Day 1
It began and spread with alarming speed. For years after this day you and other survivors will try to piece together any and all information you can remember and figure out when it happened, where, or even how. Some think it was another virus flown in on a public airline flight, others are sure that it started right here in the United States. Yet others think that it just happened all over the world, all at once.
On day 1 chaos reigns in cities around the world. Many
people try to flee, only to end up getting stuck in traffic or huge, freeway
blocking accidents and ending up as zombie bait. You're smart though, you are a
devoted Infographics fan after all, so you know the best thing to do if you
aren't already in the outskirts of the city is to shelter in place.
In case of nuclear attack, you want to get as low as
possible and take shelter at the very core of a building as far from doors and windows
as you can get. However, in a zombie apocalypse it pays to have the high
ground, so you enter the nearest high rise and make your way as far up as you
can go. The power will soon fail, and with it the elevators, which means you'll
have to climb dozens of flights of stairs to get up high- but that also means a
zombie will too. Barricading every door you come across, any zombie- or hostile
group of survivors- would have to cross a gauntlet of blocked doors to get to
you. And being that high up will help you avoid the attention of both zombies
and any marauding looters who may arise with the collapse of civilization.
Every office tower in America is going to be stocked with
food and water, so you are set to ride out at least a week, maybe two, as you
wait for events to unfold below you. Maybe this is only a local event, and the military
will soon respond to contain the situation or at least fly out survivors. Just
in case you make sure to get to the roof of the building and make it clear to
any airplanes or helicopters that survivors are inside. It's relatively easy to
set up a big SOS using brightly colored objects looted from amongst the upper
floors.
Like an ancient king watching a siege of his castle from a
tower, you spend the day waiting and watching as the city below you comes apart
at the seams.
Day 3
As predicted, not a single zombie has even attempted to make the climb up to your temporary shelter. Why would they when the streets are still swarming with poorly prepared survivors trying to make a run for it or hiding out in bad, street-level shelters? By now though it's become obvious that this is not a local event. This is it- a zombie apocalypse and the end of the world.
There's been no response from the military, and before the
electricity died and your phone with it the last thing you heard on social
media was that the President had declared a state of emergency and taken
shelter in an emergency bunker. The
reason for no military response is because military bases were as overrun with the
walking dead as any city. Some areas have been made secure, but there's still
far too much chaos to coordinate anything more than local defense. It'll be weeks, maybe even months before
there’s any major attempt to lift the zombie siege of the big cities- if it
ever happens at all. There's tens of millions of the undead, and their ranks
grow with every freshly slain human.
You take stock of your food and water. Before the power went
out you filled up every sink, pitcher, container, and even toilet you could
find with fresh drinking water. You need water far more than you need food,
though thankfully your food supply is pretty robust. Every officer tower in
America has multiple small kitchens, snack bars, and most even has
restaurants. For the moment food and
water won't be a problem, but you can't stay here forever.
You use your time wisely, setting out rain catches on the
roof of the building and keeping your SOS signal free of any debris to make it
clear survivors are inside. A few others from around the office building have
joined with you and you've got the start of a small group of survivors. In a
disaster, it’s important to keep people occupied so they don’t despair or do
something stupid, so you take a leadership role and assign people tasks.
The first is to fashion some kind of effective weapons and
protection. You take a cue from prison inmates and using duct tape and reams of
paper, fashion some pretty sturdy body armor for yourself. Infection spreads
via biting, so you make protection for your arms and legs as well. The armor can make you stiff, so you only make
protection for your forearms, thighs, and chest. Just like a real soldier's body armor, you'll
have to make sacrifices for mobility. No amount of body armor will stop a swarm
of zombies if you’re too slow or stiff to sprint or jump to safety.
You fashion spears out of mops and brooms- these are great
because while they won’t do much lethal damage to the walking dead, they can
keep them at bay pretty effectively. Sadly, there’s just not much you can use
for an effective weapon inside an officer tower- what you really need is
firearms or melee weapons that pack a punch like baseball bats and axes. Those will have to wait, and for now it's better
to avoid a fight altogether if you can help it.
You place people on rotating shifts, with frequent checks of
the stairways that lead up to your shelter area. In teams of threes you start
to scavenge the floors below you, being very careful with your progress to make
sure you don't run into a situation you can’t quickly escape from. There are a
few straggler zombies up here, perhaps people who changed when the mysterious
phenomenon that started this nightmare struck, and they are easy to eliminate.
You aim for the head out of habit from listening to years of
popular culture, but the truth is that the rest of the body is vulnerable too.
If you shatter a zombie's leg, it can't stand up on that leg anymore. If you
smash its arm, it can't climb or grab you. And if you break its spine then it’s
stuck on the ground for good. Sure, destroying the brain is good, but breaking
bones makes it incredibly difficult for a zombie to actually hurt you. With
your spears though, all you can really do is pin one in place while your buddy
stabs it in the head. This is a good strategy for the few you run into in the
tower, but you know you’ll need better weapons to survive the streets.
Luckily before the electricity went out you made sure to
plot out the location of every gun shop, army surplus store, and police station
within a few miles of you. You've got a crude map and a plan- you're far ahead
of the game versus other survivors.
Day 7
Fires started days ago from unattended appliances, car crashes, and other minor incidents that the fire department would normally attend to. However, nobody is putting out the fires, and it's becoming increasingly dangerous to remain in your tower shelter. Some of the group doesn't want to leave, but you explain to them that if they stay they will inevitably burn up when the fires reach this building.
There's a myriad of underground service and sewage tunnels
that crisscross a modern city, and you briefly consider using these to get
around and avoid zombies. And perhaps if you or anyone in your group actually
knew anything about these tunnels, like how to get into them or where they
lead, it might be a good idea. The
reality though is that you don't have the first idea of how to even get entry into
the labyrinth like maze under your feet. So instead, you'll just have to use
the streets.
The underground garage has cars, but you have no idea where
to find keys. Besides, cars will draw attention, and it's best to move silently
for now. The chaos outside has died down in the last few days as the zombie all-you-can-eat
buffet ran out of easy prey.
You consider when to make your move. Day time will give you
much better visibility, but it will also mean that the zombies have just as
good visibility as you. Instead, you opt
to move at night, and make sure everyone is wearing dark clothing. Holding your spears and skirting along the
edge of buildings, your first destination is a police station only four blocks
away from your current location.
Sticking to the shadows, you stay out of sight of most
wandering zombies. The bulk of the walking dead have followed the initial rush
of refugees out of the city- they're acting just like any predator would and
simply following migrating prey. This is of relief to you, because if not this
city would be a guaranteed death trap.
There's the occasional zombie that you stumble into, but it's easy to
overpower one or two of them at a time with your group's long spears.
Arriving at the police station though, it’s obvious others
have had the same idea you did as it’s been barricaded. You should've
known. Luckily the world hasn't lost its
entire good people because the survivors let you in. It's not nearly as safe as
your high rise tower, despite now having access to a few leftover pistols, but
it's a little further away from the encroaching fires. However it's clear to
both you and the survivors already sheltering here that this isn't a place you
can stay. Not only is the threat of
being consumed by the raging fires
growing closer every hour, but if you're
going to survive long term you need
renewable food and water- neither of
which you can get in the heart of the city.
It's clear you all have to leave, but the question is where?
Day 9
After two days deliberating, the group is split on how to proceed. The fires are close now, and you need to leave in the next twenty four hours or risk burning to death.
One group wants to head towards the nearest military base,
hoping that it has held out or been reclaimed. This in itself isn't a bad
idea, but it comes with a pretty big
downside- there's bound to be thousands
of other people who had the exact same
idea, and all you're really doing is
fleeing from one large concentration of people to another, which is exactly what the
zombies are also doing. If the base has
held, it’ll likely be very secure at this point- shambling zombies are simply
no match versus modern military weaponry. But that's a very big if at this
point.
You've got another idea. You've watched Infographics for
years, and you know one thing about zombies that nobody else does- without their
hearts pumping warm blood around their bodies, zombies can't handle the cold.
The moment that the temperature drops to freezing, even the fastest zombie is
going to become a Popsicle. You try to explain to people that it’s no different
than sticking a piece of meat in the freezer- but they don’t listen to you.
They're sadly too brainwashed from years of characters on to making really
stupid decisions during zombie apocalypses and not doing the obvious: heading
north.
Agreeing to disagree, you decide to part ways. You and your group load up two police SUVs with
supplies- mostly food, water, and gasoline you siphon from other vehicles.
Surprisingly there’s not much in the way of weapons or ammo left in the police
station- probably because the cops who were here when the world went to hell
took it with them as they acted on their own survival plans.
Your goal is to get out of the city and head north. Survival depends on you getting as far north
as you can go.
Day 10
Your two groups wish each other luck and drive in opposite directions. The streets are a mess, but you manage to navigate past wrecks and small hordes of zombies. You wisely stay off the freeways as they are bound to be full of traffic snarls and wrecks, and instead stick to surface streets until you make it out of the city.
Day 12
It took you a full 24 hours to get out of the city thanks to having to navigate so many potential roadblocks, and there was no stopping your small convoy for anything but refueling. You're taking shifts driving until you're in open country, and today you raided the first gas station you came across for paper maps of the state and the North American freeway system. Your goal is Alaska, and you need to get there before winter comes or you could get trapped.
You're tempted to loot some of the big department stores you
drive past, but wisely think twice about it. Sure, they’re bound to be full of
supplies- but also full of zombies. You need to get out into more rural America
before you start thinking about looting big box stores that could potentially
be full of dozens of zombies.
Day 15
You're making much better progress now thanks to your paper maps. You use them to avoid the freeways and use backroads, where the area is so free of signs of the apocalypse that you could almost swear it had never happened at all. But then you inevitably come across a wreck or the signs of a family having been torn apart and eaten by the walking dead.
Still, you're out far enough from major population centers
that you take a risk raiding a big box store. You've been mostly hitting small
gas stations and convenience stores, but you really need to up your weapon game
and it would help to get more food supplies.
You enter the building as a team and in formation, no
different than ancient Greek warriors would fight. You've been drilling like
this during your rest breaks- one of the oldest forms of warfare in the world
has come back, and for good reason: it
works. Working together you present a wall of spears to any zombie threat, and
easily hack them to pieces without letting them get near you. Those on the first row stick their spears
straight out and impale zombies on them,
then step aside so that those in the
second row can lunge forward and deliver
killing blows with axes, hammers, or
similar weapons. It's brutally effective, and you see why the ancients fought
like this.
The number one rule of zombie survival is to never split up,
so while it would be faster for you to investigate the store as teams, you stick
together. You manage to score some badly needed camping equipment, a few
rifles, and loads of rounds for each. You also get practical survival equipment
like fishing poles and lures- you’ll need those for your new life in the cold. And
speaking of which, you make sure to snatch up any warm weather gear and first
aid kits you can find.
Day 25
You've made decent time despite having to keep off the major freeways, and that's good because fall will be here soon and the first snow falls not long after that. You've made it into Canada, where the situation is much the same as in the US. This isn't a national crisis, the zombies don't respect any borders.
Some of the group wants to stop here, where the weather will
be a little better than in frozen Alaska- but you know better. Bad weather is
exactly why you're going as far north as you can. You need to stay far away from anywhere temperate
for at least a year, maybe two to be safe.
By that time any reanimated flesh will have fallen apart due to decay or
zombies will simply have been eaten up by wild predators. Human’s kind of suck
without guns, so predators like bears, cougars, and wolves must be having a
field day gorging themselves on walking corpses. Then a scary thought hits you-
what if those animals become zombies too by eating zombie flesh, or perhaps by
getting bit while taking a zombie down? The thought of a zombie bear sends a chill
down your spine, and reinforces your decisions:
you're going to Alaska for two years minimum, after that nature should
have run its course and there shouldn't be many, if any zombies left.
You continue siphoning gas from vehicles you come across,
and you take more than you need for the trip. You don't know how many vehicles
you’ll encounter in rural Alaska, so you'll need plenty of gas for the future.
In a dry, cool environment gasoline can last for a few years before going bad
due to oxidation, so you should be fine storing it even over the winter. You do
pick up plenty of fuel stabilizer though from gas stations and mechanic shops
you run across, as you'll need it for storing gasoline long term. You also grab
spare tires- there's a very real risk of tire rot while vehicles are kept in
storage. Just ask the Russians inside Ukraine.
Day 40
The journey's been a lot slower than it would normally be using freeways, but you've managed to beat the winter to Alaska. Now it's a matter of finding a good place to shelter. Luckily coastal Alaska is full of a lot of small resort communities or clusters of cabins for tourists to rent during the spring and summer, and the coastal waters off Alaska are rich in all kinds of edible sea life. There's rivers everywhere which are also teeming with fish- it's the last truly untouched place in North America and life is abundant here.
You pick a small cluster of cabins on the coast not too far
from a river using a tourist attraction map you can find in most motels or gas
stations. You also pick up plenty of canned goods that you add to your sizable
stockpile in the back of both SUVs.
You've never hunted before, and the last time you went fishing you were
a kid. It's going to be a huge learning curve, but one that you can pick up
with time. Until then you're going to have to supplement your diet with canned
goods, especially during the long, freezing winter.
Humanity has thrived in every environment on earth except
Antarctica for thousands of years though; you come from one of the greatest survival
success stories in history- even if modern living has dulled your edges. If
your ancestors could do it though, so can you- especially with the help of
modern rifles and fishing poles.
As far as the zombie threat, not only is your location
remote, but as predicted when the temperature falls, the zombies you do come
across in supply and scouting runs all start to slow down. Without warm blood
coursing through their veins, the
zombies get gradually stiffer and
stiffer as the temperature plummets, and
killing them is as easy as smashing them to bits while they try to lunge at you in slow motion. It's going to be tough surviving up
here in Alaska, but if anything ends up eating you up here it's going to be
bear, wolves, or bigfoot- but definitely not a zombie.