Move Along Nothing To See Here!

This being the internet, unless of course you’re reading one of the printed copies of this I fling my zeppelin whilst laughing at paupers, the news that a man in Miami had been apprehended in the act of attacking another man would’ve quickly faded to obscurity. However the news that a man was shot six times after being discovered devouring another man's face began all manner of zombie based theorising.. Obviously like most fans of the zombie genre… no ones a fan of the creatures themselves, they are pitiful shambling monsters… I have devoted an unhealthy amount of my life speculating, hypothesising and fantasising about the inevitable zomb-o-calypse. Being something of self-styled zombie expert I feel an overwhelming need to step into this discussion but not in the way you may expect. This is definitely not an outbreak.

Calm down it's not that shocking a conclusion... You know what I'm not
going to pretend that this picture is related, it's fucking funny though

One of the most important things the zombie-obsessed among us must learn is that there are a lot of things that at first glance seem to be zombies that you will got to prison for shooting. These include costumed party-goers, people making low-budget horror films and drunks that have lost bets. It is key therefore that you develop a keen ability to detect what is and isn’t zombie otherwise you wind up in prison trying to determine what is and isn’t rapist. So without further delay let me run you through the reasoning behind my belief that this case is not the moment we’ve been preparing for.

So... keep preparing... I guess.

First of the attacker was a naked individual. This is a key bit of evidence in allowing us to build a picture of whether this was zombie or not. Naked tells us that our zombie, if he were, would have turned in bed. This is actually the most likely place fro the infection to take hold. If you were out jogging and got bit you’d try to ignore it at first… what with America’s healthcare system... If you then started to feel some what under the weather you would head to the best place to recover from all sickness. Bed. So a man goes to sleep and the zombie awakes all pain and hunger filled with an insatiable lust for flesh. If he was located in a tower block, which is statistically likely in a built up city like Miami we are looking at a situation where he managed to find the stairs and leave the building without meeting a single other viable meal. Before you say he could’ve taken the lift, thus minimising his chances of meeting a potential snack, how would he have used the buttons… no the lift is only an option should someone have been in it or called it, either way you’re looking at a lift for of dead people. Of course we could be looking at the lone escapee from some form of secret underground facility. That notion is of course utterly preposterous. You wouldn’t build something like that in Miami you’d build it in butt-fuck-nowhere, Ohio.

The middle-of-butt-fuck-nowhere... and there's still a fucking hipster

The next issue is that this chap was gunned down whilst snacking on the face of a homeless man, who it is reported is recovering in hospital… not rapidly deteriorating into a shuffling corpse. On balance it is unlikely that this homeless man has become infected and therefore, given what we know about the viral source of the zombie-condition that his assailant was one of the walking-dead. There is also the fact the ‘zombie’ was shot dead by the police. This is almost enough evidence that our perp is not a zombie on its own. You see a competent police officer is trained to fire bullets into the kill column. This is a fancy term for the torso. It’s an easier target than the head with almost equal effectiveness whilst simultaneously resulting in fewer fatalities. The central concept being a man you shot in the chest is only slightly more likely to return fire than a man who has been shot in the head but a man who has been shot in the chest is incredibly more likely to not die. As to the number of shots fired, six in total, some view this as evidence of some form of zombism. It’s much more likely that the officer in question fired one shot, which had not effect due to either severe psychological problems or sever drugs, at that point he would fired off the remaining five shots in rapid succession. The odds that a police officer cracked off a head shot on a man whose face was right next to his victim isn’t just unlikely it relies on the cop being Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. It just wouldn’t happen and if it did it would be in the report.

Only from the first three Lethal Weapons though... the good ones.

The final points that indicate that this is not stage one of an ongoing outbreak are two simple facts, one is location and two is coverage. A real outbreak would be accompanied by so many cover-ups and propaganda campaigns that the surviving historians would never even hope to pin-down the beginning of it all. It’s also not going to happen in a built up metropolitan area, the first reports will start to stream in from vast swathes sparsely populated countryside. As I’ve often stated I have no desire in pointing out problems so I’m going to run through the warning signs you should be looking for.

1. Aborted news-cycles: If you start to hear stories about epidemics spreading that’s OK… if those stories suddenly dry-up then things are getting suppressed and trouble has started.
2. Excessive Force: If the National Guard are called in to deal with some form of riot it can be excessive force, or it could be a reasonable response to a threat that you’re unaware of.
3. Quarantine: Keep a close eye on airport closures, should a rural area have its airspace closed up for non-weather related reasons it could be a faulty radar tower… or it could be an attempt at containment.
4. Unusual Individual Behaviour: The Johnson’s seemed in a bit of a hurry to get away on that camping trip didn’t they? There will always be people ‘in the know’ the sensible ones among these will usually flee. Maybe it’s time to take that holiday.
5. ‘A Spate Of Similar Attacks’: This is the key phrase to look out for. Check the similar attacks are they the work of one person or are they the work of several unrelated ghouls.
6. Killing Sprees: I’m not talking about high-school massacres or unhinged postal workers I’m talking about the sweet teenage girl who snaps and kills her entire family… did she snap or did she step-up to the plate and do what needed to be done?
7. World Leaders: The minute someone on the world stage fails to turn up to something really important you know shits about to hit the fan if Joe Biden rocks up to the G8 just head to the hills as quickly and discreetly as possible.

I hope that helps put your mind at rest I’m not saying anyone of these events should have you grabbing a baseball bat but they are the starting points for the investigations that will ultimately save you from a slow and painful death… or worse.

eddie <constant vigilance>