June 2012 editorial: Zombie Awareness Month . . . are you ready?

By Brian Lee

 

As anyone who watches much TV knows, zombies are making a comeback. The popular TV series The Walking Dead has proven to be an extremely effective tool in educating people on what to expect during a zombie pandemic. It’s a fictional story about a group of survivors in the American southeast coping with an exceedingly hostile zombie outbreak. What sets it apart from the typical Hollywood zombie fare is that the show’s producers have worked hard to present material based on recent research and the best eyewitness accounts available.

It’s renewed awareness about what is an increasingly likely catastrophe. Even the BC government jumped on the trend recently by promoting May as Zombie Awareness month. The initiative was intended to promote their broader message about emergency preparation but the subtext is clear ― provincial authorities now consider zombies a credible threat to public safety.

Conveniently, a pandemic of this type requires similar survival items as an earthquake or tsunami ― "grab-and-go" kits for your home, office and vehicle with the usual supplies (water, gasoline and food). But as much as Christy Clark and her team should be applauded for pulling back the curtain on this suspiciously underreported threat, the province chose to omit many troubling details about what to expect during an outbreak.

According to Max Brooks’ bestselling The Zombie Survival Guide:

"Any creature, regardless of size or species, will be consumed by an attacking zombie. Human flesh, however, will always be preferable to other life forms."

Brooks relates an experiment involving a captured specimen that repeatedly chose human flesh over animal meat. It’s still unknown why zombies prefer human flesh but it emphasizes a critical danger (besides the hazard of infection itself) that will be present during a zombie pandemic:

You will be hunted as food.

As everyone knows, most zombies aren’t difficult to kill

— one must simply destroy its brain, either by decapitation or trauma. And though it may be satisfying to hack or bludgeon your way through a half dozen of the shuffling ghouls, Brooks counsels that close combat should be avoided. Sooner or later you’ll trip or your blade will break off in one of their skulls. Or you’ll fail to notice a little juvenile zombie until it sinks its broken teeth into your leg.

It happens, so don’t be macho:

ZOMBIES MUST BE TREATED WITH EXTREME CAUTION.

Brooks makes clear in his introduction that there is no victory or conquest with zombies

— just survival.  It’s important to understand they possess similar physical attributes to their former human selves, with a few exceptions. One is they can’t swim. If a zombie falls in the ocean, it will likely wander aimlessly along the bottom until its brain is consumed by sea lice. So consider islands and boats a good bet to avoid contact.

 

Aside from that, the popular literature (including Brooks’ book) presents most survival scenarios from the perspective of the urban dweller. Take what you can from them but also know that living on the Sunshine Coast carries a distinct advantage:

Our ferry-only access limits the number of potential zombies (in a worst-case scenario) to about 30,000.

But even then, dispatching that many zombies will require plenty of ammunition and energy so as the BC government is now strongly hinting:

You should equip yourself.