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.
The Unsanity Files 