Zombie Tuesday: Burnout

So you’ve made it this far. You’ve kept your head in the game and you’ve remembered to think long term about this whole zombie apocalypse thing. You’ve likely witnessed the deaths of friends and family members, and now you’re living in a ruined shell of the society you once knew, doing your best to keep from getting devoured by the dead-things.

This is probably a bad time to mention that I’ve been holding out on you.

I had my reasons though. I needed you you start thinking differently about this whole apocalypse thing. Like I said in last weeks post, you may be the last hope for human civilization. You need to start thinking about your life in terms of years and decades, and you need to start thinking about the centuries that will follow after you. The light of humanity must go on.

Which means killing zombies. All the zombies.

Hopefully you’ve made a good dent in them so far with the methods I’ve prescribed, but now you’re labouring under the ever increasing realization that there are far far too many of these things for you to kill one at a time. You’ve long since given up on the military doing anything helpful. If they’re even still around they’re hunkered down so far the sun could go out and they wouldn’t notice.

It’s up to you.

Good thing you have me here, because I’ve got the answer for you. In some ways it goes against everything I’ve taught you here so far. But you have to know the rules before you can break them. So lets break some rules shall we?

Here’s what you do.

1. Find some bait.

Yeah, right. It’s the zombie apocalypse. Every living thing that can be caught and eaten probably has been. There’s no living flesh within miles. Or is there?

Take a look in the mirror bub.

Okay, okay, don’t freak out on me. I know you don’t want to get eaten, but some risks you have to take.

If you can find something else to serve as bait then do it, but if not you’re it.

2. Scout out a location

You’re gonna need a good solid place, one that can keep the zombies at bay for at least a few days. You’re going to want to have supplies here too. Water and food. Not a lot, but enough to get you through maybe a week of waiting. Hopefully you won’t be in there any longer than that.

Another thing this building also needs? Roof access.  In fact you might spend the entire time camped out on the roof. Lots of big stores have a ladder that leads up onto the roof from the inside. Well, maybe not lots. But Walmart does, so I assume it’s not that uncommon.

Got your location scouted out? Good. Because it time to…

3. Ring the Dinner Bell

By now you probably know all the places where the zombies hang out in big groups. Up until now you’ve been avoiding these places. But now you want to attract attention.

Don’t be stupid, though. Give yourself room to get a decent head-start on them when they finally see you. Maybe get one of those mostly useless shotguns and fire it into the air. Make a lot of noise and then get out of there.

Hightail it back to your location and barricade the doors. Get out on the roof and keep making noise. Shoot off your gun, blow an airhorn, yell at the zombies. Get it all out now because they’re not going to be around for too much longer.

Now all you have to do is…

4. Wait

Odds are good zombies will come for miles, and they don’t come very fast. You’re here to wait them out. You want to get as many of them as you can, so just sit yourself up on that roof and wait. Every once in a while you’re going to want to do something to get their attention so they don’t start wandering off, but mostly its just waiting. Maybe take a book up there with you? Something good and long, maybe a Stephen King novel.

After all, what good is the zombie apocalypse if it doesn’t give you time to catch up on your reading?

5. Burn Baby Burn

Dead flesh gets dry after a while. Like really dry. Your zombie friends have been out in the sun for a long time now so they’ve been dried out to the point that their skin crackles when they move.

Good for you, bad for them.

And you know the great thing about zombies? They have no sense of personal space. You never hear one zombie say to another zombie, “Pardon me, but it would appear that your flesh is rotting away, and I must tell you that I find your rancid breath and horrible odour absolutely repulsive dear boy.” No, given the proper motivation they’ll pack in on top of each other like sardines in a can.

Which is just perfect for what you’re going to do.

So light ‘em up and watch ‘em burn. You might need a little gasoline to get the party started, but chances are once the flames catch they’ll spread fast.

And since they’re zombies it’s not like they’re going to run away. They’re going to press in closer as their friends in the front row get fried.

The flames will spread from one zombie to the next, until you’ll have a whole sea of dead things moving amongst themselves calling out for your flesh even as their own is burning away.

Sit back and watch the world burn. And pat yourself on the back. You’ve just taken out more zombies in one week than you could have hoped to kill one at a time in years.

6. Rinse Lather Repeat.

There’s a lot of zombies out there, so you’re going to have to do this more than once. If you manage not to get yourself burned alive on the first attempt the second one will be easier. You’ll know your obstacles and challenges ahead of time.

Killing zombies is just like anything else. To get really good at it, it takes practice, practice, practice.

Addendum:

I appreciate all of you who joined me for this little feature on my blog. I hope that you found it both informative and entertaining.

Next week, on Tuesday, I’ve got a big thing happening. I’ll be releasing my novella called, A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw on the Kindle electronic marketplace (Yes, it is the same title as one of my short stories. The short story inspired the novella). The story is about a dog who is left behind during the zombie apocalypse and his struggle to survive the horror of the dead-things.

It’s different from anything else I’ve ever heard of in the zombie-survival genre and I hope all of you will at least check it out.

Fingers crossed and counting down the days, this is Albert Berg, writer and freelance zombie survival consultant, signing off.

Zombie Tuesday: the Apocalypse Diet Plan

The zombies are there. The world is overrun by the reanimated dead, walking corpses obsessed with consuming living flesh. Civilization is in ruins.

This is widely considered to be a Bad Thing.

But hey! There’s always a bright, side right? You know that twenty or thirty pounds you’ve been trying to lose for years? You’ve done all the diets, and you’ve bought all the clothes hanging devices er…I mean exercise machines, but no luck.

Well today is your lucky day. You’re going to learn how to lose weight the zombie way. By the time we’re done you’ll be nothing more than a canvass of skin and wiry muscle stretched over harsh protruding bones. Just what you’ve always wanted!

In all seriousness though, finding food during the apocalypse is going to be an all-important endeavor. You’re going to have to struggle to scrape together the barest of essentials, all the while trying to stay one step ahead of the corpses that think you would make an excellent meal.

“No problem,” you say. “With most of the population wiped out I’ll be able to loot grocery stores for canned food for years.”

Well, yes and no. Canned food is a fine staple to start with but even canned goods won’t last forever. Most have expiration dates between three to five years in the future.

Three to five years seems like a long time, and in some ways, it is. But Zombie Tuesdays are about long term survival strategies. It’s fine to rely on canned goods to start with, but you need to have the future in mind at all times. When that food supply finally runs out you’re going to need to have a reliable source of food that will last indefinitely. There are a couple of ways you can do this.

First, hunting. Odds are good the zombies will have killed slow-moving livestock like cattle, but animals like deer listen hard and move fast. It’s unlikely that they’ll be wiped out by lumbering moaning zombies. Of course that means they’ll be hard for you to kill too.

And if you do kill them there’s the problem of preserving the meat. Drying it won’t work because you’ll have to leave it sitting in one place for a long period and the zombies will likely find it before you can get back to it. Your best option is to salt the meat. Salting draws the moisture out of the cells and helps to preserve the meat for long periods of time. In the days before refrigeration was widely available it was the only way to preserve dead meat.

But hunting alone won’t sustain you. Remember what momma said: “Eat your veggies.”

You can forage for plant life to eat. I recommend you get a book called How to Stay Alive in the Woods. It has all kinds of information about what kinds of plants are good to eat as well as tons of other useful survival information. It’s a valuable addition to any zombie survival kit.

But if you’re serious about this survival thing, you should think about growing your own food.

Gardening won’t be simple in a world overrun by zombies. You always have to remember the first principle we discussed. Keep moving. But you can stop long enough to plant some vegetables along strategic points along your migration route. The best part is you can probably find several abandoned houses with gardens already established. Start there. Keep them fertilized and watered as best you can.

And speaking of water…

Remember how you used to laugh about how ridiculous bottled water was and how stupid it was to pay so much for something you get out of the tap essentially for free? Yeah, well the shoe’s on the other foot now isn’t it?

Bottled water may be the only source of clean water the post-apocalyptic world has. Odds are good you’ll be able to scavenge plenty of it from stores and homes, and it’s not like water’s going to go bad, but if you find your supply running low remember to be cautious. Water in rivers and streams is not clean, no matter how clear it looks. It’s infested with all kinds of nasty microbes and other things that want to eat your stomach from the inside.

A few drops of bleach per gallon of water should do the trick. Or if you’re a coffee person and you have the time and means, boiling is another great way to kill all those little creepy-crawlies.

The bottom line is that survival is the name of the game, and there’s more out there to be worried about then just zombies. Keep yourself fed and hydrated. Try to stay healthy. Remember, dying from malnutrition or drinking germ infested water is still dying.

The fate of a new civilization rests on your shoulders. Don’t screw it up.

Join the Zombies, Get a Brain.

This?

This is the big thing?

This is the second coming of zombie horror? I don’t think so.

I just finished watching the final episode of AMC’s widely acclaimed TV series, The Walking Dead, and I have to say I was…underwhelmed. It’s not that the show was exactly bad. It was even brilliant in places. But by the time I got to the end there was just so much wrong.

[Spoiler Warning Thingy]

The main bone I have to pick is with the final episode, TS-19 in which the group of survivors retreat to the CDC and meet the last scientist left alive there.

Why is he the last guy left?

Because in the face of the zombie apocalypse everyone else, either ran away or committed suicide.

Really? You really expect me to believe that people are that pathetically weak? I mean sure, there are bound to be some people who can’t take the pressure, but we’re talking about a group of people who have been entrusted with the task of finding a cure for a world that is slipping into madness, and all but one of them just say, “Meh, screw it. I’m going home. Life’s not worth living”?

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

Suspension of belief only goes so far, and I refuse to believe that people as a whole are that pathetic. Do the writers of the show realize what humankind has been through? We’ve survived plagues, and famines and wars, all kinds of atrocities from within and without, and we’re still kicking.

We are not weak. We are not quitters. We are not sitting around waiting for some hardship to give us an excuse to give up.

Again, I’m sure that certain individuals might crack under the strain, but a whole enclave of intelligent people who have been charged with a mission not only to save themselves, but to save the world, their countries, their families? All of them gave up?

No. That is not how people work. In fact I found the whole notion so outlandish, I was seriously expecting a subplot where it turned out that the one remaining scientist had actually killed them all.

And then, then at the culmination of the episode, the single remaining scientist reveals to the survivors that they’re locked in with him, and that the entire building will undergo an explosive decontamination cycle that will destroy them all in a matter of seconds (This is a really, really stupid and inefficient way to prevent some kind of contamination, but we’ll just chalk that up to movie logic). He reasons it would be better for them to die this way, than to face the certainty of being devoured by the zombie hoards.

It makes sense for all of about five seconds. And then you remember that three episodes previous we met the Vatos, a group of young men stationed in the center of the zombie outbreak who are running a nursing home. And that’s not counting any number of other minor characters who are ostensibly still out in world the surviving perfectly well, thank you very much.

Civilization may be gone, but the entire human race? There’s plenty of them still out there and kicking. Plenty of people who didn’t give up.

I know, I know. It’s just a show. It doesn’t really matter. And I probably shouldn’t even be wasting your time with this But hey, it’s Saturday, which means I get to talk about whatever, and this has just really been bugging me.

Plot holes I can handle. Out of character moments I can deal with. But when you give an out of character moment to the entire human race, that’s when you’ve crossed the line.

%99 of our existence as a species has been marked by endless poverty, hardships and death. From the modern perspective most of the history of mankind was the apocalypse. No electricity, no running water, uncertain food supply. For millenia people survived day to day in conditions that most of us would find utterly horrific. And yet somehow they did survive.

And if, God forbid, humankind should ever have to return to fighting and clawing for our very existence for whatever reason we will survive still.

So there. I got it out of my system. On Monday, we will recommence with our regularly scheduled rant-free broadcast.

Same zombie time. Same zombie station.

Zombie Tuesday: “We Like To Move It, Move It”

Today we’re going to throw all that writing stuff out the window and talk for a few minutes about…

Zombies.

Yes, zombies. What is it about zombies anyway? What is there in our cultural DNA that makes us so fascinated with the apocalypse brought on by the walking dead? Have our lives become so easy that we need to dream up horrific images of rotting corpses hunting down the few remaining living, to kick our brains out of their television saturated stupor?

Maybe. Who knows? Not me.

But they’re coming. You know they are.

You’ve seen all the movies and TV shows. You’ve played the games. Maybe you’ve even read the books.You think you’re prepared.

You’re so wrong.

You don’t have the first clue how to survive the hoards of the undead. And if you’re not careful you’ll end up in the hoard of undead moaning “Braaaiiiins” and dribbling the guts of your last victim down the front of your “Ask me about my zombie plan” t-shirt.

You think that just because you’ve seen every zombie movie ever made, you’re prepared for the apocalypse? Didn’t your mother ever tell you that you can’t believe everything you see on TV?

You’re woefully underprepared for what’s coming. That’s why I’m starting a new feature on this blog called, “Zombie Tuesdays.” It would have been alliterated, but some moron forgot to name any weekdays Zedsday, so you’re stuck with this instead.

Each week we’ll look at a different aspect of zombie survival and how to avoid being torn apart by the ravenous flesh eaters.

This week’s zombie survival tip: KEEP MOVING

It’s human nature. When trouble comes we head for home. If we can’t get home we look for a safe place to hole up in until the problem blows over.

You see this in zombie movies all the time. The survivors in the mall, in a boarded up house, in a camp somewhere out in the woods. They’ve dug themselves in, strengthened their fortifications. Maybe they’ve even built a huge fence to keep the undead at bay.

Worst. Mistake. Ever.

Why? Because when you pick a fortification against zombies that place has to last forever. The dead don’t sleep. The dead don’t get tired. And there are far more of them than there are of you.

Think you can handle it? Maybe you’ve got three months of canned goods stocked up in the pantry. Maybe you’ve got a well that brings fresh water right into your house. But the food will run out. And the zombies will still be outside moaning and clawing at the walls.

Maybe you’re thinking bigger. Maybe you’ve got a whole compound stocked with food and medicine and enough land to produce the food you’ll need all of it conveniently fenced off. But you’re still stuck there forever. Need some medicine from the ruins of the hospital in town? Too bad. Need to scavenge some parts for your generator? Not going to happen.

And what are you doing to do when the undead start piling up on top of each other outside your gates until they’ve made a ramp of desiccated flesh that leads right over your precious fortifications?

You can’t dig in.

So what do you do? You move.

Don’t leave town. That’s another rookie mistake. You get in your car to hit the interstate and you’ll be stuck in a pack of cars full of geniuses that had the exact same idea as you did. And when you run out of gas and the undead are crawling over your car and the sun is literally baking you alive inside maybe you’ll understand why leaving was a bad idea.

But you have to keep moving. On foot is fine if that’s all you’ve got. You can easily outwalk the undead, and if any of them get too close you can stop and kill them one at a time.

What if they’re running?

If they’re running then they’re not zombies. This is a zombie survival guide.

Again, you’re not going anywhere. You’re not even trying to leave town. Your main objective is to avoid creating a congregation point for the zombies.

If you’ve got a bicycle, better still. Bikes are lightweight and can usually be taken places where the roads don’t go. Also, they don’t run out of gas. This is important. If you’re going to survive this you’re going to have to forget about anything that requires any kind of fuel or charge. You’re going to have enough trouble keeping yourself fueled up without having to worry about your car.

What about sleep? Well, I would tell you that you could sleep when you’re dead, but that’s not exactly true now is it? This is a long-term plan. You’re going to need to stop from time to time for sleep and rest.

Best chance you’ve got is to find a big building with multiple exits. The undead tend not to be the brightest bulbs on the funeral home marquee. If they see you go in one door, they’ll likely begin by crowding around that door. You should have some time to catch a few winks before they call the rest of their buddies and surround the building completely. You can also use this opportunity to do a little looting.

But be careful of stores with big plate-glass windows. Zombies will rip through them like a hot chainsaw through butter.

When can you stop? You can’t. Not for a very long time anyway. As long as you want to stay alive, you have to keep going.

The day you stagnate is the day you die.