Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies (22 page)

Your BOB is there to help save your life, but it can’t do its job if it’s not within arm’s reach.

The official psychologist of the Boston Marathon, Dr. Jeffrey Brown, is an expert at treating athletes who are experiencing psychological symptoms related to the extreme stress they put on their bodies and minds. In his book
The Winner’s Brain
, Brown interviewed everyone from legendary blues musician B. B. King to trainers at the FBI Academy’s firearms division, finding that success is overwhelmingly determined between the ears.

Leif Becker holds multiple world records in martial arts board breaking and couldn’t agree more:

Success is determined by an individual’s ability to develop the proper emotional state and sustain it while completing various tasks until they achieve their objective. Mental preparation develops clarity, and clarity increases one’s certainty in the actions needed to overcome obstacles.

In a marathon, the wrong attitude will find you finishing at the back of the pack. In martial arts, it will cause you to lose a competition or fail to advance to the next belt level. In a zombie plague, the wrong attitude will get you quickly killed and
eaten by a mob of ghouls or other hostile humans, and not necessarily in that order.

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.

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

I
n 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.

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.
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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.

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.
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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.

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.