Imagine if you will a world where more than 99% of humans are dead - not necessarily gone, but not breathing, not eating (food), and certainly not going to work doing the jobs that keep the world we know spinning at the speed we like.
What would it be like?
You've probably seen a couple zombie movies in your time. I've seen a couple myself; the idea of it, an unstoppable flood of infectious death running all across the landscape... I used to have some nightmares about it when I was younger. Scary stuff, no doubt. I'd see them running through my yard, surrounding the house, most ignoring us but not all. It only takes one, anyway...
This is the sort of image that the Hollywood movie presents to us, and they have their own reasons. For one, it's freakin' terrifying. They like that. Another, it's dramatic; that's not the same as being scary, but the fear and the drama work together to intensify each other. Hollywood producers love stuff like that, so obviously that's what we expect to see in a zombie movie.
I'm not saying that that's not going to happen. It probably will. But do you want to know, as the late great Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story?
Not long ago at all, the History channel put together a surprisingly educational series called "Life After People"
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| Apparently, rhinos take over the streets. Admit it though, you wouldn't argue. |
The premise of the show is devising, through scientific means, what would happen to the world if all the people just suddenly vanished. The series tends to take the long view with its predictions - nature moves in slower cycles than our daily society, you see. It's very interesting, helps you realize just how significant (or insignificant) our existence really has been compared to the history of the earth. We can imagine that the buildings will eventually fall down; the roads will crumble, trees will take over our cities, these are things we know, in principle. What this show does is really examine how these things happen and give us some idea of what kind of time-frame is involved.
But I was able to look at it from a slightly different perspective - I see it as a bloodless version of the zombie outbreak. In remarkably short time, the zombies will clear out the living human population, leaving a good bit of destruction and blood but little else. Zombies should ignore anything that isn't human, even if animals and such don't necessarily ignore them. So I figure, with only a few small differences that mostly center on hordes of zombies in the streets, Life After People works as a scientific study on the side effects of the Zombie Apocalypse.
I highly recommend watching a couple episodes for your own education. One thing I should point out to some of those who won't be watching: it seems that many of our sewers and subways are below the local water table, kept from filling up by pumps that need human maintenance. With no humans, they flood after a while... so don't plan on staying down there for too long. A good short-term option for our hopeful survivors looking to escape the high zombie density in urban areas, but not a long-term option for anyone who isn't part fish.
So far we've covered some important information about surviving your first day or so of the Zombie Apocalypse, hopefully enough to keep you alive and help you pick out the tools that will keep you alive a little longer. If I have failed in any regard so far, what I say from here on won't really matter much - quite a load off my mind, I can tell you. I'm not too good with pressure like that. If you've survived, that probably means you're lucky enough to be far away from the real action to have had time to prepare a little - keep reading and planning according to your individual situation, use the freedom and safety you have now to better prepare.
Our survival scenario will continue to focus on the fine line between certain death and almost certain, slightly delayed death. If you've got some warning before they get to you, everything you read here will still apply, you just have more time for it. If you're right in the middle of it before you even know - say you just finished a long weekend full of sex where you never turned on the TV or looked out a window (or more likely, you were playing Halo) - you probably don't have enough of a chance for me to save you. You can still save yourself, but if you can't stay ahead of the flood (ha! Halo reference!) you're pretty much on your own.
So when we last saw our supposed survivor, you were wearing a stock pot on your head and clutching desperately to a golf club, the best weapon you could find in your house (I hope it's one that won't bend completely out of shape the first time it's used!). You've got a bundle you can carry, plus a bunch of things stuck in your car. You're thinking you should leave, since I told you to. You probably don't want to, right? So don't leave yet. You've got some food still to eat, and if the zombies are upon you it's already as bad as it's going to get (at least until you actually leave, then it gets worse in a hurry). If you leave feeling paranoid and jumping at every shadow, you'll probably die just like you expect to. Take your time and get yourself mentally prepared... to the extent possible. I said "sooner or later", but the time of your departure is up to you.
The question of the day is this, though: where exactly are you going? Your goal is to hopefully meet up with like-minded people; if you're smart enough to be reading this before the outbreak begins, you should form local coalitions and make up a rendezvous plan. Decide as a group where you will meet with fellow prepared survivors, preferably away from heavily populated areas.
You didn't prepare though, so you don't know who to meet or where. You've tried to call people you know, but they're probably all dead. What? Found another survivor? Great! what do you plan to do about it?
1: "I'm going to go rescue them, of course!"
You go, Captain Awesome! I'm sure everyone in the afterlife will be impressed with your story of heroic sacrifice, even if it gets you and everyone else involved killed. Seriously though, you can't just leave them... can you?
2: "Screw them, I wish I hadn't called!"
Wow, that's harsh. They were probably sounding pretty freaked out on the phone, huh? And you thought, "Jeez, I'm freaked out too! Don't they realize that it's not all about them?" And they said that deadly phrase, "Can you please come get me? I'm so scared!" And you're like, "I'm scared too! Hell no I can't get you!" and then they started crying more... which got pretty awkward, so you hung up. Let's try that again, shall we?
3: "Um... can you meet me at the Home Depot?"
Doesn't have to be a Home Depot, but that's a good option. If your first priority is to meet up with someone you know so that you can help each other survive, your best option is somewhere easy to find that's somewhere between the two of you. A place like Home Depot will be full of tools and supplies that you can use; looters might have taken a toll on the place, but you'll probably still be able to find some. The problem is, it's probably in a more populated area, which probably means more zombies. Sneaking will be necessary. That's a topic for another time.
Can you rely on this person to arrive in a state that is still living, though? Balance your confidence in yourself against your confidence in them and use that to decide how close you want to make the rendezvous to their home location. Ask them what they have as far as weapons; if they say "I made five pointed sticks! I feel ready!" you should seriously consider either going straight there or leaving them to their fate.
Here's a list of things to look for in an ideal rendezvous place:
Accessability - This is the "run" aspect of location selection. Can you get there easily while minimizing your exposure to zombie-infested areas? Can you leave again if you have to?
Privacy - the "hide" aspect, you got it. Are there a lot of zombies about? Do you expect there to be? Once you arrive, will it be easy for them to know you're there if they happen to pass by?
Defensibility - I might have made this word up, I'm not sure, but it goes with "fortify" in any case. Refer to my previous post about the Castillo de San Marcos to see what I mean here. Once you're inside, can you keep zombies out? It doesn't matter if you're going to be there five minutes or fifteen days. If a zombie gets in while you're there, you're in trouble. Most stores these days have automatic sliding doors... you'll want to disable those for a start, and better if you can move whole pallets of bricks in front of all the glass facings. You'll want to leave some way for humans to get in if some come by (you forgot you were expecting your friend, didn't you?) but blocking easy access for zombies is a priority here. This factor is one of the main reasons I suggested Home Depot, which usually has a lot fewer windows and a lot more pallets of bricks.
Tools and Supplies - Wherever you go, you'll want access to the things that will help you survive. A supermarket, or supermarket/department store, will have lots of food, some of it still fresh maybe, but lots of dried and canned food if it didn't all get looted. Hardware and department stores will have tools, probably lots of tools you don't have at home, some of which were designed to be used the way you'll actually be using them.
Wait a moment now - you're not thinking of going to a mall I hope? You should already know how that works out in movies, and I can promise you that real life is sure to be a lot worse yet. Malls fail all of the first three requirements I mentioned - if there's zombies around, you'll never cover all the open ground to get away. There's lots of interior to hide in, but LOTS of glass-enclosed entrances to be seen from, and you can't really hope to block off any of them in a secure way. No. Don't go to the mall.
Consider instead the Power Center - a small collection of Big Box stores with a bunch of little businesses that feed off their scraps and leavings. There's probably a Wal-Mart or some department store, maybe an office supply store or a hardware store, maybe a supermarket as well. The quality of this option will depend on your local selection, of course; a Staples and a TJ Maxx won't help you a whole lot, but maybe if you like we can examine sometime what you might hope to find at one of those places to help you survive. These tend to have large parking lots, like the mall - that would be a lot of open ground to cover if you had to run that way - but most often the big stores are arranged around a central parking lot, rather than the other way around. Around back, you'll find all the freight entrances, maybe some brush or a few trees that could provide cover for escape depending on where you are. You might also find a sheer, unclimbable wall - a possible line of defense to cover your escape, but you'd have to figure out how to get yourself over it first. Here's my suggestion: many of these big-box stores will have really tall ladders in their stockroom. Set one up alongside the wall - hopefully it's big enough - and make sure you can kick it back down once you're up and over. (they sometimes might have some kind of "safety" feature to prevent this sort of thing; it's not your safety they were designed for, so find a way to disable, break, or bypass these if you need one of these ladders)
Remember, now; this is not necessarily your final destination; you should plan on surviving long enough to leave again. How long you want to stay will depend on several factors; how badly you want to be somewhere else, how well suited your current location is (see above), local food availability, zombie density. If all the location has to offer is a few tools and a couple toilet-tanks of relatively fresh water, don't plan on staying long or making any major fortification changes. If it's strong, secure, with lots of food you can get to and even cook without going outside, you might want to bunker down a bit. Remember, when planning your stay, that the longer you survive, the weaker and more worn down the zombies outside will be when you leave. That is, unless the apocalypse is just starting; in that case, there might be more of them and there will probably be plenty enough that haven't had any kind of injury or anything yet. But that's just how it's going to be at this point; the first few weeks are certainly going to be the worst of all, so put all your energy into just surviving them above all other concerns. Just about anything you sacrifice in that time can be made up in the long term.
So pretend again that you're on the phone with someone who expects you to save their life, and pretend that you're pretending that you really can. You've decided on where to go to meet them, hopefully somewhere you can secure if you need to. You, yourself, will probably set out that way pretty soon; you're all set to be going outside. They'll either come meet you or not; you can plan for them but you can't move their feet, so they might never get the courage to go outside. They'll also probably die on their way - and hey, you probably will too, if we're honest. You've improved your chances as much as you can with your preparations, but once you're out there your chances are, at best, not good. You can kill a zombie that sees you, of course - but it's better not to be seen. We'll talk some about that next time.
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