- ♪
- I very much believe that zombies could become a thing.
- [zombie growling]
- There have been cases of people eating other people.
- [zombie growling]
- The American people love to be terrified.
Look at all the zombie films that we make.
- CHUCK: The Walking Dead, Dawn of the Dead,
Night of the Living Dead,
Land of the Dead, 28 Days Later...
I just couldn't get enough.
- Who doesn't like a good brain eater?
- I'm a huge fan of zombie movies.
Slow zombies are much more preferred.
Fast zombies scare me.
- DR. CHASE: I won't lie, that terrifies me,
the idea of seeing this monster running, like, at,
like warp speed towards me just like Usain Bolt.
- MALE NARRATOR: But are zombies real?
And could they really take over the world?
- One bite and that's all it takes.
You become one of them.
- NARRATOR: According to the legendary prophet Nostradamus,
the answer is yes.
And it's gonna happen any day now.
- Nostradamus says two-thirds of the people in the world
will be removed by it.
- You went from normal society to no society
to a lawless society almost overnight.
It'll be very fast. It'll basically be unstoppable.
- NARRATOR: Are you prepared?
- WILDFIRE SMILE: What do I need to stock up on?
Canned goods.
- A bug-out bag is gonna have all kinda
different things in it:
the water bladder, a couple tools and knives.
- NARRATOR: Lock and load.
- Today we're gonna be showing you
how to zombie-proof your car.
- MAN: This is 20 feet underground.
- My advice to the people who are not prepared is good luck.
- NARRATOR: We'll show you what you need to prep for and survive
the zombie apocalypse.
- [zombie growling]
- [theme music]
- NARRATOR: The ancient mystic Nostradamus says
the zombie apocalypse is on our doorstep.
- [record screeching] - NARRATOR: Wait. What?
- [rewinding]
Zombies?
And who is Nostradamus again?
- Nostradamus was a French seer
who lived in the 1500s.
- BOBBY: Nostradamus published yearly almanacs,
mostly for farmers, predicting really the best times to plant
and to reap crops.
But he would also include some elements of entertainment for
his readers to make it more user friendly, shall we say.
- JIMMY: The predictions were in part based on astrology.
He had a prediction for each month of the year and sometimes
a bonus prediction.
And this was one of the features that made Nostradamus' almanacs
very, very popular.
He would write just four lines of poetry
in what's known as a quatrain.
He wanted to keep it short and pithy,
kind of like a modern tweet on Twitter.
And it would be very meaningful, vivid images
of a future event.
- NARRATOR: But Nostradamus
didn't just predict the year ahead.
He also saw deep into the future.
- His almanacs have dated prophecies not just to the year,
but to the specific month
that the prophecy was supposed to happen.
- NARRATOR: Centuries before they happened.
- BOBBY: Wars, plagues, tyrannical leaders,
accidents, natural disasters,
things that he felt future generations should know about.
- NARRATOR: Nostradamus predicted the rise of Hitler.
- [Hitler shouting] - [crowd cheering]
- NARRATOR: The atomic bombing.
- [loud blast]
- NARRATOR: The Kennedy assassination.
- MALE REPORTER: Historic shots rang out...
- NARRATOR: The moon landing.
- The Eagle has landed.
- NARRATOR: The death of Princess Di.
- FEMALE REPORTER: Diana, Princess of Wales, is dead.
- NARRATOR: 9/11.
- WOMAN: Another one. Another plane just hit.
- NARRATOR: And perhaps his most chilling prediction of all...
- [zombie growling]
- ♪
- "Few young people: half dead to give a start.
"Dead through spite, he will cause the others to shine.
And in an exalted place..."
- NOSTRADAMUS: "...some great evils to occur.
"Fathers and mothers dead of infinite sorrows.
The Great One to be no more, all the world to end."
- [zombie growling]
- ALYSSA: "You young people..."
It's almost like they're saying that that next generation is
gonna be the start of the downfall.
Like, it caught my eye immediately.
But at the same time too,
it's interesting hearing him say "half dead."
And then you associate it with zombies because they are,
technically, dead, but they're still alive.
They're still moving.
- That sounds like a zombie apocalypse to me.
- [bird squawking]
- JIMMY: All through human history,
there have been reports of the dead
coming back in one way or another.
- [zombie roaring]
- JIMMY: Sometimes they come back in a frightening way,
where a person hasn't just been raised from the dead,
they've been brought back to life
in a way where there's something wrong.
They're not the same.
- BOBBY: It spreads globally and kills most of the people.
Nostradamus says two-thirds of the people in the world
will be removed by it.
- [warning buzzer]
- NARRATOR: But that's not the only prediction Nostradamus
drops supporting Z-Day.
- "Mabus then will soon die, and there will come of people
and beasts a horrible rout:"
- NOSTRADAMUS: "Then suddenly one will see vengeance, hundred,
hand, thirst, hunger when the comet will run."
- BOBBY: "Maybus" here has been linked by some people
to be the third antichrist.
He will die and then will come "beasts horrible rout."
All that says to me is that there's some kind of plague that
can jump species along the lines
of what we think of as a zombie apocalypse.
The last line of that quatrain says,
"hundred, hand, thirst, and hunger."
Well, of course, what are zombies?
They're hungry. Ravenously hungry.
And then it makes reference to a comet
is thought to be thousands of times more massive
than any comet ever detected by far.
- NARRATOR: And Nostradamus predicts that comet,
and the zombies it foretells, will be here soon.
- ROBERT: One of the reasons why zombies catch our attention is
because they're a great example of science fiction
being based on science fact.
- And so the idea of zombies
showing up in Nostradamus' works,
which were predictions
and influenced by contemporary beliefs, fits in perfectly.
- I have been preparing for it, like, since I was 10,
so bring it on, I guess.
- NARRATOR: Okay, still don't trust the word
of a 16th-century soothsayer
that the zombie apocalypse is about to happen?
Well, he's not the only one who thinks so.
Even our government has a plan for surviving our Z-Day.
- DAVE: In 2010, AMC launched The Walking Dead.
And at the end of the first season, they blew the CDC up.
So we were talking about how can we engage people.
How do we really engage people
on preparing an all-hazards preparedness kit?
And somebody mentioned
how interested people were in zombies.
- So the CDC posted a zombie guide and it kinda got everybody
wondering is there gonna be a zombie apocalypse.
- Why the hell is there a zombie apocalypse preparation
on the CDC website?
I can't make this shit up, bro.
This is the CDC website right here.
- NARRATOR: The Center for Disease Control is the country's
top protector when it comes to America's health, safety,
and security threats.
For the past 75 years, it's worked tirelessly
to keep the country safe from such pandemics
as TB, polio, AIDS, ebola, and COVID.
Now they've added the zombie apocalypse to their list.
Their illustrated zombie preparation guide
is full of helpful tips.
Everything you'll need to be ready
for the walking dead's rise.
- DAVE: It all seems very simple.
It all seems very common sense.
And most people will claim, well, we've got that somewhere.
But do you have it somewhere where you could find it
if you had to find it? Do you have enough food?
- This shit even comes with a damn checklist of everything
you'll during the zombie apocalypse.
And in case you don't know,
bro, the CDC is run by the government.
So why does the government feel
that we need to prepare for a zombie apocalypse?
- DAVE: We're not gonna make it through that
unless we're prepared,
unless we've taken the steps and had the plan,
make a kit, and stay informed.
- NARRATOR: First up, food and supplies.
- In the modern world,
we've implemented enormous numbers of conveniences.
For many people, the zombie apocalypse
rolling into the town, you would see that that
softness would come back to bite many.
You can't just jump on your phone,
hop on to an app, and say,
bring this to my front door for me.
You would have to go out and find it.
What happens when you can't
just run to the grocery store when you're hungry?
What happens when you get a cut
and you don't have a Band-Aid to put on it?
- NARRATOR: When the zombie apocalypse comes,
you'll wanna find a place for your one-stop shopping.
- AMY: TruPrep is an emergency preparedness retail store.
A lot of emergency preparedness items.
So people love to come in and just get their hands on things
and kinda see what we have.
Prepping in its simplest form is really just self-sufficiency.
I'm relying on myself to take care of me.
So it's a big reason why I personally prep.
- MITCH: A true prepper to me is somebody that they basically
have gone out and they have planned and strategized
everything they've done, all their purchasing.
And if, you know, you're worried about society
failing or falling apart,
having a power source, a generator, having food sources,
having water sources, it all makes perfect sense.
- NARRATOR: What about toilet paper?
- That's the last thing I'm worried about if it goes sour.
I mean, there's a hundred other ways
to take care of your business
than to have to go run and get the Charmin, right?
Okay.
- NARRATOR: Any good prepper knows that the first thing
you need to have on hand is a bug-out bag.
- CHUCK: A bug-out bag is exactly what it sounds like.
It's a bag that you use
to bug out with...
so that when the zombies come, you can grab it and you can go
in the woods and just hang out there for 72 hours.
- So a bug-out bag is gonna have
all kinda different things in it.
Organization is huge in a bug-out bag as well,
so you don't wanna just grab a bag
and just start throwing stuff in there.
You really want to be able to find out where everything is.
- NARRATOR: Fresh water and a supply of food are must-haves.
- JOSHUA: There's the, uh, rule of three's: three days no water,
three weeks no food.
That's when you're in trouble.
- This particular bag has a bunch of, um,
just individual water pouches, which is pretty cool.
Um, it has a water bladder in here as well,
so that can be filled up with water.
These are emergency rations.
This is gonna be a high fat content, high calorie,
and it's gonna really give you the energy
to get from point A to point B.
- NARRATOR: And don't forget other essentials
like a first aid kit, sneakers, and an ax.
- CHUCK: An ax will help you make a fire, make shelter.
You don't have to use a lot of energy to wield it,
which is paramount when it comes to surviving
the zombie apocalypse.
- ASHLYNN: As far as medical supplies,
I think it would be really important to also have
a big stockpile of antibiotics, um, bandaging,
anything that can disinfect a wound,
so if that means even hitting the liquor store and getting
the highest-proof alcohol you can.
But as long as you have something to disinfect
and a saw handy in case
you get bit on one of your arms or legs,
uh, you should be set.
- Whenever you're creating a bug-out bag,
I think it's a great idea to get your items together first
and then find your bag.
If you find a bag that's too big,
you might feel compelled to really just fill it up,
and it's gonna start getting heavy.
- NARRATOR: If you do need to stock up on rations,
you might think about getting freeze-dried food.
Lots and lots of it.
- Freeze-dried food doesn't need refrigeration.
So if you have anything, uh,
an actual meal will last you 25 years.
So if you want the beef stew one day,
it's gonna be right there on your shelf.
The beef stew is really good.
Chili mac and the beef stroganoff.
I like the granola because you don't have to heat the water.
- MITCH: You don't wanna have to put yourself on a ramen and
peanut butter diet.
That, to me, is a little extreme, right?
- NARRATOR: If you're staying put to survive the zombie
onslaught, be sure to stock up on shelf-stable foods--
or as they're more commonly known, canned goods.
Pro tip: if your cans are in good condition, meaning no rust,
dents, or swelling, they can last almost forever.
Then there are those who prefer, shall we say,
a 7-11 diet for the apocalypse.
- ASHLYNN: I think for my zombie stockpile food and drink
collection, I definitely want a bunch of caffeine.
Um, lots of beef jerky and protein, keep the energy up.
And, uh, maybe some Cheetos and Doritos to make myself feel good
every once in a while.
But you definitely wanna keep your energy up.
Anything that'll just keep you going.
- NARRATOR: But what if you do if you're locked down at home
and all the grocery stores are overrun?
Easy--go farm to table with a home garden.
Just be sure to plant seasonal crops,
like fruit and vegetables for the warm months
and root vegetables for the colder ones.
So you're set for food.
But how are you gonna stay hydrated
when the water company's overrun by the walking dead?
Just ask Wildfire Smile, a prepper with social media
video views in the millions.
- WILDFIRE SMILE: FEMA says that you should have about one gallon
of water per person in your household.
You can buy containers that hold water.
I got this five pack of fold-down gallons for water.
Just fill those up with tap water and store in a dark place
out of direct sunlight.
As soon as the power goes off, fill up your bathtub all the way
with water.
Now, it doesn't have a lid, so it can be contaminated.
But you can still use it and you can still drink it
if you have the proper tools.
This is a Sawyer mini water filtration system.
It's rated for up to a 100,000 gallons of water,
so you can reuse this and reuse this for a long time.
- AMY: Water filtration is absolutely by far the most
important thing that you should have in emergency preparedness,
because we can live about three days without water.
Your source could be from rain barrels,
your neighborhood swimming pool, a mud puddle,
or anything like that.
But you need a source and you need a way to filter that water.
I kinda think of filtering
as taking out the big chunks, right?
So the things that you don't want to chew on.
- NARRATOR: When the zombies take over,
you're probably not gonna have time
to make it to the hardware store.
So here's how to make a DIY water filter
with supplies lying around your house.
Grab a plastic 2-liter bottle.
Stuff the base and top it off with a layer of sand.
Fill two-thirds with charcoal and rocks.
Then pour in your impure water.
The top layers filter out the large particulate matter.
Then the charcoal gives it a finer second filtering.
Finally, drink.
Okay, so when the death and destruction
from the zombie apocalypse begins,
at least you'll have food and water covered.
But if you really wanna prep for the army of the undead,
you first need to know how to avoid becoming one.
- NARRATOR: The old soothsayer Nostradamus says
the zombie apocalypse is imminent--like, soon.
To prepare for this nightmare,
you need to know as much as possible
about what you're dealing with,
starting with where the zombie outbreak may stem from.
- ♪
- DR. CARLSON: There are absolutely things out there
that could alter your brain activity
or could alter your thought pattern,
you know, from a virus.
So where would a zombie apocalypse virus come from?
- ♪
- Hypothetically if a zombie apocalypse were to occur,
it could occur if rabies or something like rabies developed
into a more transmissible form.
- DR. CARLSON: The rabies virus alters your mind
into that kind of rage.
You know, you're not really quite yourself.
You know, you're more aggressive.
It's not too far away to say that nature will find a way.
- [dogs barking]
- Now, think about what rabies does to a dog.
It makes it hard for them to think clearly.
It makes them more aggressive.
They start biting. They start scratching.
They start foaming at the mouth.
- NARRATOR: And just like rabies,
this zombie scourge would attack
the most vulnerable point of our body--our brain.
- ROBERT: Zombies seem to have lost their personality.
So this would suggest the changes
within the frontal cortex of the brain--
this is these regions here--
our cognition, our personality.
- DR. CHASE: It's kind of like we stripped out every aspect of
communication, every aspect of personality,
but we left behind things like aggression.
We left behind things like capacity for violence.
- NARRATOR: Bottom line: be aware of your environment.
If your neighbor starts acting more like Cujo than Ken,
you know the zombie apocalypse has begun.
But viruses aren't Mother Nature's only way
of turning things into The Walking Dead.
Real-life parasites can do it as well.
- ♪
- There are a number of forms of zombie-like behavior that we can
observe in the natural world.
We see changes in rat behavior
when they're infected with toxoplasmosis.
- NARRATOR: Toxicaraplasma gondii,
better known as the zombie parasite,
is rooted in the intestines of cats.
There, it begins reproducing and creating offspring parasites.
But these little buggers
don't stay inside their cat host for long.
The feline unleashes the parasite on the world
through its feces and urine,
which in turn infects rodents in the area.
And here's the insidious part: the parasite then acts like
a Trojan horse inside its new rodent host,
altering the code inside its brain.
Now not only are they no longer afraid of cats,
they're actually drawn to them.
- The rats, instead of being adverse
to the smell of cat urine,
now find it something that they want to investigate.
So you've got a change in the behavior of the rat
due to this infection that makes the rat more likely
to be caught by the cat, and therefore,
to then continue the cycle of infection
with the species.
- NARRATOR: Now imagine a human zombie outbreak
following the same science.
In other words, keep on the lookout for dramatic shifts
in your loved ones' behavior.
It could be the first sign
they've been infected by a zombie parasite.
But perhaps the most shocking form of real-life zombies
happens in the insect world.
- ♪
- This is a fungus that might start the zombie apocalypse.
Well, at least for ants. But if it did infect people,
this is probably what would happen to us.
- DR. CARLSON: In nature we have something called
the Cordyceps fungus,
a fungus in South America that affects only ants.
Basically what it does is the spores from a fungus will fall
from a tree onto an ant.
The fungus buries into the ant's brain, uh,
alters something in the ant's mind,
forces the ant to climb to the tallest branch it can.
And then from that point, the ant dies,
and the fungus actually erupts from it and spreads the spores
down to other ants.
And that's how a Cordyceps fungus
actually propagates itself.
So right there, you actually have a living example
of what we can consider a zombie.
Something that is mind altering, taking over the mind,
or forcing the body to do something.
Or, if you're in Florida, you have Florida Man doing
all sorts of weird things.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: May 26, 2012. Miami, Florida.
Below this overpass, 31-year-old Rudy Eugene rips his clothes off
and starts gnawing on a homeless man's face in broad daylight.
- So I think everyone's heard of the guy in Florida
who ate somebody's face off.
I'd say that's definitely zombie-like behavior.
- ROBERT: To see someone attempt cannibalism on someone
in such an extreme and violent way,
one would really want to have a better understanding of what was
actually happening to that person at that time
that could've caused such behavior.
- NARRATOR: Police say Eugene may have been taking
a synthetic drug called bath salts.
This mind-altering narcotic can cause violent,
uncontrolled outbursts-- not unlike what we see in...
well, you know.
- [zombies growling]
- DR. CARLSON: That would've been the zombie.
- [zombie hissing]
- That's what we would've seen happening.
- NARRATOR: A zombie apocalypse
triggered by our own illicit drugs.
- Zombies aren't actually just
what we would consider science fiction.
In the ancient Greek times, when someone was buried,
the Greeks used to put stones on top of their dead
in order to stop them from rising from the dead.
- DR. KEOHANE: We have cases throughout Ireland and other
countries where people were buried
and then seemingly came back.
Even in New England, there were traditions
on how to prevent against people to rise as vampires,
which we can kind of, again,
see as a zombie, the idea of the undead walking.
By the end of the 1800s, right around the time Bram Stroker is
going to come out with his Dracula,
there is a big fear of these zombies coming back
and rising from the dead.
- In Haiti, those same signs can be read as signs that
this person is a zombie.
This is not a national joke or a hoax or anything like that.
Many people in Haiti really believe in zombies.
- ASHLYNN: The Haitian zombie
is more rooted in folklore and religion.
And this kind of consists of
taking a corpse that's recently passed
and then harnessing that person's soul before it moves
into the afterlife for your own gain.
So this is very literally a mindless person who is under
the control of your whim.
Basically the purpose of a Haitian zombie is to do
the will of the owner.
They're there as a servant to their master.
- NARRATOR: Some Haitian zombie cases can be explained away,
but not all of them.
- JIM: There are cases where someone has been declared
clinically dead and has been buried,
and then has shown up years later
and really been the same person and really been alive.
A famous case of this is a man named Clairvius Narceese.
In the 1960s, Mr. Narceese was, uh,
declared dead by two physicians.
And then, years later, he runs into his sister and says,
"I was taken out of my grave by a Bokor
and I was turned into a zombie."
- NARRATOR: The key to this modern-day zombie-ism is a kind
of poison made by the puffer fish.
- ♪
- We have seen that used by Bokors or dark priests in, uh,
voodoo, when they would basically give this poison
to an individual and their breathing would slow way down,
to the point that they were almost dead.
- JIMMY: It will leave you paralyzed, but conscious,
which is one of the things that various people
who experienced zombification have reported--
that during the period they were supposedly dead,
they actually were conscious the whole time.
- DR. CARLSON: So if somebody in a sinister lab decided, like,
I'm gonna take this and alter it with these genetics,
and then make it do this,
like we saw in the movie Twelve Monkeys,
just see it just completely devolve
and spread super fast.
- I think one of the number-one things that a lot of us are
gonna jump to is that our government is experimenting.
- ♪
- DR. KEOHANE: Throughout the last 170 years,
we have various experiments on civilians or on soldiers that
we would no longer allow today,
but that throughout our history have.
- DR. CARLSON: I think it's absolutely possible that there
could be experimentation going on
because we've seen it in the past.
- NARRATOR: There have been many documented cases of doctors
and even the US government
using innocent people as human guinea pigs.
- We have the gynecological experiments by a doctor
on enslaved women in the 1800s.
We have the Tuskegee Experiment on Black men with syphilis
in the 1930s to 1970s.
And one of the most maybe well known
is the US government experiments
from the 1950s to the 1970s.
- NARRATOR: During that Cold War era,
the CIA began testing a new manmade drug they hoped would
lead to mind control.
It was called LSD.
- DR. KEOHANE: It was attempted
by a portion of the US government
to see what LSD did to the human brain
and if it could be used as a weapon.
- NARRATOR: These once-classified studies
were shut down decades ago.
Still, could the government be testing new drugs today?
The kind that turn people into man-eating beasts?
- ROBERT: I certainly wouldn't want to be accusing
the government of dosing somebody with something
that caused them to act like a zombie.
- DR. KEOHANE: The question of whether the US government can
still be carrying out unethical experiments on people...
most likely the answer is yes.
We won't find out for decades that all of this happened.
- NARRATOR: So what if a zombie drug really is being
manufactured and tested today?
Could someone unleash such a biological weapon on the world
and trigger a zombie apocalypse?
- ♪
- If somebody really wanted to
that had the ability and the capability
to introduce a foreign substance, or a toxin,
or poison into a water supply, overall it's definitely possible
that something like that can be introduced.
- CHUCK: I suppose this could be used as a biological weapon
by different factions.
But it's crazy to try to speculate on just what
it actually could be or who could actually be behind it.
- NARRATOR: So you know how the zombie apocalypse will start.
Now you've gotta prepare yourself for the spread.
- ♪
- ROBERT: If a pandemic-type zombie event were to occur,
you would expect there to be a, uh, patient zero,
a first person to be infected.
- And it then spread from one person to another,
either by physical contact or in an airborne.
- NARRATOR: Once the zombie plague enters your bloodstream,
it takes root, festering.
- DR. CARLSON: So let's just say you've got
12 days of transmissibility.
After three days in incubation period, that's 15 days.
That means that when you contract it,
that is 15 days to spread that virus to anybody
who's in contact with you.
- ALYSSA: You may not know it's here,
but then all of a sudden, everything comes to fruition
and you start to see it take effect.
Within a matter of weeks, it's on other sides of the country.
- DR. CARLSON: Let's take Los Angeles, for instance.
Let's say it started there.
I think it will spread extremely fast because everybody getting
on planes from LAX going to different parts of the world.
Now that's spread across the ocean.
You know, you're not gonna be able to contain that.
So within two weeks, you've got massive transmissions
on a global scale.
It's out of control.
- They start biting. They start scratching.
They start foaming at the mouth.
- ALYSSA: Insomnia and delirium. Their eyes look sunken.
Like, close to a skeleton, that zombie appearance.
- NARRATOR: It's too late to stop it.
The zombie apocalypse is taking over the planet.
If you wanna survive, you're gonna need to hunker down
and fortify the home front.
We've got tips on how.
- [zombie growling]
- NARRATOR: It's the zombie's monstrous bite,
tearing at its victim's flesh with an unrelenting fervor,
that terrifies us the most.
- The reason that zombies attack in such a frenzied manner
is probably a mix of their craving for living flesh,
but also their rabid state.
So they are completely irrational,
completely rage-filled beings.
They're attacking and eating.
- Zombies, in a sense, are a pack of wolves,
where they know that they have to support each other in order
for all of them to survive.
- CHUCK: Zombies would be incredibly dangerous.
They are able to proliferate their numbers
relatively quickly.
One bite is all it takes.
- I would saw my leg off in an instant if I got bit.
I'd have to.
- NARRATOR: If you want to avoid
the undead's bacteria-laden bite,
you're gonna need the right gear.
- A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that they
need to look cool to survive the zombie apocalypse.
But the more armor you wear, the more weighed down you are.
But the heavier the armor, the harder it's gonna be to move.
So I would suggest you wear bracers,
because you could keep a zombie back
just by putting your arm up.
- NARRATOR: Of course, some experts say there's an even
simpler solution to avoid being bitten.
- ASHLYNN: The best way to defend yourself against a zombie
is to stay quiet and stay away from them.
That sounds so cliché and the easiest thing to do.
But I'd say staying away is your best defense.
- [zombie growling]
- NARRATOR: If you want to survive the hordes
of mindless brain eaters,
your best bet is to simply hunker down.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: So for the next item on your prepping list,
you'll need shelter.
- The best plan is to stay put in your house.
If you know your house, if you know your neighborhood,
if you've made the prior plans to it,
you know that area better than anybody else.
You can plan your escape routes.
You can barricade certain exits so there's only way in
and only one way out that you know.
- Your ideal location is always gonna be your home.
I truly believe that.
If you can take your home and just have it ready,
that is by far the best place.
You can do things to your home to make it your safe place,
your own little fortress, because, I mean,
if you imagine the entire city just picking up and heading out,
it's just complete chaos.
I mean, where are they going?
- If you are prepared for 72 hours,
that gives you three days to sit at home and watch everybody else
fight for resources and die.
Less population, the less zombies are gonna be around.
- I'm just trying to hold my place for the time being.
And I'm trying to forecast where things are gonna go.
Are they gonna take a turn for the worst?
Are we gonna see riots and chaos?
- NARRATOR: Some doomsdayers aren't gonna hang out
in home sweet home when the zombies come.
They have, shall we say, alternative accommodations.
- Preppers have been buying these old Cold War bunkers.
And they've been fixing 'em up.
- It's almost like a little mini home, right?
So you're eating, you're drinking, you're sleeping,
you're going to the bathroom.
Hopefully you're showering.
And you're keeping yourself entertained.
A bunker's just kind of like a little miniature house
underground that you can survive in.
- Do I have a plan for the zombie apocalypse?
I definitely would do bunker.
That way nobody knows where you are.
If it's underground, I don't think a zombie's gonna think,
oh, let me dig right here.
And oh, what do you know?
Doors. Like--[laughs]
- NARRATOR: Just don't bring any guests.
- You'll be hard pressed, uh, to find someone who's gonna really
kind of let you know what's going on because it defeats
the purpose, right?
There's gonna be bunkers out there
you're never gonna know about.
You could walk past one walking your dog straight on top of one,
you're never gonna know.
- NARRATOR: Some folks take their bunkers to the extreme,
ready for the worst case scenario.
- [zombie roaring]
- Guys, I'm Ron Hubbard from Atlas Survival Shelters.
This is what I do. I go install bunkers.
There's a special lock right here
that you have to reach your hand into.
Pull this kind of lock out right here.
Then the hatch will pretty much open up on its own.
- [hatch creaks open]
- Uh, we're actually going down in a shelter.
You can have a staircase
if you don't want the ship's ladder.
But I have no problem with the ship's ladder.
This is 20 feet underground.
So when you walk into your shelter,
this is what you'd find out for a month.
Have your clothes underneath here.
All your food...
is stored underneath the floors.
You have your bathtub, sink, vanity.
Bathroom back there.
Now, if for any reason
your shelter was invaded
or you had to get out of here quick,
you can make your clandestine escape
through the escape tunnel.
- NARRATOR: While some are reclaiming old bunkers
that have stood the test of time,
others are building state-of-the-art
luxury facilities for the new millennium.
- It's a little rich for my blood to have my own bunker.
That might be a little extreme
for somebody on a limited budget.
But there are people out there that go full tilt.
- NARRATOR: Back in the day, bunkers were seen as a way
to ensure survival from an all-out nuclear war.
- In my generation, what we always thought
was we were gonna go to bed,
there was gonna be a nuclear war, and that was it.
We would never wake up.
And so that was the life we knew.
- NARRATOR: It's zombies, not commies, that terrify us today.
But not all zombies are alike.
They come with a terrifying assortment of behaviors
and attack modes.
If you wanna survive them,
you gotta know your enemy first.
- ♪
- ALYSSA: I think what terrifies me the most about zombies
is what kind of zombies will we get.
No zombie is ever truly the same.
There's always different types.
- ♪
- CHUCK: There are a ton of different kinds of zombies.
A zombie threat depends on its speed and how many numbers
there are around you.
If there are a lot of zombies, even if they're slow,
it's gonna be very difficult to move around them.
If it's one zombie, but he's fast,
it's gonna be very difficult to get away.
- So if we got, like, the really fast zombies,
I know that there's no way I'm gonna make it.
[laughs] Like, versus, like, the slower ones, you know?
It'll take them seven years to finally get to you.
- ♪
- Slow zombies are much more preferred.
Fast zombies scare me.
- DR. CHASE: All right, you're afraid you're not fast enough?
One zombie can run.
You're afraid that you're not smart enough?
These zombies know how to communicate
and can work together in a pack-like manner.
You don't think that you're strong enough?
Well, these zombies can punch through doors.
That just sets the stage for panic and anxiety to start to
become overwhelming.
- NARRATOR: Fast or slow, all zombies share one
characteristic...
- ASHLYNN: [laughs] I think probably the most noticeable
trait of a zombie is going to be
that they're trying to eat your face off.
- NARRATOR: If you want to survive the different types
of walking dead headed your way...
you gotta know your enemy.
- ROBERT: A common question is
what would a zombie brain would look like.
We can break this into three different types of zombies.
So let's take the first type of zombie, this is the slow,
shuffling-type zombie.
- The shuffler.
And this is the one that kinda slowly walks.
They maybe--urrrrr--grunt a little bit as they're moving.
They're not quick. They're not excited.
They're just slowly trying to get the flesh.
- ROBERT: They have an effect of the zombie virus or agent
on their movement centers of their brain.
But these zombies also seem to be a very primitive animal-type
phenotype of personality.
That is, they don't communicate
in the same way that a normal human does.
They don't vocalize.
They may make noises, grunts, et cetera.
So this would suggest that we have got changes within,
say, the frontal cortex of the brain--
this is these regions here--
that give our emotion, our cognition, our personality.
- ALYSSA: Those shuffler zombies,
they aren't the brightest
when it comes out of all the zombies.
- NARRATOR: Our advice for surviving shuffling zombies?
Remain aware of your surroundings at all times
so they don't sneak up on you.
- ROBERT: A second type of zombie that's depicted
in popular fiction could be considered the rage zombie.
- I think probably the scariest zombie
in my opinion is the rage zombie.
When we think of zombies, we want them to be these slow
and stupid creatures that we can outrun.
But as soon as you give them the capability of running faster
than a human, ya done. It's--it's over.
Human card revoked.
- DR. CHASE: I won't lie, that terrifies me,
the idea of seeing this monster running, like, at, like,
warp speed towards me just like Usain Bolt.
- [starting gun]
- NARRATOR: Elite sprinters, like Usain Bolt,
can run in bursts of nearly 28 miles per hour.
But the average human runs just 8 miles per hour.
That means you'd have to run nearly 3 1/2 times faster than
a rage zombie to get away,
even if your life depended on it.
Think you could do it?
- These zombies, typically faster, typically more angry.
So what we would expect to see with this type of zombie
would be a change in the way
the brain is perceiving the normal environment
such that it's fearful, it's angry,
it has rage.
We know that there are certain regions that are associated with
fear, anger, and rage.
We see it in the so-called fight or flight response.
These are brain regions that make us decide whether or not
we will stand our ground and fight
or whether or not we're going to run away.
So these rage zombies one could perceive quite easily as being
this heightened fear response, but it's amplified.
- The rage zombies are extreme and scary.
We hope that we see a shuffler.
Always do cardio. That's one of the rules,
because you never know if you're gonna
encounter that type of zombie.
I would tell my mom, like,
if this were to happen in real life,
like, I wouldn't even let them have the chance to kill me.
Like--like, at this point, like, I would just do it myself.
- NARRATOR: But speed and anger
aren't the rage zombie's only deadly traits.
- Some zombies are wet noodles, where they can just barely move
their limbs and they're just slowly making their way across
the street or going towards their prey.
But then you have those rage zombies
where they do have super strength.
They can try and fight to grab you and eat you.
- NARRATOR: But what some see as rage...
others see as simply the zombie's unstoppable
determination to hunt down their prey at all costs.
- If anything, they're going to have less strength than a human,
um, just the insatiable need for flesh.
- NARRATOR: If you want to survive rage zombies,
be sure to look for the telltale signs of speed, fury,
and laser determination
so you don't suddenly find yourself trapped.
- ROBERT: Then we've got a final type of zombie,
which is a more rare form.
And this is one that is more associated with brain-eating--
the craving of eating brains.
- ♪
- When it comes to the brain eater zombies,
we know it's stereotypically-- yes, of course,
their main focus is, oh, we need to go for the brain.
With other zombies, they don't care what they are eating.
Like, they'll eat your limbs.
They'll eat your guts, like,
they'll go for anything they have.
But the brain eater's main source is the brain.
- As a horror fan, one of my favorite zombies is
the brain-eating zombie.
Crawling out of the grave and going after brains,
it's kind of the classic thing
that we think of when we think zombies.
We're thinking brains, brains.
But I think what terrifies us so much about zombies is that
we are their target-- not dogs, not cats, not horses.
- NARRATOR: At first glance, you might not be able to distinguish
a brain eater from his zombie brethren.
So our advice? Wear a helmet.
But of all of the things zombies can easily eat, why brains?
- ROBERT: There's a very powerful craving mechanism
within our brains. It's a reward system.
It's essential for how we function physiologically.
A zombie that is craving brains, there's some sort of hijacking
of the social barriers and norms of not killing someone,
basically, and eating their brain.
- NARRATOR: So if zombies are taking over the world,
why don't they just eat each other instead?
- They know they're dead.
They know that that being looks exactly like them.
They know there's no beating heart, there's no brainwaves,
versus when you see somebody running,
or you hear a heartbeat, or you see them breathing, you realize,
wait, this is a live thing.
Fresh versus something that's decomposing.
So I think they can taste.
They can taste the difference.
- ASHLYNN: Zombies want living flesh.
They don't want to eat undead flesh.
And also, I think that would be a really easy way
to eradicate themselves.
They are trying to spread this condition and eat and consume.
They're not gonna consume each other.
- NARRATOR: Okay, taking notes on how to survive
the zombie apocalypse? Let's review.
Know your enemy.
Keep on the move.
And don't let them eat you.
Easy enough, right?
But when it comes to outlasting the undead,
there's one more trait to keep in mind.
- [zombie roaring]
- NARRATOR: As the outbreak continues to spread,
more and more people around the world start exhibiting
terrifying behavior.
They lose control of their motor skills.
Explode in chilling outbursts of violence.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: But did you know they also have
their own language?
- [zombie growling]
- NARRATOR: If you wanna survive,
you better understand what they're saying.
- ALYSSA: The difference between a zombie grunt, a zombie scream,
and a zombie roar?
I think it's the intent behind each one.
- [zombie grunting]
- A zombie grunt will sound like--[low grunt]
Or a zombie screech would be like--
[high-pitched screech]
Or even just like a zombie roar--
[roars]
- [zombie roaring]
- So when we hear zombie grunts, that tells me the zombie has not
got its eyes on the target yet.
- ALYSSA: They don't know you're there.
They're just reacting the way
they usually react throughout the day.
- NARRATOR: But when they find you--
- A zombie roar definitely is to scare.
- [zombie roaring]
- ALYSSA: Instill fear into you.
- When we start hearing screams and raging from a zombie,
that's indicative of them finding prey
and they're chasing it.
As soon as they start-- [roars]
that's a--that's when they've seen what they want.
- [zombie roaring]
- ALYSSA: If you hear it as a human in the zombie apocalypse,
you're gonna immediately process, oh, they found me.
They found me right on the spot. They're coming for me.
- NARRATOR: As the feasting hordes multiply,
the zombie apocalypse transforms
our once-bustling cities into ghost towns.
- DR. CARLSON: Once people started seeing the effects
and once people started becoming, uh, symptomatic,
that's when you're gonna have the public health community
and the medical community start scrambling for a cure--
scrambling, trying to figure this thing out,
trying to develop ways to stop it.
- NARRATOR: By then, we'll need agencies
like the Centers for Disease Control to step in--
if it's not already too late.
- DAVE: We would deploy a team.
We'd develop hypotheses on how to fight this.
And we would handle it much the same way we would handle
any other outbreak.
You would see restricting of flights.
You would see precautions taken at airports.
Many of the same reactions
that we would take for any kind of pandemic threat.
- NARRATOR: Even a fast and clear response
might not be enough.
If the zombie outbreak is like other pandemics we've seen,
it won't back down.
- So how problematic would a real,
large-scale zombie apocalypse today be?
It really comes down to can we fund the research that's needed?
And how do we create a vaccine or a treatment for it?
- NARRATOR: Vaccines and other drugs
may slow the zombie spread.
But they won't stop it.
It will do whatever it must to survive and thrive.
- DR. CARLSON: The virus is like the perfect predator.
They basically make themselves propagate through hosts.
And if they have to mutate, guess what?
They mutate.
- NARRATOR: And as the zombie-ism spreads like
wildfire, so does the chaos.
- DR. CHASE: Zombies start to become like packs of wolves.
A zombie is pure threat.
- DR. CARLSON: Within probably about a month and a half,
you've got infrastructure breaking down.
Police, fire, medical,
even logistics supply chains breaking down.
Probably about a week later is when the military would have to
come in and set martial law and actually provide
military quarantines.
You went from normal society to no society
to a lawless society almost overnight.
It would be very fast, and it would basically be unstoppable.
- NARRATOR: When the army of the living dead rise up,
you'll need to call on some primitive survival skills.
Nah, we're not talking about those skills.
We mean choosing the right weapon.
- NARRATOR: The zombie apocalypse is upon us.
So what do you do when you find yourself
face to face with one of these mutant creatures
and running's not an option?
- ♪
- NARRATOR: The experts say arm yourself.
Chuck Meré and his friend, Charles Fultz,
are the creators of the hit site Zombie Go Boom.
- MAN: When the zombie apocalypse arrives,
will you survive?
Using real-life settings,
we put the weapons, everyday optics,
and theories to the test.
Learn the best ways to bash undead skulls
and stay alive in any situation.
Zombie Go Boom-- kick undead ass!
- [blast]
- NARRATOR: They've made it their life mission to
distinguish fact from fiction when it comes to taking out
real-life zombies.
- Hey, what's up, survivors?
Welcome to another mind-blowing episode from the bloodiest show
on YouTube, Zombie Go Boom.
I'm Chuck Meré. - I'm Charles Fultz.
- And today we have a mind-blowing one for you.
We're gonna be testing out the Brooklyn Smasher.
This 34-inch long mama-jamma can crush and smash you with
its 2 pound and 7 ounce weight.
Any idea as to how you're gonna do it?
- I'm just gonna run up and smash his face, Brooklyn style.
- CHUCK: I think a lot of people just wanna see...
what's more realistic, what would actually happen,
so that if, in the eventuality of the zombie apocalypse
coming to fruition,
they can actually expect the right things.
- CHARLES: Pretty satisfying. Got blood all over me.
- ♪
- CHUCK: I started loving zombies whenever I picked up
the first volume of The Walking Dead.
And after that, it was just zombie movies for me.
I started with Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead,
Land of the Dead, 28 Days Later...
I just couldn't get enough.
A pencil can kill a zombie.
Zombie Go Boom is one part Mythbusters,
one part The Walking Dead.
We essentially create these ballistic gel head analogues in
order to find out which weapons and/or objects will actually
crack a skull and save you against a zombie.
Yeah!
- NARRATOR: Because when it comes to killing zombies...
- ♪
- NARRATOR: ...everyone knows the cardinal rule.
- CHARLES: Wow, dude! - CHUCK: Oh, gosh.
- DR. CARLSON: You shoot it in the head, you destroy the brain.
You inflict massive blunt force trauma to the head,
because that's where the brain activity is.
- ♪
- ALYSSA: What's making them want to eat or crave humans
and crave brains and crave organs
is coming from that brain.
That brain is telling them, wait,
there's food right in front of me.
So if we basically kill the brain, there's no function.
They're not gonna be moving anymore.
They're not gonna be alive anymore,
'cause that's the only thing living.
- It's kind of ironic, too, because that is the organ
they tend to crave the most.
But destroy the brain and you destroy the zombie.
- What you really want to do is find a weapon where it takes
very little effort to get through the zombie head.
- CHARLES: It's a one-hit kill!
- ♪
- Let's try something else!
- NARRATOR: Chuck's first piece of advice--
put down the chainsaw
and pick up something a little more...practical.
- CHUCK: The chainsaw is the most overrated weapon ever.
It'll get snagged on clothes and then stall out.
- There it goes, there it goes.
See, that's what happened the last time we tested it.
It's also incredibly heavy.
- You're gonna get very, very tired very quickly.
It takes gas, oil.
It takes quite a few, you know, pulls
to even get it to turn on.
- Terrible weapon.
- NARRATOR: Your best bet when fighting zombies is anything
you could hold tight, swing, and strike.
- This is definitely a one-hit kill.
And the weapon is actually pretty light for the amount
of ridiculous damage that it actually does.
- CHUCK: Picking a weapon that is comfortable
or picking a weapon
where you don't have to use a lot of energy to wield it
is paramount when it comes to surviving the zombie apocalypse.
- ♪
- Goddamn it.
A war hammer would be perfect.
A regular hammer is fine.
A baseball bat is okay--
you're just gonna have to hit the zombie a few times.
- All right! Let's inspect the damage.
That's a huge hole. Look at it here.
- CHUCK: Wow. - CHARLES: It's pretty.
- CHUCK: Yeah, and that's the parietal bone bits going into
the brain, so that's definitely a kill.
- NARRATOR: But not everyone can be Braveheart
when it comes to fending off zombies.
- I would not recommend fighting off zombies.
I'll leave that to the DoD guys
and the other experts on weapons.
- NARRATOR: Of course, there are more traditional weapons
to choose from.
- I would say most preppers that I know,
um, also have firearms, uh, you know,
plenty of ammo, and things like that too...
in case taking care of business is a good idea.
- You haven't owned a firearm, you consider it.
You know, you get some training.
A firearm's a tool just like anything else.
- ♪
- [gunshots]
- WOMAN: The Matt Barnett-made
.44 Magnum round moves at about 1500 feet per second
and contains about a gram and a half of explosives.
Basically once this round hits a zombie,
it fragments into two pieces, with the lead on one side and
the copper jacket on the other, creating a huge fireball that
promises to make a zombie go boom.
- CHUCK: There's obviously firearms,
which are incredibly effective, except that you run out of
ammunition and they're also loud,
so you're calling a bunch zombies in
every time that you fire.
- NARRATOR: So you better have a dead eye when it comes
to killing the living dead.
- CHUCK: Holy crap! - CHARLES: Wow.
We thought this was just clean--
a clean, like, explosion up the top.
But, like, I pushed down on it a minute ago and it's--
- CHUCK: Oh, wow.
- CHARLES: --disgustingly broken into several pieces.
- You shoot a zombie in the head, it goes down.
If you don't, guess what?
It's gonna bite you as you walk past it.
- NARRATOR: So what do you do when the zombies
still keep coming
and overrun your home?
- DR. CARLSON: I'm not gonna let someone bite me.
I'm gonna get out of dodge.
- NARRATOR: You're gonna need to find a new safe haven.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: A pestilence that turns people into zombies is
rapidly spreading across the planet.
- DR. CARLSON: By that point, your infrastructure services
are already breaking down.
You've already lost the rule of law.
- DR. CHASE: So you're not really thinking about, like,
all right, like, Netflix and chill anymore.
Now you're thinking a lot more of how do I not get eaten?
- NARRATOR: Easier said than done when it comes to surviving
the zombie apocalypse,
because contrary to popular belief,
zombies don't lay down when the sun sets.
- ♪
- ALYSSA: They'll never sleep. They just rest.
Let me just stand here for...
lord knows how many hours or days until all of a sudden,
a human comes by.
Zombies are gonna be active 24/7.
There's no downtime. You always have to be on edge.
You always have to be alert.
- ASHLYNN: I think they're just going to find flesh whether
the sun is out or not.
- NARRATOR: So you gotta be on your guard day and night.
- Most people are gonna be better off initially
in their home.
But if their home becomes a risk,
we're gonna have to take that into consideration.
If you had 30 people try to storm your house in a day,
it might be time to go bye bye for a while, right?
- We're going to be running
from these hordes of mindless zombies.
We're going to be having to hide out in malls and find weapons in
sporting goods stores, like we see in movies.
- [gunshots]
- NARRATOR: So your zombie prepping list better have
an evacuation plan.
- ♪
- With the zombies swarming around your house,
it becomes so important to have things already thought out.
You know, we're gonna go to this car.
We're gonna go to this rendezvous point.
If we need help, this is where we go to for this particular
neighbor or relative.
But they have this worked out in advance
with the neighbors and relatives as well.
Have a plan.
- ALYSSA: You have to find that group that you absolutely know
that are trustworthy, that are going to be reliable.
Should be at least maybe like four or five people,
not 10 or 20.
- NARRATOR: But not everyone agrees.
- Don't trust anyone.
Stay away from big populations.
Keep your group really small.
Stay away from others.
Try not to be seen by humans or zombies.
I would say...probably try go to go solo if you can.
- It's when you don't have an evacuation plan.
You don't have enough money.
You don't have your children's or your spouse's
or your medical records or your medicines.
That's when you introduce just one more level of complexity
and chaos to an already chaotic and complex situation.
- DR. CHASE: Have the kind of strategy where it's more of
a act sooner rather than later.
If you were the one who's going to leave, leave right away.
Don't wait for the choke points to be established.
- DR. KEOHANE-BURBRIDGE: We all have zombie apocalypse plans.
Everybody has an idea on who's gonna pick up the kids.
How many kids can ya fit into your minivan?
Do the kids have to wear the seatbelts or not when you're
attempting to escape from a zombie apocalypse?
Are the roads gonna be closed?
These are the layers that conversations have gone to.
Where are you gonna try to go?
- NARRATOR: When it's time to turn to plan B
and hit the open road,
you're gonna need the right getaway vehicle.
- ♪
- In the event of a zombie apocalypse,
I would require two vehicles.
One would need to be a tank-like,
Jeep-like vehicle with lots of armor on the side,
minimal window, as much coverage on the windshield as I can.
Preferably something on the front
that will just ram through zombies.
On the flip side, I'd like to have within that vehicle some
kind of quick bike/motorcycle that I can quickly get out of
my tank vehicle, run into the city, get what I need,
come back out to the tank vehicle,
and head out as quickly as possible.
I think it's important to both protect yourself,
but also be quick and efficient and quiet.
- ALYSSA: If I were to choose a vehicle,
I don't want it to be too easily accessible.
I'd want it to be strong.
And I would immediately think of, like,
one of those SWAT vehicles. Like, they're strong.
They have, like, bulletproof windows and that stuff.
So something that they can't break to get into.
So where you're in a safe space, your safe haven.
- NARRATOR: And if you don't have time
to run out to the dealer...
how about a few tips on how to convert your hooptie into
a homemade zombie-busting hummer
from the pros down under on YouTube's Mighty Car Mods?
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Grease monkeys Marty and Moog are the experts when
it comes to kick-ass DIY renos.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Their shows have garnered
over a half billion views.
And their incredible creations have been featured
in such blockbusters as Fast and Furious,
Mad Max: Fury War,
and Transformers.
- Today we're gonna be showing you
how to zombie-proof your car. We're gonna be working on
a 1987 Nissan Pathfinder four-wheel drive.
And there's also heaps of space in the back,
which you're gonna need for supplies and weapons.
But the first thing we need to do is stealth the car up
by blacking it out.
And then we need to armor up the windows
so the undead can't eat your brain.
- ♪
- [drill whirring]
- From here-- [roars like a zombie]
--they can't get in.
- [drill whirring]
- ♪
- [car starts]
- ♪
- NARRATOR: But some zombie experts say
best to keep things simple.
- The best transportation during a zombie apocalypse would be
a motorcycle, if you had one.
If you don't, perhaps a bicycle.
Except you are running on your own energy,
so it's good since you don't have to fill it up.
But at the same time, you don't wanna get too tired.
- NARRATOR: If you stop, a low profile is a must
when it comes to survival.
- DR. CARLSON: If you make a lot of noise,
you're gonna attract zombies.
So just kind of be stealthy about it, be quiet,
don't be screaming.
Don't get in too much of a hurry,
'cause that's when you make mistakes.
- NARRATOR: As you head out across the zombie-filled
landscape in search of your new home,
you need to think about where you wanna put down roots.
The advice from the experts? Choose wisely.
- NARRATOR: The zombie apocalypse's mindless hordes
have driven you out of home sweet home.
Now you need to find some safer digs.
- ♪
- Like real estate, location, location, location
matters tremendously.
Stay away from the major cities in that case.
If you're from there, have a backup plan, get out of dodge.
- ASHLYNN: In the event of a zombie apocalypse,
I think I'd wanna go somewhere
that I know others aren't going to go.
So a lot of people I think would look for the mansion on top of
the mountain behind the Hollywood sign,
away from everybody. I don't want that.
I want to preface this by saying that I have literally acted this
entire scenario out.
If I had to survive a zombie apocalypse,
I would definitely get some sort of stronghold
that is away from population, but still close enough that
if I needed to gather supplies, I could.
- NARRATOR: Some experts urge to get off grid fast.
The fewer humans, the less prey.
And less prey means less zombies.
- ALYSSA: I think it's all based off of terrain,
off of whether or not they can get the food supply
that they need.
Getting the brains, getting the organs.
Like, if they can't get access
to the things that they need to survive,
they're not going to survive.
So you'll see them slowly start to die off because
there's no one around that they can eat.
So in a sense, they start starving.
- The kind of climate I would go for in a zombie apocalypse
would be somewhere very hot
and somewhere that would not be attractive to humans,
therefore not be attractive to zombies.
So if they happen to trek that far,
they may not make it in one piece.
Like, they would deteriorate in the sun.
- NARRATOR: But others suggest a different survival strategy.
- The best climate would probably be somewhere where
there is a lot of rain.
They're not gonna be able to hear you running or shuffling
'cause it's masked by the sound of rain.
England or Oregon or Washington,
where it's always cloudy weather.
Anything that throws off the zombies.
- [thunderclap]
- DR. CHASE: If we had some sort of a zombie apocalypse occur,
where would you not wanna be?
Population centers that are valley cities
situated along rivers.
- NARRATOR: In other words, avoid the northeast.
- Not only are you contending with population density that
exists naturally in that spot, but the major thoroughfares mean
that you would have individuals who,
under extreme circumstances, may be looking to go to
less-populated areas.
And the way you do that is by jumping into a vehicle,
getting on these interstates, and driving there.
You're introducing a whole lot of risk while also being stuck
in a situation that is not easy to escape.
As a result, you increase the survival pressure.
- MITCH: I think cities are gonna be more of a trap.
These people are very used to having everything easy.
They're not gonna know how to rough it.
- And again, you're either gonna be a contributor or you're going
to be a detractor.
The soft may find themselves taking far more
than they can give,
and they may find that they're given very little
as a result of that.
What you're going to look for more are places that have
resources that could sustain, you know, survival.
- DR. CARLSON: You wanna be in places like North Dakota,
South Dakota, Montana, the Midwest Plains area, Wyoming,
Utah, things like that, just because there is so much land
and so many ways to isolate yourself, a group of people,
from what's going on.
- They have access to natural food supplies,
fish in certain areas, game animals, more open air.
But you gotta remind yourself there's a reason that parts of
our map have lower population density.
It's typically because living there has difficulties
that make it so that people aren't necessarily
always pulled into those places.
- NARRATOR: Some experts believe a water barrier's a must.
- ASHLYNN: When I think of zombies and water,
I don't think they can swim.
I don't think they would have the brain power to even think
of how to do that.
They're just, need food, need food.
- NARRATOR: But others aren't so certain.
- Originally I thought zombies couldn't swim because
when bodies decompose, there's, like, bloating.
So I think because of that decomposition,
it actually helped in their favor where, oh,
I can get across the water and get these people now.
- NARRATOR: No matter how prepared you are,
one thing's for certain--
the zombie apocalypse will be terrifying.
- The zombie represents two of the biggest things that as
humans we naturally are against.
We don't like aging. We don't like the idea of death.
Zombies represent this monster
that we've created from our most central fears.
- I think the scariest trait of the zombies is the face.
'Cause the first thing
that you notice on a person is the face.
You make eye contact or you observe their features.
Seeing the discoloration, seeing the sunken eyes, the different,
like...I hate to say the word "juices" oozing out of the...
- ♪
- NARRATOR: To conquer our fears,
we've embraced zombies as cultural icons.
- [cheers and applause]
- Are you all ready for your
2021 CreepyCon Zombie Beauty Pageant?
- [cheers and applause]
- So today I was going for kind of like a zombie pinup vibe.
This is actually one of my haunt costumes.
I'm a haunt actor.
- [zombie growling]
- I had this dress from a thrift store that I was gonna use for
an apocalyptic photoshoot anyway.
Me and my dogs went out in the yard and ripped it to shreds.
- WOMAN: This was a dress I wore to a rehearsal dinner
for my nephew's wedding.
I would like to think that I was
a guest at a very fancy cocktail party
before I got turned into a zombie.
- EMCEE: Zombie Beauty Pageant Queen of 2021...
Miss Oak Ridge!
- [cheers and applause]
- EMCEE: Do you want a speech?
- [growls like a zombie]
- [cheers and applause]
- ♪
- One of the compelling and interesting ideas about zombies
is they're based within the elements of science fact,
and then we twist on that, and we play on that,
and we add our own fears to it.
- DR. CARLSON: It's a possibility in the future
that something like this might happen.
You know, a zombie might be created by accident.
Who knows?
That kind of fear and that idea's always present.
- I would not be surprised if zombies happen.
- I don't want to use the word "virus" 'cause...you know.
- There have been cases of people being on drugs
and eating other people.
- I don't not believe.
- So yeah, I very much believe
that zombies could become a thing.
And that's what's so terrifying about them.
- NARRATOR: But here's something that may comfort you.
Don't look for any zombie babies as the next wave of attack.
- ♪
- ALYSSA: Oh, can zombies reproduce?
[laughs] They're not doing 50 Shades of Grey.
The only way that we know
that they can reproduce is basically by biting.
The more bites, the more infections, the more they grow,
the more zombies you're gonna get.
- Zombies can definitely reproduce.
Um, they bite you, and then you turn into a zombie.
But as far as, like, bow-chicka-ow-ow, no.
And I don't think any of us wanna see that.
- NARRATOR: So how will you survive long enough to see
the zombie apocalypse end?
Scientists may have the answer.
- ♪
- NARRATOR: Some say all this zombie talk is crazy...
and that Nostradamus' prediction
of a zombie apocalypse is overblown.
- NOSTRADAMUS: "Few young people:
"half-dead to give a start.
"Dead through spite, he will cause the others to shine,
"in an exalted place, some great evils to occur,
"fathers and mothers dead of infinite sorrows,
the Great One to be no more, all the world to end."
- ♪
- BOBBY: Nostradamus says two-thirds of the people
in the world will removed by it.
- NARRATOR: But there's one thing Nostradamus
didn't foresee--
how the zombie apocalypse would end.
- ♪
- ASHLYNN: So we have this idea that zombies don't ever die
because they are undead.
That doesn't mean they can't deteriorate.
Eventually a zombie's gonna get to the point
where they're no longer a threat.
The teeth are gonna fall out.
The bones are gonna start decaying.
The flesh is going to rot off.
Eventually they would decay so much that they wouldn't become
a threat to us.
- NARRATOR: But how much trouble are we gonna be in while we wait
for those billions of pesky zombies to just die off?
You know, the shufflers...
- ♪
- NARRATOR: ...the rage zombies...
and the brain eaters.
- DR. CARLSON: On a scale of one to ten,
one being basically make it unscathed,
I'm gonna give it an eight-- moderately scathed.
As far as who is the last person standing in a zombie apocalypse,
a simulation says 300 people will only be left.
That's really low.
I'm thinking more like 30 million, let's say,
on the lower scale. 30 million people will be left.
- NARRATOR: Fortunately we won't have to wait for
natural selection to take its course.
- We have learned lessons from COVID.
And we have been able to develop vaccinations very quickly.
We can make a vaccine in 18 months and actually begin
vaccinating hundreds of millions of people within six months.
Once it calms down, so maybe day 180, day 250,
someplace in that range,
that's when you start seeing people come out
and trying to look at their new world
that they live in.
- NARRATOR: Congratulations.
Your prepping checklist helped you survive
the zombie apocalypse.
You followed our advice-- securing food and supplies,
shelter, weapons, an evacuation plan,
a getaway vehicle, new digs when the shit hit the fan,
and knowing your enemy.
Now what?
As lucky survivors slowly emerge from their bunkers,
they'll enter a world turned upside down.
- ♪
- ALYSSA: We don't know if we're gonna still
have those electric plants.
We don't know if oil is still gonna be around,
if there's gonna be a way to access the oil,
or if it's gonna be shut off completely.
There's a lot of different resources that we would have
to try and find all over again in order to survive.
So I feel like it would be the same thing, say,
if it was 100 years into the future or 200 years.
You have to take a lot of time and to rebuild the country back
into what it was before.
- DR. CHASE: We've made it through ice ages.
We've made it through other extinction-level events.
And yet, like rats and cockroaches,
humans find ways to survive,
even under extremely pressing circumstances.
It may not be pleasant, but where there's a will,
there's a way.
It's part of human nature of being social creatures to want
to actually look towards others
for assistance and support in this.
Can I form a cooperative alliance with these individuals?
Can I form a group that can now start to work together
to overcome obstacles?
Work together to survive?
There are those who will pivot towards I want to survive and
there are those who will go into a direction of I want to thrive,
no matter what the cost.
- ASHLYNN: I think if all the zombies died out,
that we would probably live a life
similar to the life we're living now.
Lots of social distancing.
I think quarantining would be way more hardcore.
I don't think people would be
congregated in cities like we are now.
Lots of people staying away from each other,
not as much congregating in large areas.
And I think a lot of people will resort back to our roots,
which is going out and farming land in the middle of nowhere
just to keep away from the risk of becoming a zombie.
- DR. CHASE: It's the end of the world.
It doesn't mean that the earth exploded.
But the world as I defined it no longer exists.
And it's now my job to redefine it and to figure out
what my role is and how to survive in it.
- Everything at that point from society has basically devolved
into nothing.
We are living however we want to.
They will have to rebuild and adapt.
And it will force the next--
the next step of human evolution.
- I hate to say it, but it kind of comes down
to the survival of the fittest.
- ASHLYNN: What scares me more than zombies in an apocalyptic
situation would probably be other humans.
Humans are the worst enemy of humans, um,
in times of struggle and chaos.
It tends to bring the worst or the best out of us.
But oftentimes it's the worst.
I would be terrified in any apocalyptic situation where
resources are low or you're fighting to survive.
I'd probably rather encounter a zombie.
- NARRATOR: Will survivors be ready to deal with
the new normal?
Experts say they better be.
- My advice to the people who are not prepared is good luck
if the power goes down or gas is affected.
- The internet is gone. The electricity is gone.
The running water is gone.
- Frozen food.
Uh, medical supplies, basic first aid.
- AMY: Life as you know it ends.
With emergency preparedness, if you are ready for something,
you're ready for everything.
- DR. CHASE: You can put on the blinders and pretend that
everything's okay.
But if the sky is falling, eventually it's gonna land
on your head.
- DAVE: From my own family, if we ever have, like,
a cell phone outage, it's a crisis.
Can you imagine not having your cell phone with a zombie
swarming around your house?
- MITCH: I'm pretty stubborn, so I'm not gonna give up easy.
I'd like to think I'd have a better chance
than your average person.
If you're worried about society failing, having a power source,
a generator, having food sources, having water sources,
it all makes perfect sense.
I think more than anything, piece of mind.
- NARRATOR: Now you must go from prepping
for the zombie apocalypse to rebuilding from it.
- DR. CARLSON: The main skills that you want,
especially starting up, is you're looking for
your carpenters, your metallurgists, your welders.
You're looking for your former military personnel.
You're looking for farmers.
- It's going to be those who know how to kind of pivot,
who know how to flex, who know how to be adaptable under
extraordinary circumstances, that are going to withstand
those sorts of survival forces.
- MITCH: Really at the end of the day,
when you get right down to the brass tacks of it,
it's not always gonna be, you know,
the most fit or the most intelligent that survives.
It's gonna be the people that can cooperate
and work with other people.
If you don't pull that off, well, your time is limited,
let's just say that.
- NARRATOR: So is the zombie apocalypse
just around the corner?
- AMY: I wish I could predict.
I wish I had a crystal ball. I really do.
- DAVE: I wouldn't rule anything out.
I mean, if anything, we've learned that Mother Nature
is full of surprises.
- DR. CARLSON: It's a possibility in the future
that something like this might happen,
whether it's a zombie apocalypse virus
or whether it's a flu or COVID virus.
Something will happen
and it will force the next step of human evolution.
- NARRATOR: But cheer up. All hope is not lost.
We can put an end to all this doom and gloom
before it even begins.
- Can we prevent a zombie apocalypse?
Absolutely.
Our biggest challenge right now is how do we respond
and how do we develop the next-gen technology
and intelligence reporting and surveillance reporting?
This is what we now need to do.
- Depending on the day, I am either incredibly cynical
and this is it.
This is as good as it's gonna get.
And we're all going down
in a blaze of zombie apocalyptic glory,
and it's gonna be horrifying.
And then I have days where I think we've got it together.
- DR. CARLSON: But remember, as we always say,
what you don't know can eat you.
- ♪
- I like zombies as a concept, bringing someone back to life.
- Yeah, a zombie apocalypse can definitely happen.
- I think it's possible.
I just hope that they stay away from me.
- 100% I'm waiting.
- I think anything can happen.
- I mean, anything's possible.
- Put your hands together for the new
[unintelligible] zombies!
- ♪
- Heytown Zombies have been doing this for a long time.
We do the Thriller dance, the whole thing, the whole video.
When we start kind of coming up as a crowd,
and people are like...
'cause they didn't realize you were there.
- ♪
- Ladies and gentlemen-- gentlemen and those yet decided,
make some noise!
- [cheers and applause]
- We're at CreepyCon 2021.
This is the Zombie beauty pageant.
- I am a fern prom queen.
- My costume is zombie Lydia.
And I got my Beetlejuice right here.
I divorced Beetlejuice.
He got the house and I got his head.
- If you had the opportunity to turn one celebrity into
a zombie to be yours forever...
- Jason Momoa.
- What type of buffet item human part would you put on the menu?
- You know it's gotta be those [unintelligible].
Gotta love the juicy [unintelligible].
- ♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
- [bell rings]