Only 11 Percent of Brits Have a Zombie Survival Plan, Holy Shit Lads

Zombies, I think, are inevitable. Or at least some sort of death apocalypse that renders 80 to 90 percent of humanity dead or undead. Listen: the world is probably going to end in our lifetime. It'll possibly make it another 100 years or so after we've died, but ultimately: dead earth.

Our children will burn. The poles will slide into the sea and we will be overcome with water. Or: arid desert will swathe its way across our continents. Or: the sun will die, and us with it. Or: the forests will burn, and – later – we will choke. I just feel like the soil is souring beneath us. That the water is turning to sludge. I just feel that us being here – humanity, a huge destructive wheel – is fundamentally killing the planet, and our hubris about that will be our downfall. Sorry! That's just how I feel!

Yes I did watch 2012 (2009), the disaster movie about John Cusack being a heroic limousine driver, this week, on Channel Five+1! Yes, perhaps I am primed to be more existential than ever about our ultimate hopes of survival! Point taken!

So disaster is inevitable, and zombies by extension are likely. You think zombies aren't likely, but you're wrong. Remember in 2006 when a scientific trial went wrong and scientists accidentally gave a bloke an elephant's head and made all his toes and fingers fall off? Like, as banter? Science didn't plan for that, but it happened because of science. This is how a zombie apocalypse starts: one rogue scientist, who hasn't read the back of the Calpol packet, accidentally gives zombie medicine to a student on a £2,000-for-three-weeks medical trial. And lo, zombies are a thing. Death. Despair. A guttural shrieking sound haunts the wind, as the army of the undead loots our brains for sustenance.

Anyway, here's YouGov, who questioned 214 people for this:

Top line: we are woefully underprepared for a zombie apocalypse. On the whole, only 11 percent of Brits have plans for the zombie onslaught (this rises to 23 percent among 18 to 24-year-olds, but that's still not high enough, lads). When I say "plan" I don't even mean "you have to be a weird bunker boy who has loads of freeze-dried food and some yellow-lensed sunglasses and a big sloshing generator full of petrol".

Plans, as the YouGov breakdown shows, can be as simple as "holing up somewhere" (45 percent), "gathering supplies" (43 percent) or "meeting friends for a daring rescue attempt/squad formation" (15 percent). Like, one in five people's plans is literally "just stay at home and lock the windows a bit", and 89 percent of the greater British population has never even considered it. When disaster comes we will be doomed.

Further findings: of the zombie planners considering gathering supplies, 8 percent intend "just to wing it", which I very much respect; 9 percent of people with zombie plans refused to disclose them to YouGov, which very much same; and only 13 percent of zombie planners intend to secure a weapon with which to smash zombies' heads in. If you're going to live in a wasted down endgame of Britain, living on foraged Mars bars and meagre cupboard supplies, your friends all dead, your family all dead, and crucially the WiFi has gone out because all the BT engineers are dead, then what are you planning to do if not smash the head in of a zombie? That is literally the only perk of a zombie apocalypse. The guilt-free opportunity to kill.

But then I suppose the fact I have a zombie apocalypse plan (we have talked about this: I get to a Tesco Metro, shutter the doors, throw the perishables in the freezer section, eat all the fresh baked goods, get wildly huge and puffy and go a bit mad, start wearing deli meat as a crown and talking to myself over the tannoy) says more about me than it does about the 89 percent of those who don't.

There's a certain type of person, who has a clearly demarcated zombie survival plan. There are people like you, who have a mild daydreamy idea of what you'll do when the panic hits. There are people like me, who really, really have thought slightly too long and hard about this. And then there are lads with tactical vests and a whole room full of Kendall Mint Cake who always have a gun on them and teach themselves krabi-krabong from YouTube tutorials, and have an old Jeep and reserves of drinking water, and are mad. I am on the slippery slope towards that. When will I slide, I wonder. And the 89 percent, they just get on with their actual lives, the ones that are happening. They have jobs and careers and dogs and children, and plans this weekend, and they know how much money they have in their bank account, and sometimes they call their energy supplier to negotiate a better deal, and they are happy, and comfortable with their lot, and settled. Why do I have more of a plan for the zombie invasion than I do for the rest of my life.

Man.

@joelgolby

More zombie stuff:

How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

Actually, Zombies Are Good

Drug Zombies in Haiti