Halloween advice: Prepare for the
zombie apocalypse

Infrastructure
Aktipis said the next concern is the broader community’s preparedness, including trust in the government agencies and law enforcement who might be responsible for coordinating activities during a disaster. "You can start to sort of look outside of households and say, okay, how is the infrastructure?” she said. “Like, how would people be able to get to a safe place, if they needed to leave their homes? Would they be able to walk? Would they be able to bicycle, would they be able to drive?” (It’s a good idea to have at least a half-tank of gas in your car at all times.)

Public transportation may not be an option if the electric grid has collapsed or if an outbreak has occurred on a train, as in the South Korean film, Train to Busan, which provides a vivid example of what it would be like to share a train with a morning rush of undead commuters.

In fact, the first rule of survival in the 2009 film Zombieland is “cardio,” which makes sense. In a post-apocalyptic zombie hellscape, it seems logical that one would need to occasionally outrun the living dead. Their level of cardio is unclear, and zombie lore tends to disagree on how fast zombies can chase prey. The classic depiction from the George Romero Night of the Living Dead film features slow-moving zombies that amble towards their victims, while more modern iterations like World War Z and 28 Days Later subscribe to the fast zombie model. Still, the lesson rings true: when the dead rise, be ready to run. According to the zombie city rankings, Bellevue and Seattle, Washington, have the lowest physical inactivity rate and are best positioned to have citizens that can outrun a zombie attacker.

Aktipis and Scrivner noted it’s important to become familiar with your community’s emergency plans. If there is a park or other location where citizens should take refuge, know where it is and how to get there. Having a city or community that is prepared for a zombie apocalypse can also help to prevent a mad rush to hoard resources—as in the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic—and avoid societal breakdown.

Crawling toward emergency preparedness
 In addition to his work with Aktipis at Arizona State University, Scrivner is the director of the Eureka Springs Zombie Crawl, held annually around Halloween. Described as “a social experience in which a large group of people dresses up like zombies and ‘creep’ from one part of a town to another,” the event gathers zombie “walkers” who parade, very slowly, through the streets, while zombie “hunters” follow along.

The Eureka Springs event, like other zombie crawls around the country, is first and foremost a fun Halloween-themed party. But Aktipis and Scrivner are interested in how it can be leveraged to inspire people to think about management of collective risk without the stress involved in planning for real disasters.

“When it comes to considering what would we do in a flood or in a wildfire, if there was an earthquake—those things can be very scary and almost triggering to even just imagine,” she said. “But … what if it was a zombie apocalypse? Where the zombies had features that actually set up a scenario that's like it would be if there was a wildfire? You can … create these scenarios that then let you think through how you would deal with certain things in a playful way without necessarily having that fear response of imagining something genuinely horrific happening to your neighborhood.”

Aktipis and Scrivner hope events like the zombie crawl can serve as jumping off points to get people asking how they would confront disasters, and taking steps to get their shelter-in-place kits together. According to Aktipis’ Zombified Media site, this year’s crawl will be followed for the first time by a travelling “Apocalypse Road Show” that addresses the question head on: “Could your city survive the zombie apocalypse?”

In his novel, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Max Brooks says “Most people don’t believe something can happen until it already has. That’s not stupidity or weakness, that’s human nature.” While many people are more primed to prepare for sudden disruptions to their lives after the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s worth asking what other kinds of disasters we should be prepared for. The relative uncertainty posed by climate change means that one should generally be prepared for anything. It may seem silly to prepare oneself for something like flesh-eating ghouls roaming the country, but better safe than sorry.

“For a gazelle to learn about its local predator, it's kind of costly,” Scrivner said. “You’re putting yourself at risk of being preyed upon. But for a human to do it, you know, we can sit in the comfort of our home and watch it on TV.” (Or read it in the Bulletin.) “There’s really no cost to us. But the learning benefits are still there.”