This Interactive Map Is Your Ticket to Surviving the Apocalypse

We all get off on imagining a post-apocalyptic world. At least a little. If we didn’t, there’d be no Rapture, no such thing as a disaster movie, no Mad Max, no Hunger Games, no the Road, and pretty much no such thing as religion. And there certainly wouldn’t be any zombies. 

Zombies, obviously, have risen to the fore as the apocalyptic meme du jour. It’s a joke, sure, but the #zombieapocalypse is a fleeting nod to that collective and cartoonish picture of the end times. So, if you need a hand navigating said end times when they finally arrive, look no further than Map of the Dead.

 The tongue-in-cheek interactive map asks for your zip, then points you to all the essential survival gear and services—doctors, gun shops, groceries, warehouses, military outposts, liquor stores—so you can get there before the terrified masses do. 

It’s funny, but just like our zombie apocalypse snarking, more poignant than it probably knows. For starters, it’s strange to poke around a portrait of your community that’s voided of everything but the survivalist essentials; it’s gallows humor for sure to start plotting your supply-stocking and escape routes. Click around long enough, and the ‘zombie’ fun-layer is apt to dissipate pretty quick, and more feasibly imagined post-apocalyptic scenarios will step in: hurricanes, earthquakes, prolonged power outages, fires, and, somewhere back there, nuclear meltdowns.

In that context, seeing the city as a collection of ‘essential item’ icons is striking: some folks are going to head right for the food, some will rush to church, and yeah, someone’s going for the guns.