Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies (20 page)

Benjamin Franklin defined insanity as expecting a different result after doing to same thing over and over again. This definition describes our approach to reforming the disaster relief program in the United States.
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If the government isn’t prepared to deal with the next big hurricane, earthquake, or terrorist attack, then how can we expect anything but confusion, communication gaps, and systemic breakdown when facing something as horrific as a zombie outbreak? Claims of a streamlined, vigilant post-9/11 government fall flat when compared to Miskel’s mountain of hard evidence and reasoned insights.

Not only is the government not prepared, but our own supply chain is at certain risk of total collapse.

Today all nations and most businesses operate on a management principle known as just-in-time. The guiding rule is to deliver goods and services on an as-needed basis. This process makes great financial sense because it eliminates expensive storage costs and future waste of unused product. However, just-in-time’s overdependence on constant, reliable transportation creates an unsustainable need for massive quantities of oil. If the oil supply is cut off for any reason, the system is vulnerable to sudden and total collapse.

Now consider the workers it takes to make just-in-time function: truck drivers, packers, security personnel, forklift operators, dispatchers, maintenance crews, mechanics, and warehouse staff, just to name a very few. There are literally hundreds of people playing a direct part in getting a single banana, can of soup, or lightbulb to your door.

Current government estimates predict that essential services could be maintained only for a limited time if absentee rates rise above 25 percent. That’s still three in every four people showing up on the job as normal after being informed that the dead have risen from the grave and are feeding on the living. Would you go to work under those conditions? Would anyone?

When the just-in-time supply chain falls, the end of our way of life will follow soon after. Well before the first zombie comes knocking, most people will have run out of food, fuel, power, and water. And when that happens, all the guns and ammunition in the world won’t keep remaining perishable goods from spoiling, lights from going out, or desperate survivors from breaking down under the weight of malnutrition, dehydration, and common bacterial infection.

When the time comes, many will be forced to load up, aim straight, and bravely fight the undead feeling weak, cold,
hungry, thirsty, and suffering from cholera, dysentery, chronic diarrhea, or worse.

If I were a zombie, I’d like those odds.

When the zombie pandemic hits, there will be no vaccine or medical treatment that can help prevent infection. This notion leads to wild speculation about how individuals and governments will react in the face of a fast-spreading undead threat. But in fact, there is already a clear set of guidelines in place for dealing with similar scenarios, created by organizations such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nonpharmaceutical intervention (NPI) is what experts call public-health strategies of this type. From mandatory social distancing to quarantine of exposed population, aggressive NPI procedures have been used repeatedly over the past century, starting with the great influenza outbreak of the early 1900s that killed an estimated 100 million people worldwide.

The Texas Department of State Health Services offers an example of the types of measures that will likely be employed.

• Quarantine of the ill and infected at home.

• Quarantine of household members in homes with an ill person.

• Closure of all schools and public buildings.

• Prohibition of social and public gatherings.

• Cancellation of nonessential work responsibilities.

• Relocation of populations to less dense areas.

Though these steps may have little or no impact on the spread of zombieism, it’s important to understand what reaction your local, state, and federal authorities will likely have. If not, you run the risk of being escorted from your home by armed soldiers without time to hide, hunker down, or even collect your survival essentials.

Any survival plan should take into account not only the human threat from your fellow desperate citizens but also the threat from wrong and hasty action taken by the very individuals charged with your protection.

After experiencing the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Sheriff Larry Deen of Bossier Parish, Louisiana, was determined to get ready for the worst. The
Shreveport Times
reported that Deen recruited 200 men, training them with shotguns, riot shields, batons, and even a .50-caliber machine gun.

Deen said that in the event of a catastrophic event, volunteers would be dispatched to protect vital areas in Bossier from looters or rioters, including grocery stores, gasoline stations, hospitals, and other public meeting places:

We feel if we prepare for the worst, we’ll definitely be able to handle the rest.
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But is arming hastily deputized civilians and putting them in charge of vital public supplies and services really a good idea? When food is running low and zombies are walking the streets, will these new lawmen look out for the interests of everyone or just those of their own friends and family?

Undoubtedly, giving a select group of people high-powered automatic weapons and a license to kill significantly alters the balance of power in the community. It also assumes that other citizens will readily respect the new authority of their neighbors. Is Bossier Parish in a better position to handle the zombie pandemic than most, or is it even more likely to be plagued by lawlessness and violence because of Sheriff Deen’s preparedness measures? Only time will tell.

W
e’ve already discussed the likelihood that zombies have a substantially shorter life span than a healthy living person because their rotting bodies sink a little further back into the earth with each passing hour, day, or week. But it turns out that the dead walking the earth means decreased longevity for everyone.

Contributing editor for
Wired
magazine Jonah Lehrer explains that exposure to prolonged stress can substantially shorten a human’s life. Stress can cause you to make bad decisions and engage in unnecessarily risky behavior. It can also kill you:

Numerous studies of human longevity in developed countries have found that psychosocial factors such as stress are the single most important variable in determining the length of a life. It’s not that genes and risk factors like smoking don’t matter. It’s that our levels of stress matter more.
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The psychological burden placed on survivors of the coming zombie plague will be as dangerous as any undead horde. If you manage to stay alive through the toughest times, make sure also to stay positive. Your attitude is what will keep you
going over the long haul, so you must do whatever it takes to keep your chin up.

But a more immediate concern could be psychogenic illness, a phenomenon whereby people experience medical problems despite having no damage to their physical bodies. And I’m not just talking about a mild headache. Vaughan Bell, PhD, explains that symptoms can include paralysis, loss of consciousness, and even blindness:

They appear in many forms, most spectacularly in what is now diagnosed as conversion disorder, where people can be, to all intents and purposes, blind or paralyzed without having any damage to their eyes or nervous system.
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Bell points out that more than 30 percent of neurological patients have symptoms that are only somewhat explained by physical condition. Imagine what that number will be when the dead rise.

Furthermore, psychogenic illness can cause a chain reaction of symptoms that rapidly appear in groups of people. In a zombie plague, this social contagion can leave large swaths of
the population unable to defend themselves properly against the undead.

In the coming zombie plague, panic in the face of extreme stress or delusional thinking when forced to go it alone will likely be a recipe for certain death. But as easy as it is to fall into these and other psychological pitfalls, it can be devastatingly hard to pull yourself out.

Posttraumatic stress sufferer and mental health expert Michele Rosenthal uses her own experiences to warn of just how seductive common trauma disorders can be:

For a long time, even while I felt controlled, manipulated and devastated by my extreme PTSD symptoms, I wouldn’t have given them up, not for anything in the world.
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Rosenthal points out that psychologically damaged thinking often makes us feel safe and reinforces our new traumatized view of the world. In other words, illogical actions and dangerous assumptions may seem logical and wise inside the reactive loop of trauma.

To fight this hidden danger, solid preparation and a trusted survival team are essential. It may be impossible to get fully ready for the shock of zombies walking the earth, but the goal should be just to get ready enough to survive.

We can clearly see the damaging effect of trauma in the Chilean mine accident that left thirty-three men underground for months in late 2010. Despite their rousing exuberance after being freed, all but one of the miners have since been
diagnosed with severe psychological problems. One miner is building a ten-foot wall around his house, and he can’t explain why. Another isn’t able to sleep, eat, or even sit in a room with anyone else without being on heavy medication.

In a February 2011 interview, the jovial leader of the miners, Victor Zamora, said that he wishes he were dead because the residual mental and emotional pain is so great.

There is also a clear connection between chronic despair and prolonged starvation. As acceptable food for human consumption will likely be in short supply when the dead rise, this will be another contributing factor to widespread mental-health issues.