It’s Monday Mayhem and you know what that means—yep, zombies running amok making life miserable for all humanity.
Los Angeles
If you’ve read my Zombie Apocalypse: Revisited post last week, I wrote how I believed if a zombie apocalypse were to take place it would happen in a large urban area. Some have mentioned to me later that it would be more difficult to detect the event in a rural area instead, thus a challenge to contain.
Regardless of where it happens, we’d still have to find ways to defend ourselves. In my post Zombie Kill of the Week II, I wrote a detailed list of how I’d like to see zombies killed. As amusing as it was writing that post, some truth remains: If a zombie were to enter our house, what would we do? It’s fun saying we’d love to jam an ice pick in the soft part of its temple but if we didn’t have an ice pick, it ain’t goin’ die by lookin’ at the thing and screamin’. That’s a fact.
So, what are we to do? What would you do?
Here are a few tips you can use in the event the world collapses and the zombies begin knocking on your door.
Doorway
Do not open the door. Simple, right? Wrong. Those resilient maggot bags will stop at nothing if they hear life creaking inside your house. Don’t assume they’ll show up in the middle of the day either. Expect the unexpected. They can appear anytime. If you have a snorer in the house, lock ‘em in a windowless room in the basement. You don’t need those miserable gut suckers chomping on anyone in your household at three in the morning. Bar all the doors with deadbolts and chairs. Board up your windows and make only one door your access point. Dictate which door they can use.
Keep weapons handy. If zombies make it into the house, let their first greeting be a bullet to the head. Nothing says hello like a .357 Magnum. Be careful though, a gunshot will alert the others and instead of fending off one, you’ll have to deal with a whole neighborhood full of scab festerers. That’s why it would be a good idea to keep an assortment of garden tools interspersed throughout the house. A shovel can perform the duel role of cracking skulls and burying the remains. A hoe can function in a similar manner. Again, always think of the multiple uses for these tools. Now let’s say one of these brain eaters chases you around the house. What are you going to do? Sporting equipment works good too. Wouldn’t it be a relief to know at the end of a hall you can grab a baseball bat and beat the living tar out of these zombies? There’s nothing like hearing the crack of a Louisville Slugger upside the head of an undead.
Plan an escape route. If worse comes to worse and the whole house gets overrun with those walking fly heaps, the next and best course of action is to—RUN! Don’t stick around. Don’t even look back. You cannot afford to stay in the house any longer. Take what you can carry and head for the hills. Your life depends on it. If you’d planned ahead, you would have left a loose bottom board to one of the ground floor windows to make it easy for you to kick in and crawl through. Better still, you could have rigged the whole house to explode with you and your family safely halfway to the woods. This would ensure the zombies would remain in the house and you wouldn’t have to worry about stragglers chasing you.
Prepare a secondary home. As with any plan there should always be a Plan B. If something should happen to your primary residence, it would be beneficial to have a secondary residence in mind to act as your temporary home. This could be anything from a barn, a tent in the woods to a shed. Anything that will function as a place where you can lay your head without worrying if you’ll still have a head by morning.
These are only a few tips to keep those vermin beasts at bay while you plan your escape for the coast and hop on a boat for the nearest island away from it all.
Zombieland is a grim film. It provides a commentary on society’s ills, and demonstrates humanity’s failure to manage an apocalypse of grand proportions contrasted against civilized utopian values. Cinematic enthusiasts do well by taking this movie seriously. Queue the vinyl record scratch. Yeah, right. Are you sure we’re talking about the same movie here?
Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee
If you’re a new reader to Wednesday Warriors, this series is not about stuffy interpretations of male movie protagonists. No, it’s about having fun! And what better way to have fun than to shine the spotlight on Tallahassee, the lone wolf, undead Zombieland killer?
Let’s dispense with the pleasantries and go for the jugular. When we first meet Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), he’s not your typical zombie exterminator. He likes Twinkies. He’ll do anything to find Twinkies. And his idea of a party is feasting on a plateful of Twinkies. Did I say he likes Twinkies?
Zombieland
How’s that for a good start? Oh, and he’s real good with a shotgun. And a Louisville Slugger. And hedge clippers. A little off the top is what he always says to an oncoming zombie threat.
To his benefit, Tallahassee does like kids. On his journey to find the last Twinkie, he has travelling with him an insecure teenager called Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) trying to reach Ohio, Wichita (Emma Stone), a kick-ass chick whose attitude is more suitable with a ship full of sailors, and her sister Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), who is good at taking advantage of other people’s good nature.
Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson
Also, when it comes to working with others, Tallahassee has only one rule: stay out of the way. He has a method to dealing with the undead that may not be as pleasant as one might expect. He actually has fun killing them. In one instance, he rings the dinner bell to attract the wrong kind of attention. But it is nothing that a shotgun can’t cure.
Then there’s the matter of his anger. He doesn’t have any. He’s one of the most laid-back, zombie-fighting characters on screen. When confronted by a huge horde, he’s smiling through the whole thing wondering if he could get a selfie with one of them before he bashes their brains with a two-by-four.
Enjoy the little things.
Yet, if anyone thinks Tallahassee lacks compassion, let’s not forget he is the one who keeps falling for Wichita and Little Rock’s dirty tricks to surrender his gun. He has to help. His nature dictates he has to aid those less able to help themselves. He has that compassion running through him he’d rather not let anyone else see, but he hasn’t a choice when the situation calls for it. He cares about others, even if he shows otherwise.
And you know what? I like Tallahassee. He’s a courageous character. There’s no lying with him. Either you’re for him or against him. None of that wishy-washy “oh, I don’t think we should be doing this” stuff with him. He takes his hits and keeps moving forward.
Have you seen Zombieland? What do you think of Tallahassee?
Two years ago, I wrote an article called Zombie Emergency Kit based on the CDC‘s Zombie Preparedness page. In the article, I go on in detail about what kind of items people should keep at their disposal in order to survive a zombie apocalypse. I thought for today’s Monday Mayhem feature, I would revisit the topic and add a few more points to the already long list of items.
Emergency Preparedness Kit
Let me be clear about one thing: If there ever was a zombie apocalypse, I hope I’m dead and buried way before then. I don’t know about anyone else, but if I see a zombie roaming about my property, no amount of convincing will deter me from my main course of action—and that is to run.
Right, but what if you make it through the first wave of zombie attacks? What then? You’ll need to make do with what you have on hand. That’s where this list comes in handy.
Jack Flacco’s Zombie Emergency Kit
Water, food, clothing and any other miscellaneous items—your neighbors will have many of these items available once they’ve turned into zombies
The only item on the CDC list left untouched: first aid kit (whistle, antibiotic ointment, bandages, face masks, gloves and reference book)
Multipurpose supplies (Louisville Slugger baseball bat, golf club, screwdriver, hammer, butcher knife, darts, picture frame wire, shards of glass)
Real paper map(s) of the area
Having the supplies is one thing, knowing what to do with them is another.
Finding a place to hide for a few days at a time will be the key. If a one-gallon ration of water per day per person is doable, then hiding in a basement will be comfortable. Food can be hard to find, given much of the supply chain will no longer exist. But if you can muster canned goods from your now-undead neighbor, life will be good. You can live for months in the same neighborhood going from house to house living off supplies stashed in cupboards and pantries.
Be prepared.
Getting your hands on a first aid kit will also be critical for survival. Zombies love the smell of blood. One nick from a razor could mean death. Make sure you have plenty of bandages and lots of antiseptic. You don’t know what germs will be floating around when the undead walk the earth. My rule of thumb is never to touch your face. Germs tend to live on surfaces for a long time, up to twenty-four hours. Best keeping your hands where you can see them. You never know when touching something can lead to unintended results.
Now comes the fun part. As a means of keeping your friends and family safe, you’ll need a few things. My personal choice, as it should be in any zombie survivor’s bag of tricks is the Louisville Slugger baseball bat. It’s portable, you don’t run out of bullets, and you can make a mess of things from a fair distance. A golf club will do the same thing, but I prefer baseball to golf. Again, that’s a personal choice. A screwdriver, hammer, butcher knife will take care of things as well, however you’ll have to get close to the undead to unleash your brand of justice. Suffice it say, there is no end to the creativity a zombie slayer possesses in the throes of an apocalypse.
Last thing on the list is sporting around a real paper map. Can you still find one these days? If you don’t know where you’re going, you certainly don’t know where you are. Having a paper map will help with finding supply stores that may still hold stock. However, should a good portion of the population have survived a change into zombiehood, it would be better to hunker down in some farm, grow your own food and live the life of a nomad.
In other words, and this is my final advice—stay out of the cities.
What would you do if one night you awoke to the sound of a zombie ambling through your house? Would you attempt to find and kill it? Or would you run as fast as you could to evade its ferocious appetite?
Zombie in the house
Occasionally I ask these hypothetical questions for my Monday Mayhem series as a way to explore what my readers are thinking. I don’t ask these questions all the time, but this week I thought it would be fun thinking through the scenario with the understanding that whatever anyone says, it does not leave this site. We might actually get something done today.
Right. Moving along.
The scenario also works if you hear a zombie at three in the morning moaning in the middle of the hall of the apartment building. The scenario doesn’t need to take place in a house. And, if you’re living in the woods somewhere, well, then you’re free to do whatever you want.
Again, I’ll ask the question. What would you do if a zombie awakens you from your slumber in the safety of your domicile? Would you run? Or would you fight back?
This is what I would do—it’s all hypothetical anyway. I would first find out about the moaning. If it were during a time when the zombie apocalypse has just taken over the world, then I’ll know it’s the undead coming to claim a victim. However, if the zombie apocalypse has yet to spring into action, then I’ll have a number of things to consider.
Things for me to consider will be to understand if the thing in the house was real. It could be that the water tank was making noises again. But if it wasn’t the water tank, then I’m the type of guy who would have to see with my own eyes what was causing the chaos.
Once I’ve determined I can see it, I have to know if I can kill it. Then again, it could be human, and he/she was simply breaking in. Although if the thing was moaning I doubt it would be human. The point being, I want to know if it truly is one of those rot chewers whose life has disappeared in a mangled array of decomposing sinew and tissue. End of my rambling.
If it is one of the undead, then I can’t let it go roaming about the house without doing something about it. As someone familiar with zombies, I have to get it out of my home much like chasing a bat out of the bedroom with a broom. In the outdoors, I can then deliver some heavy Old Testament retribution.
Luckily I sleep with a baseball bat next to the bed. Oh, wait—that was in the other house I was living in. Well, from now on I will be sleeping with a baseball bat next to the bed.
This is my plan: I’ll retrieve my Louisville Slugger, run past it down the stairs and outside to the backyard. If it takes the bait, it’ll come after me. But I’ll be ready for it. All I need are a few quick swipes and it’ll be eating lumber in no time.
Okay, so that’s what I would do. What would you do?
Looking to God 