CDC offers advice for zombie apocalypse survival
May 20, 2011, 11:25 AM | Updated: 3:21 pm
Stephanie writes…
It’s good to be prepared for everything: floods, power outages, tsunamis, and a zombie apocalypse.
Yes, a zombie apocalypse. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released its Survival Guide just in case the dead come back and try to eat our flesh.
If you’ve already prepared a kit for other catastrophic events, the CDC says you’re pretty much ready. You want enough water and food, medications, first aid supplies, clothing, and other items that seem mundane if you’re trying to escape a pack of zombies through a building’s vent system.
You also want a plan. Know your emergency exits, a meet-up place if your family is separated at the time of apocalypse, a list of contacts (fire, out of town family, police), and an evacuation route. If you’ve seen AMC’s new hit, Walking Dead, you know this is probably one of the most important ways to prepare.
Just in the newsroom alone, several ideas have hatched: Hijack a ferry, camp out at Azteca, run for the woods, etc. But really, it all depends on what the undead are capable of. Can they swim? Can they climb? How fast can they run?
In the event of a zombie attack, the CDC says it will begin conducting an investigation much like it does for any other disease outbreak. While that may not feel so reassuring as you’re racing down a street with hungry zombies on your tail, the CDC says infection control, including isolation and quarantine, is part of the battle. It cites a medical paper (fictional) written by Harvard psychiatrist Steven Schoolman, that calls the undead’s condition Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome. ANSDS is an infectious agent passed on through bites and bodily fluids.
The CDC promises to send out medical teams and first responders to affected areas in an attempt to “break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases.”
The CDC’s guide, posted by Dr. Ali Khan, has received rave reviews.
Khan’s postings usually draw 1,000 to 3,000 hits in a week. This one, posted Monday, got 30,000 within a day. By Friday, it had gotten 963,000 page views and was the top item viewed on the agency’s Web site.
“The response has been absolutely excellent. Most people have gotten the fact that this is tongue-and-cheek,” Khan said.
The Associated Press contributed to this post.
