Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies

by Mogk, Matt

  Zombie survival expert Max Brooks says that he doesn’t understand the obsession some have with katanas and other weapons of nobility, because they are specifically designed for use by master warriors who do nothing but train all day. He recommends instead a peasant weapon such as the common machete.

  In the end, all weapons require practice for one to become truly proficient with them. Specialized weapons just require a lot more practice than most.

  So, unless you’re a martial-arts enthusiast who gets professional instruction on a regular basis, leave the trophy sword on its fancy black lacquer stand and join the peasant masses like the rest of us. Looking cool is cool, but staying alive is even cooler.

  AVOID THE FIGHT

  Al V. Corbi is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of residential security, having been interviewed on Oprah, CNN, MSN, and other major networks and cable news outlets. His own home is widely judged to be the safest house on the planet.

  Corbi advises that in a catastrophic survival scenario, combat should never be entered into by choice under any circumstances. Only when all other options are exhausted and your life is in direct and imminent danger should the sword be raised. His reasoning is that no one wins when the situation deteriorates to violence. There are only varying degrees of loss.

  And when push does come to shove, it turns out that we’re not all natural-born killers. In fact, according to Dave Grossman’s seminal work about the psychological cost of taking another person’s life, On Killing, more than 75 percent of us wouldn’t fire a fatal shot at our enemy even if our own lives depended on it.

  Grossman observes that the traditional fight-or-flight model is too simplistic when dealing with violence within a single species, and a more accurate breakdown is: fight, flee, posture, or submit:

  Piranhas and rattlesnakes will bite anything and everything, but among themselves piranhas fight with raps of their tails, and rattlesnakes wrestle.56

  With mountains of evidence from past and current military conflicts, On Killing proves that it’s not a matter of cowardice that makes people passive but an unconscious drive for survival of the species. Soldiers are willing to risk great danger to rescue others, gather supplies, or run messages, but these same men purposefully aim high when firing on the enemy.

  Before you discount Grossman’s work, citing your phenomenal kill rate in your favorite video game, take note that it is required reading in a wide range of law-enforcement and military institutions in the United States, including the FBI Academy, the DEA Academy, the Air Force Academy, and West Point.

  To the extent that our subconscious minds register the walking dead as another member of the human race, zombie survival isn’t going to be nearly as easy as a shotgun and ready ammunition. Even if you’re ready to go out with guns blazing, chances are that many others in your group won’t fire a single shot.

  When the dead rise, consider avoiding combat as if your life depended on it, because in more ways than one, it probably will.

  25: TRAVEL AND COMMUNICATION

  On Monday, December 10, 2007, Italian truck drivers went on strike, and just two days later, gas stations were sucked dry and food was running out across the country. Citizens did not anticipate the crisis, meaning that there were no long lines at gas stations leading up to the shortage.

  When traveling in a zombie world, you can’t count on pulling over to a local filling station when your armor-plated Hummer runs short on gas after just a few miles. In fact, even if you have extra fuel, when it comes to fleeing zombies, bigger is not necessarily better. Roads will be clogged with so many other vehicles that driving over or through obstacles will be impossible in anything less than a gas-guzzling tank. Furthermore, road conditions vary so greatly that an off-road-capable SUV may prove utterly worthless.

  On a highway overpass, traveling tight city streets, or boxed in by steep drop-offs on a country road, larger vehicles will become immobile cages, fit for speedy abandonment and little else. But even smaller vehicles such as compact cars and motorcycles will prove useless in just a matter of days as fuel runs out across the planet.

  We travel light; everything we once owned has now been abandoned, other than crucial items like water bottles, a tin opener, knives and the gun.

  —Dead to the World (2010), Gary McMahon

  HOW AND WHERE TO GO

  No matter how well stocked and fortified your zombie shelter, chances are you’ll eventually find a compelling reason to hit the road. And with gas a dwindling resource in an undead world, sooner or later, your feet will be what carries you. Along with bringing proper gear and planning well, consider following this travel tip: move at night and off-road.

  Summer nights provide a cooler atmosphere for physical activity while eliminating the risk of overexposure to the sun. In moderate climates, night hiking in winter keeps your blood circulating and your core body temperature up. But most important, moving under the cover of darkness allows you to remain undetected by those who would do you harm.

  Though slower than mechanized transportation, traveling by foot allows you to adjust more easily to changing terrain, making it an excellent method of stealth movement. A car on an open highway or even a noisy motorcycle along a dirt path is an invitation to every living and undead threat within earshot to seek you out for attack. Even bicycling down the open expanse of a paved road puts an unwanted target on your back.

  So when you find yourself surrounded by zombies and on the move, try to stay dark and dirty. Traveling undetected is the best way to avoid lurking dangers and safely make it to your next destination.

  Survival of the Dead (2009)

  SARGE:

  Going north we got a better shot at getting closer to no place.

  BOY:

  We don’t want to go no place. We want to go someplace where this shit can’t get at us.

  SARGE:

  Like where?

  BOY:

  Like an island.

  One place you don’t want to go walking at night is the great white north. In fact, depending on the time of year, you don’t even want to go walking during the day. So if your plan is to escape to a place like Alaska when the zombie horde comes, you may want to rethink things completely.

  Research physicist and longtime Alaska resident Marcus Mooers has extensive experience with the challenges of Arctic survival. He explains that a single mistake at temperatures that cold can be fatal in minutes, and the specialized gear needed to withstand extreme northern winters is often not even available in the lower forty-eight states, because there is no market for it.

  Logistically speaking, if a zombie outbreak resulted in a large influx of refugees to Alaska and Canada in a matter of weeks, there would be no available shelter to protect them from the cold. Mooers argues that the locals wouldn’t necessarily welcome strangers with open arms either:

  Supplies here are already limited. With no new infusions of food and medicine, residents are likely to feel protective of the supplies at hand. In fact, new people could wind up not as food for zombies but for other survivors!

  He says to play it smart and go south, where you can grow your own food, survive outside, and move about freely. But experienced survivalist and Mojave Desert native Zoe Mora notes that seeking out an isolated survival spot that is too warm can be equally deadly.

  Though most people have a basic understanding that deserts are hot and that water is hard to come by, few truly understand how desperate the situation can become. In the summer months, desert creeks are dry, water holes evaporate, and even the few cacti that hold drinking water will be empty. Mora goes on to explain that if you’re not fully prepared for the realities of desert survival, you are most certainly going to die:

  The desert is harsh and cruel. It’s easy to think a 120° weather report on television sounds hot. It’s another thing entirely to be out under a blazing sun, with scorching wind literally tearing the moisture from your body so fast you don’t even think you’re sweating.
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  Much like in Alaska at night, being active in the summer desert heat can be quickly fatal. Mora says that the only way to survive is to know where you will find your water ahead of time and to have a good map that shows the rivers, canals, and lakes. Short of that, you’re toast.

  To recap: Cities spell disaster because of their high population density. Heading far north risks a fatal freeze. And the open expanses of desert are deadly. In the unlikely event that you are able to find a workable means of transportation, where should you go? The simple answer is anywhere you can survive with the equipment and abilities you already have.

  COMMUNICATION

  On July 29, 2008, at 11:42 A.M., there was a minor earthquake in Chino Hills, California, thirty-five miles east of Los Angeles. Though it measured only 5.4 on the Richter scale and caused no damage, cell phones in the greater L.A. area were inoperable for upward of five hours following the shake.

  Why? Because millions of people tried to get in touch with their families, friends, and loved ones all at the same time, making it impossible for anyone to connect. Citizens returned to their regular routines within minutes of the quake, but the lines were still so jammed as to render all cell phones completely useless for the better part of the day.

  It stands to reason that when zombies begin roaming the streets, cellular phone service will instantly become a thing of the past, a distant memory of more peaceful days gone by. Unless both you and your desired party have predetermined alternative forms of communication—landlines, two-way radios—anyone out of earshot might as well be dead.

  So take heed. The terror of being isolated from your fellow man and surrounded by relentless, hungry zombies is not reserved for a lonely rural farmhouse. Faced with the threat of the undead, a city of 12 million can quickly become as desolate and unfamiliar as the dark side of the moon.

  Though calls from a cell phone will be impossible during the first hours and days of the coming undead pandemic, bandwidth-friendly text messages may prove invaluable when trying to locate your zombie survival team. That’s why CNN contributor Amy Gahran recommends owning a second cell phone to be used in just such an emergency.

  But be careful to check battery capacity on the model you choose. Gahran points to the limited battery life of most popular Web-surfing brands as a serious problem in a prolonged disaster. She suggests that a simple backup phone that can hold an extended charge is in order:

  During Hurricane Katrina, text-messaging saved lives and was a key coordination tool for NOLA.com, according to Online Journalism Review.57

  Many discount phones lack the energy-sucking features of your favorite model but can hold their charge for a month, with up to two hundred hours of talking time. For around twenty dollars, it could be the essential tool that saves your life and the lives of your loved ones in an undead crisis.

  Gahran also reminds us to program phones with essential zombie-survival numbers before the dead rise, because it’s “better to give them a head start early than a head shot later.”

  The Federal Communications Commission is getting in on the discussion with ten tips for communicating in a major disaster. Here is a breakdown of the FCC recommendations, with comments:

  1. No nonemergency calls. When your dead neighbor is trying to eat you, what call isn’t an emergency?

  2. Keep calls brief. Sure, it may be the last time you ever talk to your loved ones again, but don’t hog the line!

  3. Text-message instead. When phones are down, texting may be an option for a little while at least.

  4. Wait between calls. One failed call after another can clog the line, but in a panic, will anyone wait to dial again?

  5. Have charged batteries. Chances are the power will be out, so your phone will only last as long as a single charge.

  6. Save emergency contacts. Police, fire, and medical responders will have their hands full, so why call?

  7. Don’t talk and drive. Okay, but I’m not sure if pulling over is the best idea when you’re racing through an undead city.

  8. Have a clear plan. There is no doubt that proper planning and preparation are essential to all aspects of zombie survival.

  9. Forward calls. You probably won’t be home, so the FCC says to forward those calls to your cell. But your cell won’t work, either!

  10. Own a corded phone. This is the best suggestion of the bunch. Old-school dial phones don’t require power to work.

  In truth, there likely will be no reliable way to communicate by phone in a zombie outbreak. Texting will be only slightly more reliable than calling and won’t work when the lines become fully blocked. A rotary landline is great, but unless you’re calling someone else with the same setup, you’re likely to get an endless busy signal.

  Assume that anyone you’re not standing next to will be outside your communication zone. Therefore, the only way to ensure that you’ll be able to make contact with your group is to establish several primary and secondary meeting points ahead of time.

  KNOW YOUR ZOMBIES: NUMBER 9

  Land of the Dead (2005)

  As planet Earth is overrun by zombies, Fiddler’s Green is an enclave protected on three sides by water and on the fourth by armed guards. The rich live in an air-conditioned high-rise and the poor must scrape along the edges of town. But not even this fortified existence is safe from the undead.

  Number 9, a girl-next-door softball player gone ghoul, emerges from the water with her bat in hand, alongside a genius gas station attendant zombie who leads an undead insurgency against their violent human oppressors.

  ILLUSTRATION BY JOSH TAYLOR

  26: WHAT ARE OUR CHANCES?

  Because humans are a key ingredient in the creation of zombies, it stands to reason that a higher population density means greater danger in an undead outbreak. That’s why new forecasts released by the United Nations show that the human race is setting itself up for certain disaster.

  By 2030, 60 percent of the world’s population, or 5 billion people, will live inside large urban centers. And 2 billion of those will live in massive shantytowns across Asia and Africa, where new and deadly diseases brought on by unsanitary conditions, malnutrition, and lack of basic health care will run rampant. Huge megacities, rare just a decade ago, will be commonly found all across the planet, as populations cram together in increasingly tight geographic areas.

  In terms of zombie survival, we are becoming less self-reliant, less physically and mentally fit, and less able to avoid or escape disaster when it strikes.

  Where do you run when the mass of zombies is too thick to penetrate? Where do you hide when your desperate neighbors are so close at hand they can hear you breathing? How do you fight when the undead are less of a threat than the tens of millions of terrified survivors scrambling for life outside your front door?

  For too many of us, the answers won’t be pretty.

  Whether the defenders had run short of bullets or courage, I did not know. All I saw were humans in full retreat before the swarm. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of the creatures surged over the barricade, crushing their brethren that had formed a ramp of compressed flesh.

  —The Extinction Parade (2011), Max Brooks

  CITIES IN PERIL

  Experts have long known that population density is a major factor in evaluating a person’s risk for falling victim to crime, disease, and man-made disasters, but it is also the leading indicator of zombie survivability. Overpopulated cities don’t just cause problems for urban planners, power suppliers, and pollution regulators; they create a citizenship that is shockingly unable to take care of itself in a crisis.

  According to the Population Reference Bureau, before 2000, there were only three urban areas in the world with a population of more than 10 million: Mexico City, New York, and Tokyo. As of 2010, at least thirteen additional cities have reached that size, and in the next ten years, the number of megacities worldwide is expected to double. Add to that another 381 metro areas with a population greater than 1 million, and it’s ea
sy to see that the global community is crowding dangerously together.

  Despite the traditional cinematic depiction of zombies attacking a small group of survivors in a remote farmhouse, the real danger of a fast-spreading undead sickness lies in big cities. As the trend toward urbanization continues, the world becomes less and less likely to survive the coming zombie pandemic.

  In North America, Mexico’s big cities are the most tightly packed, but more surprising is Canada’s poor showing. Though greater New York City leads the pack in population with 21,295,000, both Toronto and Montreal house more people per square mile. In fact, the three large Canadian urban centers studied—Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver—beat out an impressive list of fourteen major U.S. cities, including Chicago, Phoenix, Dallas, and Philadelphia.

  Even with the best preparations, if your local community becomes a toxic zombie environment, there may be no way to make yourself truly safe. With this in mind, there is a simple way for ordinary citizens to evaluate their own city’s chances.

  The Regional Outbreak Survivability ranking, or ROS rank, takes into account three primary factors when predicting the level of saturation a zombie outbreak will achieve in any given urban setting:

  1. Combat readiness. What is the population density in your area? What percentage of the citizenship owns a firearm or has combat training? Are there available military resources stationed nearby?

  2. Infrastructure. Do the area’s roads offer many different travel routes in and out? Is the local climate and topography a strategic advantage? Can abundant freshwater and other resources be easily accessed?