Zombie Outbreak: What Would You Do?

Recently I watched both Dawn of the Dead and Shaun of the Dead as well as some other random oldish Zombie flicks they were airing on TV recently. So I have been thinking recently – what would you do? Let’s say you wake up one morning, you get dressed and you walk out the door planning to go to work, when all of a sudden your neighbors want to eat your brains. What is your next step?

Staying in your house would probably a relatively bad idea because of a limited food supply, and multiple entry points most houses have (windows, glass deck doors etc..). Also staying in a densely populated residential area would mean that your house would soon be overrun. Depending on how well you can board up the windows, and much food do you have you might survive few weeks this way.

It’s probably best find another hiding place. I thing most important features of a hideout are:

1. Large supply of food, preferably canned goods that will not go bad quickly.
2. Backup generator that will keep refrigerators running if the power is cut to the building
3. Few entry points that can be barricaded and tightly controlled
4. Access to weapons and ammunition

In most aspects large supermarkets and malls are perfect for this. As long as you can clear out all the zombies stuck inside, you can be relatively safe and well equipped. In most cases, you will have food, clothing and some place to sleep.

Most of malls and supermarkets have large parking lots which make them little self sustainable islands. If you climb up on the roof you have a good vantage point to spot any incoming zombies and/or rescuers. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. If you get swarmed by a large horde like the survivors in Dawn of the Dead you are pretty much stuck inside the mall for indefinite period of time.

On the other hand, if the infestation is less severe, you may be able to clear out the parking lot by sniping at the zombies from the roof, or sending kill teams to run them over with a truck and etc. I think Zombie population control is very important. You don’t want to be overrun – you want to remain mobile, so that you can leave the mall if you have to. Having one kill-car combined with 1-2 snipers on the roof can allow you to clear out small zombie groups on a daily basis.

Most malls and department stores do not carry weapons (but if your local mall does, you are in luck!) so it is probably very important to locate the nearest gun store and make an ammo run early on.

You probably want to stay away from hospitals, and emergency care centers. That’s where people with bite wounds would tend to go, and thus these areas will probably be heavily infested.

As long as you have power you should be trying to get in touch with other survivors. Calling other malls and shopping centers is a good idea. You should probably systematically go through the phone book and try to see if you can find any living people in the area. You should also pay close attention to the TV broadcasts and radio to find out the extent of the out break. If you have internet access, you should definitely hit Google Maps and similar sites and print out detailed maps of the area.

Try to find out the extent of the outbreak. Is there a quarantine in place? What is the affected area? Is the outbreak local, national, or global in scale? Try to find survivor radio stations and podcasts. Get in touch with them. Perhaps there will be some active survivor blogs as well that will allow you to share information.

If the outbreak is local, perhaps you may be able to reach the outside world via the internet by blogging or podcasting your story and sending out emails.

Oh, and you probably might want to get the Zombie Survival Guide book – you know, just in case.

What would you do? Post your Zombie survival suggestions in the comments section.

[tags]zombie, zombie survival, unread, dawn of the dead[/tags]