The Time to Prepare is Now

So I decided to take the advise of one of my commenter's by taking a trip to my local bookstore and checking out "The Zombie Survival Guide" firsthand. I must say, this book offers certain information and ideas that lend even more credence to my theory that Zombies may indeed exist. As well, it offers much by way of planning and survival for a potential Zombie infestation or take-over.

Think about it - do you really think Ving Rhames thought he would spend his last days on earth by being lunch to some verbally challenged, slow moving, brain eating hillbilly undead rather than winning an Oscar for his role in Pulp Fiction (not that he did, but rather that he would want to)??

Do you think that Duane Jones really wanted to spend his last night as a human warding off flesh eating, rotten smelling reanimated corpses rather than eating a nice pasta meal and catching an action flick with his sweetie? Of course not! And neither should you!

SO - I am going to share with you, in weekly installments, vital survival techniques, as published by Max Brooks in his "Zombie Survival Guide" so in the event we ever find ourselves in a situation where masses of the undead - Zombies - are trying desperately to devour our only brain, we will be prepared to prevent it from happening (or at least make a valiant attempt to slow it down.)

This first installment focuses on understanding how a Zombie comes to be. And if you doubt the importance of this then please allow me to quote Sun Tzu:

"Know the enemy and know yourself;

in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.

When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself,

your chances of winning or losing are equal.

If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain

in every battle to be in peril."

It's not just enough to know how they attack but why they attack. The advantage of knowing how they work, how they think, how they function, will help you to plan for it before it's too late.

Zombie-ism is caused by a virus, identified as Solanum in Mr. Brooks book, which travels through a person's blood stream, killing the body - cell by cell - as it travels toward the brain. Upon contact with the brain, the Solanum virus causes the brain to mutate into a "completely new organ" thereby sealing the Zombie state.

This will help explain how a person looks very "near death" or "deathly" just before they turn. You may think they have died being as the heart has stopped beating, yet the continuous activity in the brain lasting long enough to be transformed by the virus results in them being undead - or more commonly referred to as the "living dead."

So now that we know how the "dead" become "undead" you might be thinking to yourself, "ok fine, whatever, but why the intense desire to eat my brains?" This too eludes even the most expert of Zombie researchers.

It has been found that flesh has no nutritional value to a Zombie nor is it digested or transformed for another purpose. Actually, the flesh consumed by a Zombie sits in the intestinal tract, undigested, where it slowly builds up and over time, is either forced through the rectum or "literally bursts through the stomach or intestinal lining."

Be warned - this extreme result will NOT stop the Zombie from wanting to eat you!! Just because a Zombie with an distended belly seems to have his/her/its sights on you is no reason to become cocky or do something stupid because you think "No way could he/she/it still be hungry!" Zombies are always hungry and not selective in the flesh they eat, be it animal or otherwise, however please note that human flesh is the preferred; YOUR flesh is the preferred!

So now that we know HOW a Zombie comes to be, we will need to properly identify them, as not all Zombie's are so obvious. But I will save that information for my 2nd installment in "The Time to Prepare is Now" - be sure to grab my feed and STAY TUNED!!