Necessities Poll

Once again I'm proud of our readers for making wise decisions in a zombie crisis. We all know that the most critical period for survival in the event of an outbreak is the first hour or two, while gaining your bearings and beginning to enact your survival plan. It was that period that our most recent poll tested.

A full 46% (393) of our readers chose weapons as the most important necessity to be secured for zombie survival. This seems to me to be the right answer. After all, what good is food if you can't even protect yourself long enough to eat it? What good is water if you get eaten before you can drink it? What good is group numbers if no one in that group is capable of defending themselves (or anyone else in the group for that matter) against zombies? Frankly I'm disappointed that only 46% chose this option.

Coming in second in the poll was water (20% - 170). This seems fairly reasonable to me since if we take threats in order of their immanence, water should be second. After death by zombie, you're most likely to die of thirst next. You'll certainly die of thirst long before starvation.

In third we had group numbers (17% - 142). To me this one could easily have been above water, so it makes sense that it was barely nudged out by water. After all, group numbers is really another tool (along with weapons) for surviving the most immanent threat to life - zombies.

In fourth place was transportation (10% - 85). This is an interesting one. If you find yourself in a city you're simply not going to survive if you stay there, no matter how many weapons you have. I'm sure for these 10% that is what tipped the scales. But how do you plan to get to that transportation in the first place if you don't have any weapons? Further, what if you don't live in the city? Why concern yourself with transportation above everything else?

The fifth most chosen answer was food at 6% (50). This just seems silly...absolutely silly. A person can survive more than a month with no food. Granted that time will be knocked down significantly under high stress survival situations, but the point still stands - food should not be considered a necessity in the early stages of zombie survival. Concentrate on living in the short term before you concentrate on surviving in the long term.

In last place, surprisingly, was night vision aids (1% - 7). To me this just seems utterly absurd! Why in God's name would anyone choose food over being able to see in the dark when a hoard of zombies is on the loose? In my opinion this could have come in as high as 2nd or 3rd and at the very worst 4th. Remember that we should prioritize necessities by order of the eminence of the threat that they protect against. If that is the case, then night vision should come before even water. A person can go a couple days without water (although, admittedly it will suck), but night falls for about a third of every day! When it's dark out and there are zombies around I assure you you'll be aggressively bartering your canteen for a pair of night vision goggles or a flashlight!

Well, there's my traditional assessment of the poll results. Feel free to rip me to shreds for my idiocy.

You gotta read this email!

So I decided to check my email account that I never check and lo and behold - look what I found! Some guy named Harry Hall from the UK decided to take it upon himself to put this "conspiracy theorist" in his place. Harry, it turns out, is concerned at my (along with the other contributors to this blog's, apparently - as well as its readers') lack of cognitive power. So I figured I should pass the message on to all of you other zombie enthusiasts out there. So here it is, in an email Mr. Hall has entitled "Your unbelievably vast stupidity":

"You entirely missed the point when you based your entire website on one book. Brooks ripped the piss out of the "survival handbook" genre while keeping a perfectly straight face, and people like you, who believe conspiracy theories despite lack of evidence (and evidence against in plentiful supply), simply refuse to believe the truth and get sucked in by the most stupid idea in existence. Visit the website below for proof that he wrote the book as a joke. Maybe, if you'd studied medicine at university like I have, you'd have realised that it is a physical impossibility for a virus to affect cerebal activity in any other way than hallucingogenics and shutting it down permanently.

The theorem portrayed is that it "melts" the front lobe of the brain while still maintaining base functionality; a theoretical possibility never seen or proven. However, this would destroy any possibility of the virus transmitting its "urge to spread" (which it doesn't have; it has no wish to spread, it simply wants to feed) to a higher brain function: oh yeah -- they've all been destroyed.

Ultimately, the disease breaks the fundamental rule of all diseases: adverse affects to the body are simply side-effects of the feeding of the virus. This would mean that the disease would die out (if it is a virus, there has to be a zombie somewhere in the world at any one time, as viruses cannot survive without an organism to feed off) as it kills too quickly; a
24-hour disease epidemic is impossible, as the virus would not have time to spread. Oh yeah -- and don't be an idiot, reanimation after death as a "biologically dead but somehow mystically functioning creature" is impossible.

If i was to sum all this up, I would do it by saying: it isn't a biological theory. Why? because the word biological includes the word LOGIC. Which is exactly what the theory lacks.

The link is to an interview with Max Brooks; he acknowledges it's a joke. Bad luck. Better luck with the next stupid conspiracy.

http://suicidegirls.com/words/Max+Brooks/

Harry, UK"

What can I say? I feel debunked. I've already emailed Mr. Hall back to thank him for correcting the error of my ways. Perhaps you all should do the same. His email address is: harriieee@hotmail.com

I'm sure he'd love to hear from any and all of you.

The Test Has Arrived!!!

Alright folks, I've finally finished my Zombie Survival Test. Just go here.

Now, I'm sure that there is going to be plenty of controversy over it, so if you have a problem with the questions and/or answers, please feel free to either comment or email me. I'll be happy to defend each and every one. Hope you all enjoy it!

***UPDATE***

I have deleted the account this test was under and thus the test itself. If the blog ever gets up and running again a new test will be created.

Zombie Survival Test

Some guy who goes by "ci8db4uok" made a little quiz called "The Zombie Scenario Survival Test". I'm going to be honest - I'm unimpressed. While I did perform well enough to be considered a survivor (at 78%), I feel that a sufficient argument can be made for every one of my answers over what his quiz may have been expecting.

The bottom line is this - many of the questions on this quiz are simply too ambiguous to reasonably expect anyone to score 100%, no matter how skilled in zombie survival. So here's what I'm going to do. I am going to consult with the other contributors to this blog to create our own zombie survival test with more objective questions. I will then put the link to the test permanently on the site for all to test themselves.

Expect it within the week!

Situation in Pittsburgh all too common

In October of last year, The Onion reported a fascinating story that unfortunately didn't receive the full media attention it deserved. Apparently the Zombie Preparedness Institute performed a study in Pittsburgh revealing that a complete zombie takeover would happen in a maximum of 10 days!

This should not come as a surprise to those of us who research this problem. It only underscores the fact that PERSONAL PREPAREDNESS should be the primary objective for average civilians since the only way to prevent nightmarish scenarios like this one from obtaining is for city, state, and world governments to recognize and deal with the problem - something they've been entirely unwilling to do.

Poor evacuation routes and an ignorant citizenry are listed as the primary factors leading to the takeover. In the absense of governmental agencies willing to fix the evacuation route problem, the only chance we have for even a partial cure is to combat ignorance of the zombie problem. Knowledge is power - if we understand the threat zombies pose we will have a far higher possibility of understanding how to overcome that threat.

Recent Poll Results

Here are the most recent poll results. Again, I'm pretty impressed by our readers' collective knowledge of zombie survival principles.

"What is the ideal size for a survival party during the beginning stages of a zombie apocalypse?"

1-2 people - 5% (14 votes)
3-5 people - 48% (142 votes)
6-10 people - 31% (92 votes)
11-15 people - 4% (13 votes)
16-20 people - 1% (4 votes)
21 or more people - 10% (29 votes)

In the interest of disclosure I chose the "6-10 people" option. A full 79% (234) of you chose between 3 and 10 people. This is very good because at least three people are needed to provide security from each necessary direction, but at 10 the group is still small enough to be efficient.

The problem with larger groups of 11 or more (especially 21 or more), which sadly a full 15% (46) of you chose, is that they are less mobile, highly detectable, harder to transport, harder to provide basic resources for and are far more prone to power struggles. Each of these factors dramatically decreases the chances of short term (much less long term!) survival for the group as a whole.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our poll, and I hope to have more great participation in our next one.

Gettin' the blog back together!

It's a miracle. It seems that after an eight month haitus the zombie bloggers are blogging again. This is partially because we're addicted to zombie survival and partially because the demand for survival experts has been shown to be high. So I'm going to kick off the renewed blog by creating a new poll and posting what I consider to be the three primary principles for survival in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Any discussion or arguments for more principles or refining of my own principles will be welcome.

Doesn't this sound opposite?

This week the Beeb carried the headline, "The disease that makes people zombies".

Naturally I was excited to read the article, thinking some new and exciting Solanum research was about to be reported.

Au Contraire. The article claims, "This is an infection that carries nightmarish qualities, reducing many of its victims to a zombie-like state before they go into a coma and die."

Now, I agree that Solanum certainly brings about nightmarish qualities - but isn't the zombie-like state supposed to come AFTER they go into a coma and die?