How To Make A Zombie Escape Route...Before It's Too Late

If there's one thing I've learned after playing Left 4 Dead for three days straight, it's that the zombie apocalypse is coming and anyone without a plan is going to get their brains eaten. Luckily, with Google Maps and a little forethought, you too can make your own Zombie Escape Route. Now that I've made one, I can finally sleep at night, without the gun.

ESCAPE ROUTE TIPS

We'll assume the worst case scenario; one morning you look out the window, and there are zombies on the streets. The news is saying the outbreak is centered in your town.

TIP #1: RUN, DON'T WAIT!
The authorities may be telling you to stay inside your home. But! If your town is already infected, the zombie population will increase exponentially, and I wouldn't trust any governing body to know how to control it. Those zombs will come breaking down your door soon enough, which is why we're making these escape routes in the first place.

TIP #2: RUN, DON'T DRIVE!
Unless you're in a rural area, your car isn't going to do much good. Traffic out of the city will be gridlocked, and bridges are likely to be shut down anyway. You'll have to assume a city-wide quarantine, and count on any public routes of transportation out of the city being closed.

TIP #3: LESS POPULATED = LESS ZOMBIES
In picking your destination, you'll want to go somewhere that's far away from your city and that has very low population. Remote areas are safest because even if the population has turned, they will have little incentive to stay put and will probably be moving on to nearest city. Thus, if you have any farmland or forest within traveling distance, that might be the place to go.

TIP #4: ZOMBIES CAN'T SWIM
In almost all zombie lore, zombies aren't coordinated enough to swim. This makes a boat or an uninfected island some of the safest places to be. If you're near a coast, try to get on the open ocean; it's likely you can sail far enough to escape the infection.

TIP #5: TRAVEL LIGHT!
As noted in tips #1 and #2, you are going to be doing a lot of RUNNING. You may be tempted to take tons of stuff from your house to fit every situation, but you're better off planning to pick up essentials from stores along your route. Use Google Maps to look up grocery stores close to your destination, and plan to get food and water when you need it and no sooner.

TIP #6: MAIN STREETS ARE MEAT MARKETS
Getting out of a major city will be hard no matter what route you take, but stay off main roads at all costs. Since people will be trying to drive on these streets, and looting will likely take place in commercial districts, main streets will become throbbing veins of zombification. You're better off making a run through side streets and alleys; as scary as it will be to see a lone zombie blocking your path in a dark alley, you've got a better shot getting around him than a massive horde in the town square.

TIP #7: HOSPITALS ARE ZOMBIE FACTORIES
Be sure your route doesn't take you near any hospitals. Zombie victims will head to hospitals, turn into zombies, bite the doctors and...well, you know how it goes. Give yourself a several block radius away from these hot spots.

TIP #8: WIDE OPEN SPACES ARE PREFERABLE PLACES
Zombies shouldn't be too hard to outrun as long as you don't get cornered; to this end, if you can ever take a route through a park, a vacant lot, even a construction site, do it. Maneuverability is key.

TIP #9: SPORTING GOOD STORES MIGHT JUST BE WORTH IT
Despite wanting to stay out of populated areas, sporting good stores might be worth the risk. If you want to avoid melee combat and are not a gun-owner, a sporting good store might be the only place to get a long range weapon such as a rifle or crossbow. You can also pick up a raft or canoe here, if you're planning on making a run for the water.

TIP #10: COORDINATE WITH LOCAL FRIENDS
Try to pick a relatively safe meeting place to join up with some local friends who you really, really trust. You can set a meeting time relative to the outbreak; for instance, you could plan to meet no later than three hours after the first presidential address on the crisis. If anyone is missing by the deadline, assume the worst and get moving!

You can get a look at these tips in action by taking a closer look at my route. And if you need some pointers on using google maps, here they are:

HOW TO USE GOOGLE MAPS

1. Go to the MyMaps tab in Google Maps (under the Google logo).
2. Click "Create new map"; title it Zombie Escape Route and click the "Public" tab so it can be easily accessed by those in your neighborhood.
3. Zoom in on your house, or where you expect to be when the invasion hits.
4. Click the "Placemark" icon to make your first landmark (your house). After you write the title and description, you can click the icon in the window to select a more visually descriptive icon, like the ones I used.
5. On the left side window, click the check mark next to "Places of Interest" under the Featured Content header. This will allow you to help plan your route and find places you might want to go (grocery stores, gas stations) as well as places to avoid (hospitals, graveyards).

Now it's time to figure out your route....find your first stop, make a new placemark, and use the "Draw a line" icon to connect the two. Continue thusly until you reach your destination.

Easy, right? Post a link to your map in the comments section, so we might all better prepare ourselves for the inevitable. Best of luck!

Video: NYC Zombie Crawl 2008

Photos are one thing, but in order to really understand the mood of the Zombie Crawl, you need to hear the groans of the undead, observe their lurching gait, and hear the the plaintive shouts of the organizer; "Don't break the windows!" Enjoy Gnerd Johnny's 2 minute highlight reel of zombies on the move through Williamsburg.

Photos: Zombie Crawl 2008

I walked in the 2008 Zombie Crawl in Williamsburg, and it was everything I had hoped it would be. And what I hoped it would be was an excuse to walk around slowly with my arms outstretched and move threateningly towards cars and people. Fun! While I enjoyed the experience from a zombie-eye view, Gnerd operatives Bishop and Johnny covered the event as humans; check out some of our photo coverage after the jump, and check out our video highlights!

Photos and write-up after the jump...


This being a 21 and over event, participants met up at Duff's, a bar which I was assured was the heavy metal bar in Brooklyn. Those shadowy figures on the roof are probably FBI agents making sure there's nothing actually supernatural going on.


A couple hours before the walk began, the event organizers had set up a make-up area on the bar's front porch where walkers could get bloodied up and rotted for the low low cost of nothing.

The woman who did my make-up had worked on the awesome ThrillerFest zombies a few months ago. I went with traditional grey, though other people were getting a more colorful dark green look, and some went with a more ghoulish white. Zombies come in a beautiful rainbow of colors, just like you and me.

A close up of my "killer" neck scar (stop me).

Me in full zombie documentarian regalia. I was going for a film student who decided it would be a good idea to get footage of the zombie invasion. Wap wap waaa! You can't see it here but there's fake blood on my camera and lanyard/shooting permit as well.

At about six o'clock, Organizer Zombie announced it was time to get moving through the streets of Williamsburg.

Just before we left Duff's, a photographer got in his car and asked the zombies to attack him while he shot from the inside. The zombies were all to eager to oblige, and I swear that bumper damage was there before we started.

Our hunting instincts now fully charged, the walk began west through the warehouse lined streets North 3rd towards the main artery of Brooklyn hipsterdom, Bedford Ave. Our final destination was Passout Records, where zomb-friendly rap artist MC Chris would perform a free set.

Some zombies declined to get into character, but a good chunk really went for it, groaning, stumbling, and most importantly, walking towards any sign of fresh brains. This improvisatory aspect of the walk (the RPG aspect, if you will) was the real draw for me; being given an excuse to act out all the horror conventions you've ever seen on screen in real life, and on unsuspecting bystanders, is a very surreal and engrossing experience.

The mob's first big civilian encounters was this SUV as it drove down North 3rd, alone and helpless.


My favorite moment of the whole day was when we passed Radegast Hall & Biergarten, a huge restaurant with rusty iron bars on the window. The mob got one look at those gothic, presumably sturdy bars and attacked the facade in what must have seemed like a scene from Night of the Living Dead to the diners inside. Most of those inside looked amused at this impromptu attack, some slightly less so (hipster hate, or more likely hipster self-hate sometimes provokes extreme eye-rolling towards these kind of goofy events).

After about 20 seconds of mobbing the exterior and doorway, Redegast's black-aproned host ran out with a menu in hand and beat the zombies back, obviously willing to sacrifice his life for his customers. He even closed the wrought iron front gates in order to keep the undead out, and the horde moved on, defeated. I'd expect he got some serious tips.

Zombies continued to gravitate towards cars all the way to Passout Records. Since zombies move slowly and don't pay attention to cross walks any more than other New Yorkers, we clogged up traffic a bit and at least one humorless and hurried citizen lay on his horn, to little avail. That was actually the only person I saw all day that seemed to be genuinely annoyed with the display, pretty much everyone else we passed in a car or on the street responded with positive or at least passive attention, and usually with cell-phone camera in hand.


Walking through Brooklyn brownstones...

It took less than ten minutes to make it to Passout Records, where a band was wrapping up their set. There a grill setup outside with free hotdogs and burgers, which made for a lot of freeform eating by the zombies. At that point some of the mob went back to Duff's to drink and get ready for the spooky cabaret/burlesque show later that night, and some elected to stay for the MC Chris show.

The Gnerd crew had to cut out at that point, but we got a few more pics of the horde outside Passout. One of my favorite things about photo coverage of these events is seeing the different spins on the "zombie look" that people come up with. As with my own costume, I love it when people create outfits that indicate where they were and what they were doing when they got zombified. With that in mind, here is our Zombie Look Book.

Satan Worshipper Zombie.

Armless Cowboy Zombie. Rodeo accident, maybe?

Doctor Zombie, aka Jay, who's an actual medical professional who made his outfit with actual scrubs. Zombie doctors are great; as anyone who read the first issue of The Walking Dead knows, hospitals are zombie hot zones; people come in who've been bit, then they turn into zombies and bite the doctors...let's just say it goes from bad to worse.

Wedding Party Zombies. Poster Tagline: Till Death DON'T They Part!

A literal take on the iPod Zombie stereotype.

Geek cred alert! "Trogdor's the man! Actually he's the dragon-man!"

Milkman Zombie out of character on Bedford Ave.

And finally, because Star Wars cosplayers will use literally any event as an excuse to break out the costume, and who can blame them, we got to see some awesome Jango Fett on Zombie action.

After posing for the picture, I asked her (it's a girl in there if you can't tell) if she was there to hunt zombies, and she responded by shooting me. I really walked into that one.

Even zombie teeth can't penetrate Mandalorian armor.

Jango says something cool before blasting the zombie horde.

That does it for our photo coverage of the Zombie con. There's a little bonus material Geekanerd's Flickr account, if you absolutely cannot get enough of this stuff.

Bring On The Bear Traps: Saw Movie Marathon Thursday

Are movie marathons so different than actual marathons? I've never run a actual marathon, but I'm still gonna say no, they're exactly the same. Both require endurance, proper hydration, and proper stretching. Seriously, you can get cramps from sitting. But most geeks already know that. I'm talking to you, gamers.

Tomorrow, theaters around the country are hosting screenings of the complete Saw series, topping off with a midnight screening of Saw IV. I'm not a big fan, but four movies for the price of one is a sweet deal. It should also be interesting to compare the movies back to back, keeping in mind that director/producer James Wan and writer/producer Leigh Whannell have managed to knock out a new one of these things every year since their initial success in 2004. IV is the first of the series not to be written by Whannell, and instead Marcus Dunstan of Project Greenlight "fame" has taken over the task of making up all those wacky torture machines.

Ticket info after the jump...

A list of all participating theaters can be found at Break.com. Long story short, it's playing in the following states:

• AL
• AZ
• CA
• CO
• DE
• FL
• GA
• HI
• IA
• IL
• IN
• KS
• KY
• LA
• MA
• MD
• MI
• MN
• MO
• NC
• NJ
• NM
• NV
• NY
• OH
• OR
• PA
• RI
• TN
• TX
• UT
• VA
• WA

Condolences to Alaska, New Hampsters, Oklahoma, and all the other states that got snubbed. In a way, it's a compliment that AMC doesn't think you'd be into eight hours of torture porn.

Fellow NYC geekanerds who are into that sort of thing can buy tickets for the Manhattan and Brooklyn screenings on Fandango. All the screenings start at 6pm.

Final Thought: When I saw the Saw IV poster for the first time, I thought that pig lady was actually hooked up to a medical IV. That would have been hilarious, but I guess that sort of visual pun is beyond the Lion's Gate marketing team.