarily made of glass. See the problem there? Yes, it will be a nightmare to keep clean.

  GARLIC

  Garlic cannot be used to ward off the undead unless the undead you happen to be warding off are vampires (which is a completely new book waiting to happen) so do not wander around an apocalyptic Earth with a clove of garlic around your neck – people will just think you’re silly.

  GIRAFFE

  The GIRAFFE AMB Radar defence and surveillance system used by the military provides 3D target updates over a large elevation range at a rate of one-per-second. Ultra-low antenna side-lobes combined with pulse-to-pulse and burst-to-burst frequency agility provides some resistance to jamming. Those of you who own one of these will be fusinaware of its operation and capabilities and those that don’t own one probably never will which is why we won’t be talking about it today. Instead we’ll be discussing the giraffe, the tallest of all land-living animal species and the perfect mode of transport during a zombie apocalypse.

  Giraffes are currently on the ‘low concern’ list by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which obviously means that they are easy to come by. So if you’re able to nab yourself a giraffe, get one whilst they’re hot.

  The average speed of a giraffe can be up to 55 mph and their height (up to 18 ft) means that you can travel on the back of one through a horde of zombies without having to worry about being grabbed. Although you may have some concerns over the well-being of your steed, remember that giraffes are more than capable of looking after themselves. One kick from an adult giraffe is capable of smashing in a lion’s skull or snapping its spine. Using a giraffe as a ladder as well as a mode of transport will allow you to reach windows on the first and second floors of buildings without having to enter at the ground floor, making scavenging missions easier.

  The only minor problem we can see in keeping a giraffe during a zombie apocalypse is that you will need a safe house with a very high roof and big door – unless you set up your base in a giraffe enclosure, which will then give you even more giraffes to travel around on and access to other animals at the zoo too (you could train a moose to dance for your enjoyment and penguins to go on kamikaze missions – the possibilities are endless).

  GOLF CLUBS

  A golf club is a golf club. You just pick it up and smash it into a zombie’s skull. Yes? No! Of course, any golf club can be used to dispose of an undead pest, but if you’re going to do a job you might as well do it properly and use the best tool for the job.

  Golf clubs fall into four main categories: woods, irons, hybrids and putters. Each of these categories is used for a different purpose.

  For the sake of simplicity (and so as not to get angry letters from golfing experts) here is a golfing club breakdown:

  The wood is for long distance shots, the iron is for more difficult shots approaching the green (i.e. over the rough, through trees etc.), hybrids encompass the virtues of both woods and irons, and putters are used for shorter flat shots that require good aim.

  As putters are used for short-distance ball-hitting they are not built to withstand heavy usage so we must immediately relegate them to the bottom of our list.

  When it comes to woods, it will make a difference depending on if you are using an older or newer set of clubs. Older woods are made from wood, whereas newer woods are made of more durable metals. If it is a wood wood then discard it. Metal is always better.

  The most durable club is an iron. They are built for working in the rough so have to withstand the possibility of smacking a tree stump or badger, but don’t necessarily have the weight behind them to allow for longer distance hitting.

  This leaves us with the hybrid, which with the distance power of a wood and the familiar swing of an iron makes it a perfect brain-smushing weapon

  For those unfamiliar with the world of golfing we would suggest finding out what a hybrid looks like now as you don’t want to be wasting time during an attack scrabbling through a golf bag searching for the correct club whilst a zombie is bearing down on you. Just ensure that if you are not a regular golf player you choose a club with an A-Flex shaft to maximise your swing. Of course, the pros amongst you should always stick with an X-Flex; you know what I’m talking about… I’m glad somebody does.

  GRAFFITI

  When the power goes out and you are no longer able to make pretty posters on Microsoft Publisher with smiley-faced clipart you will have to find an alternative way of leaving messages for other survivors other than pinning a note to the door. The most obvious and cleverest way to do this is by using graffiti. This method was used during the Great Plague in London in 1665 when large crosses were drawn on the doors of houses that were infected. Using a similar system in a zombie plague would be useful for various reasons.

  Firstly, you would be able to alert fellow survivors that a particular building is highly infested by the undead. By marking buildings with a big red cross, other survivors will know to stay clear of that particular domicile. Of course, this does somewhat negate the selfish attitude you should be adopting, but I suppose there should be some give and take.

  Secondly, you could mark a building to let fellow survivors know that it has been drained of all resources. Maybe by writing EMPTY on the door or LOOTED. This is by no means a way to gloat to other survivors that you’ve got all the Curly Wurlys, but it will save them wasting their time and energy in searching a building that is already empty.

  Thir
dly, you would be able to let the authorities or other survivors know if you are currently occupying a building. You could daub SAFEHOUSE or SURVIVORS INSIDE on the walls or roof.

  There is a condition to sending out this message, though – and that is you should update it daily with the date. Writing SURVIVORS INSIDE is very similar to the notes you see on shop doors that state BACK IN FIVE MINUTES – nobody knows when the five minutes began. If you’ve just turned up at the shop, they could have already been away four minutes which means you only have a minute to wait. But if they’ve just closed the door, you may have to hang around for the full five minutes! What do you do? It’s so ambiguous! As is the sign SURVIVORS INSIDE. At the onset of the outbreak there could very well have been survivors inside but they may all have moved on now – or worse, they could all be dead which means the sign should read ZOMBIES INSIDE. It is unlikely that anyone will come to your aid unless they are 100% certain that you are still inside and simply updating the sign daily will help.

  Another good indicator that there are survivors inside a building will be the masses of zombies outside clamouring to get in. If this is the case, don’t bother nipping out to change the sign on the door. Just update the one on the roof and hope that help flies overhead – or an extremely tall soldier walks past.

  GUNS

  As stated in the introduction, weon’t focus heavily on the use of guns as a weapon, but I have two very valid points to make regarding any form of handheld firearm. Firstly, zombies with guns. It is highly unlikely that you will come across this scenario, but if you do, you need to be prepared. Zombies will have no comprehension or memory of how to use normal, everyday items like door handles or ladders. The undead are often depicted holding on to everyday items. This is perhaps because they were killed whilst holding them, or because rigor mortis has set in and they are incapable of letting go.

  What if a soldier was killed whilst holding his gun? He would reanimate still holding the weapon and although he would have no idea what it was, it could still accidentally go off if he made a sudden movement. How do you combat this problem?

  In the same way you would combat a zombie without a gun – just with extra caution. The zombie will be unaware that it can use the weapon to gain an advantage. You, therefore, need to get the headshot in as quickly as possible – you will then have a dead zombie and also a gun to add to your weapons inventory.

  The second point I want to make regards gun safety and handling. Remember that guns don’t kill people, people kill people – although guns make people’s jobs a lot easier when they want to kill other people – but on the other hand people who need people are the luckiest people in the world, whereas people who need guns may still be lucky – just lucky people without guns – and as long as they have people they can still be classed as being lucky, the luckiest people in the world, in fact. I think this is important to remember when handling firearms.

  HAIKU

  In the apocalypse, culture and the continuance thereof may take a sideline to more important things (e.g. killing the undead, surviving the horror and rebuilding the human race). But we must not lose our history and heritage of creativity because this is what differentiates us from animals (as well as coherent speech, war, religion, the ability to write and opposable thumbs).

  Creating art, however, can be a somewhat time-consuming and cumbersome activity, and we won’t all have time to sit and create a sprawling oil-painted masterpiece of the City of Naples at Night or devise a new musical based on the life and times of Barbra Streisand.

  This is where the Haiku comes in. Short, snappy and to the point, they have all the beauty and meaning of any poem I’ve ever read but with the bite-sized readability of only being seventeen syllables long.

  Learning the art of the Haiku also means that we will be able to entertain each other without the worry of being interrupted by the marauding undead and leaving a performance unfinished.

  Take for example one of the most well-known Haiku, Basho’s Old Pond which goes like this:

  Furu ike ya

  kawazu tobikomu

  mizu no oto

  I’ll leave you for a moment to soak up the beauty and meaning behind these words – but now let’s run this again in a simulation situation.

  You: Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu (CRASH! BANG!) Oh no, zombies are getting in!!

  Audience: But wait – we haven’t heard the end of your poem! This is highly disappointing and unfulfilling.

  You: Mizu no oto.

  Audience: (taking a moment to soak up the beauty and meaning behind the words) Beautiful.

  You: Now run!!!

  As you can see from that simulation, the audience were not left wondering how your creative masterpiece concluded and also had time to escape. Imagine if you’d had to finish Homer’s Iliad with over 15,600 verses. I think we can pretty much guarantee you’d all be dead – either from the zombies or from boredom. So, to continue the art of culture and poetry into the post-apocalyptic land, the Haiku is the way forward (and limericks too).

  THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION… of Basho’s Old Pond:

  Old Pond…

  A frog leaps in

  Water’s sound.

  It does rather lose a lot of its majesty in translation…

  HALLOWEEN

  There is never really a perfect time for a zombie apocalypse to begin. In fact, any day that portends the beginning of the rise of the dead is going to be a bit crap. And although Halloween is a pagan festival which some see as a celebration of the occult, the apocalypse is no more likely to occur on this day of the year than any other. The problem is that this particular occasion makes a zombie outbreak incredibly difficult to contain as I will explain.

  In Western culture, Halloween is ‘celebrated’ on the 31st October and should that date fall on a weekend the festivities will often extend over several days. That’s several days of folks dressing up as ghouls, purposefully making themselves appear dead and spraying fake blood all over the place. With Halloween celebrations increasing in popularity, costumes and spooky effects have become incredibly sophisticated and realistic. This means that it will be more difficult to tell the real zombies from the fake ones. As a result people will become infected very quickly before the authorities or those ‘in the know’ can leap into action and commence their survival and control plans.

  Even once the authorities have become aware of the situation, they will find it difficult to know who to target. The living will be dressed as the dead so the undead will look like the living. But this will in no way stop the living being attacked by the undead (see Emulation) and when given no choice the authorities are liable to shoot the living believing them to be the undead, in order to keep themselves from y the undelled.

  Of course, there is nothing we can do to halt the popularity of this festival but what we can do, is ensure that we are kept safe. You must stay vigilant and you must never dress as anything that looks vaguely dead. We suggest SpongeBob Squarepants. Even under extreme pressure no member of the authorities would shoot him.

  HEAD

  The head is the thing on the top of your neck where the brain is stored. In the case of a zombie apocalypse the phrase ‘Always go for the brain’ can reasonably translate to ‘Always go for the head’… What am I telling you this for? You know this, right? Right? Dear god, please tell me you know this! If you didn’t know this then when the apocalypse comes, that thing on the top of your neck – yup – that thing with the face on it! Stick it in an oven and turn the gas on… What’s an oven? Oh Jeez!

  HEDGEHOG

  The humble hedgehog comes in for a lot of stick. He is forever being squished on country lanes or being burnt to death when he decides to make his home in our bonfires. So, in order to protect our prickly chum from any further mistreatment, let me just make it very clear from the start that you cannot use a hedgehog as a weapon.

  Yes, hedgehogs have spines, but contrary to popular belief a hedgehog’s spines are liable to do very little dama
ge to a member of the undead. Their spikes have been compared to hairbrush bristles and if one comes into contact with them, the pain level is only as bad as being poked with a pen. This is because a hedgehog’s spines are hollow hair made hard by keratin. So, if you had considered taping a hedgehog to a stick and using it as a mace to destroy a zombie’s brain, let me assure you, you would have just as much luck if you used a gerbil. So please do not use hedgehogs as weapons. Tortoises on the other hand… Strap them to a stick and their shells can cause major carnage.