May poll results

Well survivors May has been a crazy zombie awareness month but I consider it a success. I created and gave out my grey zombie awareness pins. The ZLC went from hundreds to thousands of readers. I completed my goal of a-post-a-day-for-May.

I am now going to try to keep up with posting every day but these three months are my biggest money earning months so I really need to put a lot of hard work into my other endevours. Never fear though! I am planning special posts about each city I travel to over the next few months and have been inspired by the sudden increased in readers to keep the content coming fast and furious! Hopefully on those days I can't fit a post in there will be lots left on the site you haven't read or you can post a comment somewhere about your thoughts or ideas for posts you want to see. I do get and regularily respond to a lot of e-mail traffic, mdthesoldier@hotmail.com feel free to send anything there as well that is ZLC related.

Now to the meat of this post.

Would you rather become a zombie or die?
Bite me: 13%
Save a bullet for me: 86%

Even among survivors the rate of people who would rather become zombies is unfortunately high. This is not completely unexpected though. As much as zombies represent death, they can also represent a twisted continuation of life as many other undead do. People are so afraid of death they would rather live the sick and twisted life of a zombie. Here is the fatal flaw in this thinking however. A zombie is not you. Whatever you are, whatever your soul is, it has moved on. A zombie is an empty husk being controlled by a virus or parasite. There is no cure. There is no living on as a ghoul. Becoming a zombie is infact dying, someone else just has to clean up your mess. The more zombies means the less chance of humanity surviving, becoming a zombie, for whatever misinformed or estranged reasoning is a selfish act of desperation that will not prolong your life but might end someone else's. Do the world a favor and let's try to get this number from 13% to 0%.

More discusion on this topic can be found here.

Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.

April poll results

What will the cause of the Class 4 outbreak be? Nanobots	0 (0%)
Prions (Creautzfeldt-Jakod disease or similar)	1 (14%)
Parasites (Toxoplasma gondii or similar)	1 (14%)
H1Z1	0 (0%)
Voodoo	0 (0%)
Reanimation research (Stem cells, zombie dogs, cloning etc.)	1 (14%)
Weapons research (combining HIV, rabis and a flu or similar)	2 (28%)
Solanum	0 (0%)
T-Virus	2 (28%)

Click on each cause to find justification for it.

Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.

February poll

Check if anyone you know was involved, or knows someone involved.	2 (28%)
Go zombie hunting!	1 (14%)
Hide in your panic room.	1 (14%)
Grab a few extra supplies like bottled water and canned foods.	4 (57%)
Search out someone directly involved and get the details.	1 (14%)
Gather your friends together to hide in your panic room.	1 (14%)
Inform the people you trust what the situation is.	4 (57%)
Keep a close eye on the news.	3 (42%)
Ignore any suggestions this may not have been zombies.	1 (14%)

Check if anyone you know was involved, or knows someone involved.
This is one of the first steps involved in determining what exactly happened and where the infected may have come from or gone too. It will also be important to find out if these people had been attacked during the outbreak.

Go zombie hunting!
A Class 1 outbreak does not mean open season on the undead. For one, a Class 1 does not pose a huge threat if it is kept in check and there will be a limited number of infected. Second and more important, the law does not acknowledge zombie slaying and killing of zombies in a small scale will be observed as murder. Best left to nonlethal means unless absolutely necessary.

Hide in your panic room.
Panic rooms are for emergency situations to protect yourself for a limited time. If the outbreak were to be Class 2 or heaven forbid Class 3 the panic room would be a good idea to hide it out or even to stay safe for the first few days or a Class 4. But would be relatively pointless in a Class 1.

Grab a few extra supplies like bottled water and canned foods.
Never a bad idea. In this case a great idea.

Search out someone directly involved and get the details.
Very similar to the first option. The difference is this involves actively going searching out and contacting someone who was in the outbreak himself.

Gather your friends together to hide in your panic room.
If going to the panic room alone was extreme, this is the icy on the cake.

Inform the people you trust what the situation is.
This can be the hardest thing to do as a survivor but it must be done, the ones really worth the trust will accept what you have to stay and at least humor the possibility of danger.

Keep a close eye on the news.
This is a must. Don't just watch one station or website but look at as many different feeds from the area as you can find. It is important to note much of this information will not be the truth but if sometimes you can find something that isn't completely false or hidden.

Ignore any suggestions this may not have been zombies.
Well... if this is the course of action taken after an outbreak being confirmed the person who does this will not survive very long after the fall.

Once an outbreak is reasonably certain to be a Class 1 it is important to know as much about it as possible. This is still an information gathering phase. The reason being is that unless directly involved there is no way to be 100% of anything, outbreak status, number of infected involved, termination of all infected, etc. There is no call as of yet to begin searching out the infected as local law enforcement or those on hand can likely handle the situation. If they cannot handle it the person gathering information will hopefully see the signs of a bigger Class 2 or even 3 outbreak before it begins. And those signs are the cue to begin taking a little more extensive measures.

Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.

Zombie lovers...

To most survivors this may seem off topic or random but this post will feature a couple of different things.


First I will bring your attention to some good friend's of mine and fellow zombie enthusiasts, Atomic Zombie Tattoo Artists. These valiant men and women are extremely open about their interest in zombies and while not all of their ideas regarding them are completely factual they show no fear in displaying those ideas and discussing new theories. This is in addition to being kick-ass tattoo artists. As a man without tattoos I often think about getting one whenever I see the work these people do. The company itself helps with events such as Zombie Walks or local Zombie films. I am always in favor of supporting people who will turn around and support their fellow survivors in the effort to spread the bad news.


Here is a link to their website:
http://www.atomiczombie.net/home.html


This post is obviously not following the format of many of the others so far so I don't feel it out of place to address anything that wouldn't fill up a post completely on its own. Like for instance there is a new poll up. Or that I am proud to see readers from different countries have tuned in and I hope that some great automatic translator is making sure they get the information as well. The undead are found in every culture and every area, the information presented here is from a Canadian viewpoint but help protect any survivor, any where in the world.


Another shout I would like to send out is to the potential survivors at NR92, NAIT's student radio station. I recently did an interview with them about my blog and the Zombie Research Society, NR92 is attempting to “Prepare you for the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse.” by putting local events and news in the spotlight. Here's what they had to say about me after our interview: “Local blogger and Zombie Research Society member, Michael Davidson believes it is not a question of if but of when.” Radio is an important part of preparation for life after the fall because many forms of power and thus satellites -especially those not automatically-ground or manually-space controlled- will eventually stop working and knowing how to understand and operate radio could proof the most efficient means of long range communication.


You can listen to the students at NAIT at:
http://www.nait.ca/nr92/index.html


I would like to end by pointing out I will never run out of ideas for posts for the ZLC but comments and requests are more then welcome. I've had a couple of people e-mail me, one of those requests led to a post about vehicles. Thinking about which now, I should put another vehicle break down up soon. I'm also planning an exciting series of posts for the summer months while I am touring to other cities.

Be vigilent, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate,

Mike D.

January Poll results

Panic! Panic!!! PANIC!!!
This will do no one any good. Panic is not in fact a natural reaction. Panic is what the untrained mind and body does when facing new or dangerous experiences. This result is easily avoided by careful training and preparation.

Celebrate! Kill everything that moves!
Also not a good choice. There will be other survivors around and you will draw a lot of unwanted attention from both the living and the dead. Note this is an unconfirmed report, the willingness to kill at the drop of a hat for unjustified reasons is not healthy. Just saying, get help.

Ignore it and go about your daily life.
This will suffice for the vast majority of outbreaks but ignorance will not always end in bliss. Eventually a Class 3, 4 or even a Class 2 outbreak will cause everyone with this mindset to become among the first (and most deserving) to turn.

Stay calm. Immediately prepare yourself for the worst and put your well laid out survival plans into effect.
I thought this would be the most popular response. But it is an incorrect one. This is because of the misunderstandings of what a zombie report is. You will never see dramatic news reports such as are commonly in films about “the dead walking among us” or “not enough room in hell.” By the time these reports start coming it will be too late for most people. Unconfirmed reports happen all around us. Last year in Edmonton, a woman was rushed off to hospital after her husband suddenly attacked and bit her. The husband was shot and killed by police, even though he was unarmed. This is an unconfirmed zombie report. The event did happen but the truth behind it is either unknown or covered up. Now this event obviously does not call for a full scale defense nor is it an immiedately life changing event.

Keep the event in mind and watch for similar activities or cover-ups.
Take the event described above, not cause for alarm but what we have here is a possible Class 1 outbreak: a small contained incident. If for instance the wife were to die and some sort of strange explaination is given, like she died of an fever, infection or even “complications” it could be a cover-up. Or watch for similar or related events, such as a sudden unexplained death involving a police officer who happened to be one of the ones involved at this household. These events together could make it reasonably certain it was an outbreak and could continue further. These events happen around us all the time and we simply ignore them but with only a little training and vigilance they can be spotted and used to keep track of outbreaks.
A Class 1 outbreak, especially an unconfirmed one is no cause for alarm but it should by no means be ignored incase events were to escalate.

Outbreaks can be put into four Classes.
Class 1 is a small, contained event. This event will probably only involve a few people, ranging from one to twenty infected. The entire event could last a few hours or up to two weeks and will not cover an area larger then a twenty-mile radius. Response will be minimal, either civilian or police. Media coverage will also be minimal if any.

Class 2 is a larger event in a more populated area. This event may range to involve possibly up to a thousand people and between a few dozen and a few hundred infected. The entire event lasts between a few days and up to a few weeks, this is from first contact to final clean up. The area may spread from a hundred mile radius or so to as small as a couple city blocks depending on the density of the population. Response will be slightly heavier, including local and federal law enforcement and possibly even some military support. Media coverage will be high but cover-ups, disbelieve and mixed information will keep most of the truth out of the reports.

Class 3 is the largest outbreak within reason. The number of infected will rise to the thousands, possibly tens of thousands) and the number of people involved could reach up to ten times that of the infected. The infection could cover several hundred square miles, entire states, small countries or boarders. The entire event could last between weeks and up to a few months including mop-up, cover-up and clean-up. Response will be military, heavy military ranging from armor to special forces. Media coverage will be heavy but over time and through dilusion of the facts most of it will never reach the public.

Class 4 is the worst possible situation. The event true survivors are preparing for. When civilization completely breaks down. The world will become a wasteland in which new societies will be formed and the undead will wear down humanity until an estimated 500,000 survivors remain to rule the barren ruins that will be left behind in the wake of the zombie apocalypse. This period in which the world is dying is what I refer to as the fall.

Signs to look for when spotting an outbreak:

• Homicides in which the victims were executed by head shots or decapitation.
• Missing persons, particularly in wilderness or uninhabited areas.
• Cases of "violent insanity" in which the subject attacked friends or family without the use of weapons. Find out if the attacker bit or tried to bite his victims.
• Riots or other civil disturbances that have limited media coverage.
• Disease-based deaths in which either the cause is undetermined or seems highly suspect.
• Any event in which media coverage was forbidden.

Once an attack has been identified keep tabs on it. Note where it took place, similar events in the area or a path of similar events. Note how far apart the event took place in time as well as distance. Note what sort of response was made by police, military or importantly, other “extremist” groups and the like. Once you believe an outbreak to be confirmed, than actions should be taken to regarding the size of an outbreak. It is vital to note that any outbreak may escalate very quickly into the next class and it is only a matter of time until ignorance brings about a Class 4.

 

Be vigilent, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate,

Mike D.