Zombie Apocalypse Survival 101

A Story by D Allen

Zombie Apocalypse Survival

How does a zombie apocalypse start?

We know that the Z-virus is a naturally occurring dormant virus in some number of people. We also know there were synthetic Z-virus strains produced primarily by the Germans as early as World War I. By the way, you should know there are recent reports of Iranian, Russian, and Chinese scientists working on synthetic Z-virus strains today; however, they claim they are only experimenting for vaccination purposes. I don't trust them.

The primary way a Z-virus pandemic will happen is likely by way of a natural outbreak where the Z-virus piggy-backs on some other natural pandemic. Let’s assume for now the German, Iranian, Russian, and Chinese (and American) scientists have their strains controlled and secured.

Natural disasters have some potential to cause a Z-virus outbreak, although this would be extremely rare. Natural disasters like a tsunami or earthquake thankfully will often cause enough body tissue damage to make a zombie outbreak improbable. But there are other "natural" threats such as pandemic outbreaks -- N1H1, Bird Flu, SARS, Swine Flu, MERS -- that can lead to a Z-virus outbreak.

Side Note: Go get your flu shot!

The Z-virus lies dormant naturally in a number of people and should any of these people die and any of their bodies remain intact and any of those bodies are not disposed of, these carriers of the Z-virus will reanimate. This is a proven scientific and statistical fact; about 1 in 100,000 people are carriers. More about them later.

The Egyptians were one of the earliest societies to use zombies (mummies) ineffectively to guard tombs. They also ceremoniously removed key vital organs of the deceased to include the brain of the deceased to prevent unwanted reanimations. There are several documented stories of slave ships arriving in the Americas with an entire ship full of chained zombies and the crew either abandoned the ship or were killed. There is also documented evidence of early civilizations wiped out by Z-virus outbreaks that piggy-backed pandemic outbreaks in the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Because the Z-virus lives in a number of humans naturally, all that's need to start a zombie outbreak would be:

1) human deaths where, 2) the carrier bodies are mostly intact and undamaged and unburied. Despite Hollywood’s insistence, buried zombies tend to remain buried; they can’t claw their way out of properly buried caskets. Keep in mind that when a body arrives at the morgue, one of the first things the doctor will do is remove the brain. We’ll talk about this more later. Stay with me.

So if there is a pandemic flu outbreak where a significant portion of the population dies (as little as 15% of the population) and this overwhelms local human services such as coroners, medical examiners, morgues, and other disease control measures (which it will), there will be enough intact carrier, deceased, and unburied bodies for a zombie outbreak. One other note, carriers are not contagious until after they are dead and the Z-virus takes over their dead immune systems. Most carriers live healthy normal lives without ever knowing they are carriers and without ever becoming zombies.

In a typical zombie outbreak event, the services mentioned above become overwhelmed and body removal is delayed. A small number of the intact corpses of carriers will reanimate and begin infecting people with stage 2 Z-virus. Stage 2 Z-virus is the highly contagious form of the dormant Z-virus and can be spread person to person. This person to person spreading causes an unstoppable outbreak and is what will create roaming hordes of the walking dead.

Next time we’ll talk more about zombies, their physiology, and how stage 2 Z-virus is spread. You need to know all of this if you intend to survive. You need to keep reading my stories if you intend to survive. Stay tuned.

© 2013 D Allen

Author's Note

Give me some time to submit additional portions of this series, then tell me what you think. I've working on daily content and a full body of work that really should work in total rather than as separate pieces. Ask me some questions about zombies, my theory, my universe. Tell me if you see holes in my theory, my universe. Challenge me to explain. Suggest other content you think I should read.