Question Three
A zombie has spotted you and has started to shamble towards you intent on taking a large bite out of your face and turning you into one of its undead friends. What do you do?
For God’s sake! Can I not finish this damn muffin in peace?
Run away and hide. You can outrun a zombie while close combat could result in you being bitten.
A teepee.
Question Four
You have secured yourself in a safe house when a small, dirty and bloodied child comes knocking and crying and asking you for help. What should you do?
Allow the child safe passage through your kingdom on the condition they answer three riddles correctly.
Turn the child away. You cannot afford to put yourself at risk.
Eat the child.
Question Five
You have been bitten by a zombie. What should you do?
Bite the bugger back! That’ll teach him!
Immediately kill yourself by destroying your own brain so you do not rise again.
Become enraged and disorientated and climb to the top of the empire state building whilst holding onto Faye Wray as biplanes attempt to shoot you down.
Question Six
Is there a cure for the zombie virus?
/div> Yes.
No.
A teepee.
What this questionnaire tells you:
Mostly As
You are a strong-minded individual who doesn’t mind using their sexual power to get what they want. But being a little bit flirty and a little bit dirty isn’t always the best way to gain friends. Try using a gentler, more understanding approach and you may be pleasantly surprised at the reaction you get.
Mostly Bs
Your perfect partner is someone who will love you for who you are. They will be able to give as good as they get whilst still getting as good as they give. They will stroke your hair whilst reading the sonnets of Shakespeare to you on cold winter nights. They will love Italian food, French cinema and Spanish wine. They will be honest and loving and not be too rash with financial decisions. They will be ginger.
Mostly Cs
A teepee.
REPOPULATION
It’s all well and good surviving a great disaster, but it doesn’t do humankind much good if you’ve not planned on doing anything about rebuilding the completely decimated human race. I’m sorry to say, that as one of the few survivors, it is your duty to repopulate the planet as quickly as possible to aid in the continuance of mankind (and womankind too – because without womankind there would be no mankind and vice versa and with no Judge Reinhold there would be no Vice Versa, but there would be Big with Tom Hanks which was slightly better and not forgetting Freaky Friday which was like Vice Versa only with females. See, we couldn’t have one without the other… I digress).
Those who need any help in the art of repopulation probably need to reevaluate their lives a little bit. Possibly starting by thinking less about the undead and more about the opposite sex. However, those of you who already know the basics of ‘making babies’ (let’s just be doubly clear at this point that the making of babies doesn’t involve storks, gooseberry bushes or toilet seats… unless you have a particularly kinky sexual bent) need to think long and hard before committing themselves to the repopulation programme.
Having sex with as many people as possible in order to save the human race may seem like a really attractive prospect but not when you consider that most of the people who have survived will have been battling the dead for some time and will not really have had time to clean or iron their clothes, get their hair cut, have a shave, wash, bathe, brush their teeth or spend a few sessions on the sunbed. Most survivors are liable to smell just a little bit too. Women who opt to help rebuild the population of the earth will most likely spend the rest of their adult life pregnant and men will have to continually have sex – and although I’m sure this task won’t have put off many men be aware that you will be unable to build a relationship with either your offspring or the mother of your child (or children).
If the zombies have not yet been fully defeated you will be bringing a new generation into the world who will continue to fight on behalf of the human race. And if the zombies have been defeated, the children who are born will grow up in a world that needs a hell of a lot of cleaning up doing. Whichever way you look at it, any child born into a world after the zombies have risen is going to have to make a really hard slog of it. But bear in mind that by opting to repopulate and bring them into the world in the first place you’ll have done most of the hard work. The people you sleep with won’t have washed for god’s sake!
RICOCHET
If you shoot this gun correctly then the bullet will bounce off that beam up above us and then hit that dustbin. It will then ricochet into the pile of bricks on the floor and then ricochet back against that plank of wood that is leaning against the wall. It will traverse those crates and bounce off the opposing wall into that fridge, onto the ceiling and then straight down onto that zombie’s head, thus killing him!
Or you could wait until the zombie gets a bit closer and hit it with a stick.
ROBOTS
Technology has come a long way since the early sixteenth century. I would not be typing this on a computer for one thing; I’d be plucking a chicken or a golden eagle and dipping it’s feathers in a pot of ink – or maybe even scraping the entries into blocks of stone with a flint which would mean this book would be really heavy and would probably cost a fortune to ship from Amazon – but I seem to be digressing…
These days we rely on machines to do a lot of our work for us, especially the more dangerous work. There are bomb disposal robots, search and rescue robots, robots to split atoms, robots to carry out surgical procedures, robots to visit distant planets and robots that can operate WMD. Of course, although no one has fully perfected artificial intelligence yet, putting these robots in dangerous situations with scant regard for their safety and also giving them control of our weapons systems will ultimately lead to a Skynet situation where the robots will take over the world and we will have to lead a revolt against them and battle just to stay alive, which is a whole other book on survival techniques (available soon: Dr Dale’s Dictionary of How to Survive a Skynet Situation Where the Robots Take Over the World and We Have to Lead a Revolt Against Them and Battle Just to Stay Alive). In the meantime, if the zombie apocalypse occurs first (which is more likely), much like any other mechanical object listed in this dictionary, if you have the means to keep it working and it doesn’t take up too much time in maintenance, then by all means use the robot to go out and fetch supplies or battle the undead or protect your safe house or whatever else you can think of that it could do to help you survive.
Note: If you own a robodog then these are pretty useless in aiding in survival. Just because they can sense where a wall is doesn’t make them that useful to you. Instead of using the robodog to find a wall, why not use…say…your eyes! Yes, yes, robodog makes cute barking noises (that will no doubt draw the undead to your location) and does a back flip that is mildly amusing. However, to gain the most use from a robodog, pick it up and smash it over a zombie’s head repeatedly until neither the dog – or the zombie – works anymore. This is referred to as kling two birds with one stone.
ROLE PLAYING
Seen by many as a pastime for geeks who sit around a table with 97-sided dice, pointy wizard hats and silly, unpronounceable alter egos (in Elven), role playing in its many forms is not something that should be mocked. Yes, you may very well have spent your formative years downing kegs of beer, dressing in togas and engaging in potentially homoerotic hazing activities in a dorm room with twelve football players and a goat (which was no doubt fun at the time) but what is going to be better value in preparing you for the apocalypse? Partying hard or RPGs?
When soldiers prepare for battle they do so by going through training exercises and simulations of the situations they’re likely to face out in the fie
ld. This is not just the case for the team on the ground either. Those officers who will be controlling the mission from the situation room go through similar training. This, in essence, is what role playing is all about (albeit with less tanks and more demons).
Whether you play them on your computer, round a table or out in a field (referred to as Live Action Role Playing), this training will enable your mind to act and react instantly to tactical situations and will thereby increase your chance of survival.
There is only one thing to bear in mind when partaking in roleplaying simulations and that is that your opponents are alive. Whether it is a games master or other players – each situation that you are placed in will have been created by another sentient being, whereas when you are out in a real-life apocalypse your opponents will be very much dead and incapable of intelligent thought and planning (very much like those beer-drinking footballers we were discussing earlier actually). They will have no plan, they will be erratic, disorganised, unrelenting and without any battle strategy. You’ll need more than a wooden sword, a latex helmet and 300 power points to beat them in the end.
SAFE HOUSE
Your ‘safe house’ or ‘sanctuary’ or ‘sanctum sanatorium’ (if you’re feeling particularly pretentious) can be just about anywhere as long as it is secure from the amassing hordes outside. But like most aspects of the housing market, there are certain attributes that make some buildings more attractive to potential survivors than others and therefore a better choice to build your base of operations. Here are some of the things to keep an eye out for when on the hunt for that perfect locale:
Altitude
You are always going to be safer from zombies if you are higher up due to the fact that zombies can’t jump (this applies to all creeds of zombies and not just the white male ones). Neither can they negotiate ladders very successfully, concoct a scheme to raise themselves to your height, or fly.
Of course, when we refer to altitude we are not talking about a shed on a hill. More suitable would be any room, apartment or office above ground floor – the higher the better, in fact.eing up high also limits the points of entry for the undead as they can no longer gain access through windows. That leaves only the doors, and if you block off the stairways that lead to the floor you live on it will create more barriers for them to breach before finally reaching you.
Points of entry/escape
You require a safe house with as few points of entry as possible. If there are ten doors leading into the building then that is ten doors you have to barricade and guard. It is also preferable to have ‘bottleneck’ entry points: small or normal-sized doors that are situated at the end of a corridor. This will mean that should that point of entry be breached, only a few zombies at a time can get through – and should you kill them, in time their bodies will essentially block up the door so other zombies can’t get through.
As well as the regular points of entry into the building, you should also have an irregular planned escape route that doesn’t involve doors and windows. This can be an attic to rooftop escape; cellar to sewers or through air vents to a different part of the building. This alternative escape route is essential because although the undead are mindless creatures, as we discussed beforehand, they are ‘aware’ of their surroundings. They will know that doors and windows are the best point of entry to a building and will be amassing outside of them trying to get in.
Once the dead have discovered you are inside a building, it is pointless trying to escape through the normal routes.
Windows
The fewer windows the better. In fact, no windows would be a bonus. If the dead can’t see you, then it will be less likely that they will discover you. If your safe house does have windows then you can always consider covering them up, but if you have chosen to set up shop in a ground-floor building then a few sheets of newspaper stuck to the glass will do nothing to stop the undead smashing their way in should you make too much noise and alert them to your whereabouts. Your best bet, if on the ground floor, is to brick the windows up or barricade them as effectively as you barricade your doors.
Furniture
You are not going to survive if your safe house does not have a reasonable amount of items with which to barricade doors and windows. Choosing an unfurnished building as a sanctuary will mean that you will have to locate and bring items to it in order to barricade the doors.
Rooms
It is a common misconception that an open-plan safe house is more effective than one with many different rooms. You need as many accessible rooms as possible to give yourself a better chance of survival. The reasoning behind this is twofold.
Firstly, if the main door to your abode is breached by the undead you can simply set up a barricade at the next doorway. If you were in an open plan room you would have nowhere to run (apart from your irregular escape route – but here is the second part of my reasoning).
Secondly, if a zombie sees you head into an air vent or through a hole in the floor it will follow you – thus making your irregular escape route pointless. In an open-plan room a zombie is liable to spot you making good your escape, whereas in a multi-room safe house you can have your escape route set up in another room and thus make your escape without being spotted.
Location
Although in cities and towns you are more likely to amass better supplies, it is preferable to have your safe house in an area that has a lower population. Small towns or villages are ideal, or even business parks that have been built on the outskirts of a town. Lower population means fewer zombies – and also less chance of you getting nuked (see Nuked).
THE THEATRE – A PRIME SAFE HOUSE PROSPECT
As long as the theatre isn’t an infection hotspot, the older buildings make excellent safe houses. They have few points of entry. They have lighting and sound control areas that are elevated. They have few, if any, windows in the main performance area and they have very small tubs of ice cream with wooden spoons for you to eat (the wooden spoons can also be whittled down to make tiny spears).
SKY FLOWERS
Or, as people of sound mind prefer to call them, fireworks. Some believe that if you shoot fireworks into the air zombies will be distracted by the shiny, pretty lights and you will be able to pass by them unseen as they all stare up into the night sky. They may even go ‘Oooooh’ and ‘Ahhhhh’ at the same time – who knows?
Other techniques that may distract zombies are shooting flares in the sky, dressing someone in a fibre-optic suit and making them dance on top of a building, giving them tickets to the Fantasia water and light show at MGM studios or shouting ‘Hey, look over there!’ whilst pointing behind them.
Please feel free to try any or all of these techniques if you wish and let me know if they work by sending a copy of your death certificate to my publisher’s address.
SLEEP
I’m not even going to bother going into this. Of course you need to sleep. If you need me to tell you that you need to sleep then there is seriously something wrong with you. The human body needs sleep to be able to operate properly, and I know it may be difficult to get forty winks with the thought of shambling corpses outside, but you will have to. Sleep, that is. Because I don’t know if I mentioned but you need to sleep.
Hey! You also need to breathe. Maybe I should have put a segment on that in the dictionary. Make sure you breathe. Yes? Should I go back and put it in now or should I just not bother? Tell you what, I won’t bother and we’ll just forget about this whole silly sleep incident, shall we? Just make sure it doesn’t happen again, OK?
SOUNDTRACK
Music can be an excellent motivator, but if there is an apocalypse raging outside, we wouldn’t recommend playing any tunes at full volume to pump yourself up prior to battle for the obvious reasons (it will draw the undead to you). Neither would we endorse using an iPod, MP3 player or a Walkman cassette personal stereo as this will plug up your ears and leave you open to a surprise attack. Instead, we suggest that you invent a playl
ist of music in your head that you can ‘play’ as a soundtrack for your life as you go about your daily business of surviving the undead. This nd as two points in its favour:
Firstly, the aforementioned motivational aspect of music. Studies have proved that music played both before and during intense workouts has improved the performance of athletes by, on average, 23%*.
Secondly, whilst you are imagining music playing in your head you aren’t really allowing your brain to think about all the horror, blood, guts, gore and undeadliness that is occurring around you – thus desensitising your own mind and allowing you to complete your tasks more effectively.
The music you decide to use in your own personal ‘soundtrack’ is completely up to you as you will be the most aware of your own personal musical preferences – but here are a few suggestions of styles of music and individual songs that you can utilise for specific situations.
Dr Dale’s Zombie Dictionary Page 16