THE FULL ARSENAL
Those were just a few of the dozens of different umbrella stroller combat techniques that will be available to parents in the zombie apocalypse. I wanted to write an entire book on stroller fencing, but the world isn’t ready for that much useful information in one place. I guess someone else will have to win the Nobel Prize in literature. In the meantime, here’s a quick rundown of other stroller moves that could save your life. Feel free to practice them in front of a mirror over and over again until you get them right. That won’t freak out your spouse at all.
Other Stroller Attacks
Name
Description
The Whirlwind
Use the hooked handles of a stroller to catch a zombie by the neck. Spin in circles until one of you falls down. Try not to throw up.
Lance Attack
Fold up the stroller, place it under your arm, and charge ahead at full speed like you’re jousting. Then offer a rose to the nearest damsel.
Figure Skater Special
Swing the stroller like a club, but aim for the kneecaps.
Drive-by
Get a running start. Jump on the back of the stroller to glide by the zombie. Punch it in the face as you pass. Warning: The stroller may collapse under your weight if you’re older than two.
Bait and Switch
Leave your kid in the stroller. When a zombie goes in for the kill, bull-rush them from a hiding place off to the side. Don’t be late.
The Nutcracker
Collapse the stroller and swing it like a golf club at the zombie’s nuts. The zombie won’t feel anything, but it’ll make you feel better.
Exit Stage Left
Use the hooks on the stroller handles to snag the zombie’s feet and pull them out from under it. Tell it to break a leg.
Sacrifice Bunt
Hold a closed stroller horizontally in front of you like you’re about to bunt a baseball. Run forward and knock over zombies. Die with honor.
ORDER NOW
Get your hands on an umbrella stroller before it’s too late. After the zombie apocalypse starts, people will kill each other over them. Actually, the killing will only go one way since anyone who doesn’t have one won’t stand a chance against someone who does. Entire military units will drop their M4s in favor of umbrella strollers. If you already have one, pat yourself on the back. For perhaps the only time ever, having a kid paid off.
CHAPTER 9
THE HOME FRONT
There’s no such thing as a child-proof home. The best you can hope for is a home-proof child. Over time, your kids will grow immune to all the daily dangers you overlooked. They’ll develop tough skin from playing with knives and an unstoppable immune system thanks to a liberal interpretation of the five-second rule. Ironically, your failure to keep your children safe could save their lives—or drive them away the second they’re tall enough to reach a doorknob. Only time will tell.
Hopefully they’ll stay home. Your house is the most secure place to be in the zombie apocalypse. In fact, your kids will be safer in your home after the world ends than they were before. Electrical outlets and stove burners will be harmless playthings once the power and natural gas cut out. There won’t be anything left in the house to harm your children besides splinters. So forget elaborate survival bunkers and abandoned nuclear silos. Your own home is the perfect place to ride out the apocalypse. Just throw a rug over the hardwood floors first.
Your house isn’t that far from being zombie-ready right now. Contrary to what home-buying couples on TV might say, your home does not need a total gut-job. It also doesn’t need granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, or space for entertaining. It’s hard to impress your friends when everyone is dead. From that point forward, the only people who will see the inside of your humble dwelling will be your own family and any looters or zombies who smash their way in. There won’t be any pressure to keep up appearances. The zombie apocalypse will be a great time to be a homemaker.
Decorations That Will Be Pointless in the Zombie Apocalypse
Decoration
Why It’s Pointless
Throw Pillows
Nobody knows what these do in the normal world. In the apocalypse, they’ll just make your house more flammable. Throw them away.
Accent Walls
All colors look the same in dim candlelight.
Crown Molding
You can’t watch for zombies if you’re staring at ceiling joints.
Hardwood Floors
Louder than carpet. The zombies that hear you sneaking around won’t care that it’s real bamboo.
Quartz Countertops
Won’t make that canned corn any less expired.
Glass Shower Doors
Eliminate any chance of hiding from zombies in the shower.
Gas Fireplace
Natural gas will run out. Good luck lighting fake ceramic logs.
Your home will need only a few minor modifications once your nice, quiet neighborhood becomes an undead hellscape. Every zombie survival guide explains how to turn your house into an impregnable fortress with boarded-up windows and a single passageway in and out. For families, that’s a death trap. People with kids can’t wall themselves in. First of all, the smell would be unbearable. Children are small. You’d think their odors would be scaled proportionately, but the opposite is true. Children are covered in a layer of slime that absorbs every scent they’ve ever encountered. My oldest daughter still smells like a waffle joint I visited one time three years ago. We went through the drive-thru. Daily baths can’t stop the smell, but they can mask it for a while. Even that won’t be an option after the zombies show up. It’s hard enough to get kids to clean up when the water is warm and welcoming. When the only bathing option left is a cold stream three miles away, that will be the end of bath night. Sealing yourself in a house with your kids will turn your home into an olfactory torture chamber. Open a window to maintain consciousness.
The second reason you shouldn’t seal up your house is that with kids, you always need multiple escape options. You don’t know which room they’ll be in when zombies attack, but chances are it’ll be whichever one is the most inconvenient at the time. If you’re at the front of the house when a break-in occurs, expect your kids to be three rooms away in the kitchen making themselves cardboard and ketchup sandwiches. I’m sure those will sound much tastier once you’re starving.
It will be too hard to round up all your kids and shepherd them out a single available exit. Other survival guides say it’s easier to guard a sole point of entry. The flipside is if zombies break through it, your house will turn into a giant lunchbox. Besides, boarding up the windows is a major violation of the fire code—which doesn’t sound like a big deal until there’s a fire. You’ll be in a house full of lit candles and stumbling, clumsy children chasing each other in dim light. Be sure to loot some fire extinguishers.
Boarded-up windows are also a visible sign to passing looters that they should stop and take a closer look. A protected home is a home with something worth protecting. A boarded-up window is a billboard to the world that says, “Please kill me and take my stuff.” When you nail up those plywood boards, you put the final nail in your own coffin.
Don’t despair yet. There are plenty of reasons to give up hope, but this isn’t one of them. Instead of sealing up your windows with dead trees, cover them with blankets. The blankets will stop people and zombies from seeing into your house without preventing you from jumping out a window in an emergency or because you feel like it. Using a standard door can get old even for the best of us. Plus putting blankets over the windows will look trashy, and trashy houses never have anything worth looting. A passing scavenger will glance at your place and shudder. They’re not looking for chewing tobacco or stock car commemorative plates. Their loss.
Whatever you do, don’t keep the window coverings you already have. Normal curtains and blinds make homes seem well-kept and occupied, which is the opposite of what
you’re going for here. Besides, hanging normal window dressings is a nightmare. It’s a great project to tackle with your spouse if you don’t want to be married anymore. Blankets offer no such installation challenges. Hammer some nails through the blanket and into the top edge of the window sill and you’ll have the right mix of privacy, survivability, and patheticness to throw off the zombie hordes and anyone else who is out to get you.
To maximize your home’s lack of curb appeal, follow these pointers:
Do use a thick blanket. There’s no sense hanging up a transparent material. Windows already have one of those. It’s called glass.
Don’t use a cool blanket. A brand new artificially distressed ironic retro pop culture comforter set will attract attention, not drive it away. Plus it probably costs as much as a mortgage payment. It isn’t cheap pretending to be poor.
Do cover every window, even the small, out-of-the-way ones that don’t normally get much attention. That includes any bathroom windows. You’ll need privacy while you do your most important work.
Don’t use a towel because it looks like a mini-blanket. It’s completely different. Don’t make me draw another diagram.
Do use lots of nails. It’s an easy project, and if you use them all up now, your spouse won’t be able to make you build a deck.
Don’t ask anyone for help. It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower to put a sharp, steel nail through a thin piece of cloth.
Do nail up blankets at the very start of the zombie apocalypse. The wails of the dying outside your window should mask your hammer blows.
Don’t use a nail gun. It’s too much fun. Your giddy screams of joy will get you eaten by nightfall.
OPEN DOOR POLICY
Modern homes come with thick metal security doors to keep out even the worst threat. Never lock them. This seems counterintuitive in a world where everything wants to kill you, but trust me on this. As a parent, the biggest threat to your safety is getting locked out of your own home. The last thing you want is to race back to your house with a pack of zombies in pursuit only to discover your baby dropped your keys three miles back. The only reason kids are fascinated with jingly objects is to create this exact scenario. It’s their passive-aggressive way of getting back at you for not letting them eat dirt.
Sure, you could knock on your own front door, but any kids you left inside will take forever to answer. They never did anything quickly even in the best of times. By the time one of them opens the door, they’ll find your partially eaten body and a pack of zombies who are ready for seconds. Even if the zombies don’t catch you, there won’t be any locksmiths left to replace the key. And if you do manage to find one, you can bet they’ll overcharge. I’d rather die than be a sucker.
A locked door isn’t a meaningful deterrent anyway. While it can delay you long enough for you to die on your own front steps, it won’t keep out looters. In fact, it might draw their attention. If they test your front door and find out it’s locked, they’ll be curious as to what survival supplies you’re hiding. If they can’t break through the door, they’ll smash a window. And all the glass surfaces on your house will only be protected by blankets. In hindsight, that seems like a bad idea. I wonder who told you to do it.
The truth is nothing will keep out a determined pursuer, dead or otherwise. If you had armor plating over all your doors and windows, a looter could simply burn down your house. Sure, they wouldn’t get the supplies inside, but if they can’t have it, no one can. It’s easy to predict human actions once you assume everyone is a jerk. You’ll be better off with windows that still open so you can easily escape rather than making a last stand in a house you only bought because it was in a good school district. The luster fades as soon as the first teacher tries to eat your kids.
As for zombies, they can’t turn doorknobs, so an unlocked door will stop them as effectively as a locked one. You just have to make sure it’s closed all the way so it latches. With kids in the house, this will be a challenge. It takes almost no effort to close a door all the way, but even that’s asking too much. Children are in a hurry to get back to doing absolutely nothing. The only thing they respect less than you is your utility bill—or your firewood supply, once the power goes out. Don’t bother sarcastically asking your kids if they’re trying to heat the great outdoors. Kids are the primary cause of global warming.
INTO THE BREACH
Putting blankets over your windows and keeping the doors securely shut but unlocked is the closest you’ll ever come to living in a stealth house. But in the unlikely event this gambit fails, you still have your best card left to play: your own child-ravaged home. Remember that your bad housekeeping is actually a powerful defensive measure. Stop aspiring to the perfect home and embrace the disaster. It’s the only way you’ll survive.
The first step is to give up on picking up around the house. It takes hours to clean a home but only seconds for children to destroy it. The floors of houses with kids are perpetually covered with plastic toys, dirty laundry, and random food bits from meals you may or may not have eaten this year. The only times homes with children are presentable is after hours of frantic cleaning before someone visits. Even then, your house only stays that way if you lock your kids in the basement.
Walking anywhere in a child-infested house is as dangerous as entering a coal mine. Keep it that way, at least on the first floor. I’ve mentioned before how hazardous this tactic is to zombies, but it’s equally dangerous to human intruders. If looters break in, they’ll slip and break their ankles on the hundreds of former birthday and Christmas gifts your kids just had to have but then immediately forgot about. If they push forward through the chaos, they’ll never find anything worth stealing. Even you won’t know where your good stuff is. Your most prized possessions will be buried under cheap plastic toys that take millions of years to decompose. They’ll be safe for eternity. Any looter who sees that kind of desolation will give up and never come back. It’s the perfect plan, other than the part where you’ll still have to live there amidst the squalor.
Worst Toys to Step On
Toy
Consequence
Legos
If you’re wearing shoes, you’ll lose your footing. If you’re not, you’ll lose your foot.
Barbie Shoes
Sharper than steak knives.
Marbles
Aren’t even a real game anymore. Only exist for tripping adults.
Plastic Army Men
Hurt like hell and make you feel unpatriotic for breaking them.
Matchbox Cars
You’ll simultaneously break your ankle and ruin their collector’s value.
The debris will have the same effect on zombies. Their balance is poor, and their bones are brittle. Unlike looters, however, zombies won’t give up. If they think you’re in the house, they’ll keep going, no matter how suicidal the path ahead. Dying and rising again dulls their fear of death. Go figure.
Since zombies are stupid and relentless, you’ll have to carefully position your random junk to stop them. First, leave all stringy toys right inside the front of the door. Jump ropes, Slinkys, and costume necklaces should all be piled there as inconveniently as possible. This will tangle up any zombies who pass through in the dark. This also works on humans. For parents with older kids, it’s also a great way to enforce a curfew.
Next, make tall, teetering piles of boxes filled with books. They’re heavy enough to crush anyone they fall on. “Light reading” is an oxymoron. A clumsy, flailing zombie will knock over those stacks, trapping itself underneath. Then you’ll be free to kill it or leave it in place as a deterrent against looters and other unwanted living guests. Squirming piles of debris are great for scaring away salesmen.
All homes with kids in them drift toward chaos. The approach I described above just lets nature take its course. You’re not a bad parent; you’re an effective defensive strategist. Keep in mind this only applies to the first story. On the second floor, there’s no excuse for living in a
post-apocalyptic pigsty. That’s why the laziest parents will ride out the end of the world in a single-story ranch. They’ll never touch a dust pan again.
LANDSCAPE OF DOOM
If you’re feeling ambitious, you can add traps outside your home as well. They’ll have to be well disguised, though, or you’ll ruin the whole uninhabited vibe you created with your window blankets. To avoid unwanted attention, any outdoor measures need to look like a haphazard eyesore, not a cohesive defensive grid. Basically, be bad at landscaping. Don’t worry, if you have children, you can fail at anything.
The best way to disguise your outdoor traps is to make the outside of your house look like it’s under construction. No one will bat an eye if you have dangerous scaffolding and building equipment outside your house for months or even years. As anyone who has ever renovated a home knows, if a contractor says something will take two months, the actual timeframe is forever. Those long-term renovations are extremely dangerous for children, pets, and all other living things. Once the world ends, that’s a perk, not a liability.
Only Dead on the Inside Page 9