The Zombie Preparedness Initiative
Of course, we all know how valuable bacon would be in the case of a zombie apocalypse (the correct answer being “more valuable than gold”). This very topic was discussed at Baconfest in regards to the Tactical Bacon. Commenter Victor Tookes was quick to point out this post on How to Make Bacon Post Apocalypse.
This article is great, with some fantastic quotes:
There is no reason that the walking dead should stop humanity from enjoying it’s crowning culinary achievement.
and
Pigs are fantastic, magical animals, they turn vegetables into bacon.
Tell me that is not just *dying* to be put on a tee-shirt.
However, the informative bacon posts are just the beginning! It is well worth looking around the rest of the Zombie Preparedness Initiative’s website!
Hours and hours of things to read there. Important, life saving things. Keep in mind, this is the only zombie organization specifically inspired by Shaun of the Dead. And if that doesn’t make them serious enough, they have an .org extension on their webpage. They are an organization people!
An important organization with an important mission. I want all of you to study up. We’ll each have our roles to play, and we don’t have room on the team for any slackers.
I wish I had these when I was a kid
Remember those little army men you used to play with when you were little? I used to love those things, but what could you really do with them? Not much. And honestly, is it really appropriate to have kids waging little wars? Probably not.
UNLESS those army men were doing something a little more constructive than fighting wars, such as fighting zombies. Thanks to ThinkGeek you can now get scaled down zombie and zombie fighter army men.
Not just for kids either: now you can practice your zombie plans easily and accurately. You want to talk about constructive toys that can really teach your kids something worthwhile…
Search Term Rollup
“sharktopus colouring in pages” – Like, for kids to color? We’re still talking about this thing, right? That’s what you want your kids to be coloring?
“are zombies allergic to pee circles” – Well? Are they? Because that sure could simplify my zombie apocalypse plans quite a bit…
“what if a praying mantis sees himself in a mirror” – Indeed. What if.
“pipe manners meth” – You know, I’d hate to be impolite when I’m SMOKING METH.
“animated gifs allergic reaction” – An animated gif of an allergic reaction, or a person who is allergic to animated gifs?
“stomp on my glasses please” – WHAAA?
“bowling mustache” – Isn’t that redundant? Is there any other kind of mustache?
“president riding a dinosaur” – Yes please! You show me a president riding on a dinosaur, and I show you my vote, no questions asked.
“how to make baby stuffed quilts” – I’d go for wool myself, but I suppose babies would work too.
“how to draw the green bay packers logo” – IT’S THE LETTER G
“why u-shaped toilet seat pee on floor” – I know, right?
“negative points of putting sandhood and milk on face” – Because, I see the positives of rubbing sand (hood?) and milk on your face, but I just can’t see what the negatives are?
Search Term Roundup
“things that start with the letter a” – I’m guessing that returned a lot of search results.
“harry potter wands for sale cheap” – It’s like, I want to do magic, but I’m on a budget, you know?
“heat seeking balloons” – Oh god, pull up! It’s right on your tail! Evasive maneuvers! It looks like a heat seeking…balloon?
“when it rains it pours zombie?” – When it rains, it pours….zombies? Paratrooping zombies falling from the skies? The horror.
“80′s – ohh ohh ohh ohhhhhhhhhh ohhhhh” – This one makes me laugh, both in the futility of the search, but also because I have been reduced to performing similar searches before. (specifically “Ber ner ner ner, ber ner ner ner, ber ner ner NER ner ner ner”)
“funny zombie birthday quotes” – That’s…very specific. Funny zombie quotes are hard enough to come by, but to only limit them to birthday quotes…
“bigbutt wemon” – This is actually the only way I find my own site.
“bacon worshipping religion” – Yes please.
“potluck flowchart” – Is there bacon wrapped weenies? Yes -> take 10, No -> be sad
“facebook for people without kids” – I guess I didn’t realize it was specific for people with kids?
“jet ski urban crime” – Awesome idea, however, not a lot of urban places are accessible by jet ski. Chicago just might be one of them, though…
“is it bad if people hero worship you” – As a person who is most likely hero worshiped practically nonstop (I assume), I am definitely the right person to answer this question. Seriously though, who asks this question and how do they fit their enormous head through the door?
Technology: our advantage over the undead
They might have unflagging strength and endurance as well as overwhelming numbers, but what they do not have is reliable Internet access.
Jump on the zombie survival map at Map of the Dead, and get your location in Google maps highlighted with nearby zombie survival necessities, such as gun stores, outdoor stores, grocery stores, hardware stores, hospitals and pharmacies, and other areas of interest such as harbors, police stations and liquor stores. Oh yeah, cemeteries are clearly marked as well.
Looking at the map, I realize I’m totally screwed. First off, I live in a food desert, so there’s not going to be much to scavenge. There isn’t much retail, and no stores that would be of use to me. I do live close to a hospital and a harbor, but those things are about equidistant from me, with an enormous cemetery in the third direction.
Doesn’t look good folks.
Anybody have a particularly good or particularly bad location?
Google Search Term Rollup
“random things nobody would ever think of” – Good luck with that search.
“swashbuckling chicken” – I just…I…wow.
“so i stopped the apocalypse” – …and now I’m looking for something else to do.
“things that are going well in schools” – Aw, this made me so sad! I just imagine some depressed parent looking for just one example they could point to that something was going well in our schools these days…and only able to find my blog.
“rocket propelled banana” – Not sure what it has to do with me, but I’m in!
“advantage of pseudopods” – Plastic surgery has gotten so crazy these days. People are actually weighing the merits of attaching pseudopods?
“von trapp dog training” – So long, farewell, arf wienerdog, goodnight.
“just simple drawings of different types of puppets” – That’s all I’m looking for. Is that so much to ask, Internet?
“zombie narwhals” – This one captured my imagination. I googled it myself and found a surprising number of hits! There’s a wealth of information about this topic. I never knew narwhals were such staunch zombie fighters! And the possibility that all their zombie fighting might inevitably lead to a few zombie narwhals has come up a time or two before. Absolutely fascinating.
“zombies vs jedi” – I’m sorry, but this wouldn’t be much of a fight. I don’t know how I’ve never considered a lightsaber as a zombie fighting weapon before, but I’d be hard pressed to imagine anything better for slaying zombies!
“The first snowfall of the winter of a boys 18th year means he must take his first step towards manhood.” – This was actually a spam comment, but it is definitely the strangest one I have ever received!
The Mobile Zombie Safehouse
You know, the first step in a lot of zombie apocalypse plans is to find some kind of safe place to hole up. Usually you take something that is moderately safe to begin with, like your house or the corner store, and then fortify it in some way. However, most people will tell you that mobility is your best ally, which tends to conflict with the first part. But some outside-the-box thinkers are selling the best of both worlds: I give you the mobile zombie safehouse:
- Click for Larger
Big enough for two (probably not very comfortably, but this is the zombie apocalypse we’re talking about here), and yet you can carry it on your back. I love the picture at the end, which implies 1) that the “reflective camouflage” is so good that a person can’t easily spot those things without an app, 2) that cell phone towers are still functioning, and 3) there are so many people with mobile zombie safehouses, that they’re literally sprinkled all over this field (which seems to be pretty zombie-free to begin with). Oh well, if their marketing saves even one person from being eaten by a zombie, that’s a job well done!
Link via Nathan.
Another day, another species of zombie is born
Alright, nature, I think you’ve reached a new low.
Here we have a virus which infects caterpillars, and turns them into zombies. The virus forces them to climb up in the tree and grab on, where they slowly liquefy, raining down virus-infected body-goop to affect other caterpillars and begin the circle of caterpillar zombie life anew.
This particular virus only affects gypsy moths…as if they weren’t bad enough to begin with. However, as awful as the gypsy moth menace is, I can’t condone turning things into zombies. That’s just bound to go wrong. As long as we live in a world where a zombie-producing virus lives, there’s always a chance that virus mutates into something that can affect humans.
This kind of reminds me of the zombie ants. That’s right, we now know about a kind of zombie created by a fungus, and another created by a virus. And you people scoff at my zombie preparations! Who’s laughing now?
Link via Sara who enjoys nothing more than horrifying me.
CDC recommends preparing for the zombie apocalypse
The other day, the Center for Disease Control, more commonly known as the CDC, released a statement saying that Americans should be prepared for the zombie apocalypse.
I have to say, this validates everything. This isn’t just some crazy blogger out there, this is the CDC we’re talking about. WHAT DO THEY KNOW THAT WE DON’T KNOW??
Their blog has some good zombie apocalypse tips, such as ”Pick a meeting place for your family to regroup in case zombies invade your home”. They even have special badges to use on webpages:
I’m telling you man, when someone who knows from diseases like the CDC tells you to be prepared…a part of the U.S. government…it’s time to be on your toes!
Link via Barb (and many of my other informants in the Zombie Information Network).
Zombie Proof House
Just to prove that you *can* have your cake and eat it too, someone made a really awesome looking house that can go into total, zombie-proof lock down mode. The first ever zombie-proof house!
This house can go from open-and-airy, like this:
To total concrete bunker, like this:
This place even has a drawbridge to the only entrance (which happens to be on the second story):
I think it’s awesome. If you told me you were building a zombie-proof, concrete bunker, I would tell you it was a great idea, but I never would have imagined something that actually seemed as nice and livable on the inside as this. And notice some of the nice features, like the concrete wall running around the property. They don’t give many details about the other required features of a zombie-proof house, such as generators, food storage, access to clean water, etc., but it seems like the kinds of things you would have included if you went to the trouble of making foot thick, concrete blast doors.
I’m not really sure if this is zombie-proof, but I think it’s got about the best chance of any real place I’ve ever seen.
Link via Ben.
Happy Zombie Jesus Day!
I was going to start a zombie-based religion, but then I remembered there already was one.
He Is Risen…and he hungers for your soul.
Happy Zombie Jesus Day!
Coming Soon to a survival shelter near you
You know how you want to stock up your Zombie Apocalypse bunker, but you (r wife) just never quite (lets you) get the time to go around and actually get the supplies? Well, now you can just pick them up next time you’re out shopping.
Costco now offers the complete 3-month, 2-person Food Supply with 55-gallon Barrel Water Storage System, for the low, low price of $999.99 (because there’s no way I would pay $1,000 for it). We’re talking “4,251 Total Servings which Averages Over 2,000 Calories Per Person Per Day”. My question is, how much space does it actually take up? It seems like it must be huge.
I will give them credit, they do have nice, colorful marketing images. It looks downright cheery!
Apocalypse with a Smile!
I have to wonder, though, if the cheeriness and marketing is really appealing to the target market. I’m not sure those colorful cans would go with the average survivalist shelter decor.
In case you are nervous about plunking your money down, good news! There are reviews. Nobody has given it less than a full 5 star rating. Looks like a winner!
Link via Sara.
Why waste your time planning for all these OTHER ridiculous disasters…
…when there are real, actual threats you should be planning for!
Link via GraphJam.
That’s called preparedness
From full sleep to fighting zombies in 30 seconds or less:
Picture via FailBlog.
How the Boxcar Children led me to the Zombie Apocalypse
When I was little, I loved the book The Boxcar Children. I’m talking the original book here, not the 700 books that came later in the series, where they were solving mysteries and fighting Nazis and what have you.
There was something I just loved about these kids living in this boxcar, making a go of it. They’d scavenge things from the junkyard and modify them to make their life a little more comfortable. I remember how it blew my mind when they made a little refrigerator by putting their milk in a little cave under the creek. It was awesome. I loved it.
For me, the zombie apocalypse is like a modern day Boxcar Children. It’s the ultimate you’re-on-your-own scenario. It’s imagining how you could adapt things to a different use. How you could carve out your own little comfortable castle in the middle of the chaos. It’s the ultimate exercise in self-sufficiency.
In fact, I think they should redo the whole book, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies style. The children hiding out in their boxcar while the zombies groan outside, scratching out a living until Mr. Henry comes and whisks them away to his island compound.
This would fit so perfectly, that I’m not 100% sure it wasn’t the original intention of the book. It was originally published in 1924, so zombie books probably weren’t quite so common back then. But even as a kid, I could read between the lines.
Boxcar fortress. Zombies. Think about it.
Zombie Apocalypse – Dead on Arrival
There aren’t a lot of bigger zombie apocalypse supporters than me. So, when I see an article entitled 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly), I get ready to scoff. However, I read the entire article, and I have to say that they make some pretty good arguments! Unfortunately, I have to admit that they have a point. The 7 reasons are as follows:
7. They Have Too Many Natural Predators
6. They Can’t Take the Heat
5. They Can’t Handle the Cold
4. Biting is a Terrible Way to Spread a Disease
3. They Can’t Heal from Day to Day Damage
2. The Landscape is Full of Zombie-Proof Barriers
1. Weapons and the People Who Use Them
You really have to go read the article, because looking at that list isn’t very convincing. But basically the gist of it is that zombie movies downplay certain key factors, and up-play other key factors, to make a convincing movie. In reality, all those little details they are fudging would mount up to a significant, zombie-stopping force. For example, people are more organized and better at killing things than you might imagine (that’s how we got to the top of the food chain to begin with), hot corpses fill with gas until they explode, maggots and bacteria are pretty efficient at dismantling dead meat, there’s no way every bite could lead to infection, etc., etc., etc.
Go take a look at the list and tell me you’re not convinced.
Looking at that list brought me to another list on the same site, 5 Popular Zombie Survival Tactics (That Will Get You Killed).
5. Raiding the Gun Store
4. Get Out of Town
3. Fortify Your Base
2. Conserve Ammo: Use Melee Weapons When Possible
1. Always Aim for the Head
Basically these kind of come down to, “Hey, you’re not the only person who thought of that, idiot.” They’re right to point out that pretty much everybody has the same plan. The details might be different, but the general outline is the same. And I don’t know how many gun stores you have in your neighborhood, but chances are they’re going to get a little crowded. Not to mention that most of us aren’t the superheroes we think we are, where every shot is a head shot, dancing through scores of bodies without getting a drop of blood on us. In other words, real life isn’t a video game.
Who knew cracked.com would be the sanest place to get zombie advice??
Organ Trail
I’m pretty sure most of you have played Oregon Trail. Ride your wagon from landmark to landmark, busting axles and getting cholera and dysentery until you eventually try to ford a river that’s too high and your entire party is swept out to sea. Just think of all the hard-won buffalo meat you’ve lost!
Well anyway, that’s all fine and well, but you can’t really relate to it. Who’s a pioneer these days anyway? No, we need something more realistic. We need Organ Trail.
Organ Trail is a little different. Organ Trail has zombies. It’s essentially a one-to-one redo of Oregon Trail, except this time you’re traveling in a station wagon, and your ammo is for killing zombies, not harmless wildlife. You get the t-virus instead of dysentery, and you cross hordes of agitated zombies instead of fording rivers. How grueling will your pace be? How filling your rations?
I made it through on the first try, so it’s not necessarily that hard. My score was 2330. Everybody in my party lived, but Nathan took the brunt of the abuse (stop breaking your leg you clumsy oaf!) and Jackie somehow managed to get bitten by a zombie 4 times! Thank god their fearless leader was a little more competent.
Who needs a gnome?
Lloyd the gnome is currently guarding our garden, and doing a decent job at it. So far this year, no poachers. However, I think Lloyd is about to be superseded. Gnomes aren’t really that scary. But zombies are.
That’s right, a garden zombie from (who else?) ThinkGeek. It’s a little pricey at $90, but who hasn’t wanted to have their own garden zombie?
Yeesh, never mind, that thing’s too scary.
ZombieFit
Everybody wants to lose weight, to exercise more. It’s the motivation that’s the problem. It’s just that there really isn’t anything motivational enough to get me to run, jump, etc.
Well, there is one thing: zombies!
Now in Chicago you can sign up for ZombieFit, which bills itself as “fitness to survive the apocolypse”.
The keys to surviving Z-day are simple: Be able to lift and throw heavy things, run fast and for long distances, and be able to navigate obstacles and urban environments in an efficient manner.
I will let them describe the program, in their own words:
…five to a dozen people gather to run, jump, climb and vault up, over and around obstacles that stand in for the features of a city in the grip of a zombie infestation. They also undergo strength and conditioning training because zombies are relentless.
There are no actual zombies or zombie stand-ins, though Gatz says they are invoked for inspiration. A precision jump, for example, requires participants to land in an exact location, much as they would have to do if fleeing a zombie from rooftop to rooftop.
“You’ve got to land that, or the zombies are going to get you,” Gatz tells students.
I think it is time for the haters to admit that I’m not the only one talking about zombies here. It’s common enough to be a business model.
Link via Jackie.
Speaking of zombies, I sure wish someone would come up with some plans for a rocket propelled chainsaw. Because that would just be the most ridiculous…
Zombie Harmony
Finally! The zombie dating site we’ve all been waiting for! Zombie Harmony…because the apocalypse doesn’t have to be lonely.
Certainly ONE of the best free dating sites for zombies
This is so great. You fill in the search criteria to specify the type of zombie you’d like to meet. For example, fill in the blanks (between the quotes):
I am a “slow-moving” zombie seeking a “slow-moving” zombie with “all limbs intact” who is “freshly turned” and is interested in “Gnawing”, “Lumbering” and “Groaning”
Don’t forget to check out the sample profiles or the testimonials by happy couples!
Link via Jackie’s twitter.
More Search Terms
As I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, I am endlessly fascinated by some of the things that people google which result in them landing on my blog. So here are some of the highlights. These are broken down into a few categories of amusement, 1) what the heck was that person searching for, 2) how did that search land on my blog, 3) I don’t know why someone was searching for that, but amazingly, I have a blog post for them!
What the heck was that person searching for?
- ‘tactical mayonnaise’ – Lunch tactics? Or war tactics?
- ‘resplendent start with the dead’ – I don’t know what that means, but I’ve had that one no less than 4 times!
- ‘pull out fingernails’ – Yeesh. No thank you!
- ‘human zombie cat’ – Yeesh! NO THANK YOU! Stitch together your sick creations on someone else’s blog thank-you-very-much. I have enough trouble with a living, non-human-hybrid cat.
- ‘jelly fish hunting fighting boats’ – What could that even mean? It conjures images of sea battles with giant mutant jelly fish.
How did that search land on my blog?
These are usually things that I don’t believe I’ve ever talked about, but I do in fact agree with or support. So it’s like Google detected that these people think like me and led them to my blog, despite me never mentioning anything of the sort.
- ‘are “two question” marks aggressive’ – I don’t know how they found me, but for any future searches on this topic: Yes. Yes they are.
- ‘awesome cat’ – Okay, I had a couple of hits on this one, but I’m not sure how those found me. I have the opposite. But I did get a hit on ‘nusiance cats’, so that one I understand.
- ‘what do zombie pirates say?’ – I really don’t know. But I kind of feel like, if anybody should know, I should know, right?
- ‘where there be pirates’ – Was this a search by an actual pirate?!
- ‘i grit my teeth when i pet my cat’ – My favorite, hands down. It describes my position exactly. I don’t think I ever said that on my blog though, so how did they end up here?
I don’t know why someone was searching for that, but amazingly, I have a blog post for them!
- ‘big headed chiquita bananas’ – Lead to this post, in which I mention the chiquita banana lady, but not the size of her head.
- ‘bacon evie’ – Now those are good search terms for finding me! I get a lot of ‘erith1 is this thing on?’ searches, but those are more obvious. What if ‘bacon evie’ was looking for someone else?
- ‘litter box in bathroom curtain AND cat peed on curtains why’ – I soo feel for the desperation of the person searching for this. Now, my cat didn’t pee on my curtains, but my story did involve both cat pee and a curtain. So I wasn’t too far off.
- ‘picklerita’ – Wow, I actually had a good post for them! There can’t be that many picklerita posts out there.
- ‘she toot on me’ – ::sigh:: but I did get a ‘toot hole’ search, so maybe the phrase is catching on!
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