More Fun With Online School
I recently started an English Composition class in my online school. I already passed that class previously but the school felt I needed to take it again because “You took it a really long time ago because you are freakishly old to be a student, and besides, we really want you to give us more money.”
I may be paraphrasing.
So one of my first assignments was to write an essay to describe how to accomplish a task. And I thought about it, and realized something. I could spend an hour or so writing an essay that met the requirements. Or I could spend five minutes searching through my site archives until I find a post that meets the requirements.
As it turns out I have written far more posts on how to survive a zombie attack than is probably reasonable. I spent about ten minutes combining them into one large essay and turned it in.
I got an A, and my class is now safe from the undead menace.
How to Survive the Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse
Say you are sitting in your living room, minding your own business, when you happen to notice what appears to be a pack of flesh eating zombies standing on your front porch. Sooner or later everybody finds themselves in a situation like this, unless of course they don’t have a porch. The human race is clearly about to be swept away by a tide of ravenous ghouls, while all of our implodes in frenzy of terror and violence. None the less survival is possible, if you simply follow these easy steps.
Step one: Confirm The Zombie Infestation
Check the date. Is it Halloween? If so there is an excellent chance that the zombies are merely some kids in make-up, and they want candy. It is generally considered bad form to shoot your neighbor’s children in the brain.
However movies such as CHUD 2, Revenge of The Living Dead, and many others have taught us that sometimes the flesh-hungry damned do rise up to attack during Halloween. And these movies always feature at least one suburban family that get ripped apart because they opened the door to what they foolishly assumed to be trick-or-treaters.
There are, generally speaking, only three ways to confirm the presence of zombies. The first is to open the door and see if they try to eat you. There is a rather large and glaring flaw with that test. Because if they turn out to not be zombies they might actually be process servers, or proselytizing religious folks, or traveling salesmen, and end of the world or not, there are just some things you just do not want in your house.
Another option for checking for zombies is to ask them.
“Excuse me, are you a zombie?”
If they drool, and reach for you while licking their chops, then it’s zombies and you should attempt to destroy their brain.
If they answer “yes”, then thank them for their honesty and then dispatch them as quickly as possible. But you should reward their courtesy by doing it politely.
In the event that they tell you that they are not zombies, then shoot them in the brain anyways. Because everybody knows that zombies are liars.
Finally there is a test I like to call “the “Sample Salvo”. Select on of the people standing on your porch, and shoot one of them in the leg one to several times. If the individual stays up, and just glares, moans, or screams for you tasty tasty brains, then it is clearly a zombie and you should follow up with a shot to the head.
If on the other hand, the person falls to the ground screaming in pain and dropping candy all over, then its just a little kid wearing a costume and there is not currently a zombie apocalypse. You can safely go back to watching television. If the target falls over dropping candy without the screaming, then congratulations. You just shot a piñata. And what kind of asshole shoots a piñata?
Step 2: Gathering Supplies
Now that you have confirmed that living dead are in fact rising up to devour everything we hold dear, it is time to properly outfit yourself. There are many things you will probably want to get your grubby little mitts on. Bottled water, medical supplies, canned food, gasoline, women, and maybe even a shortwave radio all come recommended by a variety of emergency preparedness experts. To this I counter that there are only two things you should worry about at this stage. Guns and ammunition. Although please note that it is vital that you have more of the later than the former.
If you have guns and ammunition, you can generally trade them for any other survival gear you may need. At a very favorable rate of exchange. You will usually be able to get all the supplies you want simply by promising to end the exchange with the same amount of ammunition that you started with.
When selecting a firearm it is important to choose one that is well suited to the new post-apocalyptic undead nightmare hat you will find yourself in. I personally have scoured movies books, and the internet to examine what is generally considered to be effective weapon qualities against a zombie . My conclusion is the weapon that would work best as an anti-zombie gun would be a belt-fed machine gun that shoots flaming chainsaws.
If fact the perfection of the belt-fed flaming chainsaw machine gun is hampered by only three facts. The first is that very few people are properly trained in the use of the belt-fed flaming chainsaw machine gun. The second is that the ammunition, flaming chainsaws, may be difficult to find or even carry safely. And lastly there is to small flaw that belt-fed flaming chainsaw machine-guns to do not in fact actually exist.
In survival situations it is generally preferable to rely on equipment that strictly speaking, actually exists. I recommend that if you start with whatever firearm you are most familiar with. If you are equally familiar with multiple types, go with whichever one you have the most ammunition for. If that doesn’t break the tie go for the weapon with the highest ammunition capacity, followed by size of projectile.. Although having more than one gun is a good idea, you should probably draw the line at the two to three range, lest you find yourself pinned to the ground beneath your own personal armory. In the zombie apocalypse, you definitely want to stay mobile. Which brings us to our next point, vehicles.
You ideally want to select a vehicle for three factors. Storage capacity for all of your supplies and friends, ability to drive into nearly anywhere, and durability. The perfect vehicle would be a Bradley M2 Infantry Fighting Vehicle. It seats nine, is amphibious, resistant to light anti-tank weapons, and has a turret mounted cannon capable of killing a small schoolhouse. Unfortunately anybody that has one is unlikely to want to give it up, and will automatically be better armed than you.
You will probably have to settle for a 4×4 truck or SUV. Remember when selecting that bigger will usually be better due to durability and storage. And besides once the inevitable zombie apocalypse starts fuel efficiency will only be a concern for hippies, socialists and zombie chow.
Step Three: Choose Your Friends Wisely
You will only have so much space in your zombie escape vehicle, so it is vitally important to pick the right people to go with you.
First thing to do is to make sure that nobody that you associate with is stupid enough to do any of the following things; Read creepy old books out loud, open strange barrels with military warnings on them, screw around with angry lab monkeys, or propose any activity in a spooky abandoned mental hospital.
Also you should not associate with anyone who will try to have sex with a member of the undead. I know that this sounds like basic common sense, but according to the movies that I have seen, it is a more frequent problem than you would think.
If you have any friends that are either physically disabled, very large, or for some other reason quite slow on foot be sure to bring them along. When things go wrong, you do not have to be the fastest runner in your group to escape. You just have to be faster than the slowest member of your group. Take stock of your friends now. Are they all in better shape than you? Then you may need to create a slower one by shooting your least favorite friend in the leg.
So in conclusions, once the inevitable zombie apocalypse goes down, life will become a stress-filled and dangerous place. But if you follow these steps you will survive, and be able to go find shopping mall, underground military base, or some other location to live the rest of you days out in relative comfort.
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March 15th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
My Lit teacher would kill me if I handed in something like this, but then again he is kind of scared of my friends and I after the nail polish uniform debate. Anyway great post, made me laugh
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Freiheit reply on March 15th, 2010 7:58 pm:
“nail polish uniform debate”
Come on! You can’t drop that and not explain it.
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Dave in NC reply on March 16th, 2010 9:00 am:
Sounds like tomorrow’s post to me
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Captain McCheese reply on March 16th, 2010 10:00 am:
It really was nothing. We were having a discussion in groups of whether we should be made wear uniforms. The teacher was coming round to acess us or something and when he got to our table we decided to voice our opinions all at once. I was telling him about my addiction to nail polish, another friend had started a petition about 5 minutes before for girls to wear trousers to school, another was talking about warm scarves and how school shoes are uncomfortable and the other was just sitting there quietly. He left pretty quick and hasn’t talked to us all as a group again.
Minty reply on March 16th, 2010 5:12 pm:
I guess I’m missing something–what’s so scary about that?
Captain McCheese reply on March 17th, 2010 9:37 am:
I think he’s just scared of teenage girls
Prodigal reply on March 18th, 2010 6:23 am:
Who with any sense isn’t?
March 15th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Great stuff.
Would have LOVED to see the expression on the marker’s face. That the essay got an “A” suggests a sense of humour, or that they were scared about what would happen otherwise?
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March 15th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
I don’t know, I see a few sentences that end with a preposition. ;)
I will admit, I have one particular essay that was revised and expanded a number of times and handed in for assignments in elementary school, junior high, senior high, and college.
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March 15th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
From what I’ve understood, coming back to a basic English Composition class long after I learned everything they will teach you in an English Composition class, teachers will not notice a sentence ending in a proposition. They’re too busy hating themselves for teaching an English Composition class, and their brains are running out their ears already, from having to read forty other essays in which preposition-ended sentences are the least awful thing that could happen.
I’m glad that you got an A.
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Sicarius reply on March 15th, 2010 11:10 pm:
Man, my teachers ALWAYS notice my sentences when they end in a proposition. “In conclusion, how about dinner tonight?”
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March 16th, 2010 at 12:13 am
Fuck yes.
I want a belt fed flaming chainsaw shotgun. NOW. NOW!
I will mount six on my Bradly M2 Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Each of my nine-man team will also be armed with a belt fed flaming chainsaw shotgun.
I will also be forced to play Metallica and Sabbeth on a loudspeaker from my zombie-killing apocalypse machine. I predict that the zombie’s heads will actually explode from the overdose of awesome.
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Mark reply on March 16th, 2010 5:23 am:
Catherine, you might just be my hero.
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sparkey17 reply on March 16th, 2010 9:56 am:
Catherine, Marry Me.
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Catherine reply on March 16th, 2010 1:05 pm:
Sorry…spoken for:)
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David reply on March 31st, 2010 4:06 pm:
When he turns into a zombie and you blow his brains out (so to speak), you’ll have a place reserved for you in my post-apocalyptic compound in Alaska.
March 16th, 2010 at 6:44 am
The only question I have about the zombie apocalypse survival plan is, is it better to find a place in a large town or city to hold up? or is it better to go to the middle of nowhere and deal with the average redneck?
Captcha: scimitar in – no, melee weapons are bad for zombie apocalypse Mr. Captcha…stick with projectiles
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StoneWolf reply on March 16th, 2010 11:26 am:
Don’t go for the middle of nowhere. That’s where I live. I live on a hill that also provides excellent overwatch of my town and all major routes of approch. I have memorized my hill and most of my town. And I don’t like people. People loving people tend to end up in cities, and will be so happy to see another person they’ll invite you in long before it occurs to them to check the safty on their weapon. People like me will have you sighted in long before it occurs to us that you may be useful. And even then, I played DnD. I know all about corps-raiding.
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Billy reply on March 17th, 2010 12:29 pm:
“I got a gal who lives on the hill, she won’t do it, but her sister will.”, sorry, random music appeared in my head.
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StoneWolf reply on March 17th, 2010 2:04 pm:
I think I know that song.
rollen the tompson gunner reply on March 17th, 2010 6:53 pm:
it is from a song done by ZZ Top called “tube steak boogie”
March 16th, 2010 at 7:51 am
From my experience as a SOTA (Student Over Traditional Age) in a community college, it seems that professors are somewhat blind to typographical errors, sentences ending in a preposition, etc. because they are completely inundated by the horrors of a large portion of today’s high school graduates who barely know how to spell.
It was annoying to me when our professor would assign us a 500 word essay on something and everyone would groan, when in fact I would have trouble keeping my essay under 1000 words because I wanted to get my point across properly, and 500 words was just not enough.
Heck, those two paragraphs alone account for 100 words. 500 words is nothing!
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StoneWolf reply on March 16th, 2010 11:29 am:
I’m 23, well read, and resonably well spoken. I often had to get special permission to submit work over max word limit. I had a 5 page short story I was unable to submit because two years and 100,000 words later I’m still not finished.
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March 16th, 2010 at 12:49 pm
I remember doing Day of the Triffids in CSE English back in about ’85. The teacher, Mr Mills, had us write lots of essays about post-apocalyptic survival. It was great fun, and I thought “Maybe I’ve misjudged this boring subject for all these years…”
Then we went back to the standard fodder of British High School – Kes, Across the Barricades and a couple of diabolical plays. At that point I lost the will to live, or at least to care about English.
Then, in a blinding act of redemption, he let me do Brave New World as a portfolio project. But even so, it was never as good as trying to write the survival handbook to the killer plant rampage.
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Billy reply on March 20th, 2010 8:24 am:
Especially since plants are the most likely to cause the zombie plagues. Fungi are already doing this to random insects, eventually some crazy person, maybe even me, will figure out a way to weaponize such plants, mutating them for the use against humans. After all, plants are also easier to crossbreed than any animal.
captcha: that blob, yeah that is an exception on the animal side.
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March 17th, 2010 at 8:58 am
About the logistics of a belt fed flaming chainsaw machine gun- are the chainsaws set alight before they pass through the projectile postion of the machine, or does it work rather like a flame thrower- they are lit as they pass by the exit port as a high rate of speed. If things are set up to both switch them on AND to ignite them a moment before they are shot out to kill zombies in a super awesome manner, well, I think we might be able to get that marketed pretty quickly really. If you were to use miniature chainaws- ones only about 1 foot long it would be easier to set up the chain, and for that matter to load it in the tray. Could be a fun science fair project…
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Willy reply on March 19th, 2010 9:04 am:
As fun as that might be, you might have trouble finding a science fair that allows lethal weapons as a project.
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paula reply on March 20th, 2010 11:10 am:
yeah, science fairs are boring that way!
captcha: wintered johns — spring’s here, and it’s time to wash the winter longjohns!
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David reply on March 31st, 2010 4:13 pm:
Miniaturized chainsaws would not be nearly as effective as big gas-fired 36″ logging chainsaws. Also, there is the economy of scale to consider.
I think the flaming chainsaws are encased in a sabot which allows them to be belt-fed, handled safely, and the sabot seperation triggers the chainsaw ignition and the blades to spin all at the same time.
Now we’re talking about a weapon that looks like, oh, like a belt-fed howitzer. So now we really DO need our escape vehicle to be built on something like a dump-truck chassis.
captcha: that heavy
Yes, THAT heavy!
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JoAnn in VA reply on March 31st, 2010 5:54 pm:
We need to move this out of the planning stage and start making some prototypes…unfortunetely my forte is in first aid, emergency medicine and working a sewing machine, not a tool and die shop. Now if you want some good uniforms to wear, or get sick, there I can help ya.
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March 19th, 2010 at 9:49 am
MIT?
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March 19th, 2010 at 10:24 am
I’ve always thought that to make the best post apocalyptic ride you start with a (civilian money delivery style) armored car. They’ve got armor, gunports, and enough interior space that you can outfit the inside like an RV and live in relative comfort. The you mount HI-RAIL adaptors so that you can drive on the railroad tracks as well as roads. Movies tell us that the highways will soon be jammed with broken down fuel-less vehicles as far as the eye can see. Railroad tracks will offer an alternate route out of cities, and across rivers. As a bonus, rail yards have refueling spots for locomotives which are much less likely to be looted out than the local gas-n-gulp. Finally, you want to paint it as a rusted out old diaper delivery van. There may be many things people are tempeted to try and rummge throug an old panel truck in search of, but dirty diapers are likely to get a pass even from the most desprate survivors. Yeah, I’ve put a little too much thought into this. But I haven’t put as much action into it as my acquaintance with a Ferret Scout Car and M35 deuce and a half.
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David reply on March 31st, 2010 4:10 pm:
Poor off-road mobility. They’re only good on good pavement, and you already pointed out the problem inherent in basing your escape plan on using highways and interstates. You would be far better off up-armoring a garbage truck. Road construction vehicles can be acceptable.
The Bradley may be the best, but a Stryker or an MRAP would make an acceptable alternative, and you can up-armor that garbage truck to MRAP levels.
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March 19th, 2010 at 10:51 am
Am I the only one curious about which movies had the necrophilia Skippy mentioned?
Captcha: recipients discerns- I’m just curious
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April 3rd, 2010 at 11:21 am
Your desire has been created…mostly.
CAPTCHA = The skivvies…That which zombies shall be shatting when you open up with this baby!
see more
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April 3rd, 2010 at 11:25 am
OK…the link didn’t post…so I try again.
CAPTCHA = waste warty…oh yes! this baby will take out warthogs, noooo problemo!
http://verydemotivational.com/2010/03/30/demotivational-posters-zombies-2/
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April 5th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
can i “borrow” this for english papers?
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March 7th, 2014 at 1:36 pm
In the event of a zombie apocalypse, I would head to the nearest railroad yard.
I would do this for several reasons, which are listed below.
1. There are usually a lot of people who work there that know their way around locomotives and the large equipment, so you might have a locomotive engineer which will come in handy. (see below)
2. It is a large area that is usually well lit.
3. The repair shop buildings have a variety of large and heavy tools, including bridge cranes, large hammers, (very) large wrenches, scrap metal to build defenses with, etc.
4. There is usually a generator with plenty of fuel.
5. The outbuildings have track laying tools that include spikes, ten pound hammers, and other stuff.
6. The railroad cars could have large amounts of canned food, water, fuel for the generator, and could have needed supplies.
7. You can hole up in a boxcar. They usually have half inch thick steel sides and can be insulated.
8. You have an easy way out with a locomotive.
9. You can modify a few train cars to be able to walk between them without stepping off by cutting holes in the ends and making a hallway so that you and other survivors can get between them while moving.
10. The locomotives can be used as weapons themselves, because they can weigh up to 50 tons per locomotive, so you can run over the zombies.
11a. If the tracks are not clear further down the line, you can use the locomotive’s radio to find out if there are any trains coming.
11b. Or you can easily move from one train to another
The train is easily expandable, so you can add more cars if, and when, needed.
12. There is no need to worry about running out of fuel, because there are regular fuel stops along the line, or you can rig up a system to move fuel from a tank car to the locomotive’s fuel tank.
Those are my reasons for heading to the nearest railroad yard. What do you think?
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