by Mogk, Matt
With this in mind, you might want to consider giving up that morning cup of coffee or daily caffeinated soda, because once the human body becomes dependent on caffeine, an absence of regular infusions can render a person mentally unable to plan and execute any reasonable level of zombie defense.
I saw the effects of caffeine withdrawal firsthand when a former coworker secretly switched her husband’s coffee to decaffeinated. The poor guy was in bed for days with a “mysterious” illness. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate, and certainly couldn’t fight zombies. My coworker finally felt so guilty she switched him back to the hard stuff, and his condition instantly improved.
Whatever your guilty pleasure, consider this a warning. The best preparation and planning in the world won’t protect you from a zombie attack if you’re preoccupied with feeding a habit rather than preventing the undead from feeding on you.
KNOW YOUR ZOMBIES: FIDO
Fido (2006)
Fido, the title character, is an unassuming zombie servant owned by the Robinson family in post-war 1950s America. He serves drinks, plays catch with little Timmy, and seems destined to lead an unassuming death. Of course, things never work out as they’re supposed to in zombie movies, even for the zombies.
Fido is a prominent example of the increased humanization of zombies that has emerged in recent years in works like S.G. Browne’s novel Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament (2009) and Comedy Central’s animated Ugly Americans (2010).
ILLUSTRATION BY CARLA RODRIGUES
23: BUILDING YOUR TEAM
In the 2009 Norwegian zombie romp Dead Snow, a group of university students heads off to an isolated mountain cabin for spring break. After a local kook stops by to warn them of potential doom, the gang is attacked by frozen Nazi zombies who stop at nothing to rip them limb from limb.
Despite the fact that they’re separated from civilization and can’t call for help or easily escape, and despite the fact that they seem unable to defend themselves against their undead attackers, the students have one key survival advantage that you probably won’t when facing down your own zombie menace: they are all good friends.
Zombies wait for no one, and they’re certainly not going to stand back while you gather your ideal survival team. When it’s time to fight for your life, the person by your side is just as likely to be someone you’ve never seen before as it is an old friend, a coworker, or even a casual acquaintance.
The Walking Dead, Season 1, Episode 5 (2010)
JENNER:
Why are you here and what do you want?
GRIMES:
A chance.
JENNER:
That’s asking an awful lot these days.
GRIMES:
I know.
JENNER:
You all submit to a blood test. That’s the price of admission.
What’s more, if you do happen to be in a different location from your loved ones when the undead outbreak strikes, it’s quite possible that you will never see them again. This harsh reality of zombie survival is often overlooked, but as lines of communication break down and transportation corridors grind to a halt, it’s inevitable that many won’t make it back home safe and sound.
FEMA’s guidelines on emergency readiness suggest that predetermined rendezvous points be established, so a core group of friends and family will know where to find one another:
In the event of an emergency, you may become separated from family members. Choose a place to regroup nearby your home. Then choose another location outside of your neighborhood in case you can’t return home.54
You may also want to develop a series of protocols that your group can follow. Who is assigned to search for missing members? Who is tasked with staying put in a safe location? If you’ve ever tried to find someone in a mall with no cell service, you know just how valuable protocols can be.
If all planned efforts to reunite fail, you need to shift focus to your own personal survival and expect your missing companions to do the same. With zombies about, it’s not time for a wild-goose chase that’s more likely to get you killed than show any tangible results.
NO HONOR AMONG THIEVES
Carlos Marighella was a South American revolutionary who spent his entire adult life developing strategies for small groups to survive under the weight of violent pressure from powerful outside forces. In his book, The Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla, Marighella explains that more dangerous than any external enemy is the enemy that comes from within. He warns of the damage that a person acting in his own self-interest can do when that interest inevitably becomes at odds with the good of the whole.
Ironically, Carlos was killed by police in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1969 after being set up by members of his own movement. But betrayal by members of your group isn’t the only deadly pitfall when it comes to working with others.
Imagine you’re caught in a catastrophic zombie outbreak. You make it to the edge of the city alone and find refuge at an abandoned highway service station. With some food and bottled water taken from the stockroom, you climb to a hidden spot on the roof and try to come up with a plan. Your mind is racing. How did it all fall apart so fast? When will you see your family again? Is this really even happening?
Soon another survivor comes walking up the empty road. It’s a woman with her young son. They look tired and desperate, but they’re not infected. You make yourself known, share the looted water, and get news of the nightmare unfolding behind you. The zombie horde has grown too large for the military’s defenses. They’ve pulled back to the county line, and the city is lost.
The woman tells you that it’s just a matter of minutes before a writhing undead mass makes its way across the blocked entrance ramp, through the piled construction debris, and over the three small hills that lead to you. But there is no reason to run or hide, because she has a plan that is certain to work.
She says that zombies are repelled by the sound of loud music. With her own eyes, she saw a man move straight through a crowd of them holding nothing but a battery-powered radio. She swears it was a miracle, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Another man was hopelessly trapped inside a car, but just as zombies smashed through the windshield, they were suddenly driven back by the blaring dash stereo. She says you have only to turn on the station’s speaker system and watch as the approaching menace passes right on by.
You have your doubts, but the speakers are working, and the woman seems so sure of what she saw. What other explanation could there be? Besides, your friends and family are still in the city, and once the threat passes, you can head back to help them. You pull a cheap CD from the revolving rack at the counter, pump up the volume as loud as it will go, and wait.
The horde comes over the hill, slowly marching toward you. They continue within earshot, methodically approaching the station, closer and closer. Soon it becomes clear that the music isn’t working. It has no effect. The woman was wrong, but it’s too late to run. As you scramble to the roof once more, she reluctantly admits that she heard the story from someone else. But they sounded so sure of what they saw!
Zombies quickly surround you on all sides, pressing against the flimsy structure like a great wave. The speaker system continues to blare as the roof finally collapses, sending you into a mass of biting teeth and pulling hands. You try to fight, but it’s no use. You’re eaten alive to the echoed sounds of The Very Best of Dolly Parton, Volume 2.
Nicholas DiFonzo is professor of psychology at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of The Water Cooler Effect, a study of the power and pervasiveness of false rumors. He writes:
Rumors tend to arise in situations that are ambiguous and/ or pose a threat or potential threat—situations in which meanings are uncertain, questions are unsettled, information is missing, and/or lines of communication are absent.55
He concludes that misinformation is fundamental to human nature, and we are all often compelled to believe bad facts and pass them along, especially as part of a
group setting. Once you join up with other survivors, you are likely to be swayed by their beliefs and information, even if they’re clearly wrong.
SHOULD YOU GO SOLO?
If you can’t trust anyone, it’s preferable just to go it alone, right? Wrong. In addition to the added time pressures of having to do everything yourself, such as collecting food and water and maintaining safe shelter, the mental stress of isolation is a major obstacle to survival.
The United States is one of the few remaining First World nations that still use solitary confinement to control prison populations, with nearly all other Western countries classifying forced separation as psychological torture worse than any physical abuse. An expert on the mental impact of isolation, Dr. Stuart Grassian, says that people who are alone and confined often become tortured by paranoia.
In a zombie pandemic, you may not be stuck in a single confined space for years on end, but if you choose to go it alone, there will likely be long stretches of isolation. Human beings are social creatures, so prolonged separation from our fellow man can have profound psychological consequences. You may be faster, stronger, and more confident on your own, but you may also lose your marbles.
When forced to go it alone, you can combat loneliness and depression by setting concrete goals and working hard to accomplish them. This type of singular focus not only improves your physical situation, but it also gives you a stable mental platform from which to move forward.
Shock Waves (1977)
ROSE:
Chuck, do you feel all right? Chuck, what’s the matter?
CHUCK:
You’ve got to let me out of here.
KEITH:
Christ. Not now. We can’t do it now.
CHUCK:
Just let me out. You don’t have to come. I can’t stay in here any longer!
24: WEAPONS OF WAR
The most effective weapons instruction I ever received was in the French Foreign Legion, the mercenary wing of the French military. But it wasn’t what you might think.
One of my trainers, Corporal Blaga, was a short Romanian man with a chip on his shoulder. He hated the fact that he’d been assigned to a teaching unit. And he really hated anyone who was bigger than he, which was pretty much everybody. In my first week, he broke my nose swinging at the burly Russian recruit talking in the mess line in front of me. The Russian ducked, I bled all over my breakfast, and Blaga scurried off as if nothing had happened.
Steven Wieland was a stoic German kid who’d had it rough. Raised by a chronically alcoholic mother and an abusive stepfather, Wieland scrounged for basics such as food and clothes growing up. At eighteen, he was six foot two, solid muscle, and my first roommate in the Legion. He didn’t drink. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t lose his temper or even say a bad word about anybody. He was by all accounts a perfect kid who just wanted to keep his head down and go through life unnoticed. Unfortunately, Blaga had other plans.
One night, after a few too many beers and not much else going on around the unit, Blaga decided he needed to assert his authority by making an example of someone, and this time he picked Wieland. He circled us up in a large common room and pulled Steven to the center. After lecturing him incoherently about respect and what it took to be a Legionnaire, Blaga slapped Wieland about the head, getting angrier as the German showed no reaction. Blaga then retrieved a large combat baton from a nearby closet and raised it in the air threateningly. He dared Wieland to attack. He ordered him to charge. But Steven wouldn’t move a muscle.
Frustrated, Blaga started to hit Steven with the club, screaming louder and louder. He smacked him in the mouth with its butt end and struck Wieland across the skull and shoulders repeatedly.
With no other options, Steven finally charged, prompting Blaga to deal him one last violent blow to the side of his knee. The German was meant to collapse to the floor in a lump of failure, but instead, Wieland kept coming and delivered a punch to the center of Blaga’s face that speckled the room with blood and knocked the Romanian out cold.
I think Wieland was as shocked as the rest of us, and we all just stood there with our mouths open. After what seemed like forever, another trainer came by to see what the silence was all about and quickly carried Blaga to the infirmary. He would later be transferred to a different unit in what was said to be a preapproved move, but we all knew it was because Blaga had lost control of us and we would never take orders from him again.
The next night, a group of seven or eight trainers grabbed Wieland from our room and beat him up pretty good. He came back battered and bruised, but his first words to me in his thick German accent were “Totally worth it.”
But what was the Romanian trying to do? He wanted to intimidate us to show that he was in charge, but instead, he got himself reassigned to warehouse duty at the trash yard. Wouldn’t a pistol have worked better than a stick for intimidation? Having had both waved in my face at one time or another, I can tell you the answer is a resounding yes.
The lesson I took away is that when given options, it’s crucial to pick the right weapon for the job at hand within the range of your abilities. No weapon is the best weapon for everyone or every purpose. My top choice might be last on your list, and rightly so. But ego, testosterone, and fantasy have no place in the decision process if we’re talking about actual zombie survival.
USE WHAT YOU HAVE
In a perfect world, your weapons choices would be endless. But after the dead rise, you may not have any options at all. With dwindling resources and limited opportunity, your weapon may well be whatever you can scrounge. In Shaun of the Dead, it was a cricket bat. In Dawn of the Dead, a screwdriver. But you don’t have to look to the movies to see that almost any object can represent a deadly threat.
On May 3, 2007, college student Jason Webster murdered a classmate at Hull University in England by stabbing her with a pen. Fifty-seven-year-old widower Jeffrey Burton killed himself with a pencil on September 27, 2009. From bottles to billiard balls, news reports around the world prove time and time again that a weapon is what you make of it.
But no group better illustrates the intersection between ingenuity and armament than the United States prison population. On February 26, 2009, guards at Baraga Maximum Correctional Facility confiscated a knife that was twelve inches long with a six-inch blade and made completely out of toilet paper. Though it had been created in just a few hours with no special materials, the paper shank was rock solid and sharp enough to penetrate a human body easily, highlighting the bitter truth that when there is a strong will to inflict bodily harm and death, there is always a way.
When it comes to firearms for zombie defense, running out of ammunition is often cited as their Achilles heel. A second common knock is that gunshots are loud, revealing your location and inviting countless undead and living dangers. Both are valid points, but there is another much-overlooked flaw that makes your shotgun, rifle, or pistol a potential loser in zombie combat.
Despite what you’ve experienced in your favorite video game, when you pull the trigger of a firearm in actual combat, chances are you’re going to miss your target over and over again.
A study of New York City police officers found that when firing at live targets just nine feet away, their hit rate was a dismal 11 percent. When the target stood at a distance greater than twenty feet, that number dropped to 4 percent, meaning that ninety-six out of one-hundred shots missed their mark. By contrast, these same officers were more than 95 percent accurate when shooting in a controlled gun range. They receive regular training and annual qualifications and are statistically much better shooters than civilians.
When faced with a zombie horde or a gang of roaming human thugs, hearts will race, hands will shake, and bullets will fly everywhere and hit nothing. If you think you’re going to be accurate even 15 percent of the time, you’re living in a dream world and are likely to wake up to the sound of someone or something chewing your guts out.
He kept firing his pistols until they
were both empty. Then he stood on the porch clubbing them with insane blows, losing his mind almost completely when the same ones he’d shot already came rushing at him again.
—I Am Legend (1954), Richard Matheson
As we’ve seen, arguably the most overlooked threat in a zombie outbreak is the human threat. It’s one thing to be prepared to take out a member of the undead, but what about someone in your group who goes violently mad? What about a seemingly friendly stranger who later plans to take your food and water, leaving you stranded on the side of the road? Johnny Law isn’t going to be around to make sure that justice is served, of that much you can be sure.
My recommendation for nonlethal human threat mitigation is a stun gun. Smaller than a garage door opener and packing upward of a million volts, most come with a lifetime guaranteed lithium battery and an option to buy discounted replacements just in case. Why waste precious ammunition or bludgeon energy when a short burst from your stun gun can incapacitate an attacker for up to ten minutes?
That’s plenty of time to get the upper hand or simply get away.
BAD IDEA: SPECIALIZED WEAPONS
Famed samurai warrior Miyamoto Musashi wrote a classic treatise on military strategy called The Book of Five Rings in 1645. In it, he emphasizes the need for extensive training to become proficient in the use of weapons.
Musashi compares the traditional Japanese katana to a musical instrument, suggesting that it’s as illogical to believe you can pick up a sword just a few times and then engage in meaningful combat as it is to believe you can pick up a violin and play beautiful music. But if I had a dollar for every time I’ve overheard someone with no formal training declare a katana to be the ultimate zombie weapon, I’d be rich by now.