The Centers for Disease Control has released a comic book: Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic.
No, this is not a joke.
CDC has a fun new way of teaching the importance of emergency preparedness. Our new graphic novel, "Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic" demonstrates the importance of being prepared in an entertaining way that people of all ages will enjoy. Readers follow Todd, Julie, and their dog Max as a strange new disease begins spreading, turning ordinary people into zombies. Stick around to the end for a surprising twist that will drive home the importance of being prepared for any emergency. Included in the novel is a Preparedness Checklist so that readers can get their family, workplace, or school ready before disaster strikes.
This was actually inspired by the success of the CDC's Zombie Preparedness blog from May.
Thankfully, it doesn't get too much stranger. This is essentially a "what if" scenario for the unlikely event that there is a problem with shambling corpses coming back to attack the living.
If you're increduolous that you're reading this in a self-defense article, imagine how the author feels.
The standard format of zombies is via a virus, whether by mutation or by artificial creation. Welcome to the specialty of the CDC. They start by giving a checklist for a general emergency kit: water (one gallon per person per day), non-perishable foods, medication, tools, and a whole host of other items you can read about here. It also discusses coming up with an emergency plan (where to go, who to call, an evacuation route.)
It also covers what the CDC would be doing: setting up isolation and quarantine for infection controls, investigating the virus itself, that sort of thing.
But, in the event that you actually do have to face zombie hordes, and we don't mean those in Zuccotti Park, there is another line of thought looking at endothermic zombies from a completely different scientific viewpoint: like how many natural predators they have (for example: flies), the heat (ask anyone who's found a corpse baked in the sun too long), the cold (freezer burn), and that biting is an awfully ineffecient way to spread a disease.
As for New York: imagining Zombies in an urban environment might seem like a bad dream, until you realize how many skyscrapers are easily locked down. Who needs a gun? Push a desk out a tenth-story window into the zombie hordes in the street. An encyclopedia set is an arsenal.
So, in short: keep your head, and you won't lose it.
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