The Stoner’s Guide To Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse

The Stoner’s Guide To Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse

Take this advice with a pinch of salt.  As unlikely as this is to happen (a nuclear war is probably much more likely – maybe I will cover this in a future article), I am no survival expert.  But I have watched a lot of Bear Grylls.  And 28 Days later.  And Shaun of the dead, dawn of the dead, land of the dead etc (I also completed at least two resident evils, despite the shitty control system on the ps1).  So I’d like to think I know what I’m talking about.

Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse, The Stoner Way

Stay aware
Use the internet to keep alert of possible threats.  These days twitter knows more than the news does, and they have just signed a sky-net style deal that will see a company in the US analysing tweets for world stories from eye-witnesses before they hit the news.

As soon as you hear of a possible threat, take action.  As zombie films have shown us, once shit goes off, it hits the fan fast.

Gather supplies
Get everything you’re going to need as quickly as possible.  Fuck your bank balance, draw all of your available money out and turn it into resources before it loses value.  I would personally get the following:

• Bottled water – you don’t know how long tap water will be safe for, but my guess is not that long.  The only downside is that water is really heavy, especially when stoned.  Still, get as much as you can carry (and some squash to satisfy the taste buds).  When conserving your water, try to pour it into a glass/cup rather than drinking it straight from the bottle – if you do this it seems to smell funky after a few days, and you don’t want funky water on top of everything else.
• Toilet roll – this doesn’t really need explaining, but I suggest you get the quilted stuff. A little bit of luxury goes a long way when you’re down in the dumps.. i.e. the world is ending and most people that you knew/loved have been ripped apart/zombiefied.
• Tinned food – This will last the longest – If you pick up fresh food, it’s not going to last long, and you could be holed-up in your chosen zombie-free haven for a long time.  Baked beans and vegetable soup are perfect – good nutrition and also things you can eat cold.  Not much would be worse than having a shit load of freezer food and the power going out, leaving you with defrosted salmonella and no way to cook anything anyway!
• Rice/Pasta – these staple foods will last and can be cooked by boiling them.  Could be the difference between a quick meal and death from starvation when other foods run out.  My personal preference is rice, although both are super bland without some sort of sauce.
• Vitamins – When the diet is bad, one must improvise, and A-Z vitamins will go down a treat.  Whilst the warning on the side will most likely say “not intended as an alternative to a balanced diet”, in reality vitamins will keep you stronger for longer if you have to live on Doritos, diet coke and jelly babies for a couple of weeks straight…  Fruit isn’t going to last long (unless you thought ahead and got some tinned fruit), and you don’t want to start looking like a zombie in a hostile environment by waking up with scurvy and your teeth falling out of your face!
• Painkillers / Antibiotics / Other drugs you need – and I’m not talking about your raving tablets – bumping into a zombie when you’re gurning and loving life most certainly wouldn’t be a good idea – you need to stock up on the pharmaceutical supplies that you rely on.  Hopefully you’re not relying on too much medication – once this runs out you could be stuck without it forever.  This is perhaps one advantage we have in the UK over those dealing with the same problem in the USA – people over there typically use a lot more medication!

Stoner supplies

Ok, bearing in mind that this is ‘The Stoner’s Guide To Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse’ I thought that stoner supplies deserved its own section.  Whilst the following things might not be essential in keeping you alive, they most certainly will improve your ‘living experience’ as you try to wait out the zombie apocolypse:

• Rolling box – why not think ahead? I’ve got a rolling box with a tray inside to roll my spliffs.  I’m also a messy roller.  The result? Lots of what I like to call my ‘End of the world weed’ – a general mixture of dried tobacco and old grinded up bits of weed that would have otherwise been lost forever on my carpet.  Whilst I don’t generally want to smoke this, and will avoid it unless necessary, if a zombie apocalypse does end up occurring, I’ll be happy to have it if I’m still alive by the time my main stash of chronic runs out.
• Chocolate / sweets / other sugary shit – A must have for most stoners, the munchies are a bitch when you don’t have anything sweet to satisfy your taste buds.  Try to be conservative with your munch – I personally can get through the majority of a pack of biscuits in one sitting, but this just wouldn’t be practical in a survival situation.
• Lighters and boxes of matches – remember, being a stoner – fire is your friend.  You’re going to need to light all those spliffs – not much is worse than having a spliff and no way of lighting it!
• Lots of king skins and other general rolling equipment.
  Tobacco – So the world’s going to end and you’ve got a dirty habit.  It’s not one you’ll likely want to go cold turkey on!
  Shit to do – magazines, maybe even a Gameboy (retro) and lots of batteries. In times of boredom (obviously during lulls from the panic induced by frequenting walking corpses), pokemon will keep most stoners content for hours on end.  Make sure you have earphones though, noise levels could be an important factor in avoiding detection.
• Cannabis seeds – fuck the law son, the whole world has gone to shit.  It’s not like MacGyver is going to be running around outside, fighting off zombies and busting cheeky cannabis growers.  Now is your time to shine, plant those seeds and grow your own! If you can survive the plant cycle, that harvest will taste oh-so-sweet.  Obviously there is not telling how long the power supply will last, which could ruin your plants, but it’s worth a try.  Also, you better hope that the zombies don’t have some weird attraction to the smell of ganja, because a lot of strains will stink out the house/flat/general street area.
• Digi-scales to weigh your herbs – if you’re going to be rationing yourself, it makes sense to use scales to make sure you know how much you are smoking, and therefore how long it will last at your smoking rate.  That way you can decrease the ration if necessary to make it last longer.
• Music – Life is better with music, and good songs have the power to improve your mood or relax you, and help take your mind off of current events.  Make sure you have some earphones – it almost goes without saying that loud music is a no-no when you are trying to avoid detection.  As a stoner, might I suggest some reggae – Will Smith has the right idea in ‘I Am Legend’, singing Bob Marley’s “Don’t worry” when shit gets tough.
• Jewellery – If the world goes to crap, money is going to lose its value pretty quickly (see 28 Days Later – there are wads of bank notes littered over a deserted London).  Nice-looking jewellery (and gold in general) may still be worth a pretty penny, i.e. useful supplies that could keep you alive for longer.  As a stoner, your ultimate goal will no-doubt include scoring some more weed if you ever get the chance, and having a nice gold ring / watch to bargain with could be a game changer if ever such a situation arose.

Go see your dealer
Very important – It was a toss-up between this and gathering supplies for the first instruction – obviously life-saving supplies come first, but I don’t know if I could bear to face the end of the world without a good supply of cannabis..

Buy as much as you can afford.  For all you know, this could be the last cannabis you ever get to buy, so make sure you take as much as you can.  You need to analyse how much cannabis you generally smoke – for myself it is approximately a gram a day, therefore just over an ounce a month.  So I would buy at least 6 month’s supply, maybe more depending on how optimistic I was on my chances of survival.  I know as a serious stoner that whatever I buy will get smoked, so getting as much as possible would mean I can enjoy life a little longer.

Get out of densely populated areas

It’s a bad idea to be around a lot of people at a time like this, so if possible you should move to a location less crowded.  Central London is a no-no, unless you fancy hoards of the undead swarming every square inch in search of your flesh.

Find a safe house
Your safe house needs to be a secure location where you can remain hidden from the walking dead.  If they do discover your location, your safe house should be secure enough for you to hold them off for as long as possible, to make a chance of escape possible – so make sure you also have a back exit.

Also be sure to consider how many people will be sharing your safe house.  Too many people mean more risk of exposure/discovery, and also supplies will diminish faster.  Too few, and you could be left on your own when the world’s gone to shit.

Possible good safe house locations include (but are not limited to):

• Old bomb shelters
• Flats (not ground-floor level)
• Basements/Lofts

Make sure you barricade your safe house, no matter how safe it seems.  If there are hordes that could potentially discover your location, you need to make sure that they can’t get in.  Strength of numbers really comes into effect with zombies, and their lack of pain means they will relentlessly crush towards targets, often knocking down most things in their way.

Find/make a weapon
If it all really does go to shit, we will be cursing with envy at the Americans and their right to ‘bear arms’, as us folks in the UK mostly won’t have access to firearms.  In America they’ve actually began to sell “Zombie-Killing Bullets”, a novelty which we expect will wear off if/when someone accidently blows their own brains out with one.  You can currently buy these babies over at http://www.hornady.com/ammunition/zombiemax if you are fortunate enough to live in the US, mad enough to own a gun, and want that extra little bit of protection just in case zombies come to town.

“Zombie Max™ ammunition from Hornady®! Loaded with PROVEN Z-Max™ bullets… yes PROVEN Z-Max™ bullets (have you seen a Zombie?). Make sure your “bug out bag” is ready with nothing but the best!”

Those of us stranded on our infected little island when zombies attack however will need to make do with whatever they can find – sharp/blunt/heavy objects that will cause impact damage.

Look out for:

• Shovels
• Other general gardening equipment (shears, rakes etc)
• Knives (The bigger the better – the closer the zombies get to you, the more danger they present – one bite and it’s all over!)
• Baseball Bats

In reality, an effective weapon is one that you can kill a zombie with in one hit – so the heavier your item (as long as you can comfortable wield it) the better.

Also it is worth noting that this is real life, and not a video game – weapons will probably break after the 20^th zombie or so (ok that’s a random guess, but you get the picture), so make sure you have a backup supply of things to whack/chop/slice zombies with!

Set a strict set of rules and follow them
It would be easy to say “Screw this” and just go on a mad one, but unlike in “I Am Legend”, you’re not Will Smith.  You probably don’t have a trusty, potentially life-saving best friend of a dog, and if you do decide to go on a rampage, it is very unlikely that a surprisingly well-groomed woman accompanied by her young son is going to pull you out of your zombie-covered motor at the last second at 4am on a Thursday morning.

In all seriousness though, make sure you create a set of rules to ensure you and your group’s safety.  The number one rule should be never to go anywhere alone, but if you are alone you’ll just have to deal with it.  Maybe you’ll turn into some kind of Denzel Washington’s Book of Eli character, roaming the wastelands murking cats with sniper-crossbows even though you lost your sight years ago.  Probably not.

So pay attention to the following:

1. Don’t venture out at all if you can help it – if you have followed the previous advice you should have all you need to stay put for a number of weeks/months.
2. If you have to venture out of your safe house, don’t venture out alone.  Make sure you tell those you leave behind where you are going, and establish a method of communication/time you will be back by.  Of course the most sensible rule to set is that if you don’t come back not to go looking for you, but we are all humans and emotional ties can make people react irrationally.
3. If the zombies are ‘night-crawlers’ (unlikely, but we have to cover all bases), only venture out in the day.  If they are out during the day and night, then be very wary.  When you’re out in the open – you’re exposed.
4. When in your safe house keep noise to a minimum – the last thing you want is to alert a horde of the undead to your presence.  If by some miracle there is still electricity (or you have a generator), make sure you use headphones to avoid excess sound levels.  If you are in a modern house with double/triple glazing then normal voice levels should be fine, but no shouting!
5. Sleep next to a weapon, in case zombies discover your location during this period – I’d imagine you won’t fall into a very deep sleep with danger constantly just around the corner, so hopefully if zombies do start to break in you will wake up and can get to safety.

Ration your supplies
You really don’t want to run out of supplies, and be left without food, water or weed.  That is why it is important that you pace yourself – while it will be near-impossible to predict how long you are going to be holed up in your safe house, the less supplies you use each day the longer you will survive if you remain undiscovered.  While it will be tempting to smoke fat blunts until you fall into a happy oblivion, I would advise against this.   Prison spliffs will make your weed last as much as possible, especially when supply begins to diminish.

The recommended amount of calories per day that we should consume is 2500 for men and 2000 for women.  However, as long as you eat something each day you’ll survive for a long time – this is where being a stoner becomes a bit of a problem , as you will not be able to satisfy your munchies without wasting valuable supplies! Be strict with yourself, it’ll work out better in the long run.

Sadly for us stoners McDonalds (unlike this picture suggests), KFC etc will be non-operational pretty much right away, so you can kiss goodbye to fast food forever!

Make sure you keep hydrated – so as to avoid headaches and serious health risks.  Drink plenty of water – you should have enough bottled if you followed the previous advice in this guide.

Be wary of large groups of survivors
These could be groups of rapers/pillagers/general bad people that are inevitable born out of this sort of catastrophe. Tough people will tend to stick together, and without laws to govern or police to enforce them, people may not always be trustworthy.  The number one rule of everybody post-event will be to look out for themselves, so make sure you don’t leave yourself vulnerable.

If you manage to survive and the zombies begin to somehow ‘die-off’ 28 days later style, then you’re going to need to go and explore, and this could still present dangers.  Don’t assume all is well if at first you don’t see any zombies – without television or the internet to keep you updated you won’t know it is truly safe, and could risk discovery/being turned into a zombie even by the last zombie roaming about.

However if you see swarms of army guys and special forces (probably led by Americans, as dictated in many zombie films), I’d say it is safe to come out and say “hey – I’m a survivor – get me to safety”.  Maybe, just maybe your ordeal will be over.

And so there is the Stoner’s Guide to Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse.  I hope that you have found this useful/inspiring, and if ever there is a zombie apocalypse that it will be utilised, so long as you don’t lose your marbles from all the impending danger and gloom.