A Brief Research Hiatus

My deepest apologies to our readers for being gone so long. In my perpetual quest to enlighten the ignorant masses I attempted to begin researching zombie scholarship. That was a bust. The field is sorely lacking in any real analysis or prediction science.

Though before I continue my personal rant on the failure of zombie authors to fully address the coming concerns, I must concede, of course, that one manual and historial analysis does exist. I'm referring of course to Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z. I've recently discovered a brief, but deeply helpful primary source on the aftermath of the infection. Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection, posits that food additives building up in our systems may be responsible for the zombie menace.

This is not a particularly far-fetched theory, as chemical imbalances of a less serious nature can lead to all sorts of behavioral changes in individuals. That being said, the idea that such a plague could be spread as a contagion is a less reasonable proposition. The author had to go so far as offering the results of a non-scientific trial as though it were fact. He claimed that mixing a blood sample from a zombie and a human would congeal the blood, thus essentially poisoning the system of the human and leading to zombification.

Call me a skeptic, but this seems to be a simple throwback to the irrationally fearful crowd in a vain attempt to sell a book. Congealed blood? You see, my friends, this is a primary example of the problems facing zombie scholarship right now. Like the muckraking journalists of the 19th century, authors have free reign to claim just about anything they so desire. While some texts are clearly more authoritative than others, there is still no established medium that promises accuracy and careful scholarship.

By far the most disheartening experience we've faced in recent memory was in an attempt to practice some of the skills we've recently learned. Your faithful zombie analysts hopped in a car and drove an hour out into the country to a range promising the zombie survival experience. Unfortunately, they too were not taking this situation seriously enough. Perhaps it was wishful thinking to believe that we would be facing actual zombies, but to instead be playing duck hunt (for all intensive purposes) with a single teenager in a costume and a paintball gun was, well, disheartening. That is perhaps the only way to describe it. As a Halloween attraction it was amusing, at best. As practice for the coming hordes, it was sadly inadequate.

Until later, I will continue looking for authoritative texts on the coming dark days as, I think it goes without saying, there simply is not enough information available at present. As my research continues, I will attempt to build a set of comprehensive escape plans allowing as many people to survive as possible. Of course, there must be multiple plans as, if everyone did the same thing, there would not be enough resources to sustain them all.

Keep safe and keep informed!