Zombies! A guide to surviving a zombie attack
So you’re on the Getchell Library steps having coffee with a friend, complaining about classes and watching the leaves turn orange when a distant moan grabs your attention.
You look around to find that the once peaceful courtyard has turned into a horror flick. Some dude’s legs are being ripped from his torso, an emo kid is chewing on a detached arm and some sorority chick is biting into another girl’s neck in the grossest girl-on-girl action imaginable.
You look back at your friend just in time to see him screaming as some guy sinks his teeth into his right arm. You help your friend push off the attacker as the guy falls to the ground and cracks his head open on the steps. Instead of going limp, the pale figure rises and part of a low groan escapes from a bleeding gap in the guy’s neck. That’s when you realize your friend wasn’t attacked by a rabid frat boy who hasn’t showered for a few days – he was attacked by a zombie.
Although not much is known about zombies, if you keep calm and come up with a plan it will help you keep your head (literally and figuratively).
Step 1: Making a plan
You need to scoop up your friend, find a place to calm down, get a weapon and think of a plan of action. You might even grab a few survivors on the way to help with the battle to survive.
But moving across an undead-infested campus is dangerous unless you know how to avoid ravenous ghouls.
Apart from an occasional chanting of the word “brains” and the awkward movements, it is hard to tell a person from a zombie from a long distance, said Justin Gifford, zombie movie buff and literature assistant professor.
These zombies don’t seem like the fast-moving and violent “infected” humans from films like “28 Days Later.” In reality they are slow-moving reanimated human corpses with low intelligence and poor motor skills said Max Brooks, author of “The Zombie Survival Guide.” Oh, and they feel the urge to feed on humans. Hence the biting.
“If you can’t get away from a zombie, then you deserve to be caught,” Gifford said.
Zombies have an excellent sense of smell, so it would not be wise to act like a zombie because they can distinguish the living from the dead.
The best place to go for temporary shelter is the bookstore. There is only one entrance with heavy doors, and a lot of supplies and possible weapons.
However, zombies don’t eat for nourishment and don’t have any basic needs to survive – not even oxygen.
Zombies are formidable because they are persistent when tracking down their prey. So finding a place to hold up for a while is a good idea, though not for long.
“You may be able to get away for a while and hold up someplace, but eventually they’re going to get to you and there is no escape,” Gifford said. “Like death itself.”
Now that you look around, some of the students around you are frantically talking about what they have seen, some are dead silent, and a girl is crying hysterically on one of the couches in the Pine Lounge. Someone needs to take charge of other survivors and find a more permanent refuge.
Brooks said the best place to weather a zombie outbreak on campus is the dorms. Dorms have food, a diverse group of people with different skills, and if you abandon the first floor and destroy the stairs, the zombies won’t get to you because they can’t climb.
Tell somebody to call ahead to the dorms and tell them to get food, make sure the dorms are zombie-free and start destroying the stairs. In the meantime, you need to prepare for another venture through the zombie horde by gathering supplies to fight your way to the dorms.
Zombie-killing is a simple task— destroy the brain or separate the head from the body— not an easy task.
Zombies do not feel pain or fear, so they have a great amount of stamina and can take a tremendous amount of body damage without slowing down.
Sergeant First Class Mike Connell said bullets wouldn’t be very effective against zombies because zombies would not even feel a bullet going through them and most people aren’t good enough shots to kill a zombie, or don’t have access to the high-powered rounds necessary to take down an undead fiend.
Connell said one-handed blunt objects like baseball bats or a hammer would be most effective, so start raiding the janitor’s closets and storage rooms. Things like shovels (sharpened on concrete, handles cut in half) and fire-axes could also be used. Connell said, if possible, to use duct tape to secure the weapon.
“If you are dealing with goo, blood and guts things get really slippery,” Connell said.
With one hand free, Connell suggests finding something to use as a shield and to wear as much clothing as possible. Now you’re armed and ready for some zombie-bashing, but you’ve got another problem – your friend has fainted.
Remember that bite? Zombies come from some sort of mutation after death, either due to radiation or a virus. Zombies are like walking plagues, which spread through open wound contact with the undead, like lets say, oh a zombie bite.
In his book, Brooks said zombie bites are 100 percent fatal and have a 100 percent chance of infection. Reanimation can take place anywhere from a few minutes to a day, depending on the type of infection. Translation – your boy’s an undead time bomb.
Gifford said zombie outbreaks get out of control because most people either don’t know that a person will become a zombie or they are too emotionally attached to the dead body to dispose of it. So people won’t even be aware zombies are present until a large outbreak.
But you know better, so quit your sniveling, drag your friend into a backroom of the bookstore and go medieval with that baseball bat you’ve got taped to your arm. If it helps, remember the old zombie movie cliché – he’s not your friend anymore.
Step 2: Move to more protection
With your friend taken care of, now you can get on to the shortest, but most dangerous, part of your journey. You’ve got to lead your armed squadron of survivors from the bookstore to the dorms.
Connell said when faced with a hoard of ghouls, it’s best to take the most direct route possible, and move in a group similar to a roman phalanx: form a triangular wedge, shields together, the people in the middle would help push the group through the crowds.
Fighting your way through groups of zombies with the same density and direction as freshmen during orientation shouldn’t be that hard or hazardous if you are prepared enough. It might even be fun de-braining that show-off from physics, if you can ignore the scattered limbs and overturned cars.
Step 3: Wait it out or get moving
You lose a few people on your little walk, but that’s life now – the zombies have to win sometimes. And besides, most of the group makes it to the dorms and now you can wait for help to come.
But that doesn’t mean it’s time to relax just yet.
“You got to wait it out, just don’t sit and play your PSP. While you’re waiting you got to think of an escape plan in case the government does not come for you,” said Brooks. “You haven’t bought yourself some safety, you have bought yourself some breathing space.”
So you have a choice to make, you can either stay at the dorms and make the food last a week or two hoping you won’t be overrun, or strike out into the undead world to find some other people.
In his book, Brooks recommends people train themselves both mentally and physically to get out of the area if the government doesn’t come.
Put the survivors to work.
The kid on the seventh floor who can make a beer bong out of a condom and a milk carton?
Have him start making a ladder for the escape.
The honors students with math powers like Einstein, tech skills like the Geek Squad and muscles the size of toothpicks?
They can rig a radio to communicate with the outside world and outline the logistics of the journey to safety – wherever that may be.
The honey down the hall with the slamming body?
Well, that’s just good for morale.
Brooks said to move in small groups when moving to another location and drive small fuel-efficient vehicles that can handle different types of terrains, like Jeeps.
Brooks said, if worst comes to worst, to find a small isolated corner of the world to restart civilization.
You have avoided being zombie chow, probably better than the most of the population. the worst is over but more hard days are to come if you have to start living with the walking dead.
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July 13th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
wow this is possibly the most retarded thing i have ever read, especially considering there ARE NO ZOMBIES!!!!!!!!!
July 22nd, 2008 at 3:28 pm
retarded like a fox!
November 19th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
well you fags are tarded for searching zombie attack plan and the hating on the fucker who wrote this. Respect the guy who wrote this and back down. besdies,what if zombies did attack? anything could happen,some people believe in jesus,others believe in zombies. enough said.