(Earlier posts in this series: Surviving the ZA and Preparing for the ZA)
Okay, so, chances are that you may be stumbling across this guide during the early days of the Zombie Apocalypse. How will you know if there’s a Zombie Apocalypse (ZA) in progress? Well, first of all, it will be all over the news. Secondly, I’ll put up this helpful little graphic that I’m basing on the Department of Homeland Security’s Terrorism warning graphic thingy (totally the official name):
If it goes to OMGWTFZABBQ (aka “Red”) then there’s a ZA in progress. Grab your guns, grab your gear, and get ready to get the hell out of Dodge. Do not go to the nearest Four Seasons hotel and cry because that’s not going to do you or anyone else any good.
The first news reports may be confused because, let’s be frank, journalists are communications majors — not infectious disease specialists, doctors, or biologists. However, even they will be hard-pressed to screw up reports about people who were pronounced dead suddenly reviving and then biting those around them. The civil authorities may attempt to suppress the stories for a short time in order to prevent mass panic or to put their own forces in a position to try to contain the outbreak and keep it quarantined. If they are successful, then the ZA will be averted and the whole thing will probably be classified and we’ll never know about it.
However, the US government can’t even keep the Secret Service Agents Gone Wild under wraps and they can’t keep the Chinese out of their own “secure” networks so color me skeptical that they’d be able to actually contain a ZA itself and keep it secret.
In the early stages, the best play is to follow the advice of the wise Douglas Adams: Don’t Panic. Pack your gear. Pack your guns. Plan your escape route and at least four meet-up locations. Communicate your plans to your friends and family. Go ahead and stock up on non-perishables if the stores aren’t sold out. Continue to report to work but keep a pistol with you at all times and to hell with the laws and any “gun-free zones” because zombies don’t care (this applies only during an active ZA — if a ZA is not in progress, obey the law or work to change it and respect the rules of any private establishment or opt not to enter it unless you can convince the owners to change their policies). Keep your car filled and an extra gas can filled in case you need to split in a hurry.
If you start hearing reliable reports that the outbreak has breached quarantine or see such evidence for yourself, then vacate your home and all populated areas immediately. If social collapse begins to encroach on your region or seems likely, retreat is advisable — sooner rather than later.
How will you know when the collapse is coming or if the outbreak has breached quarantine if there are no reports? Well, a zombie-plague will probably have an extremely high fatality rate — something on the order of at least 80% and probably closer to 95%. Hell, it might even be up there with rabies which has a fatality rate of 100%.* You are going to have a high number of people either sick or dead and thus not reporting in to work. Assuming a rate of 75% (the lowest figure I’m going to go with for a ZA), that’s 75% of people who aren’t there to work in power plants, who aren’t driving delivery trucks, who aren’t running the trains to deliver fuel, who aren’t operating the control stations along the grid, who aren’t monitoring the communication relay networks…
The death toll will look something like this…
The electricity will become unreliable. Internet usage will become unstable and then cut out. The lights will go dark. Television transmissions over cable and satellite will end. Popular broadcasts over the airwaves will cease. The phones will go dead. At this point, communications will fall back to the early twentieth century (at best). Radio and line-of-sight. You may be able to get on the HAM radio network and keep in contact with people or on a CB radio. If you have a UHF device, that will work, too. However, powering those devices is very quickly going to become an issue because, as I mentioned, the electrical grid is going to shut down. It can’t run unmanned for very long. You need to get out of town before the lights go out. I’d suggest getting out as soon as you start hearing reliable reports of a massive increase in death toll or seeing the effects yourself. Chances are that the major metros will be hit first and worst early on. New York will stop broadcasting. When that happens, it’s time to get out.
Now, where should you go? The suburbs? No. You want to get out further than that. And don’t be stupid and go to Yellowstone or some other major national park. Thousands of people are going to have already thought of that and will be there ahead of you. Get out to the closest rural area you can that has a constant source of free-flowing water — a river, a stream, whatever. If you own the land, great. If you know the owners and they’ll let you stay there, awesome. If no one owns it, fine. If it’s claimed already, move on. You want to find a place where you can forage and hunt, construct a reasonable defense against the zombies, see them coming, but that isn’t so attractive that someone else will kill you for it.
Also, this is the point where you need to start berating yourself for not planning better and promising that, once you’ve survived this thing, you’re going to fix that.
In the next post, we’ll look at who you should consider having in your group and who you should definitely not take along for the ride.
— G.K.
*By the time the disease is identified, the government will have announced how the symptoms can be identified so that people who have it can be placed in quarantine because — believe it or not — the government does actually have a vested interest in keeping things like a ZA from wiping out its citizens. So, taking even a low-ball figure of 75% fatality (and assuming a 75% transmission rate via indirect contact or 100% via direct contact like biting), if the disease breaks out of its quarantine and the dead start rising, there is going to be a very swift exponential increase in body count where the bodies don’t stay dead.
The exact formula to show this is (bN)(S/N)Z = bSZ and was published by Robert J. Smith? in “Mathematical Modeling of Zombies” (University of Ottawa Press, 2014). The key problem is that zombies never reach a stable-state with humans like other diseases do so there is never a drop-off or plateau on their side unless humans kill enough of them or contain them successfully for long enough.
Also, logically, there are only a few forms a zombie-plague can take. It will need to have the infection rate of something like the flu — perhaps a mutant strain of the Spanish Influenza of 1911 — or the measles. It will need to have the fatality rate of rabies. It will need to affect the brain and nervous system like rabies and meningitis. So, it will most likely be a virus or bacteria with a long incubation period (up to 14 days before onset of symptoms) during which it’s contagious and spread through airborne spray (sneezing, coughing) or touch (door knobs, handshakes) the way the cold and flu are now. Then the symptoms set in and the person dies from them. Post mortem, the person reanimates and then continues to spread the disease by biting others (the way rabies is spread).
