Zombie Apocalypse: What Would You Do?

by jordan | April 4, 2008 at 12:24 pm | 182 views | 1 comment

Wired's Danger Room, which normally focuses on security-related technology, has run a few articles about dealing with disasters far more spectacular-- and exponentially less likely-- than those that normally appear in the news.

The most recent of these deals with surviving a zombie onslaught, but rest assured that the good people of Wired have you covered against giant monsters. They even have the 411 on defeating a certain Teutonic cyborg.

Whether or not this was intentional, I see these articles as a jab at those duct-tape-and-plastic-wrap solutions for terrorist attacks that were so widely circulated-- and derided-- a few years back.

However, mostly you're likely to encounter the type of Alien Zombie favored by Geroge Romero. These are reanimated by an extra-terrestrial force; this is an infectious form of zombiedom that seems to be spread via biting. They are oblivious to most injuries but can reliably be taken out by destroying their brain.

When battling this type of zombie, you are basically trying to stayalive and get to a place of safety, as there are likely to be far toomany for you to defeat them.

One tempting option is to go out there with a flamethrower. Zombiesmay have a natural aversion to fire, you should be able to igniteseveral of them with one burst, and it looks spectacular – there's a video of a demonstration here.

Circling back to Terminators, I always kind of wondered about this:

Several others pointed out the Terminator's obvious weak spot: theeyes. From the movies, we know that Terminators see through their eyes.This is not necessarily obvious, as a robot could have visual sensorsall over it, giving it a 360 degree field of vision, and the visibleeyes in the head might just be window-dressing. If we assume that thereare no back-up visual sensors, would a bucket of paint balanced overthe door Home Alone-style be enough to foil the android?