Dr Dale’s Zombie Dictionary Read online

  Bear in mind that both humans and animals can be equally affected by rabies, which is the closest to a zombie virus. In fact, humans may not become infected at all and we may instead be faced with a kitten apocalypse, which does not bear thinking about. Come to think of it, your best bet on hearing of a zombie outbreak, is to kill all nearby animals immediately – including beloved family pets – and put them in cold storage to be used later for food. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.

  ANIMALS (TRAINING OF)

  Should it transpire that animals are immune to the zombie virus, and you didn’t follow my advice of immediately placing them in cold storage due to a misguided sentimental attachment to your gerbil Puffin, you could always consider training animals to help you during the zombie apocalypse.

  Animals can be taught to carry out any number of simple tasks: going on scavenging missions, search and rescue, attack and defence, diversion, guarding safe houses or carrying supplies. The first animal that springs to mind when considering likely animals to train is, of course, a dog.

  However, even though they are probably the most domesticated and easily trained of animals, this does not necessarily make dogs the best option. Historically, dogs and humans have a strong emotional bond, some people even value the companionship of our four-legged friends over that of other humans – they dress them up in little outfits and put bows on their ears and carry around in purpose-made handbags and make videos of them doing cute things like falling down stairs or chasing their own tails and then send the tapes to You’ve Been Framed giving ITV a reason to keep showing the programme and torturing the rest of humanity… My point (apart from that people who do that should be stabbed with a pointy stick) is that humans can become easily attached to dogs and would be unlikely to send their beloved canine companions out to battle with a horde of zombies unprotected.

  Where does that leave us? Taking this emotional weakness into consideration, and after many hours of research, we have discovered that in actual fact the best animals to train up are sheep.

  The good thing about sheep is that there are lots of them and they all look alike. They are docile and easily led and can be trained to carry out simple tasks. Scientists can also clone sheep. So if you run out of natural sheep you can just nip along to your local cloning centre and get some more. The mere fact that they all look alike means that if you have several highly trained sheep on your team you will be unable to tell them apart and therefore will not become emotionally attached to them (unless you put different coloured hats on each of the sheep, but bear in mind that whilst you are not looking the sheep may swap hats meaning that you may still be uncertain of which sheep is which. They’re crafty like that, are sheep).

  The only thing to consider when training sheep is that they are not very good at multitasking and so you will only be able to train each sheep to carry out one specific task. These tasks are as follows:

  Attack Sheep:

  A sheep that will attack. Sheep aren’t particularly good at jumping so their attacks will be focused mainly on areas of the zombie below the knee level. It is possible to train the sheep to lever itself on its hind legs against the zombie, therefore raising its mouth to chest level, but this still won’t take it to the level of the brain. You can only hope that the zombie will stoop low to fight back, thus putting its head in the line of fire. Either that or you could train the sheep to stand on top of each other.

  Defence Sheep:

  Sheep can be trained to form natural barriers against doors and windows and can cause enough ballast (depending on the number of sheep) to hold a door or window closed, or block a passageway or street. You can also use defence sheep whilst travelling from place to place. If you stand in the centre of a group of sheep, the zombies will attack them first leaving you time to escape while the undead chomp on your woolly friends.

  Reconnaissance Sheep:

  A sheep can blend into most surroundings as long as it is covered in snow or clouds. If this is the case then you can send a sheep to carry out reconnaissance work by strapping a video camera to its back. As it cannot be seen, it will be able to return to you unscathed.

  Guard Sheep:

  The piercing ‘Baa’ of a sheep could raise the dead. But it’s not raising the dead you’re worried about, it’s drawing attention to yourself from the undead.

  Sheep are always alert. They may fool onlookers by seeming docile and stupid, but secretly those piercing eyes are watching every movement like a hawk. A sheep can also be trained to recognise your friends as well as your nemies, and can be placed as an effective sentry on a door as long as the password is ‘Baa’.

  Search Sheep:

  This is the one area of difficulty we have encountered in effectively training sheep. More often than not when sent on a search mission to find supplies, they will invariably lead us to grass. Be prepared to put time and effort into training the search sheep. Unless you like grass.

  Of course, sheep are not the only animals that can be trained to carry out these tasks. These creatures have also shown themselves to be suitable for training: cows, pigs, ducks, badgers, frogs and voles. Just ensure that should you run out of sheep and have to use a different animal for sentry duty, you make your team aware that the password is no longer ‘Baa’ to avoid unnecessary confusion.

  ANORAK

  NO! NO! NO! They are brightly coloured so you will be easily spotted, and they rustle so you will be heard from a million miles away. OK, so they’re waterproof, but I can assure you that in these dire circumstances rain will be the least of your worries. The only advantage to your wearing an anorak is that when you become a zombie (which you will because your friends will happily sacrifice you) it will be twice as enjoyable to kill you.

  ANTHRACITE

  Anthracite coal is probably the best fuel to use during a zombie apocalypse. Not only does it burn with little smoke or flame – so will be less likely to attract attention – but it also gives off intense heat and lasts longer than normal coal. The only downside to using this particular form of fuel is that it is very difficult to come by. Your best bet to actually obtain this special and rare item is to find an anthracite mine and to make that your command post and sanctuary during the siege of the dead.

  A plus point to setting up your base in an anthracite mine is that in its very nature a mine is underground (apart from cloud mines) and thus will have limited access points for zombies to get in – and these are easily guarded. The problem is that there are very few anthracite mines around. The most famous of all the anthracite mines is based in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and although this may seem like a bit of a trek for some of you, we do recommend you make the effort to get to it. Not only does it have an anthracite mine, but it is also built on top of seven hills (making it easier to fortify). The population is also very low, currently estimated at under 15,000, so there’d be fewer zombies to kill if they become infected.

  I think this advice is best summed up in the words of General James Nagle: ‘In times of the rising of corpses, head for the Pottsville anthracite mine in Pennsylvania.’

  Wise words indeed.

  ARMOUR (MEDIEVAL)

  Do not bother wearing a suit of armour. It will be heavy and unwieldy. It will greatly reduce your speed and most importantly is an absute nightmare to remove when you need a wee.

  ARMOUR (OTHER TYPES)

  Although you should definitely avoid wearing medieval armour, as explained in the previous entry, there are other forms of protective clothing that you may also have considered. Riot gear for example, or martial arts training gear, or indeed a shark suit (being a suit that protects against shark bites rather than a suit that makes you look like a shark). I’m not saying that it’s not a good idea to wear armour if you have it to hand but I wouldn’t go out of my way to seek it out as protective clothing.

  In order to survive, you need to avoid the undead and surely preparing to be bitten is tempting fate somewhat? Thinking you are completely protected from zombie
bites will give you a false sense of security and you may put yourself in more dangerous situations. One minute you’re strolling down the road and the zombies appear. You don’t run, you think you can walk straight through the horde, but then more and more of them appear and you decide this wasn’t such a good idea after all so you jump into the nearby river to escape, but there’s a shark in there and it attacks you but it can’t bite through the shark suit and it gets annoyed and swims off and you think you’re safe, but you’re not because the shark just went to get its mate – the Mega Shark – and then the Giant Octopus turns up too and now you’re truly screwed.

  See what happens when you tempt fate by wearing armour? Take my advice and concentrate on avoidance rather than protection – it’l make life easier.

  ATTORNEY

  Also referred to as a solicitor or lawyer. An attorney will not be terribly useful during an apocalypse (although if mine survives he assures me that he has found a legal loophole that will grant me ownership of Devon should all the inhabitants die).

  You should, however, keep an attorney on retainer while you are training for the apocalypse. They may prove useful when that stray throwing star hits an old lady in the head, or you accidentally knock a post office down with a rickshaw. They will keep you out of prison and quash any fines, leaving you to continue your preparation.

  AUTHORITIES

  From all the research we have done into how people within positions of power and authority will react during a zombie apocalypse, we have garnered one singularly important piece of information: they will be of no help at all. Their complete ineptitude, ignorance and failure to accept the seriousness of the situation before it’s too late will no doubt lead to hundreds of thousands dying and being reanimated. So our advice is to not bother going anywhere near any person in a position of power, because you will end up dead.

  Councils and Governments will nod sagely and tell us that everything is under control even when their offices are overrun and their secretaries are being gnawed on by the undead.

  What do they have to worry about? They’ve got their own secret bunkers to dive into. And they probably started the whole thing anyway by sanctioning some deranged scientific experiment.

  The Army will follow protocol to the letter. Trusting that their superiors know what’s going on they will quarantine infected areas leaving those who have not yet been bitten unable to escape. They will pay no attention to anyone who is trying to explain to them that their whole family has just been infected, and they will happily nuke entire cities just to keep the infection under control, with no regard for anyone who may still be alive inside. After all, what’s a little collateral damage between friends?

  What do they have to worry about? They’ve got guns as standard issue. And they probably started the whole thing anyway through some deranged weapons experiment.

  The Police will pat you on the head and tell you to run along home now, sonny, when you try and explain to them that the local shopping centre has been invaded by the undead. On subsequently learning the truth, they will incarcerate you and hold you to blame. They will immediately instigate martial law and kill anything that vaguely resembles a zombie. We are led to believe this is due to fear and panic, but really it’s because deep down they’re all power-crazed maniacs who are all fully paid-up members of the local fascist society.

  They will pay no attention to anyone else’s advice and invariably get themselves killed en masse due to badly organised strike teams. They will most definitely set up a road block somewhere that consists of two police vehicles placed in a chevron formation and then hide behind their bonnets with a megaphone (one or both of these police vehicles will then subsequently explode).

  What do they have to worry about? They’ve got the law on their hands. And they probably started the whole thing anyway by failing to spot and control the initial outbreak.

  Secret Government and Non-Government Organisations will stay very much out of the way. They won’t even leave their office or secret laboratory. Ever. They will attempt to aid the other authorities by feeding them irrelevant information so that they don’t get the blame for the mass carnage that is occurring. They will be searching continually for a cure to the infection and will always be so close but so far.

  What do they have to worry about? They have endless funding and resources and are securely locked away in their high-security offices. And they probably started the whole thing anyway, that being the kind of thing secret organisations do.

  The Women’s Institute will call a meeting immediately to attempt to reschedule the jams and jellies social to a time when Marjorie isn’t chomping on her husband. They will try to find an alternative venue for the summer fête as the field they had planned to use is now overrun with the undead. They will realise that raffle prizes will now become more difficult to come by as shops are being looted by scavengers, and although they know that they will have to cancel their coach trip to Bognor, they will come up with an alternative social event to keep their members happy.

  What do they have to worry about anyway? They probably started the whole thing…or perhaps not. Who knows though?

  FACT 1: Though we have made it perfectly clear that the authorities as a whole are not to be trusted during an apocalypse, there is usually one member of each group who is plucky, courageous and willing to help (they’re usually new to the department so haven’t had time to be poisoned with cynicism and machismo). If you must go to the authorities try and link up with this one person.

  FACT 2: All research regarding the authorities’ reaction to the rising of the dead has been taken from varying filmic sources and is probably in no way connected to how they will react in real life. For all we know they already have a secret zombie plan that will save us all when the dead rise – but how can I comment on that if they insist on keeping it a secret? If they just told us the truth now and then and were a little bit more transparent then maybe they wouldn’t be depicted as Hitlerian egomaniacs or shambling goons in every zombie film that has ever been made.

  BACTERIA

  In 1998 an American scientist calculated that the number of bacteria on earth was 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. One can assume from this man’s findings that:

  in over ten years this figure has increased and

  this man never got much sex.

  So, how will this very long number affect us when attempting to survive a zombie apocalypse? Bacteria will be both our best friend and possibly our worst enemy during these dark times.

  There are good bacteria and there are bad bacteria (for proof of this, speak to Mr Yakult). Unfortunately, we are more likely to encounter the bad bacteria (the likes of which cause tetanus, typhoid fever, diphtheria, syphilis, cholera, food-borne illness, leprosy, tuberculosis and other life-threatening illnesses) than the good bacteria (like Lactobacillus and Lactococcus that make cheese).

  With society on its knees, medicines are going to become scarce so we will be more susceptible. There is not much you can do about this other than to take simple precautions such as: ensuring you and your sanctuary are kept clean; if you do suffer injuries, attempt to sterilise them; and if food begins to spoil get rid of it. Should you, however, discover a way in which to destroy all bacteria I implore you – DON’T. Bacteria is also our greatest natural asset in the war against zombies. It is bacteria that makes them rot.

  Although this may seem like a rather time-consuming way to defeat the undead, bear in mind that given the right conditions (hotter climate) and with the help of insects, a human body can rot away to just bone in anywhere between 50 and 365 days. So, with the help of bacteria, it will all just be a case of bedding down and waiting for our inevitable victory! With a wine and cheese celebration afterwards.

  BALD

  This is the best way to present one’s head during a zombie apocalypse – and quite possibly the rest of your body tooshould you be a rather hirsute person. The reasoning behind this has less to do with fashion and more to
do with giving a zombie as little as possible to grab on to should you be attacked. Zombies are known to fight like girls and will grab your hair, bite and quite possibly pinch you too if they have the chance.

  Having no hair will also make you a faster swimmer – according to the Goodhew theory of aerodynamics.

  BARRICADES

  A barricade is what is needed when a door just won’t do the job on its own. If you have a large number of zombies to keep out then you need to pile as much stuff as possible in front of all the access points to make it as difficult as possible for them to get in. Furniture is the preferred item for use in a barricade.