1)Turn back! Zombies!
You’re driving down the highway looking for some home improvement store that sells electric fencing when the flashing sign that usually warns you to buckle your seat belt and not pick up hitchhikers suddenly warns you to be wary of the walking dead off of Exit 8. Should you heed this warning or continue on? That, of course, depends on you. However, there are some other things to pay attention to. Are the cars traveling in the opposite direction blood splattered, speeding away widely, and/or increasing or decreasing in number? If so Exit 8 may be the last place you wish to go. Still, the best proof is either scientific or eyewitness. If you so chose, you can continue driving to see if the walking dead are strolling across the road (unless you’re on a motorcycle). Keep in mind that, unless these are some odd hybrid zombie resulting from strange scientific experiments, your car will be able to speed past them or, if necessary, run them down. Before running anyone down though, make sure they’re actually a zombie. Vehicular homicide is still homicide, and telling the judge that you thought the construction worker was a zombie will probably only lead to an insanity plea if anything. It was probably some prank with the sign anyways.
2)Flash Zombie
Having survived the non-zombie attack on the highway, you’ve returned to your apartment to store your fencing. Outside your window you suddenly hear groaning and the bumbling footsteps of a large crowd. When you look outside a mob of blood splattered, tripping dead are parading through the square, and you reach for your gun. Don’t panic, and do not shoot. Simply check your calendar and if it is Halloween, April Fool’s Day, or any other sort of holiday you should calm down. If it is not a holiday then you still might want to wait for some sort of actual attack to occur in case it’s a flash mob looking for some fun. Would zombie spontaneously appear in your quad anyways?
3)Attack
With the flash mob chased away and your doors and windows locked, you’re ready to call it a day so you have energy tomorrow should the incursion begin. However, screaming from the hallway interrupts your sleep, and you find your neighbors stumbling blindly from the staircase. While they could have become dangerous, brainless zombies they could also be drunk/drugged/harmless, lobotomized tests experiments/turned into brainless humans due to some other occurrences but sill harmless. If they are indeed harmless and bumbling then there’s a safe bet that you can lock you six locks on your door and be perfectly safe until you find out what’s going on around the world. If some odd sort of thing is going around and making people neutral and bumbling but perfectly harmless then headshots are not the best idea.
So, to aid in knowing when the zombie apocalypse occurs I’ve created a nifty system of color coded threat levels:
There is no grey area during zombie attacks. There can’t kind of be a zombie incursion. We’re either doomed to an eternity of fight away our mindless loved ones, or we’re not.
Next week, flight or fight in the face of different zombie kinds.
