Stopping a zombie apocalypse

I understand that someone prepared a simulation of what would happen in case of a zombie apocalypse, and concluded that the human species would go extinct.

Well, maybe.

If you’re dealing with zombies, then you’re dealing with an enemy far more physically powerful than you are, but far less intelligent. At least, far less intelligent than you can be. Characters in zombie apocalypse novels are often pretty stupid, but people in reality are not. Not always, anyway.

So how do you stop a zombie apocalypse? You start by never letting it get completely out of control. It will get out of control to some extent because no one will initially believe that what’s happening is really happening, but once the authorities (even local authorities) realize what’s happening, what should they do?

First, tell people there’s a fatal infectious disease on the loose. That terrifies everyone, although the overreaction to Covid may make that less effective than it should be. Tell them to shelter in place until future notice; tell them to let no one in or out and to call the police if anyone tries to break in. Apartments are made to keep people out so they may hold off a zombie long enough — especially if the residents have barricaded the door.

It may well be impossible to sufficiently barricade a house — houses tend to have a lot of ground-floor windows that zombies can break — but houses have roofs that generally require a ladder to access. Climb up on the roof, pull the ladder up after you, and it is likely impossible for a zombie to reach you. Of course, sheltering in place on a roof for days is not going to be a popular approach, but setting up rotating teams of watchmen in a neighborhood may be a solution. Also, of course, you will have fewer zombies in an area with a less dense population.

Second, get control of the utilities. People are going to be a lot happier about sheltering in place, and a lot safer doing so, if the power, water, and phone service are all working. Here you don’t have much choice but to stage an assault if there are zombies inside a substation or something. Once you have control, you move in a small number of carefully vetted workers, barricade the place, and station snipers to keep zombies away.

I think the next thing you need to do is start supplying food to people sheltering in place, but that may require some prior steps depending on the situation. Maybe apartment buildings can be supplied by helicopter; maybe the food has to be transported to houses by a convoy of zombie-fighting vehicles.

At some point if you’re in a city, you have to clear the streets by the painful process of running zombie-fighting vehicles through them over and over. Removing the bodies is going to be a problem in any case, since you don’t want anyone to touch them. I think a power shovel putting them into a dump truck, both with cages welded over the windows and with an escort of zombie-fighting vehicles, is the only way to go.

Out on the highways and in rural areas, I think you pretty much have to use aerial reconnaissance — helicopters, crop dusters, drones if you have them — to spot wandering zombies. Once you spot them, though, luring them in and eliminating them is likely easier than in the cities because you can pick a place with good sight lines and no innocents hanging around.

Once you’ve cleared every zombie that’s wandering around outside, it’s time to clear the buildings. And you don’t do it the way they did in World War Z.