A new study shows that Chicago is a terrible place to be during the (inevitable) zombie apocalypse. Specifically, it ranks 49th out of the 53 largest cities in the U.S.

In general, I agree that big cities are terrible places to be during a zombie apocalypse. There are too many people, and each one of them is, at best, a leather-clad motorcycle raider waiting to happen, and at worst a member of the shambling horde, ready to be the straw that broke the camel’s back by adding *just enough* body weight onto your outer security perimeter to send you running for the hills. How does every zombie movie go? First you have the initial rush for safety, then a nice lull in the middle while the survivors consolidate their fortress, then the inevitable overwhelming tide of zombies overrunning everything.

If you hang around in a place as populated as Chicago, you’re practically begging for a tsunami of zombies.

However, I’m not so sure I agree with the methodology of this study. Far be it from me to question the scientific rigor of the researchers at CareerBuilder.com, but the metrics that they are looking at make no sense. Population density? Sure, makes sense. Equating the number of available handguns to the number of people in law enforcement? Yeah, come hang out in my neighborhood sometime. I guess all those guys hanging out on the corner are off duty cops.

But looking at the number of people in “biomedical research and development” makes absolutely no sense. First off, you don’t find a cure by sheer numbers. It kind of matters WHICH researchers you have working on the project (the guys studying which direction dogs like to poop in, for example, probably aren’t going to be a big help). Second off, if someone does manage to find a cure, it doesn’t really matter where they are. I don’t care that they’re in another city, only that they found a cure. Finally, your ability to develop a cure has nothing to do with your ability to hole up during a zombie outbreak. If someone, somewhere, wants to work on a cure, I highly encourage them to take that route, but it doesn’t help me secure my canned goods (and bee tee dubs, spoiler alert: there’s never a cure. All the aspirin in the world can’t cure someone who had their face eaten off two weeks ago.)

Look, I’m a software engineer, so I think I’m qualified to say that if you’re counting being close to MIT as an asset in a fight, you’re doing it wrong.

Okay, maybe it makes some sense to look at some of those things, but it seems silly to leave out vastly more important concerns. Who has the best natural barriers, like rivers and mountains? Who is closest to food warehouses? Military bases? CDC locations? Who lives the closest to Norman Reedus??

(All that being said, good work Grand Rapids! #12 overall. Who would have thought?)

Link via Andrew.