How to Survive a Zombie Attack

Transcript Zombies are more popular than ever, but why? I know why I like them, because they freak me out; but why are they so popular on a global scale? There’s been a lot of debate about this, but I think there’s a couple reasons. One is that zombism is essentially a biological infection. It’s …

Transcript So what are some of the top Zombie movies of all time? Movies that, if you call yourself a Zombie fan, you have to see? It starts out with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. That movie started the Zombie craze as we know it today. It created the modern Zombie. Secondly, Return …

Transcript Hi. I’m Matt Mogk; I’m the Head of the Zombie Research Society, and author of ‘Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies’. Zombie Research Society is a group of academics, and artists and enthusiasts who are interested in advancing the knowledge and respect of zombies in science and survival. I’ve always been obsessed …

Transcript What is the zombie lifespan? If we can figure out how long zombies survive, we have a lot better chance of surviving ourselves. Unfortunately, we’re never going to be able to pin it down exactly, but what we can do, because we know that zombies occupy the human body, we can look at the …

Transcript There are what we call ‘zombie animals’ that already exist in nature. Some great examples are Zombie Snails; snails that are infected with a parasite that takes control of the snail’s brain, causes the snail to climb up in a tree in the open where it never normally would go, and the snails tentacles …

Transcript The modern zombie was created in 1968 with George Romero classic, ‘Night of the Living Dead’. This movie created the zombie that we know today from film, video games, and books. It was the first-ever depiction of dead coming back to life and trying to eat the living in mass hordes. Romero wasn’t inspired …

Transcript What would make up an ideal zombie survival team? You have to think about essential needs, for instance, healthcare, medicine, a doctor or a nurse, someone who has knowledge of that. A mechanic or engineer, someone that can create things, build things. Hopefully, someone that knows how to grow food. You also need to …

Transcript What would the government response be to a zombie outbreak? We can never be sure, but one thing’s certain is that they would screw it up. Talking to dozens of Disaster Preparedness experts across the globe, they all agree; governments do not respond well to unforeseen crisis. The first time a disaster happens, they …

Transcript One important question of zombie survival is how do zombies hunt? If we could figure that out, we may have a much better shot of surviving when the dead actually do rise. Some movies, zombies hunt by the sense of smell. You could, for instance, cover yourself in zombie guts and they won’t be …

Transcript There are 4 deadly threats in a zombie outbreak, and only of them is zombies. We have the zombies; that’s the obvious one. Second threat is other hostile or desperate humans. If you don’t account for other people who are potentially going to want to take your stuff or need to take your stuff, …

Transcript What is the best zombie-defense weapon? Actually, the answer really varies. You may say that the best weapon hands down is the super-badass sniper rifle made in Russia with the custom scope handcrafted by children in Finland. If you don’t have access to that rifle, that’s a worthless rifle to you. The best zombie …

Transcript What is the Voodoo Zombie? The Voodoo Zombie is an unrelated creature that springs from the Haitian voodoo tradition. Voodoo Zombies are created through a mix of religious ceremony and essentially drugging a victim. I drug you, I bury you in a coffin, and then a couple days later I dig you back up …

Transcript In a catastrophic zombie outbreak, what you’ll quickly find is the most readily available easily-to-use zombie weapon is in the bludgeon category. Bludgeon weapons are any weapons that are designed to inflict blunt force trauma on its intended victim. For instance a baseball bat is the quintessential bludgeon weapon. The advantages of bludgeon weapons …

Transcript Have there been any zombie outbreaks throughout history? There are no confirmed zombie outbreaks throughout history, but there are certain unexplained events that we look at that could point to a past zombie outbreak. One in particular is the Lost Colony of Roanoke. The Colony of Roanoke was intended to be the first permanent …

Transcript Just-in-Time Management Principal is used by pretty much all governments and businesses as a way to reduce storage costs. What it dictates is that goods and services are delivered on an as-needed basis. When I buy a can of soup from the local grocery store, it goes into the system, and on Thursday when …

Transcript What are some ways to find and purify water if you’re stuck without water in a zombie outbreak? Lack of water, having no water to drink, or drinking tainted water that causes you to get sick is as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than encountering zombies. If you’re in an urban environment, a great …

Transcript All your other options have been exhausted, there’s no way that you could avoid the fight; what should you wear in a battle when you’re taking on a zombie? First thing is, don’t do like they do in the movies; you should not wear only a t-shirt and a bandana to hack a zombie …

Transcript There’s a lot we will never know about the coming zombie plague until it actually hits. One thing we can all agree on is that people make zombies. The Number 1 rule in surviving a zombie outbreak is stay away from other people. Without other people around, there could be no people turning into …

Transcript Do zombies eat animals or are they just after humans? Some movies, they’re only eating people, other movies, for instance, ‘Night of the Living Dead’, the original modern zombie movie, they eat everything; they eat bugs off trees. They eat anything they can get their hands on that’s alive. Many movies and books show …

Transcript We already established that zombies crave the living, but do zombies eat dead people? The answer seems obvious, right? No; they’re looking for living people to hunt and infect. Let’s say I’m trapped in an alley being attacked by zombies. Then I fight them off and I survive for a while, but then I …

Transcript A key element to zombies is that they’re relentless aggressive. Why don’t they duck when you hit them? Why don’t they show any sense of self-preservation? A couple of interesting theories in humans may point to the reason. Researchers in Italy were able to find an actual switch in the brain that controlled fear …

Transcript What are beer goggle zombies? Beer goggle zombies are creatures that aren’t zombies, but if you were really drunk and not able to put together a logical train of thought, you might mistake them as zombies. For instance, Frankenstein is not a zombie. Occasionally, people will suggest that there’s a debate whether or not …

Transcript When you’re pushed into a corner and you don’t have access to any weapons, what are the best hand-to-hand combat techniques to use against a zombie? First of all, you have to remember zombies want to bite you. Zombies have toxic infected blood and bodily fluid. What you want to do is avoid, for …

Transcript What are the ups-and-downs of firearms when used in a zombie plague? There is no question that firearms are deadly. If you’ve ever brought a gun to a knife fight, chances are you are probably going to win. One of the obvious problems with firearms is that they run out of ammunition. Each firearm …

Transcript How do we judge the quality of any zombie-survival shelter? At the Zombie Research Society, we use a scale called the DSM Scale, and that stands for defensibility, sustainability, and mobility. You can look at a place like Costco for instance, is that a good zombie shelter? A lot of people think they’re going …

Transcript When looking at the safest states in the US, we can apply that same model that we that we use for the safest countries. We look at population density, gun ownership rate, military presence, public health infrastructure. What we find it that a state like New Jersey that has a population density of 1,000 …

Transcript How do you kill a zombie? The short answer is, destroy the brain. Whatever processes are working in the zombie; whether it’s a living zombie or a modern zombie, whether it’s undead or came back from the grave, however it’s functioning, we know almost for certain if you destroy the brain you kill the …

Transcript You’ve been bitten by a zombie. Can you survive it or are you going to turn into a flesh-eating ghoul yourself? The short answer is I hope you never have to find out. If we think of zombieism as an infectious disease just like any other infection, it stands to reason that where you …

Transcript In survivalist circles, there’s a common rule known as the Rule of 3. What the Rule of 3 says is in a worse-case scenario you’re dead in 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. Your Zombie Survival Plan should be centered around the Rule …

Transcript At Zombie Research Society, we took a look at every country with a population over 5 million, and rated them based on their zombie survivability. Australia comes in at the top spot, primarily because it has very low population density, large areas of land that fleeing people can escape to. It also has the …

Transcript What are the advantages and disadvantages of using an edged weapon; a weapon with a blade, a weapon designed to cut through skin? The advantage is often noted that blades don’t need reloading. Pointing to the obvious downside of firearms that once you run out of ammunition they don’t work, but blades do need …

Transcript How will a real zombie outbreak be different than the movies that we see? Probably in a lot of ways. We don’t know exactly what the zombie plague will look like until it hits, but one thing we can say for sure is that people likely are not going to behave like they do …

Transcript What is a zombie walk? In its most true sense, in its purest sense, a zombie walk consists of a group of people dressing up like zombies and walking from one location to another for no other reason than to walk from one location to another dressed up like zombies. They’re not promoting a …

Transcript What do zombies eat? The short answer is zombies eat people. They’re looking for living flesh to chew on, to swallow, to digest. In reality in a real zombie outbreak, zombies may actually not eat anything, at all; they may just bite and chew. Turns out that swallowing is actually a complex neuromuscular activity …

Transcript We’re not in the middle of a zombie plague right now, but there are certain diseases out there that are mutating in strange ways; seems like they could possibly lead to a zombie sickness. A couple most compelling ones are prion diseases. A prion is a mutated protein that when it gets in your …

Transcript The Number 1 rule in zombie combat is don’t. You want to avoid the fight at all cost. LV Corby is a leading security expert who invented the concept of the panic room. He’s been on CNN and on Oprah; he’s been all over the place. He says that when a situation devolves to …

Transcript What’s the difference between the living zombie and what we call the modern zombie? The modern zombie is the traditional undead, rise-from-the-grave ghoul that is trying to eat you. The newest innovation in zombie culture is what we call the living zombie, and that is the zombie that really got kicked off in 2002 …

Transcript What is the definition of the modern zombie? The definition that we use at the Zombie Research Society is that the modern zombie is a relentlessly aggressive reanimated human corpse driven by a biological infection. You can break that down into three parts. The first one, relentlessly aggressive: You’re not going to negotiate with …

Transcript What don’t we know about zombies? There’s actually a lot we don’t know about zombies, because we’re not in the middle of a zombie outbreak right now. We don’t have a zombie we can put on a lab table, and dissect and figure out exactly how the brain works and exactly how it’s haunting …

Transcript There’s a lot that we don’t know about the coming zombie plague and we can’t know until the dead actually rise to eat the living. There are a couple things we can say with almost certainty. One is that zombies don’t eat brains. The human mouth is too small and the human jaw is …