Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies (26 page)

Without a doubt, India is the last place you want to be in a zombie pandemic. It packs in 944 people per square mile, making it an ideal recruiting ground for new undead conscripts, and of a total population of 1.3 billion, less than 4 percent own firearms. Furthermore, India’s military is substantially smaller and not as well equipped as that of either China or the United States.

We’ve seen the worst, but where is the best? At first glance, countries with remote or hard-to-traverse terrain tend to stand out. Other desirable attributes include ample food supplies, a self-reliant population, and solid military and civilian defense capabilities.

Note that only nations with a population of more than 5 million were included in this evaluation. So a country like New Zealand, with a citizenship of just 4.4 million, did not meet the criteria for consideration.

Here is a list of the top ten safest countries in a zombie outbreak:

10.
Sweden.
A favorably small population and many natural defenses help Sweden capture the tenth spot. Its military is well trained, well equipped, and solely focused on the defense of its people and lands.

9.
Argentina.
As the eighth-largest country in the world by landmass, Argentina is sandwiched by the Andes Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. Its high level of urbanization keeps it from climbing higher on the list.

8.
Finland.
The Finnish benefit from being surrounded by other countries strong in zombie survivability, and their population density of just forty-one people per square mile doesn’t hurt, either.

7.
Norway.
The fact that the tiny country of Norway came in second in gold medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics shows that Norwegians know how to thrive in icy conditions. A lot of snowy land and a few hearty people to defend it is a recipe for survival.

6.
Bolivia.
With mountains to protect the population from its neighbors and the worst economy in South America, Bolivians are adept at managing without modern conveniences and can ably fend for themselves.

5.
Kazakhstan.
Borat made the whole world laugh at this little country, but Kazakhstan may get the last laugh. The rugged terrain, formidable climate, and extremely low population density are key survival factors.

4.
Russia.
Low population density, huge land barriers, and a battle-tested people give Russia the number four spot. If the Nazis couldn’t take Leningrad, there’s no reason to think that zombies will.

3.
United States.
With more than eighty-three people per square mile, the United States is considerably more dense than any other country in the top five, but its
heavily armed citizenship is more ready for a battle than most.

2.
Canada.
Sure, its 35 million residents are packed in a thin strip along the country’s southern border, but gun ownership is common, and there’s plenty of room to head north when the dead rise.

1.
Australia.
This vast nation grabs the top spot because of its population density of just 7.5 people per square mile and the fact that it has the world’s biggest moat surrounding it on all sides.

As we’ve seen, traveling even a short distance in an un-dead world will be a dangerous and slow affair. Building your survival plan around simply hopping on a plane to the Aussie outback at the first sign of the zombie plague is extremely ill-advised. No matter how high on the list, a given country is only suitable for extreme survival to its own population or those few outsiders who are intimately familiar with the climate, culture, and resources.

Running off to some perfect new land that will welcome you with open arms and readily provide everything you need to thrive is a fairy tale, and when the dead walk, fairy tales get you killed.

I
n the winter of 1918, history’s most lethal virus was born in an army camp in Kansas, then quickly spread, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide in little more than a year. In terms of the panic it caused and the lives it destroyed, the Spanish flu is the closest thing to a trial run for a global zombie pandemic that the modern world has ever seen.

The Department of the Navy’s records for that period give a glimpse into the collateral problems generated by so many dead so quickly:

Bodies started piling up in the road. In a vision not seen since the Black Death of medieval Europe, carts went through the streets, their drivers calling for people to bring out the dead for burial. Wagon loads of bodies were buried together, some having died weeks earlier. Highway workers dug large trenches and filled them to capacity.
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If zombies carry with them the same disease and filth as a human corpse—and there is no reason to think they don’t—one of their greatest weapons might be their ability to spread sickness from afar.

A handful of bodies left out to rot in the elements can generate a putrid smell for some distance, but hundreds of thousands of rotting bodies could literally create a toxic death-cloud that invades the lungs of hiding humans, rendering them too sick to defend themselves before a single ghoul is even in the same zip code.

Imagine coming down with a high fever. Your head is pounding, you’re sweating bullets, you can hardly see straight, and the thought of eating makes you physically ill. After three or four days of this, there’s finally a scratching at your front door. By the time zombies come to finish off what’s left of you, death seems like a welcome change, as you’re too weak even to fight back.

No scent is more distinctive and revolting than that of death. The stench is so universally repugnant that even insects avoid coming in contact with the dead of their own species. In 2009, biologist David Rollo of McMaster University in Canada made this discovery accidentally while researching the social behavior of cockroaches. Rollo found that when he crushed dead cockroaches, spreading their body juice across a specific area, other roaches wouldn’t dare come near:

It was amazing to find that the cockroaches avoided places treated with these extracts like the plague. Naturally, we wanted to identify what chemical was making them all go away.
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Though human noses can’t easily detect the fatty acids of dead bugs, we are repelled by the sickly-sweet smell of mammalian corpses, especially those other humans. Anyone who has smelled even a tiny dead mouse under the stairs will never forget the stench of death.

There’s a lot we can learn from past outbreaks of other more common deadly pandemics, but what of zombie outbreaks throughout history? There are no confirmed incidents in the historic record, but by investigating possible attacks from the past, we can hope to reach a better understanding of the threat we may soon face.

In 1587, the colony of Roanoke was established on a small island along the coast of present-day North Carolina. One hundred fifteen men and women eagerly arrived at what they thought would become the first permanent English settlement in the New World. The group was well stocked with supplies and lived in secure structures that offered good protection from the elements and any unfriendly neighbors.

The mystery of Roanoke began when a supply ship returned in 1590 to find not a single living soul and no evidence of war, famine, or any other possible reason for the colony’s complete disappearance. In fact, there is still no generally accepted explanation for what happened to those settlers, leading some to suggest that it may have been the work of zombies.

Max Brooks included a fictional zombie outbreak on Roanoke in his 2003 bestseller,
Zombie Survival Guide
, and now it seems life is imitating art, as noted Harvard archaeologist Lawrence Stager recently unearthed evidence of mass cannibalism at the Roanoke site.
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No doubt, a sudden undead plague sweeping through the unprepared colony would quickly become a horrific, violent feast, leaving not a single man, woman, or child alive. The relative isolation of the settlement and the time elapsed before the return of the supply ship might have allowed for the remaining colonial zombies to rot back into the earth. Without any humans left to feed on and therefore no way to spread the infection, the zombies would have simply died off.

If the colonists did experience a catastrophic undead event, there could be something sinister still in the ground on Roanoke Island, waiting to be released into a modern population that is more advanced, more connected, but just as unprepared as ever.

What’s more, if the settlers on Roanoke Island were, in fact, overrun by a deadly zombie outbreak, then there are certain important date markers to note. They landed at their new home on July 27, 1587, and exactly one month later, the ships that delivered them sailed back to England. Then, on August 18, 1590, the ships returned to bring supplies and support to the new colony, but they found not a single living soul.

Even if the Roanoke zombie plague began just days after the ships sailed, the lack of human remains found upon their return indicates that an outside estimate for the zombie life span would be two years. It could obviously be much shorter, but two years is a probable max.

The notion is that there must have been enough time for zombies to completely overrun the colony, leaving no one left alive, and then wander the island aimlessly until they slowly decayed back into the earth. By the time the reinforcements arrived, there would be nothing for them to discover.

In March 2010, archaeologists excavating ancient Roman ruins in Italy uncovered a mysterious lead coffin weighing almost a thousand pounds. Not only is the metal slab bizarrely heavy, but it’s also folded over its encased corpse like a “burrito.”

Some baffled experts speculate that a notable figure from the third century must have been given the rare honor of a sheet-metal burial, but others speculate that the coffin was meant not as an honor but to keep the dead man from getting out.

Managing director of the project Jeffrey Becker cautions about making any assumptions about the mysterious remains:

All we can say so far about the contents is that the lead wrapping contains a human skeleton—or at least a portion thereof—as there is visible bone at the open, foot-end of the sarcophagus.
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What makes the discovery all the more bizarre is that Romans were not normally buried in coffins at all, and when they were, the coffins were always wooden. And because the Romans didn’t embalm their dead, instead burying the washed body in a shallow grave, it stands to reason that a zombie from that era would have no trouble clawing back to the surface.

Clearly, there is no evidence of a widespread zombie outbreak in ancient Rome, but if a traveling warrior or nobleman did return home with an unknown sickness that caused him to die slowly and then rise from his grave, this mysterious lead casket just may have been the practical solution for his terrified family.