In the event of a zombie apocalypse, making your way to the Rocky Mountains in the US might be your best bet for survival.
A team of scientists at Cornell University have simulated a zombie outbreak in the US as a novel approach to studying infectious disease.
Using statistical mechanics, the team led by Alex Alemi simulated millions of interactions between zombies and humans to predict the pace at which a fictional zombie virus might spread.
‘We build up to a full scale simulation of an outbreak in the United States, and discover that for realistic parameters, we are largely doomed,’ said the researchers in their paper.
London would fall in days in the event of a zombie apocalypse, as would major cities in the US due to their population density. The north west of Scotland and the Rockies in the US would hold out for longest before the infection arrived, making them the perfect place to hide
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Densely populated cities would fall to a zombie outbreak in a matter of days, according to a simulation built by researchers at Cornell University as a fun way to approach statistical mechanics and disease modelling (scene from film 28 Days Later pictured)
While the study focuses on an imaginary disease, the techniques used are useful in modelling the spread of real infectious diseases.
Cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco would become overrun with zombies within days, with less densely populated rural areas lasting a few weeks.
But it would takes months for the infected to reach the northern Rockies, making the mountains an ideal hiding place to escape the undead hordes.
‘At their heart, the simulations are akin to modeling chemical reactions taking place between different elements and, in this case, we have four states a person can be in—human, infected, zombie, or dead zombie—with approximately 300 million people,’ Alemi told.
Run to the hills: it would take months for the infected zombies to reach the Rocky Mountains in the western United States, making the mountain range the best place to escape to. The model simulated millions of interractions between infected zombies and humans
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THEORIES TO EXPLAIN CAUSES OF ZOMBIISM
The zombie apocalypse occurs in many different forms in zombie films.
Space radiation – Night of the living dead
Chemical weapons – Return of the living dead
Biological infection – 28 days later, Resident evil
Genetic manipulation – Resident evil
Parasites – Zombie town
Magic – White zombie
Supernatural possession – Evil dead
Depression – Warm bodies
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The simulation has built in randomness: interactions between zombies and humans can go either way.
Sometimes the zombie bites the human victim, infecting them, and sometimes the human is victorious, living to fight another day.
In this way, each interaction is treated like a radioactive decay, allowing the researchers to calculate the rate of spread throughout the United states where each event – for example the fall of a city – can affect the rate of spread.
In fictional accounts, ‘if there is a zombie outbreak, it is usually assumed to affect all areas at the same time, and some months after the outbreak you’re left with small pockets of survivors,’ explains Alemi. ‘But in our attempt to model zombies somewhat realistically, it doesn’t seem like this is how it would actually go down.’
‘Given the dynamics of the disease, once the zombies invade more sparsely populated areas, the whole outbreak slows down—there are fewer humans to bite, so you start creating zombies at a slower rate,’ said Alemi.
If the model was applied to the UK, the Scottish highlands might be the best equivalent to the Northern Rockies with a very low population density and similar terrain.
‘In general the UK would be harder hit in my model than the US since it is a much smaller geographical area with larger population densities in general,’ Alemi told MailOnline. ‘All of the UK would fall on a timescale of months. The details of course depend on the particular choice of parameters, but we tried to set our parameters to match the behavior of zombies in the movies. Of course if you wanted it all to be over soon, you should plant yourself in downtown London,’ he added.
‘North western Scotland would likely be some of the last untouched places in the UK.’
Nightmare: If the model was applied to the UK, the Scottish highlands might be the best analogue to the Northern Rockies with a low population density and similar terrain (scene from the Walking Dead pictured)
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SIX TIPS TO SURVIVE THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
Don’t fight: Zombies wouldn’t have the neural responses to care about pain, so unless you could shoot to kill, it would be best to run for it.
Keep quiet: Zombies with CDHD would have very little memory and poor concentration, so if you hid, something else would likely capture their attention, keeping you safe.
Distract them: Damage to zombies’ posterior parietal cortex would mean that they couldn’t concentrate and would be at the mercy of whatever grabs their attention. Try fireworks for a quick getaway.
Copy to survive! Zombies wouldn’t be able to recognise faces so they identify each other by movements and sounds. ‘If confronted with a herd of the undead with no clear avenue of escape, do what Shaun and his friends did in “Shaun of the dead” – act like a zombie, the experts said
Out-run them: This only would only work with CDHD-1 zombies, who would only be able to lumber along clumsily.
Don’t try reason: ‘CDHD presents with a massive dysfunction of the language circuits in the brain. This means that zombies can’t understand what you’re saying, nor can they talk back,’ the neuroscientists warn. Their ‘fight’ reaction would dominate, leaving you pleading with an angry hungry zombie.
Mimic them: Zombies wouldn’t be able to recognise faces so they identify each other by movements and sounds. ‘If confronted with a herd of the undead with no clear avenue of escape, do what Shaun and his friends did in “Shaun of the dead” – act like a zombie. Do it with enough accuracy and you can wander through the herd undetected,’ Professors Verstynen and Voytek say.
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