Don’t Go To Wal-Mart: Why your plan is bad.

The Apocalypse:

Day One – Get feet wet. Dispatch wandering zombie in the backyard. Pack up necessary survival and sentimental items. Fuel up car and leave town.

Day Two – Arrive at nearby Wal-Mart. Gather supplies and weapons – enough to hold you over for weeks. Build a makeshift safe house in the storage room of the large department store. Daily living and interaction will take place throughout the store. Safe house will be used for emergency situations. Daily clearing of the undead outside the glass doors will take place from the roof. A signal for help will also be built.

Day Three – Wake the fuck up. This won’t work.

            The first item on the list of zombie preparation is simple – let go of your fantasies. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a discussion concerning potential outbreak scenarios, only to discover that my peers have nothing more than Wal-Mart dream plans. The issues with plans like these are numerous, but we’ll only tackle a few here to start.

            First of all, I’m not one for rules, but I think we may need to establish one before we go any further. We will call it the, “This Ain’t No Fuckin’ Cinema” rule. The rule is as follows: You are not the hero. I know I’ve said this before, but I think it bears repeating. You never were the hero and you’re never going to be the hero. You are made of flesh and bone, just as everyone else. Chance does not sway in your favor; bullets and teeth alike will puncture your skin.

            So, now that we’ve established that, what’s wrong with Wal-Mart?

            To be fair, you’ve made a logical choice if you are one of the many with such a plan. We all know why we would go there. In any given Wal-Mart super store there are sizable stocks of food that could sustain a modest group of survivors for months. In a world where food is the source of most conflict (you’re either searching for food or becoming food), it would be a substantial advantage to have access to such large quantities and varieties. While other groups would be dealing with sparse meals and a lack of proper nutrition, you’d be choosing between the canned corn and the bottled peach slices.

            As advantageous as this would be, we of course need a little more than a food source to take root and rebuild. Other necessities include medicine, first aid, weaponry and fortifications. Luckily for us, Wal-Mart can provide all of these things. While you may not be able to purchase an album with a parental advisory sticker from this economic superpower, you can buy a shotgun, a crossbow, and the requisite ammunition for both (because a filthy mouth is the precursor to a filthy soul, but we should always have the necessary means to fuck shit up).

            The same goes for the other categories. I’m sure you’ve taken enough glossy-eyed strolls through the isles of this store or something like it to realize that every necessity for sustaining human life is represented. Any minor injuries are more than accounted for with full stocks of bandages, pain relievers, disinfectants and medicine for fighting germs and disease (though I wouldn’t recommend combating the current outbreak with Claritin D). As for fortifications, this may not be a Lowe’s (though you may have one nearby), but there are plenty of desks, tables, metal shelves and furniture whose purpose can be reassigned to the noble task of keeping out the dead. Grab some nails from the hardware department, pick up a hammer from the next isle over and start putting up a wall against the surface of the glass. You’ll have protection that invites the envy of every human being on the face of the planet in no time (for better or worse – we’ve all seen the conclusion of Dawn of the Dead).

            So yes, Wal-Mart seems to be a good choice, but one must remember that this ain’t no fuckin’ cinema. Where this plan goes wrong is simple: it fails to take into account the existence of the most propagated (and most destructive) ape on the planet.

            I want you picture traffic gridlock – hundreds of cars, vans, trucks and buses filled with warm bodies. The call to “stay in your homes” that the media will undoubtedly issue will not be given adherence. Thousands of families in your area will be ignoring this fairly sound advice, heading to the highways, desperately searching for a safe, unpopulated haven to protect them from a crumbling world. Unfortunately for these masses, they will have unwittingly stepped into a death trap.

            At least they’ll get to see biology work it’s most clever magic yet.

            In this situation, the automobile is the grave. It is far too probable that one of these vehicles harbors a family with someone who has come into contact with the infected. Lacking an understanding of how this virus propagates, or even that a virus is the culprit responsible for the mass hysteria just beginning to unfold around them, they have huddled around their bitten family member to give him comfort.

            “It’s going to be okay – we’ll get you to a hospital soon.”

            But they won’t get him to a hospital. This wall of traffic isn’t going anywhere soon and, in due time, little Timmy’s dad passes away, only to reanimate moments later with a horrible case of the munchies.

            After a short moment of panic, those inside the car will surely realize the need to disperse and will open their car doors, at once fleeing for safety as well as opening the floodgates of viral infection for everyone around them. The father, who has just finished feasting on his first born, reaches through the window of a neighboring vehicle. The young woman in the passenger seat, a mother of four, couldn’t close the window quickly enough, and Timmy’s dad manages to scratch at her face quite a bit before his attention is distracted by a soon-to-be dead officer of the law.

            The young mother of four thrashes about in her seat for a few minutes, her family desperately trying to understand why the harsh but certainly not fatal scratch wounds have put her in such a great deal of pain. Unfortunately for her and everyone near her, Timmy had managed to put up a small fight with his pocketknife, leaving his father with a thick coat of freshly infected blood on his fingertips. It only takes a few minutes for the infection to reach her brain with such a close point of entry. She’s dead, lying peacefully among the sad sobs of her children, and then alive once more, vying for more of their horrified song.

            Meanwhile, Timmy is making his undead debut, attacking the driver of the Ford Escort three cars down. He’d had his back turned to the front of the line, making casual conversation with another anxious traveler. He goes down quickly, his fellow traveler stares in dismay and so the pattern continues on until the infection has found its way a mile down the road and into the rear passenger window of your four-door sedan.

            Can we agree that we should always avoid vehicles and highways? I think we can. Now, you may be revising your plan, swapping out the Toyota Camry for the more versatile Yamaha dirt bike. You get two points for heading in the right direction (a mountain bike is preferred – silent, small and fit for most of the terrain you could ever hope the encounter), but you lose three points for not recognizing the most relevant lesson from our little foray into the outbreak traffic jam: stay away from people. Any and all concentrations of people whose stories you cannot account for are dangerous. Given what we know about people (mainly, that they won’t understand a thing about this infection for at least 48 hours), there will almost surely be an SUV turned zombie-taxi nearby at any establishment to which you run.

            In fact, people are the only reason a Wal-Mart plan isn’t a viable option. Whether it’s an armed man who’s managed to convince himself that the baby food you’ve selected from the shelf is critical to his son’s survival, or the infected thirty year old that has spotted you selecting a side dish from the freezer and is quickly turning you into his meat portion – you need to stay away from concentrations of human beings.

            I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but supplies are going to be scarce and you’re going to need good improvisational skills if you have any hope of making it through the first two weeks. Don’t look for the perfect safe house – just make use of that wonderfully complex concentration of nerves resting atop your shoulders. You’ll have to find food on the run and stitch your wounds with whatever you can.

            And if you still plan on going to Wal-Mart, do us all a favor and break something critical to movement before you go down.

            Want to argue about this? Come at me bro. Comment below, and click that pretty “FOLLOW THE DEAD” button at the bottom of the page. Everyone needs a friend for the end of the world.