Scientists Determine Safest U.S. Locations During Zombie Apocalypse
Scott Hallam
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What’s the safest place to head during the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse? A bunch of really smart guys sat down and did all figuring for you. Read on to know in which direction you should run screaming when the shizzy hits the fizzy.
Entitled You Can Run, You Can Hide: The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies by Alexander A. Alemi, Matthew Bierbaum, Christopher R. Myers, and James P. Sethna of the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, the study was released on March 4, 2015. That’s right; no less than the brains at Cornell University have come up with this in-depth study. And please take note; we did NOT make the expected zombie/brains joke here. You’re welcome.
The introduction to the study reads as follows: “We use a popular fictional disease, zombies, in order to introduce techniques used in modern epidemiology modelling and ideas and techniques used in the numerical study of critical phenomenon. We consider variants of zombie models, from fully connected continuous time dynamics to a full scale exact stochastic dynamic simulation of a zombie outbreak on the continental United States. Along the way, we offer a closed form analytical expression for the fully connected differential equation and demonstrate that the single person per site two-dimensional square lattice version of zombies lies in the percolation universality class. We end with a quantitative study of the full scale US outbreak, including the average susceptibility of different geographical regions.”
Whew! That’s why these guys are at Cornell. I followed about a tenth of that. Thankfully the study includes plenty of colorful diagrams and illustrated maps that break down exactly what these guys are talking about and where you would be safe and where you would be fucked should said zombie apocalypse ever occur. We might not totally grasp closed form analytical expression or two-dimensional square lattice versions, but you show us a map with a big red circle on New York City, and we get the picture.
“New York City would fall in a matter of days, but Ithaca, where I am, it would take weeks for the zombies to make their way up here,” researcher Alexander A. Alemi said. “It would be a situation where you’re watching chaos on television, but where you are everything would remain unchanged.” So it’s Ithaca or bust!
The report you can access above is totally awesome and incredibly thorough, insanely thorough actually, but the coolest part of the whole study may very well be this interactive zombie outbreak map. You can pinpoint the generation of a zombie anywhere in the continental United States, set the speed and bite-to-kill ratio of the undead, and with the click of a button watch how the outbreak would spread, seeing how long it would take for the walking dead to reach specific areas of the country.
The bottom line confirms what we’ve pretty much already expected: Our cities will be our tombs. New York, Los Angeles, and the major metropolitan areas are basically screwed while the more rural you go, the safer you are. So the decision is yours. Battle zombies or live in Utah? You decide. (No offense, Utah; we love ya!)
Categorized:News
