It’s Time to Prepare for Your Personal Zombie Apocalypse

On Oct. 23 at 4 p.m. EDT, join Future Tense, ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination, and the authors for a free online event about what zombies can teach us about surviving the apocalypse. Register today.

In 2011 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted a disaster preparation guide called “Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse.” The guide—a playful blog post on the CDC’s website—generated so much traffic that it crashed the server. It also sparked enough confusion that the CDC later took it offline, but it was soon replaced by a zine focused on preparing for the zombie pandemic. That same year, the U.S. military devised CONPLAN 8888, which was used to train officers in contingency planning. The topic of CONPLAN 8888? The zombie apocalypse.

The CDC and U.S. military weren’t planning for an actual zombie apocalypse. But they found that this hypothetical was a great stand-in for many different potential disasters they do want people to prepare for. It turns out our readiness for the zombie apocalypse can tell us about our readiness for a variety of different catastrophic events, from future pandemics to wildfires to infrastructure collapse—what disaster preparation experts call “all-hazard preparation.”

In a perfect world, we would never encounter an apocalyptic scenario, so we wouldn’t even need to think about one. But our world is far from perfect, and we don’t want to be caught off guard if a catastrophe does occur. Our best bet is to find safe (even fun) opportunities to learn about potential dangers and our collective and individual vulnerabilities.

This is where the zombie apocalypse comes in.

Zombies have two key traits that make them ideal for this sort of imagining. First, they possess several exaggerated features associated with danger (such as disease spread and predation), and second, they aren’t real. Zombies are incredibly formidable, shaking off most physical assaults—and they are also always on the hunt for their next meal. At the same time, we know they aren’t real, so the (fictional) zombie apocalypse works as a very low-risk “danger” that attracts our attention.

All this means that zombies can help us learn about potential threats, deal with our own fears, and create shared attention. Imagine, for example, that a zombie apocalypse comes to your neighborhood. Initially, you probably won’t be sure exactly what’s going on. You’ll want to stay indoors and gather information so you can figure out the best course of action. But if you stay inside, you need resources: Do you have enough supplies in your home to shelter in place for 72 hours? What if the water is cut off and the electricity goes out?

These resources would be key to your survival in a zombie apocalypse, but they would also be really useful in the event of a pandemic, blizzard, or other emergency in which you need to stay home and figure out your next move.

Speaking of your next move in a zombie apocalypse, what if you were trapped somewhere that was unsafe or running out of supplies? Would you be able to evacuate? And would everyone else in your town or city be able to evacuate at the same time? Would it be reasonably orderly?

Imagining these scenarios can help you evaluate the viability of your community’s infrastructure in disasters of many kinds. To keep it simple, you can focus on three questions: Would there be resources? Would it be safe? Would transportation be viable? The answers to these questions in case of a zombie apocalypse probably mirror the answers in case of a flood, earthquake, or grid failure.

Let’s start with the first question: Do you have enough resources to sustain yourself for at least 72 hours? You’ll want to build a 72-hour shelter-in place kit—a plastic bin or duffel bag that you can store somewhere in your house. Be sure to stuff it with:

You should also prepare a portable version of this kit, known as a go bag, which you can grab if you need to leave home.

Once you have your shelter-in-place kit and your go bag stocked, it’s time to look outside and ask how safe your community would be in the event of a zombie invasion. If your area has dealt with any past disasters, that’s a great place to start. You can reflect on where things went wrong and work to shore up those gaps.

Stores, for example, need to be well stocked and distributed across neighborhoods. People need public spaces they’re used to gathering in—community gardens, parks, libraries—that could serve as locations to come together and figure out collective plans. Local governments and law enforcement need clear communication plans and to build trust with the people they serve. You need to know your neighbor’s name, and to be able to knock on their door in case of emergency.

But even in the best-prepared communities, resources will eventually run out; you’ll need to either go out to collect more or move to a safer location. Local authorities may also suggest you evacuate—and that’s when transportation becomes important.

To be ready for the zombie apocalypse, your car (if you have one) should always have its tank at least half full. You should also have a car kit that contains basic necessities like first aid, straightforward vehicle repair, safety equipment, food, and water. If you don’t have a car, biking, walking, or other forms of personal transportation can also help you get to safety—but you need to make sure you know which routes are most likely to lead you there.

The final step in apocalypse prep is a little fuzzy: You need to imagine how things would feel. Would the zombie apocalypse be chaotic and frightening? Or would you and your neighbors be likely to help one another out? These are tricky questions, but talking about your apocalypse plan with your loved ones can be a useful and even entertaining way to assess how safe your community is in a potential catastrophe. You might even find an interactive way to act out these scenarios through events like zombie crawls or an apocalypse-themed party (which, for example, could replace clowns with wilderness first-aid training and come with goody bags stuffed with emergency blankets).

If this logistical prep feels like a lot, remember: It doesn’t have to happen all at once. You can build up your zombie apocalypse plan over time and think about the resources you could share with your friends and neighbors to do so.

Ultimately, imagining a creative disaster scenario like the zombie apocalypse can help motivate all of us to hone our disaster preparation game, call attention to the need for infrastructure management, and strengthen relationships in the process. All this will make your community more likely to survive catastrophe—and it’s going to be a hell of a lot more fun than the alternative.

On Oct. 23 at 4 p.m. EDT, join Future Tense, ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination, and the authors for a free online event about what zombies can teach us about surviving the apocalypse. Register today.