(chainsaw revving)
(film strip running)
- Here's how people that study diseases visualize
a zombie outbreak outside Vegas.
(lively piano scale)
And here's how Zack Snyder does it in Army of the Dead.
(bouncy music)
Both approaches have merit, but this one uses
a mathematical model to predict where
and how quickly zombies would take over.
Starting from New York, aggressive zombies would wipe
out most of the country in about 50 days.
And what's cool is that these kinds of tests are often based
on the techniques we use to predict actual diseases.
So, we'll show you how zombie survival tests work
and then count down five cities where you might be safe.
Vegas probably isn't going to make it.
(explosion)
(helicopter engine revving)
Fittingly, there are "hordes" of scientific zombie studies
out there. Get it? Hordes? And they're often grim-
- We could die.
- Yeah, we'll probably die.
- [Narrator] But sort of hilarious!
- Woo!
- [Narrator] Like the 2009 Canadian paper that found
that 500,000 humans would be wiped out by zombies
within days even with quarantine measures added,
but still managed to throw shade at Ottawa
which I guess is a Canadian thing.
(gulps)
- Burn.
- [Narrator] Zombie scientist and zoonotic disease
specialist Dr. Tara Smith said the popularity
of zombies is because they offer a gateway
into the study of other diseases.
- [Dr. Smith] You know, all of the factors That
unfortunately we've seen in the past year,
you can use zombies to talk about a lot of those different
things that are going on even if the mode of transmission
is not always exactly the same.
- [Narrator] At the most basic level, a zombie test has to
measure the spread of a disease; "un-death" in this case.
And that usually means a mathematical model that's also used
to predict real epidemics like Ebola, SARS.
They're even used on historical plagues.
One that's frequently employed is called the "SIR" model,
and essentially it takes a static population and divides it
into buckets of susceptible, infected
and removed individuals.
The last of which can mean either immune, or dead,
or presumably locked inside a casino vault would count too?
(suspenseful music)
Modelers make educated guesses about rates of infection
and removal, and then watch the population buckets
drain and fill over time.
- [Dr. Smith] And then once the "R" category
gets high enough, you basically end the outbreak.
(automatic gunfire)
- [Narrator] So for zombies we just switched the "I"
to a "Z" and watch the carnage, right?
Well, yeah, sorta.
But you should see the actual models when they're finished
like this one: they're so complicated. Like,
it-makes-me-want-to-eat-scientists'-brains-to-get-smarter
complicated!
Plus-
- [Dr. Smith] When you have zombies, you have to add in
some additional variables.
- [Narrator] If you look at Army of the Dead, for instance,
you probably need additional population buckets
for alphas and alpha primes, but more than that,
there are tons of those variables that affect the rates
of zombie infection and removal
which is where scholars of the undead get creative.
(gunshot)
Drawing on real lessons from epidemics, there's evidence
that a city's population density and number
of international flight routes would increase transmission
but it's not just density, say zombie researchers.
It's how far away you are from other population centers.
In the simulation I mentioned at the top,
low density places close to big cities get wiped out just
as quickly because multiple zombie waves converged there,
but remote areas in the upper Rockies
or Northern Maine hold out.
And there's this other hurdle in building
a unified zombie test:
(zombie growling)
zombie-ism in Army of the Dead operates differently
from that and say World War Z, with respect to things
like incubation period. And that changes the map a lot.
If you have something with a short incubation period,
then you're going to have one epicenter.
People don't have time to get out
and get to other big cities,
so it might be easier to contain the zombies.
Whereas if you had something with a longer incubation
period, you'd see zombie-ism and popping up around the globe
as people move around.
Assuming you get through all that,
then there are the other set of variables: humanity's
response, which can potentially fill up
the "Removed" bucket quicker. Scholars have suggested
everything from levels of firearm ownership,
military and law enforcement populations,
previous healthcare crisis response, and
even food production capabilities for long, undead sieges.
(zombie growling)
But one variable I didn't think about is wildlife.
(tiger growls)
- [Man] It's a goddamn zombie tiger.
That's crossing the line!
- [Narrator] One scholar has argued that the living dead
would be picked apart by various scavengers from ravens
to grizzlies.
(bear growling)
But, here's the rebuttal to that.
- [Dr. Smith] My response to that is wildlife as secondary
reservoirs for a virus, like a zoonotic virus.
Certain animals becomes zombies, and then they can of course
bite people as well.
- [Narrator] So the zombie tiger is approved by a scientist!
Putting those together with a little more, the ideal city
in a zombie outbreak might be less dense, more remote
more protected by its surroundings,
and less connected via air routes. With more guns,
more people trained to use guns, more engineers, more food
and proven public health infrastructure.
So right away, you can probably count out some
of the world's greatest cities from London to Seoul
to Sao Paulo - it's reasonable to think that anything
with a population density and international air index
in the Top 25 would become a capital of the undead.
(horde of zombies crying out)
- [Narrator] So the reveal: five cities where you
just might survive.
(Mongolian throat music)
Once famous for another kind of horde,
Mongolia's capital of Ulaanbaatar might now stand a chance
against hordes of zombies, even though it's one
of the bigger cities on our list, its population density
is ridiculously low, but it's nothing compared
to the population density once you leave the city:
which is five.
(hawk crying out)
Desolate landscape stretches out for hundreds of miles
in every direction, meaning
Mongolia is a natural zombie breaker.
(intense flourish)
If you like your remoteness with a little more
Western Civilization, then perhaps you could wait
out the zombie apocalypse in Perth, Australia,
sometimes called the most remote city in the world
because the next closest big city is 1300 miles away.
Perth also has low population density, the well ranked
Australian military, and a recent history of efficient
public health responses.
(cheery flourish)
But if you can stomach a cooler climate, it's hard
to do better than the strategic Russian city of Norilsk,
which you actually need permission to enter.
And it's not just because it's a far-flung city
above the Arctic circle,
but it's also because Russia has the most police
per capita and produces the most engineering graduates
per year in the world.
(upbeat guitar)
Assuming you could get there, Cuba wouldn't be such
a bad place to weed out some shamblers.
While Havana is far too dense, the small Eastern city
of Baracoa has a lot going for it.
First, mountains surround it,
and there's only one road through them.
Second, despite a smaller population and years of sanctions,
Cuba is a surprise medical powerhouse with several
pandemic countermeasures and an actual lung cancer vaccine
in testing, so perhaps they could wipe out zombie-ism?
In the meantime though, just look at Baracoa!
This beautiful, defensible place is also the center
of chocolate production in Cuba. Need I say more?
(cheery music)
But, we couldn't forget the United States of America.
Because while this great land may be slow to stir,
we do have ample land and food.
Vegas probably wouldn't do so great due to its
medium population density and high number of travelers,
but it's worth noting that remote Vegas sometimes survives
that earlier simulation when zombie start on the coasts,
although of course that didn't take air travel into account.
So you're probably better heading up
to the Northern Rockies to a city like Great Falls, Montana,
which has a much more favorable population density.
But it also has guns!
According to a 2020 study, 66% of Montana adults owned
firearms; highest in the nation famous for owning them.
Great Falls does have one unusual feature though:
It's the only place in Montana that's right next to
a military base, in this case, the one that
controls nuclear missiles. I don't know, seems like that
might be important somehow.
(explosions)
So, there you have it: five places that may do better
than Vegas when the dead rise. Of course,
predicting a zombie attack isn't an exact science, it's sort
of a goofy cousin of science, so everyone can do it.
Let us know whether your city would make it or not
when the zombies come, but until that day, Viva Las Vegas!
(suspenseful crescendo)
(record scratch) (cheery music)
- The U.S. Military doesn't seem super prepared
for zombies in Army of the Dead, but their real life
zombie plan may or may not comfort you.
In 2014, journalists broke news of CONOP 8888,
U.S. Strategic Commands allegedly for
training-purposes-only plan in case of a zombie attack.
(zombies growling)
We'll link to it, it's really good.
Among other things, it envisions an attack
by zombie chickens and then worrisomely concludes
that STRATCOM can't hold out for 30 days.
(gunshots)
Maybe I'll just stick close to one man-army: Dave Bautista.
(screaming)
(film strip running)