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Statistical Mechanics Finds Best Places To Hide During Zombie Apocalypse
HughPickens.com writes Eric Mack reports at Cnet that a team of researchers at Cornell University, inspired by the book "World War Z" by Max Brooks, have used statistical-mechanics to model how an actual zombie outbreak might unfold and determined the best long-term strategy for surviving the walking dead: Head for the hills. Specifically, you should probably get familiar now with the general location of Glacier National Park so that when it all goes down, you can start heading in that direction. The project started with differential equations to model a fully connected population, then moved on to lattice-based models, and ended with a full US-scale simulation of an outbreak across the continental US. "At their heart, the simulations are akin to modeling chemical reactions taking place between different elements and, in this case, we have four states a person can be in--human," says Alex Alemi, "infected, zombie, or dead zombie--with approximately 300 million people."
Alemi believes cities would succumb to the zombie scourge quickly, but the infection rate would slow down significantly in more sparsely populated areas and could take months to reach places like the Northern Rockies and Glacier National Park. "Given the dynamics of the disease, once the zombies invade more sparsely populated areas, the whole outbreak slows down--there are fewer humans to bite, so you start creating zombies at a slower rate," Alemi says. Once you hit Montana and Idaho, you might as well keep heading farther north into the Canadian Rockies and all the way up to Alaska where data analysis shows you're most likely to survive the zombie apocalypse. The state with the lowest survival rate? — New Jersey. Unfortunately a full scale simulation of an outbreak in the United States shows that for `realistic' parameters, we are largely doomed.
Alemi believes cities would succumb to the zombie scourge quickly, but the infection rate would slow down significantly in more sparsely populated areas and could take months to reach places like the Northern Rockies and Glacier National Park. "Given the dynamics of the disease, once the zombies invade more sparsely populated areas, the whole outbreak slows down--there are fewer humans to bite, so you start creating zombies at a slower rate," Alemi says. Once you hit Montana and Idaho, you might as well keep heading farther north into the Canadian Rockies and all the way up to Alaska where data analysis shows you're most likely to survive the zombie apocalypse. The state with the lowest survival rate? — New Jersey. Unfortunately a full scale simulation of an outbreak in the United States shows that for `realistic' parameters, we are largely doomed.
I am definitely not worried about a zombie invasion. They seek brains, so I'm quite safe.
Okay, good work. But in their model, do they make the assumption that everyone on the continent is trying to make for Glacier National Park? Because, now that they've told everyone that's what they should do, I think their model should account for that.
It's probably using some existing outbreak model and imputing parameters for a particular kind of "zombie". Most of these "scientific zombie studies" are thinly veiled pandemic modeling scenarios.
I read the internet for the articles.
Why are there so many studies about a non-existent problem ? If you want to model a disease, why not a deadly flu ?
So what will be the new best place to go to taking the increased number of people heading for the Glacier National Park after reading this message into account?
1) Zombies are stupid
2) Humans rule the world because we are smart, not because we are strong, not because we are hard to kill, nor because we are numerous. One smart human with 30 minutes to prepare makes a spear and scares off a lion, wolf, or even a bear. Why? Because we are some sneaky, devious, son's of bitches that outwit enemies.
3) Everyone always says your average human can defeat one zombie in pretty much every single movie or book. the zombies only are scary in large numbers.
4) So please tell me how in the real world a single zombie can infect all the rest of us?
It simply can NOT happen. The zombies will have surprise on their side for maybe 10 hours - and that's assuming it turns zombie close to nightfall. But even then, the surprise won't last long.
Come the day after the zombie outbreak ends, they will all be dead. They will NEVER take an entire city. At best they might take over a small town/rural community before word gets out, and humans arm ourselves with spears, axes, shotguns, torches, etc. Yeah, a few new zombies would be created after the surprise wore off, but if 1 human kills on average 3 zombies before they themselves become a zombie, then the number of zombies would drop like a bar of lead dropped out of an airplane.
Zombies are the stuff of nightmare only for children and sick people. To a human in the prime of his life they are an excuse to have some violent fun.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Zombies are worse than Pirates and Ninjas!
Zombies are not REAL, Zombies as an exercise isn't realistic, as you just applying basic game rules to a model.
Zombies as a literary element is about a lone or a few people against a mindless horde. So we can feel good that a guy with intelligence 1 standard deviation from the mean, can be victorious against such a hord, by outsmarting them. So us normal people feel good about ourselves, that we can somehow be better than the rest of the population.
This meme needs to go away, it is old and tiresome.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Boy, it sure is a good thing we've got such a sound model in our heads as to exactly how humans will act and behave once we are "zombies".
Infected people better be running around with an IQ of 50, superhuman strength, an uncontrollable appetite for brains, and are easily defeated by beheading.
Otherwise, there's gonna be a lot of people who are pissed that the real-world version of a viral outbreak isn't anything like what Hollywood has so clearly defined as a "zombie".
A zombie vegetarian with an insatiable lust for green beans isn't exactly a future doomsday preppers are imagining.
they aren't real. they were never real. they never will be real.
if you're talking fiction and you want to talk about WWZ or Walking Dead, or whatever game it is you all are still playing, fine.
But stop posting crap like this where people make simulations about zombies and apocalypses as if this shit is real.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
To my city Zoo. 1.4sq miles with its own working train, planetarium, and 10ft concrete walls designed to keep big cats from jumping them. Open exhibits with moats instead of caged pens which are perfect for herding zombies into or keeping criminals. Indoor areas for winter exhibits to take shelter in. A petting farm with a barn full of sustainable livestock animals to live off while using some of the wilder animals to keep both snoops and zombies at bay. Every entrance is heavy pad locked gate or 6ft carousel style gate. It's own water tower, sewage, and generators. Two natural spring fed ponds, gardens, and multiple snack stations loaded with food. Tranq guns, mancatchers, and stun equipment for dealing with humans and wildlife. Massive parking structure with a helipad.
Come at me bitches!
Obviously the best place to be is Madagascar, as long as your get there quick enough
The interesting thing about Zombies is they're for the most part fictional. In our Canadian winters up here, they'd likely freeze solid and they'd pretty much be easy targets at that point. Even if freezing solid doesn't kill them which is odd, there's no cold-blooded animal out there that is active in winter.
While I enjoy the genre, I find that the "rules" of zombie apocalypse seem designed to limit the ability to humans to fight back by imposing arbitrary limits on the effectiveness of weapons.
Brooks quickly discounts the effectiveness of military weapons like cluster munitions, Gatling guns and other kinds of weapons designed to put a large amount of shrapnel or projectiles into an area quickly. Even if it didn't result in killing of an entire horde, I would expect it to kill a large number and greatly reduce the threat of most of them by seriously degrading their mobility through damage to their ability to walk or move.
I'd like to see a Mythbusters episode where they take a 7.62mm Gatling gun and fire it into a simulated zombie horde at average head height to see what kind of damage it would do. It's probably beyond practicality to setup that many targets, but it would be an interesting simulation nonetheless.
I think the simplest way to deal with a horde would be a minor adaption of a machine designed to clear minefields -- the demining flail. These slightly resemble a combine bolted onto the front of a tank, with the "combine" being basically a bunch of steel weights on the ends of chains designed to beat on the ground to set off mines.
It's not hard to imagine a much lighter weight device (since zombies don't explode) spinning 5 pound weights in the air. It would completely pulverize zombies and turn clearing zombie hordes into something akin to mowing the grass.
...but my refuge for the zombie apocalypse?
The town water tower. Specifically, INSIDE/atop.
First benefit is that (until now) nobody else would be going there, and you avoid the panic-rush when everyone gets stuck on the freeways.
Many/most(?) stations have emergency generators already built in and by law well-equipped for sustained operation.
Ample fresh water, obviously, and a great situation for catching clean rainfall.
Most of our local towers are largely flat, and basically immune to severe weather and heavily insulated, meaning you'd have a secure, highly defensible place with great sightlines (to signal/communicate other survivors, if that's something you want to do), so high that even if they were attracted to your location, they'd have to pile up so high they'd pretty much liquefy at the bottom before getting to you.
Bring your acetylene kit as you evacuate*, and you could really build a nice home in there, including ziplines to nearby roofs/buildings for foraging (granted, getting back up there if there were zombies around your entry might stink).
*lots of small communities actually have a fair amount of tools stored right inside in the base for maintenance, saving you a lot of work.
-Styopa
New Jersey has the lowest survival rate? Hey! Don't the Kardashians live there? There is a God after all.
They did this on their own time and own dime....Riiiiight?
Well, *someone* has to find a safe hiding place for all the Senators and Fortune 100 CEO's... you don't think they have time to find that on their own, do you?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Because everybody else is going to leave now, right?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Skewed in favor of an unstoppable infection. Military weapons are posited as ineffective, even WW Z (the film) made it seem like walls of any height were ineffective (they were able to just dogpile against them until they had a ramp up).
I'd guess the story isn't any fun if at the end of chapter two it reads "...and then the AC-130 gunship decimated the field of zombies, the end."
I also wondered if "human intelligence" could work in the form of curved passages where zombies run in, but curves in the passages cause them to be steered away. Or sloped approaches where the slope angle gets extremely steep, causing them to fall back. Same with walls, walls that slope away, steeply, towards the top, causing them to fall back.
Really? We have run out of problems now that time can be spent on all this drivel?
I personally have heard that zombie brains make excellent dip, so get the chips ready.
Nevertheless, this is silly.
Humans are the most deadly predators that the planet has ever had. Killing stuff is what we're really really good at. Making weapons is something we're really really good at.
Zombies... their weapons are teeth and fingernails. Their tactics are go straight in and attack regardless of tactical situation.
They wouldn't have a chance.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Anyone else notice that the article and blog post are from March, 2014.
Yes, this is a /. article about a blog post from a year ago.
Nothing to see here...
There is a reason that Glacier National Park has fewer zombies. It has fewer people to start with so there would be less "feed stock" to make zombies. But there is a reason there are so few people in the area. It's very cold and hard to survive there. So maybe Key West would be a better alternative. And of course, if everyone tries to get to GNP, it will be very crowded with people... and zombies.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
It's more likely that their research had some other useful reason for existing, and using "zombies" in their model was simply a lab joke that turned into a hook to get people to read the paper.
Yes. Speaking as a Montana fellow, and being quite familiar with Glacier park, I can confidently inform everyone that if you try to live up there in the winter without a well-insulated and extremely well supplied domicile away from any steep slopes (locations for which there is a very limited selection, btw), Glacier park will calmly, without any particular effort, make you dead. For that matter, given the terrain and some of the species still wandering around up there, I'm none too sanguine about anyone's chances through the other seasons, either. And a bunch of people? You'd just kill each other.
No zombies required.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Critics point to an alternate simulation showing that for realistic parameters, zombies wouldn't last long in real life
It's the tyrannical foreign government zombie invaders that'll get you in the end. They can feel the hate. And they want your brainnzzz.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Which makes
>Unfortunately a full scale simulation of an outbreak in the United States shows that for `realistic' parameters, we are largely doomed.
so much more comforting...
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I think we need to do realistic, full-scale test runs of this concept with the intended participants. Just to, er, get them some practice.
Their model basically assumes that you - the person who read the study - would be the only one who would flee to some location where you expect to be safe, and everyone else would stay where they were. If humans really were like that then by all means, follow the advice. But of course, many other humans would react to a zombie apocalypse by fleeing to the country. Quite probably, some would bring infected (still asymptomatic) victims along, which would infect others in the "isolated" sanctuary. How many residents from LA would drive to Death Valley because it seems like a place where zombies wouldn't be? Well guess what: That immigration wave is exactly how zombies get there. A better model would account for this predictable human flight behavior before arriving at a final recommendation.
Shaun of the Dead was in a world where zombies were known, but most people were dismissive of it. Of course, that might've also been one of the tipping points to really get zombies into mainstream culture (2004), as many of the movies tended to be rather gruesome things that only appealed to a limited audience.
I want to say that the (excellent) book Ex-Heroes might've had zombies as a known thing as well. Of course, that one's set in a world that also has super heroes (who are fighting against the zombie outbreak).
I can't remember if World War Z (the book, not the movie) had established that zombies were a cultural thing before the outbreak happened ... I want to say that the disease vector was different than your typical zombie movie, and they had called them Z as zombies were the closest thing that they had to relate it to.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
A piece of conversation overheard in a bus:
Guy1: "What would you do if a horde of zombies would approach your house?"
Guy2: "I'd blast them to dust with my pocket atomic bombs."
Guy1: "Oh come on, be realistic!"
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
Unless they run on nuclear fusion, zombies that don't eat will stumble around for a few days tops, then weaken and drop in their tracks. I mean, where do they get the energy to run around for week after week? Where's the thermodynamics?
In that case, I humbly suggest they do a trial run at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, where no zombie would think to look for fresh brain matter.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I should think the safest place to hide would be among fundamentalists.
No large concentration of brains there to attract hungry zombies.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
In a zombie apocalypse, all movies and games depict their being some kind of "safe-house" where all the uninfected will gather together.
This, it seems to me, is the most stupid idea ever. Heading towards that is certain death. The zombies only need to be able to read, or get lucky, for it to be game over - they know where the highest concentration of juicy victims will be. And that concentration will increase as everyone piles to go there.
Sure, that's where the firepower might be concentrated too, but that's not good enough when one breaking through is enough to create a game-over scenario.
It seems to me that when everyone is piling towards the safehouse, a prudent course of action would be to stay still / run the other way, unless there's something that stops you doing so.
If I was a zombie, I know exactly where I'd head first.
Similarly, when everyone tries to flee a city, the first thing they do is jam the motorways (freeways). It seems quite stupid to even try if there are really that many people headed that way. All you'll do is trap your vehicle in a queue that you can't escape and then have to get out on foot.
Go the other way, go down the backstreets and side-alleys, stay off the main paths is surely the intelligent thing to do (besides using a bike or other fast transport in the first place).
"The state with the lowest survival rate? — New Jersey" It also happens to be the state least effected by all its citizens being turned into mindless zombies.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Statistically speaking, you are more likely to end up on the zombie side than you are the survivor side. To that end I think we should start stocking up on brains to keep us fed during our long trek to Glacier National Park.
All those cute Zombie outbreak pandemic models ignore one of the mayor differentiators - we generally do not kill sick people, we setup care centers. No such problem during Zombie apocalypse.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
zombies also do not want to go where we surely do not want to live. Interesting tidbit...our taxes dollars at work,...
Zombies don't need to be realistic, merely being entertaining is sufficient. They can be quite useful to bring up the topic of disaster preparedness. A super-flu, ebola, etc is not necessary for crisis. A "mundane" storm or earthquake that knocks out the power to millions and shuts down the supermarkets is sufficient. Anything that might spark a conversation or some thought about having a weeks worth of unrefrigerated food and water at home is a good idea. OK some plastic trash bags, baby wipes, and purell might also be a good idea for your in-home campout.
Similar story for those survivalist/prepper shows.
Humans are the most deadly predators that the planet has ever had. Killing stuff is what we're really really good at. Making weapons is something we're really really good at.
Actually, making tools and organizing labor is we're really good at.
Exactly. And tools and organization are the two most useful skills... for efficiently killing things.
I personally have never killed anything larger than a bug in my life; I suspect a lot of other people haven't either. I've never had to, because there have always been other people who are willing to do those unpleasant tasks for me, in exchange for modest amounts of money.
Paying somebody else to do it turns out to be a very efficient strategy for killing.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Okay.. where's the source of food energy which is going to allow zombies to be mobile more a few days after they turn?
Assuming "fast" zombies, a genuine zombie disease would burn out faster than ebola as they consume all their "food" almost immediately.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Is there any place where one could hide from zombie stories?
Which is why they are not all that interesting from the zombie perspective. For zombies, you need to build a model that accounts for things like 300+ million civilian guns in USA, and the corresponding stockpiles of ammo.
I haven't built one, but my gut feel is that in US, the outbreak would be over in a week, tops, as zombies would be mowed down by the trigger happy redneck horde that finally gets their adventure of a lifetime.
NJ would still be screwed, tho. ~
"The Hardest Part About a Zombie Apocalypse Will Be Pretending I'm Not Excited'
I doubt the modeling took into account that here in the South we defend our homes via the second ammendment against foreign invaders, tyrannical government AND zombies!
... which is nice except for the fact that Montana has a higher rate of gun ownership than any state in the old confederacy, and the third-highest overall (after Wyoming and Alaska). http://usliberals.about.com/od...
People have been holing up in the Flathead and Yaak River valleys (both to the West of the Park) for the last forty years or so waiting for the end.
I'm thinking about '28 days later'. How long can one hide from the growing population of the diseased? The foraging option given in most stories will become exponentially difficult as food spoils and shops are looted by other survivors. Just like the movie, the best option is leaving town. This means the most valuable part of doomsday preparation is not gas masks and dried food but an exit strategy. If no authority has repaired infrastructure and established order after 5-7 days, it's time to exit any highly populated areas.
This strategy is going to work so well when you encounter the well-armed residents of small towns who are unlikely to welcome strangers who might be carrying a fatal disease and who are unlikely to have practical survival skills that said small town needs (strangers with survival skills, that is).
Even without the unlimited guns/ammo world of Left For Dead, if start with 1% of the population surviving, each survivor would only need to kill 99 zombies for the world to be "zombie free". Also The unlimited ammo situation is not all that far fetched. There is something like 6 Billion rounds of ammo produced annually in the US, most of which is in civilian hands.
Makes me wonder why the Walking Dead crew are having so many problems finding guns/ammo in of all places Georgia. Maybe they should spend less time whining and more time smashing skulls and looking in basements for all those bibles and guns everyone in the south cling to.
Just turn on some "reality TV" and the zombies won't be interested in you. "No brains here," they'll grunt. Just remember to turn the TV off before the reality TV rots your brain.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I like zombie movies, but I've begun to lose my ability to suspend disbelief. The Walking Dead has slow mostly rotted zombies with unbelievably soft skull into which a knife can be easily driven. It's gotten to the point of ridiculousness. The humans would clean house.
But you know, the humans would clean house anyway.
I have over 400 rounds of ammo in my home, and three guns. I don't believe I'm uncommon. Even if only one in 30 people is as well armed as me, and if one in 12 of us survives the initial surprise attack long enough to get up on our roofs. (nobody expects zombies, so you could well be surprised and eaten on the first day), then by shooting a bullet into the head of each zombie from the safety of the roof, one would expect to have enough ammo to clear the area. And the shooting would conveniently make noise and attract the zombies. There would remain only people with guns and dead zombies after a short while.
...
Guns aren't very effective at stopping zombies. You basically have to disintegrate them to stop them; a mere shot to the heart or head won't do it.
...it's rendered redundant, as everyone still able to Google will be taking the same action