The Zombiegeddon Fitness Plan: Being the Best You Can Be, in Case of the Zombie Apocalypse

So, I recently got a gym membership.  I’m looking to drop about 40 pounds, and I really needed something to do, so the gym is kind of perfect.  And while losing weight is awesome, and being healthy and fit is great too, I have to admit that in the back of my mind (or maybe somewhere closer to the middle) one of my motivations is definitely Zombiegeddon.  Having been expecting zombies to show up for years now, I have run over so many scenarios, so many times, and one thing is clear – staying alive will not be a cakewalk.  Unfortunately for those of us who are out of shape I think that survival under these circumstances will require a good amount of running, walking, jumping, and hiding in often uncomfortable places (though the backseat of a Volkswagen wouldn’t be a particularly good spot to hide from zombies.  Just FYI.).  Endurance, strength and flexibility will be huge assets, and in fact may mean the difference between life and death. 

Today I started actually working out, getting in shape.  Today I also started my self-training for the Zombie Apocalypse.  There are lots of great reasons to get in shape, and they all factor in to why I decided to pay good money to make myself all sweaty and out of breath.  But perhaps the most entertaining, and the most ridiculously motivating is the possibility that you may need to be in the best shape possible to prevent being eaten alive by zombies.  Think about it.

Zombies Everywhere! .11

Ok, so you may be asking yourself how my new-found friend didn’t know about the zombie apocalypse.  Well this comes down to assumptions that popular zombie culture have bred in many people.  In the movies there are always zombies everywhere – kinda hard to miss.  Or, there is a news program on that tells you what is happening.  Or the lead character wakes up from a coma and everything is already in full swing.  My point is that in fictionalized accounts of this sort of thing exposition and the need to move the plot along leads to things being taken for granted, and to things happening conveniently because that’s the easiest way to do things.  But when it is really happening, as with the rest of life, things are not so simple.

For instance, depending on what is the cause of zombieism, the condition might spread rapidly, might not.  In this case, I can’t tell you for sure what caused the zombies.  I never saw a news report about it, or stumbled into some secret government lab containing conveniently laid out explanatory documents that shed light on the matter (or at least I haven’t yet 🙂 ).  I have theories, of course, most everyone I’ve met has theories.

From what I can tell this plague started out slowly, probably taking at least a day or two to pick up speed.  I think that at the time I took notice it was at some kind of mid-stage.  It seems to travel like a virus, transmitted through bodily fluids.  However it also seems to afflict the dead, whether or not the person had been infected whilst living.  I’ve personally seen a previously uninfected dead guy get up and walk around with no apparent provocation.  Due to this I believe that the cause is pathogenic – viral or possibly fungal.  I’m not a doctor or a scientist of any sort, but, like I said, everyone has a theory.

My slightly confused hero lived further out into the country than I did, so it’s not so surprising that he was unaware that the world was falling into zombie-induced chaos.  It took a lot of folks by surprise.  And unfortunately the element of surprise is a hell of a great advantage.

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Zombies Everywhere .10

Once upon a time there was a beautiful damsel held prisoner in a tree by 4 ghoulish undead warriors.  For days she sat perched in this tree, waiting for what she had assumed to be the short zombie attention span to bring her respite, but alas!  It seemed that her predicament could result in only one tragic ending, until from her high vantage point she spied a handsome gentleman strolling by, and she rejoiced because she knew that her hero had arrived.

Ok, so, just for the record, zombies do have much greater powers of attention than you might assume.  I wasn’t stuck in that damn tree for days, more like a day, but trust me it felt much longer (most trees aren’t big on amenities).  But the benefit of my situation was that I had a great view of the surrounding area.  I could see two houses and a barn within what looked like a mile.  I also saw a guy walking up the road in the same direction that I’d been walking.  My heart literally leapt when I saw him; he was nicely built, strong and relatively tall, and his steady gait and clean appearance suggested that he was alive (always a good sign).  My first instinct was to call for help, but I didn’t want to alert the zombies to his presence, as he seemed to be unarmed.  I was trying to think what the best course of action was when things were taken out of my hands – he started whistling – just a whistling, taking a nice morning stroll…

Predictably the zombies attention was drawn and they started their slow shamble away from my tree and towards the road.

“Hey!” I called, “Hey I’m stuck in a tree, can you hear me?”

The guy stopped and looked around, and I waved my arms frantically so he could pick me  out of the dense mass of branches and pine needles.  Finally he caught sight of me.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah.  There are zombies coming right towards you!”

“What?” He started laughing, “How long have you been in that tree?  I’ll be right over, just hold on.”

“NO, no.  Don’t come over here!  There are zombies, seriously!”

But he obviously hadn’t heard the news yet, and though that I was joking, or off my rocker, and he was making his way towards the stand of trees where I had been residing without hesitation.  And I was now faced with the fact that I was going to have to rescue my rescuer or else watch him torn apart by the living dead.

“Shit.  What the fuck?” I muttered as I scanned the ground below me to make sure that all my stalkers had really walked away.  I then scrambled down the tree as fast as I possibly could.  On the ground I could still see the zombies, moving just ridiculously slowly, and I could hear my hero stomping through brush not far away.  I needed a plan, or a weapon.  I took a deep breath and looked around.  All that I could see was trees, pine needles and fallen branches.  By now the guy from the road had come through the brush and could see the zombies who were diligently approaching him.  I grabbed a large branch off the ground, one that I though looked sturdy, and ran over towards them.  The gentleman was surprised to see four other guys in the woods, and I’m not sure if he had time to put together their disheveled appearance and shambling gait with my warning of zombies, before I came up and hit one of them brutally.  The zombie fell to the ground and I yelled, “They’re zombies!”, as I swung widely trying to hit as many of  the others as possible.  I jumped over the fallen zombie so that I was standing next to my would-be rescuer and said, “I could really use your help here!”, as I pushed away zombies with the end of my branch. Luckily he didn’t  take too long on the uptake and he grabbed his own branch and started fighting.  I bashed in the head of the fallen zombie, and then turned my attention on the next closest one.  By swinging forcefully and ignoring the horrible wet thwacking and the eventual crack of the skull, I dispatched another zombie and turned to see who was next.  To my great relief, the work had been done, and the only other animated being in sight was the poor confused guy from the road, standing holding a blood-splattered branch and looking both disturbed and confused.

“Hey, are you ok?” I asked.

“What…are…were…”

“Zombies.  The living dead.  They’re all over the place, I can’t believe you didn’t know.”

“These guys were zombies?”

“Yep, they had me stuck up that tree for a whole day.  God knows when they would have left if you hadn’t come by.  So, thanks man.”

“Yeah, no problem, I guess.  What should we do?  Like, call the cops, or something?”

“Um, I’m kind of guessing that they have their hands full.  I was on my way to try to find a gun or some other kind of weapon when these ones cornered me, so that’s probably what I’m going to do now.  I think there are a few houses not too far from here.”

“I know where there are guns,” he said, “I bet we could get our hands on a few of them.”

“That would be awesome.”

“It’s only a little over a mile from here.”

“Ok, let’s go.  If we’re quiet and keep our eyes open, we could make it.”

And so, clutching our branches, we made our way out through the trees to the road.

Zombies Everywhere! .09

Image via Wikipedia

You know what are great?  Trees.   Trees, and spoons, and European history.  But trees are the greatest during Zombiegeddon because they are numerous and, best of all, zombies can’t  climb trees!  Man, do I love trees.

Whatever was causing people to become zombies, it was working fast.  Even heading away from town, I encountered a large number of zombies.  I attribute this to the element of surprise that zombies have over normal, non-zombie expecting folks.  And of course one cannot ignore that amazingly fast turnover rate that the bitten suffer from.  I didn’t know it at the time, but even if you aren’t fatally wounded by a zombie bite, death is swift to follow regardless, which has led some people to believe that the zombies are venomous,  though I don’t subscribe to this hypothesis myself.

I was searching for a gun, but before I could even get to another house there were at least four zombies who had caught sight of me.  I would have just kept going, and avoided the ones I could see coming, but one caught me  off guard, shambling out from behind a particularly dense stand of pine trees, and so I had little recourse but to go up, away from my pursuers.  Before long all four zombies were at the base of the tree, moaning and reaching up towards me, unable to follow, but stalwart in their determination.  Still, their limbs were unable to be coordinated towards their goal, and after a minute or so I began to relax a bit, as it became clear that climbing was not in the zombie repertoire.  I even laughed a bit, though bitterly and without mirth, “Stupid zombies”.