Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies (24 page)

O
n 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
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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.

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

B
ecause 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.