...I should probably write something.

With all the zombie hype lately, it’s hard to not fantasize about the theoretical outbreak that would certainly doom this planet to near extinction.  Between the Zombie movies,World War Z and The Walking Dead we’ve been show a plethora of possible regarding what may or may not one day come crashing through out front doors bleeding and snapping it’s lifeless jaws at us.

The question is, are you ready?

No, I mean are you REALLY ready??

Yeah, me neither.  The main problem that we all face is that we’ve been Hollywood-trained to prepare for this cataclysmic event and they’ve really glossed over the sticking points with the need to “entertain”.  I’m not saying they need to make an honest-to-Pete survival guide for every American,but I can really see there being major problems if this should ever come to pass.

First, let’s be brutally honest.  Any outbreak, regardless of where it happens,will spread like wildfire until people begin to recognize it for what it really is.  That small group of knowledgeable folk will be those of us that actually WATCH this stuff like its real.  We expect weird, strange stories in the news about quarantines, people dying mysteriously, and other random events that would be tied back to an outbreak.  As an example, there are roughly 18,000 people in my township as of 2010.  If 10% of them watched any zombie media that leaves 16,200 souls that will undoubtedly find themselves running for their lives, or running after their next meal. Sixteen thousand people that will get in your way, prevent your escape,or kill you in their attempt to get out before you.

And I don’t live in a rural area where there’s distance to the next town.  Nope, we’re stacked on top of each other like flapjacks which means we will be pulling in the infected from other areas adding to that already overwhelming number.  I’d have to count the townships but in my COUNTY alone is 500,000 people.  That’s a LOT of walking dead.  THINK about that if your first thought is to bunker down and wait it out.

In order to bunker down, you need to understand that all basic utilities will be cut off.  No lights, no motor cars, not a single luxury. No running water, no heat, no air conditioning and most certainly no noise.  There’s no way you will last if the dead know where you are, so plan on lots of silence.  You’ll need enough food for you and your party and it will have to be non-perishable and require little to no cooking.  No noise and to be safe, no smells.  It’s all speculation but you don’t want to find out the hard way that zombie CAN smell. Add to the food, all the water you’ll need.  A place to put refuse so that it doesn’t contaminate the living quarters. Medicines, first aid supplies, weapons, etc etc.  Oh yeah, and a nice solid place to PUT all this.  Simply boarding up your house will not help.  Wood rots, glass breaks and a couple hundred pounding bodies will break through even the most, well-thought defenses after days and days and days of non-stop effort.  How will you defend you and your family if you’ve been kept awake for 4 straight days?

Sure, bunkering is a good idea but unless you’re in the middle of NOWHERE do not do it in populated areas.  Unless you’ve actually constructed a concrete bunker complex in your backyard.  Which would be really cool.  Anyhoo.

No, the real simple answer is to get the hell out of Dodge.  Pronto. Grab everything that would’ve gone into a bunker situation and pack it to go.  Team up with friends and family that have access to properties or places that are out of the way.  Look for mountain homes, cabins and such and at higher elevations and latitudes.  If anything can be hoped from World War Z is that they freeze in the colder climates, making them easier to dispatch. Hi Canada, I’m looking at YOU.

Pack 4x4s to the gills with SURVIVAL GEAR.  Your daughters Hello Kitty sleeping bag isn’t going to cut it.  You need something that will survive at -20, or even better -40. Warm clothes, backpacking gear that’s small and compact and edged weapons.  Yes a firearm is a good idea but think genius: where are you going to get more bullets?  Do you HONESTLY plan to walk miles and miles with 80lbs of ammo strapped to your back when food would be better suited?  You can’t EAT a .45 bullet.  Well you could, but then why waste the effort?

Ammo is good but you’re not going to be able to carry everything.  I watch The Walking Dead and the group is firing off rounds in non-emergency situations and I’d LOVE to know where they are going to get resupplied. Two people with edged weapons, spikes or anything sharp should be able to isolate a walker and dispatch it inside of 3 seconds.  A well-armed, well-trained group can protect itself with no loses against a pack and make little to no noise in doing so.  They can certainly see, perhaps they can smell, but you KNOW they can hear.  Gunfire is the LAST thing you want to announce your presence.  The group of 15-30 you just wiped out could be replaced by the 1,000-3,000 that just heard your shots within a day.  Also, since sound travels out concentrically(in circles), you just surrounded yourself. Way to go, dead meat.

The best hope is that we get the slow, ambling walker and not the super zombies of I am Legend and 28 Days.  If it’s super zombies, well, I hope there’s an afterlife.  But scientifically speaking, they should be slow, and that means that you have a chance.  You’ll have to watch out for fresh reanimates as they’ll probably move much faster than the average dead-head.  Ones that jumped to their death or were torn apart before returning will be good as that should slow them down.  As time wears on, and they hopefully decay and begin to fall apart, they should slow even more.  If you use pack tactics and separate the able bodied ones from the slower ones, you can whittle them down without facing the full force at once.  Never go at a pack.  String them out through streets and cars, or find some thick forest area with hills to spread them out.  Imagine if you get to the top of a steep incline, you can bash them in the head one at a time as they begin to reach you.  Why waste energy fighting a crowd when you can kill them one at a time?

Something else to consider is the group mentality.  Whether you’ve joined up with family,friends, or just strangers working together to survive you have to follow some basic principles that we all would frown upon in this day and age.

First, the safety of the group comes first.  Those individuals that cannot conform to that principle would have to leave or be removed. I’m not jeopardizing the lives of my family because some ass thinks this is nothing and wants to do their own thing. Noise discipline has to be enforced, food rationing along with hunting and foraging would be paramount, and shelter and security would be non-negotiable.

Secondly, everyone would be required to do everything that everyone else can do.  If I can teach defense tactics, then everyone will learn them. If you can teach knots and snares, then you will teach everyone.  If you know farming, then you will teach everyone.  No one person is allowed to maintain a skill that the group can afford to lose.  If the only person that can shoot is killed,then the rest of the group is screwed.  Everyone must learn every available skill to survive.

Thirdly, there is a fluid hierarchy that must be accepted.  This is such that those in the group are senior to all of those that enter the group until such time that the newcomers can exhibit a significant percentage of the skills of the group as a whole and have mastered most if not all the nuances of the behavior of the group.  There is no one leader, no alpha male, no General in command.  The group operates as a collective, rational mind because as I said before, you can’t have that one leader get killed and then you have no governance of the group.  It’ll be difficult at first to put some direction and command in place, but you can’t have a half dozen people screaming that they know best and wind up attracting the dead right into your camp.

The best advice would be gather as much supplies as you can,avoid populated areas and hope to hell that the military takes over with a SENSIBLE plan and wipes out the undead with no hesitation so that you can return to your home as quickly as possible. Am I saying you need to run out right now and buy 100 days worth of MREs?  No, but when the news reports start to come in about mysterious illnesses, disappearances, quarantines…

 

Don't wait.  RUN.

 

How cliche of me?  But of course!  What else would I be doing instead of reading the assigned school material on the first week of class now that things have slightly calmed down to a semi-manageable level?  That was rhetorical by the way.

And since I can't seem to concentrate on anything but this headache and my desire for sleep, I figured I'd blog first to get some things of my chest and out of my head.  *takes a swat at an imaginary fly*  Since there's only 3 months left to this sucky year, I best recap up to the last blog entry so that I can keep things straight when I'm old and my great-grandkids come visit me in the home.

So far, Gannon has been doing very well with his treatments.  We're now a week away from his last and final checkup of the second phase before moving immediately into the third phase.  Essentially, next Tuesday we'll go to clinic and if his blood counts are good, we'll get setup and admitted back downtown at CHOP Main Campus where he will spend four days in the hospital dealing with Intrathecal MT, High-Dose IV MT, VinChristine, and MK pills.  Then we'll have a week off, and then we repeat the four in-hospital days all over again.  He has four scheduled in-hospital visits, but the phase runs over 64 days, so essentially we'll be going right up until Thanksgiving with this round.

Then we repeat two months of outpatient work again, which takes us into the early months of 2012.  After that, there's some debate if he'll go another round of in-hospital work or if he'll go into maintenance which is just once a month for the next 2-2.5 years.  Either way, we know we're in this for the long haul and we've settled into not having a routine for the most part.  Weeks can't be preset because more often than not we arrive at clinic on Tuesday only to discover his counts of something are so low he has to come back Friday for a transfusion.  Last week it was platelets, the week before whole blood.  Chemo is some nasty shit.  It kills of your body, stopping it from trying to kill you off itself.  *snort chuckle*

The support from family, friends, and co-workers has been top-notch through all this.  My Mom, who's fighting her own fight right now, has been a rock through all this and one whom I think I take after when it comes to my rational, logical side.  I think we're partial Vulcans.  My friends have been there to listen and to praise and to promote so much for Gannon and myself.  I don't think I would've been able to supply the boy with nearly two companies of BattleMechs, a demi-company of armor, and BattleArmor in a unified paint-scheme without them.  It's a good thing I moved Gannon's Cannons to a bigger shelf because I understand there's more coming in the mail yet.  My co-workers have been beyond supportive and understanding, even so far as to unconditionally accept my unpredictable schedule with trying to cover time working remotely and care for my son.  I believe with sincere certainty that several of my previous employers would've forced me into FMLA by now.  When my CEO told me to do what I needed to do and let them know if I needed ANYTHING, he meant it 100%.  I couldn't ask for a better boss and company to work with.  Even my BattleTech boss has manage to surprise me with some cool news.

So, that's the current story in a nutshell.  A routine of uncertainty and repetition while moving towards an achievable goal of getting Gannon cancer free.  Every day that he's with us, I'm thankful for and grateful for this wonderful recovery that he is accomplishing with bravery and courage that you would not normally see in a 7-years old child.  I just hope that this event in his life hasn't somehow robbed him of a childhood that he more than deserves to experience.  I hope that I will still be a fair and effective parent years down the road, unchanged by the horrible times of the past.  I cherish these moments of clarity.

And then I go to sleep.