We have all watched them and we have all imagined what it would be like to live in such a world. I am talking, of course, about an apocalyptic world run by zombies, which till now, we have seen only in movies and TV shows. Thank goodness!

A zombie apocalypse sounds really scary as it is not only the end of civilisation but a bloody end, with the army of undead still roaming around, gobbling up anyone left alive. Who wants to see their own guts getting eaten, right?

Many people claim that scientifically, it would be impossible for zombies to exist in the first place or that even if somehow they are able to exist, they would be dealt with pretty easily by the armies of the world and they wouldn’t spread across the entire globe.

For the sake of this post however, let’s imagine that zombies indeed took over the world and most people in the world are now the walking dead. What would be your chances of survival? How long could you avoid the inevitable?

An Apocalyptic World

Let’s analyse this new world first. So, the zombie virus has spread over the entire planet. Most people have turned into zombies and that’s, a lot! There are 7.5 billion people in the world and there could easily be well over 7 billion zombies!

As we know from popular culture, they are attracted by noise and the smell of living beings. Therefore, they are actively looking for anything living to bite. Depending on where you live, you would be dealing with anywhere from a hundred thousand to a few million undead.

In such a world, it would be very, very, difficult for you to fulfil your basic needs of food, water and even shelter. Ok, you could manage to find shelter but every second that you are outside, you would be in danger.

The real problem, believe it or not, would be the other survivors. We are already at each others’ throats in today’s world. Just imagine what we would be like in an apocalyptic world where getting resources would be extremely difficult. I am guessing, we would be nothing less than animals in such a world.

Then there are things that we take for granted today like medical care, or electricity or the internet. In an apocalyptic world, one of those three wouldn’t matter and the rest would be very hard to get. Today, an allergy is easily treated but in such a world, it might lead to your death.

Your Best Moves

I am not talking about dancing in front of the zombies but how you think in the situation. If you use your wits, you might be able to survive, at least longer than the others.

The first thing you would need to do is to get to a very isolated area, say, in a remote part of the country side or a cabin near the woods. It would automatically be safer due to a much lower number of zombies. If you are able to gather enough supplies, hiding some nearby, you could potentially survive longer.

Also, you would need to learn some survival skills and that too fast. For example, you would need to learn to kill off zombies quickly, preferably with a sword or knife than guns. It would also do you good if you could learn to grow some simple vegetables.

If you are lucky enough to find a yacht, you could be much safer than the others because zombies don’t swim and you would be away from people too. If you are able to find an offshore oil rig, you could potentially live for a long time as you would have power, you could fish for food, desalinate ocean water for fresh water and have a sturdy shelter.

In any case, I would personally say to live in isolation, hoard up as much as you can and use up as little as you can. If you find a strategic place where it would be difficult for both humans and the undead to reach, you would be set pretty well.

Not All Is Gloom

Due to all the reasons I mentioned above, it seems like your chances of survival, even if you are a pretty good, would be pretty slim. There would just be too many living dead to handle.

But there is something that may help and that is time. Zombies are basically rotting corpses, right? So, day by day, they would wither away. In time they would get much slower, weaker and easier to handle.

Even if they take like 5-6 months to completely decompose and die a second time, (this time for good) it could mean that survivors of the apocalypse would have to ‘manage’ for about half a year at the most.

Doing that is very much possible even with very limited resources. So, if you could just manage to hoard up enough to last you a few months, you could very well come out alive!