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Where are you going to run to? (Courtesy: iStockphoto/Renphoto)
By Michael Banks in San Antonio, Texas
If you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of trying to survive a zombie apocalypse in the US, what should you do?
Well, according to Alex Alemi of Cornell University and colleagues, you should head to the Rocky Mountains or the Nevada desert.
Using 2010 US census data for population levels around the country, Alemi and colleagues used statistical mechanics to model how a zombie outbreak would spread.
The researchers assume that each person can be in one of four “states”: human, infected, zombie or dead. They start the model with one in every million people being infected and assume that the zombies then randomly walk around, travelling at about 20 cm each second. When a zombie comes into contact with a person, the researchers also take into account that a human could kill the zombie rather than just succumbing to a nibble on the neck (or worse!).
While most movies assume that after a zombie outbreak cities would be left with pockets of human survivors, the researchers find instead that towns would quickly fall but it would take months for the zombies to break into less densely populated areas.
“Things would get bad really quickly,” says Alemi. “Zombies are pretty terrible.” Indeed, after just one day, 10 million people would be infected, with half the US population gone in just a week. But it would take more then five months until almost everyone is part of the walking dead. Yet even then there would still be a few zombie-free locations in places like the Nevada desert.
Alemi and colleagues are now looking to improve their model to take into account that, with time, humans would get better at seeing off zombies, allowing for a greater chance of survival.
Yet there is a serious side to the research, as it could be used to model the outbreak of infectious diseases. But as Alemi makes clear, there are no actual real-life systems that follow actual zombie behaviour.
This deserves a ig-Nobel
Once we learn how to eat zombies, All Our Problems Are Solved. Buy some zombie sauce and once you turned, don’t eat brains without it!
sounds delicious , with some cheese on it……..
How is it known then, what real Zombie Behaviour is like ,if there are no Prototypes , in other words a Baseline to Measure this, that could be used to Model outbreaks of infectious diseases ?
Is it the construed ideas of what Zombies are that makes this determination of how to “study” outbreaks of infectious diseases ?
Thank You !
I was also wondering why People should go to Nevada to Escape the Zombies ?
Thank You !
@ Baldonado
Dear Nancy
Come to Serbia to see how Zombies look like and bahave. We still have plenty of those nibbled by Josip Broz Tito (so-called Brozombies), who venerate the late dictator as a divinity, visit his grave (in fact a cenotaph) in Belgrade once a year and hate everybody who happens not to adore their God. Some of their progenies are still ruling Serbia.
This is truly Amazing ! So they DO Exist! I would love to go to Serbia, not enough $.
Are Zombies just another word for Bad or Weird Real People? Or are they actually Real ? Do they appear like the one in this Photo ?
What about Mummies & Were-Wolves ?
I lived in New Mexico & saw strange things like Real Fire “Devils” out on the land of Santo Domingo Pueblo.
I also wonder how this fits in with Physics.
Thanks You , Nancy
@ Nancy
No, it has nothing to do with Physics, but fits in with Psycho (in a Hitchcockean sense). Hitchcock’s hero did not realize his most beloved was dead, as Tito’s Brozombies (moving cenotaphs) follow the slogan: After Tito – Tito! They appear right: Tito was elected for the president of Yugoslavia with an indefinite mandate. Accordingly, he is not obliged to be alive to rule Yugoslavia, as Brozombies rightly observe.
And they proudly point out that more statesmen attended Tito’s funeral, than J. F. Kennedy’s! It is something to keep in mind!
See you at the Cenotaph!
Petar