How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

Don't be afraid of them. They are lifeless; they move sluggishly; they are easily outrun. To a person with basic athletic ability, there is little to nothing threatening about them. The only hard thing is killing what is already dead when necessary.

On second thought, be afraid. They are soulless. They are starved for flesh and desperate for yours. They have no sense of remorse; they have no reason to hold back. What should they fear? The law? Death? They are above those.

But let your fear propel you. Use the adrenaline. Run fast. Find a defense and fight. Hiding will only protect you for so long; the human body has its “fight or flight” mechanism for a reason. Use it well.

You will attempt to hide, of course; you will try to seek cover with family, while they're still alive. They will give you food and shelter, and you will believe yourself to be safe. But soon, the house will be invaded. There will be four of them. You will try hiding, but your hiding place will give you a vantage point you do not want. They will find your mother first—paralyzed with fear, she won't react in time—and you, hiding in the kitchen cupboard whose door doesn't quite shut all the way, will be able to see everything. You can see the way her eyes spring open, the way her hands twitch as though jolted with short bursts of electricity, the steps backward she takes as she hesitates about what to do next.

She will turn to run, but not away from harm—she will head deeper into the house to save your brother, who is upstairs. Teeth inside bloody jaws will tear into her leg almost as soon as she trips. She will scream, as blood gushes onto the white tile floor that she always kept so immaculate. You will be able to do nothing to save her. Go ahead and try to look away—it will be impossible. But you will learn a valuable lesson in survival: The self comes first. Fatalities will be necessary for your own survival. Remember that.

Three of them will go upstairs. But one has seen you. You just couldn't keep your face away from the cupboard door, could you? That monster is across the room, though, and you're faster. You'll squeeze out of the cupboard and make it to the door. But your brother is still upstairs. Should you save him?

No. He's lost. You would have been too, if you'd hesitated a second longer. Run.

Out the door, down the street. There are more of them nearby. Displays of their strength and desperation are everywhere. Car doors ripped off, glass shattered on pavement. Doors of houses torn apart, practically turned to splinters. Blood spattered on surfaces of every color and texture. Even a few bodies in the streets, huge chunks of flesh and muscle missing, intestines exposed. There are no screams from inside many of the houses, because the victims have already lost the fight.

Keep running. Don't look. Don't even think. Try not to acknowledge what is happening—it will only make you hesitate, and you've already learned from your mother what happens when you get too compassionate.

You need to be able to defend yourself. There is—or, was—a conservative southern family three blocks from where your mother lived. The father was an avid, supporter of the NRA, and he kept a gun safe with nine shotguns inside. Go to that house and steal one of the guns. You don't need to know the security code to open the safe—the family, of course, had tried to defend themselves, after all. (“And them damn Democrats wanted to take away my guns!” the father had insisted as he fumbled to open the safe. “Said we didn't need 'em for self defense! Damn it, I wanna protect my family!”—Though he had never intended to use them for anything but hunting and showing off to fellow gun fanatics.) Not a single gun was removed—they got to him before he could do any more than tug the door open.

Don't feel guilty for taking the gun. This is no time to worry about laws or morals. Besides, the family that owned it won't be needing it anymore anyway.

Pack a bag of food and water and head outside of town. You need to be someplace sparsely populated. Those monsters will look for cities. They will look for places where all the people are. Parks, schools, huge office buildings where stuffy people in stuffy suits will try to convince themselves that they're overworked and hallucinating because none of this could be real. Those are the easy targets.

You'll be safer out in the country, hiding on the farms. The field corn is as tall as you are and conceals you easily. Even if, in desperation, they venture out onto the farms and ransack the buildings, they won't expect you to be hiding out among the vegetation.

Days will pass. Maybe a week. It will be hard to keep track; you'll barely sleep, and that's good. You shouldn't sleep. You can't risk letting them find you incapacitated.

It's best to keep moving from place to place, but stay among the fields so you can remain hidden. And for God's sake, don't lose that shotgun.

When you do stumble upon a different city after trekking through farmland for a few days, don't expect any better a sight than that of the city you left. But you will need to stop in the city. After a few days, your supplies will be running low. You'll need to stock up again on food and water. Don't worry about money. The cash registers will be unattended, and surveillance and security aren't necessary now.

Those few people who have made it this far may offer you help. Do not trust them. Remember the lesson you learned when you left your mother's house—that others may need to be sacrificed to keep yourself alive? Others have figured that out too. If you aren't careful, it may be your life that gets sacrificed.

Get into the store. Don't let yourself be seen. Be careful. Keep that shotgun on you and ready. The most important key to survive a zombie apocalypse is to be prepared—

THEY'RE HERE. Here, in the shop. Move. Move. Shit, why did you drop the shotgun? Pick it up! They're coming—there are three, blood dribbling down their faces, clothing ripped, graying flesh rotting away to reveal half-decayed muscle and filthy bone. Grab the gun and shoot! For god's sake, stop gawking and shoot!

BANG! One of them is hit in the chest. But it isn't deterred. It stumbles, but only for a moment, before lurching forward.

BANG! Better aim this time—the one closest to you is hit square in the forehead. It falls back, and the others swarm around it. There are too many of them. Try to run—but no, they're closing in, and the shop is small with no back way out. Why did you let them corner you?

They're too close now to bother shooting. Swing the shotgun like a bat, try to beat them away—but they're stronger and more resilient than they look. They seem impervious to pain. If you're quick, maybe you can maneuver—

One of them catches your ankle as you try to dodge around them toward the door. You hit the ground with a hard thud and the discharge of the shotgun (which mercifully didn't end up shooting you), and the next thing you're aware of is a sharp pain in your leg. You look to see it bent over you—a rotting head with wisps of hair clotted into the blood, sinking its yellowed teeth into your thigh. The pain seems to spread instantly through your whole leg.

With a desperate swing, you bring the butt of the shotgun down hard on the creature's skull. A satisfying crack tells you the target was hit; it releases you. You're lucky the monsters are so slow. One of them dives for you, but you roll out of its way and run to the door.

The burning sensation in your leg is hard to ignore, but you keep running anyway. You need to get back out of the city. Don't worry about the food and water now—it isn't worth it. You go back in there, you'll die, and the food won't do you any good then. Just keep running.

But the pain in your leg is getting worse by the second. Minutes pass and you feel like your leg is being torn off. You're gasping for air; you're half a mile away now. Don't stop. You can't afford to slow down. You can't take another attack.

Everything is blurring by you as you try to keep your focus on the street in front of you. Your thoughts become more and more clouded as you get more short of breath. Air is coming in sharp, painful gasps now. You're almost at city limits...But, abruptly, you stop.

There's something in the city that you want. Something that you need. Your mouth begins to water as you take a few steps back toward the heart of the city. So many people here...such tender flesh and muscle. You drop your bag. You don't need that kind of food anymore.