Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies (17 page)

Not only is an exposed forearm or calf easy pickings for that hungry zombie you just bumped into, but an untreated scratch or bug bite can lead to infection, debilitating sickness, and death. In an undead world, there’s no hospital to visit if you’re feeling ill. There’s no pharmacy stocked with antiseptic ointment. There’s no friendly neighbor with a medical degree and a stocked first-aid kit. Tetanus shots, cough medicine, and penicillin will be long-forgotten remedies of a bygone age. Prevention is your last and only line of defense. Therefore, your skin should be thought of as a thin plastic bag holding your guts and bones in place. One accidental puncture, and your very life could leak out onto the floor like so much tomato soup.

Cover your head and feet at all times, thereby insulating you from the sun’s harsh rays, preventing precious heat from escaping and acting as a primary first layer of combat protection. When possible, your entire body should be covered with loose, layered clothing in both hot and cold weather. Tight-fitting garments restrict blood flow and decrease your ability to regulate body temperature. Try to keep your clothes clean and dry. Dirt reduces the fabric’s natural insulation qualities,
and wearing wet clothing at night or in winter will turn you into a human Popsicle in no time flat.

If you have options, choose breathable fabrics like linen when exposed to extreme heat. In extreme cold, wool and synthetic material is the way to go. Cotton will suck your body heat if it gets wet, even from your own perspiration, and is commonly known as the “death fabric” in survivalist circles.

When it comes to zombie body armor, there is no need to strap on a full set of medieval chain mail or wear a full shark suit. A hooded sweatshirt with strips of industrial-strength tape could provide complete bite protection for your entire upper body. Add leather gloves and goggles, and you’re well on your way to being virtually bite-and splatter-proof.

Protective shelters also need to take into consideration your specific climate, but there is a basic set of criteria for sizing up the pros and cons of any undead shelter. The DSM Scale is a system that looks closely at three primary areas when evaluating the quality of a shelter. In order of increasing importance, they are:

1.
Defensibility.
What are the location’s natural defensive advantages? What weapons can be found or created therein? What steps can be taken to eliminate vulnerabilities?

2.
Sustainability.
How much food and water is safely available? What essential supplies are stocked and ready? What threat does the surrounding environment pose both now and in time?

3.
Mobility.
Are there a number of adequate escape routes for safe retreat? What transportation options does the location
provide? Are the essential weapons and supplies able to be made portable?

While a discount retailer such as Costco may score high in defensibility, with available weapons and almost no vulnerabilities, its sustainability rating takes a hit because of the extreme threat presented by the surrounding area. In a zombie outbreak, big-box stores will draw a desperate and violent crowd, quickly becoming epicenters of death.

By contrast, a suburban home may have large windows and be difficult to defend, but if upgrades can be easily made, a supply of canned food and a backyard pool could allow for a period of relative safety. Of course, when it inevitably comes time to move, the water in the pool can’t be carried along without portable containers and advanced planning.

A good rule of thumb when planning your zombie shelter’s defense is to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Sure, the undead may be mindless drones that can’t even complete the simple task of turning a doorknob, but what if they’re not? What if zombies are smarter, faster, and more able-bodied than anyone ever imagined? How well will your defenses hold up if they’re designed around the expectation of a lesser threat? I’d hate to be the one to find out.

Instead, think about what steps you would take if an angry mob of humans were coming to attack your shelter and kill you and your loved ones. In a land gone crazy, the likelihood that you will face both living and undead enemies is very real, so any survival strategy that doesn’t account for the greatest possible threat is utterly useless.

Don’t make the mistake of narrowly focusing on combat with zombies. Step outside yourself to imagine the complete
pandemonium that will consume any infected area. Chaos will rule the day, and questions like these should be asked early and often: Can I break down this barricade? Can I climb over this obstacle? Can I breach this structure? Can my defenses be stronger?

In the end, the challenges ahead can’t be fully understood until they present themselves. No one knows what’s just around the corner in a time of law and reason, let alone when zombies are eating the neighbors across the street. When building defenses, all we can do is hope for the best and plan for the worst. But whatever you do, never underestimate how bad the worst can be in an undead world.

In a zombie world, the power grid will inevitably fail, making night an extremely dark environment. Candles, flashlights, lamps, and other interior light sources will suddenly be the equivalent of a “Come loot me” sign to anyone searching for places to raid. Survival expert James Wesley Rawles says that your house should look anonymously dark, like those of your neighbors who have already run for the hills or are without power.

To avoid unwelcome guests, cover all windows with heavy black plastic sheeting. Trash bags, blankets, and other improvised blackout precautions tend to leak light, so if you don’t have the proper material, you should consider illuminating interior windowless rooms only, and even that at a minimum.

Rawles goes so far as to recommend installing infrared, motion-sensitive floodlights to the outside of your house. Invisible to the naked eye, these lights will provide an early-warning system when used with night-vision goggles.

If you’re like me and don’t have high-tech gear at the ready, a less extreme alternative is to set up dummy lights in abandoned houses up the street or on another block. With good
sight lines, you’ll be able to monitor neighborhood activity from the safety of your blackened shelter.

If the Internet is still working when things really go south, you might also want to consider disabling your Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi signals can be used as primitive homing devices, making you vulnerable to attack from other hostile humans even if your house appears to be abandoned from the outside. All a clever looting gang needs to do is drive down residential streets with their laptop set to search for available Wi-Fi. A signal means jackpot for them and trouble for you.

Even if your house is completely blacked out, an active wireless network lets the bad guys know there’s a potentially lucrative target in the immediate area. Once the gang gets a hint that someone is sheltering nearby, they’ll search two or three likely houses until you’re discovered. At that point, zombies are the least of your worries, as your food, water, and other supplies become a thing of the past.

So when the undead rise, consider plugging in or shutting down. Though the Internet may last longer than grid utilities such as power and water, it’s not worth the risk as people become more and more desperate to survive. Besides, nobody will be reading your Facebook updates anymore, anyway.

In an extreme survival situation, your shelter is only as good as its escape routes. No matter how secure it appears to be, if
you can’t get out in seconds, that perfect hideout could quickly turn into the perfect tomb.

Once your defenses are fatally breached, either by the un-dead or by other hostile humans, a “fire” plan should be put into action. Don’t grab valuables or try to fight off the threat. Any movement not directly related to escape is a waste of time and energy. Every second counts! In less than thirty seconds, things can go from bad to worse to completely out of control.

When the dead walk, most of us won’t have the advantage of living in a specially created zombie-proof structure. But even in the average home, there are concrete steps that you can take at the first sign of a zombie outbreak to ensure safe retreat should the need arise.

Closets are excellent pass-throughs to secured rooms or other levels entirely. In a two-story home with a basement, closets can be a safe connection between the second floor and the basement, bypassing the dangers of the ground floor altogether. For a single-story house without a basement, look for an internal closet to access the roof and any crawl space below the subfloor. You can then develop your escape strategy using these access points.

Build your “domestic tunnels” with a specific purpose in mind. A pass-through from the basement to the roof should be sealed at all other levels, with closet doors blocked up for safety. If access is required to the first floor, create another point in a different closet by punching out the ceiling there.

Other escape methods include portable ladders to climb down from second-story windows and roofs or steel and wood planks to bridge gaps between one structure and another. Whatever your strategy, the ability to flee any given location through multiple exits is essential. Do not bet your life and property on the hope that you won’t be discovered or that your defenses will hold up to attack.

On the DSM Scale, I rank mobility well above the other two criteria in importance, because in a zombie catastrophe, no place is truly safe or secret.

Business is booming for companies that build doomsday safe houses, but because of the high cost of construction, the new model is to buy part ownership in a larger facility designed to house up to two thousand people. The Vivos Network, for example, is a planned group of twenty fortified, underground living communities spread across the United States, intended to protect those inside for up to a year from any number of catastrophes.

But one overlooked issue is the massive amount of trust in strangers that these partial-ownership facilities require. When hundreds of people have the ability to access your shelter, what’s to stop an owner from bringing his entire extended family along even though he’s only purchased one spot? What’s to stop dozens of owners doing likewise, thereby instantly shrinking your food supply from a year to just a couple of weeks?

By contrast, what if you have loved ones visiting when the dead rise? Will you bring them along or elect to follow the rules and leave Aunt Bertha outside to be eaten by zombies just because she doesn’t have a golden ticket?

Add in the standard problems of clashing personalities, religious and political disagreements, and the inevitability of hidden infections in the group, and the community-shelter system seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

L
ewis Keseberg was out of options. It was the winter of 1847, and he was trapped inside an isolated mountain cabin with a badly injured leg that rendered him unable to walk. Lewis and his young family were part of a group of eighty-seven pioneers bound for a new life in California when a storm trapped their wagon train in the snowy Sierra Nevadas. Those healthy enough to continue the trek were sent ahead for help, including his wife and children. Before she left, Lewis made a promise to his only daughter that he would survive at any cost.

The cabin was warm enough, and the falling snow provided plenty of water for drinking. But as the weeks turned into months, with still no sign of rescue, starvation and resulting sickness took hold of Lewis and the others left behind. The small band of survivors was reduced to just Lewis, lying on the floor surrounded by five corpses blankly staring at him, their gray skin stretched tight across exposed teeth and jutting bone.

By night, he would listen to wolves clawing at the door and roof in hopes of gaining access to a fresh meal. By day, he would boil and eat the flesh of his dead companions to stay alive. When Tamzene Donner returned from a nearby cabin, she refused to eat human meat and soon died herself, orphaning her five children. Lewis promptly ate her as well.

Keseberg was eventually rescued and rejoined his family
to lead a long and prosperous life in California. He was never convicted of any crime. And there is no question that if he had not engaged in cannibalism, he would have died along with so many others.

If the next great zombie outbreak leads to societal collapse, food will instantly become a dwindling resource. In a matter of days, people across the planet will be forced to make new and difficult choices about what and whom to eat.