I'd rather you not eat my brains, thank you

I've been having a lot of fun using this text in my introductory course on International Relations, and most of my students, even those saying they're not into the zombie genre, enjoy this witty ride through different paradigms of international politics via this premise: what would countries do in the face of an outbreak of zombies?  Or to put it in non-zombie terms: what would countries do if there were an unprecedented, catastrophic event on a global scale? Think of the movie Contagion, or any story of world-wide plague, real (American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic) or not (The Stand). Drezner walks readers through the various descriptions and predictions that the different paradigms offer (realism, liberalism, constructivism, including theoretical derivations of each), and my students have found it a useful repetition of what they're getting out of the other standard primer that I use (my one criticism is that Drezner blithely dismisses critical and feminist theories).

Anyway, a Washington Post blog by Christopher Ingraham popped up on my Facebook page this morning: Where to live if you want to survive a zombie apocalypse: The definitive guide. Ingraham wonders where in the US would we have the highest chance of surviving a plague of zombies. He determines the best places based on these five factors.

Low population density (less people = less zombies)
Access to guns (self-explanatory, to be honest)
People with military experience (veterans!)
Terrain that's difficult for zombies to traverse (when's the last time you saw one scale a cliff?)
Access to bodies of water (zombies can't swim, and you need water to survive)

Using sliders, the reader than can chose which of these variables she or he would think more important. The reader can then slide the arrow over the map getting the county by county results. Here's the map based on my preferences

I buy the logic that lower population density means lower chance of running into zombies (and therefore lower incident of infection). Besides, I'm an introvert. But one problem here is whether the zombies are the slow-moving kind as depicted in George Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead, or the fast-moving kind as seen in 28 Days Later and World War Z. I hope for the former, since I'm 55 and my hamstrings are shot (Drezner thinks the speed is irrelevant--zombies will get to where they want to go no matter their speed, given their numbers, the 100% rate of infection, and human unpreparedness for this, again, unprecedented and catastrophic event).

George Romero's 1968 cult classic.

Danny Boyles' 2002 28 Days Later

Access to guns? Haven't shot a gun since I was, I don't know, 15? Besides, as we know from almost all zombie stories, there are large variety of non-firearm weapons humans can employ against zombies. As well, humans often turn on one another in times of existential crisis, especially where there are limited resources (I assume a zombie plague would disrupt access to basic necessities, along with the disruption of communications).

Veteran population? Well, veterans would certainly be better shots than me, but I'm concerned that the standard operating procedures that govern military engagement with a human enemy might lead to huge tactical errors--zombies won't respond like the usual human enemy. Veterans may adapt to the drastically new situation, but that adaptation may come too late. I'm thinking here of my Peace Corps experience. Volunteers with prior professional experience in their particular program (e.g. forestry, agriculture) often had a more difficult time adjusting to a radically new environment, in comparison yahoos like me who had no prior experience, and therefore fewer pre-existing assumptions or biases. We'll need flexibility of thought when seeing a swarm of zombies lurching towards us.

Landscape features? The "stopping power of water," as realists remind us, is a powerful factor in the geography of conflict. Rivers, big lakes, with steep terrain around them. That's what I'm looking for. Zombies can't swim, and are, at best, sloppy climbers. And wintry weather in upper elevations might be a boon (as long as we have a way to keep warm). The zombies will freeze, giving us a breather.

Access to bodies of water? Again, a good defensive terrain feature, but we'll need water. Just hope it's not too polluted.

So--based on my preferences, and Ingraham's calculations, where to go? I live in Grand Rapids, Kent County. The map reports that my chances of surviving there are "way way below average" and that I'm "basically dead already." We could head west to neighboring Ottawa county, where chances are above average, but the area is surrounded by low survivability counties--wouldn't take long for Ottawa to be overrun. We could head north, but given that I'm irrational, I'd try to convince my wife and whoever else is with us to try the run across risky Illinois and Iowa, and head for eastern Oregon, maybe Harney county, the Burns area. Always wanted to get back there again anyway....

Whitehorse Lake, Harney County, Oregon