Bridge and Tunnel Hordes

Manhattan: Crown Jewel of the five boroughs. It's glittering steel towers are iconic, not just of the city, but New York as a whole (go ahead, tell me that when I say New York that the skyline isn't one of three images in your head. Now try to tell me that one of those images is the Corning Glass Museum in Steuben County... nice try. That Glass Museum looks interesting actually... But I digress).

For generations, the Manhattan skyline, with the modern day Colossus, Lady Liberty, waiting serenely on the horizon, has served as inspiration and hope for those hoping to find the American dream; setting to sea and escaping their old lives to carve out a new one among the skyscrapers. As a result, NYC has one of the highest populations in the world, with more cultures and backgrounds mixed into it than you could shake a stick at, with Manhattan itself housing over one and a half million people. Punks and Poles, Rabbis and Rastas, Goths and Greeks, and even more alliterative pairings. The bizarre and often flawed masterpiece that is the psychological engineering that allows so many different people to live together in total indifference towards one another is incredible.

Even the parts of the city that are underground are an engineering masterpiece. Boasting over eight hundred miles of track work, servicing one and a half billion riders every year (five million plus every day), the New York City Subway truly deserves the capitalization I just gave it. It takes thousands of people, hard at work through all hours of the night, just to keep the subway running at basic capacity (so next time you see an MTA worker, say 'thanks').

This is all to say that both above and below the street (and the street itself while we're at it), NYC is an incredible place.

Manhattan, as the cultural icon for NYC, is a certifiable death trap.

When the undead come, the worst place you could be is in a densely populated area with choke points instead of exits. What do I mean choke point? Well, the only way off of Manhattan, is via one of its many bridges (fifteen that connect from Manhattan to another major borough) or tunnels (four for car traffic, and eighteen exclusively for MTA use), meaning that when the waves of panicked Manhattanites flood out of the city, looking to go hole up in their house in the Hamptons, or blaze west instead to... New Jersey I guess (although given a choice between the undead and Newark... I kid, I kid), they will be forced through the same narrow channels as everyone else. Imagine even a hundred thousand people all pushing through the GW bridge at once. And remember, I'm not even including the population from the outer boroughs yet! One hundred thousand people on foot, on bikes, but many in cars (75% of Manhattanites do not own cars... which still means four hundred thousand people do).
So what happens if someone fucks up?

Think back to any single traffic jam you've been a part of. More often than not it is the result of an accident clogging a single lane of traffic, and traffic is unerringly guided by local police. So what if they're not there? As the dumb and selfish animals we are, eventually some asshole will try to rush past the jam, swerving between lanes, pushing cars out of his way as best he can (he's probably a Jersey driver) and being a dick in general. Which of course, will result in at least another accident, further clogging traffic.

Imagine if you will, that due to humanity's inherent self-centered nature, someone at the far end of the bridge (rather than being an aggressive jerk as mentioned above), ditches their car or simply dies due to the infected bite they've been trying so hard to ignore, and the whole long snaking chain of cars back into Manhattan comes to a slow grinding halt. Now we have hundreds of thousands of cars with men women and children packed into them, carrying their belongings (like their fine silver and other valuables), becoming sitting ducks for the wave of undead sweeping up behind them, attracted by the incessant honking and screeching. Of course, I'm also assuming the undead are restricted to Manhattan. What if Jersey or the other boroughs have been infected? Caught between two waves of walking cadavers, any bridge between two major metropolitan areas will be less of a road and more of a meat grinder. Being on a bike might help... until some opportunistic driver clotheslines you to steal your bike and get the hell out of dodge, or until you run into the horde of undead waiting for you on the other side. Walking is equally dangerous. First, humans (opportunistic, panicky, murderous), next cars and their drivers (see: humans), finally zombies. Consider: the hordes are still waiting for you on either side and on top of that, anyone in a car who was turned when their windows were down has become a rotting claw grasping at you from the interior of their sedans, waiting to snag a backpack strap or a loose sleeve.

Are the tunnels any better? Hell no!

Reread the paragraph above, and give it the full sensory treatment: burnt rubber and fried radiators (someone will have crashed their car at some point), constant honking and terrified screams (of pain, seeking help, begging for mercy), the low horrific moans of the dead, the occasional swipe of a hand against your skin seeking to bring you closer to a hungry mouth. Notice I didn't use visual imagery? Yeah, because in a tunnel with the power cut the only available light will be from headlights already rendered less than effective considering the traffic will be bumper to bumper. The confused shadows thrown up on the walls of the tunnel, along with the echoes from the mouth of the tunnel will only enhance the chaos and your growing terror. Yeah, good luck making rational and informed decisions in that environment.
I'm not even going to discuss the subway tunnels.... until a later post.

So what do you do? Honestly, not much. If you live in Manhattan there is no way in hell you should try to evacuate in the face of an undead swarm. Obviously for other natural disasters the National Guard and other government forces will be working to direct evacuees, but here they will be focused on taking out the damned corpses filling the streets. You're on your own. The best would be to fortify your home or apartment, turning out the lights, and relying upon your emergency supplies (which you have of course stocked... right?). When things have calmed down, you can make your move, choosing a bridge based on density of swarm on either side and whether or not it has a train line running underneath it or a pedestrian path above it (to avoid the stuck cars and zombies within).

While Central park might be appealing, forget it. The park was designed to be easily patrolled (when the police bother to do so) and has clear line of sight pretty much everywhere. You will not be hidden.

Considering Manhattan is the best known and third most populated borough of the city, we will be coming back here to investigate more zombie related issues, as well as specific neighborhoods within Manhattan for specific zombie defensibility, but for now...

-Shamble On-

Food For Thought

Okay.

Cities. What are they? How do we define them? Really, that's not as important a question as "How do they work?" I'm sure we can make all sorts of analogies and metaphors to discuss the aesthetics or mechanics of a city. In fact, I'm so sure we can do this that I'll do it myself. A city is like a machine; it has many interlocking parts, it does things, it hums and bustles etc.
Actually the only reason I made that analogy is so I can point out something very important: machines break down.

Yes, for all their vaunted economic might, cities are incredibly fragile mechanisms, relying on a number of important factors to keep humming along. If any of these city-sustaining qualities is thrown out of whack, expect the whole contraption to just grind to a halt (imagine smoke, gears and springs shooting out).

Cities rely on a consistent work force to manage it and major supply lines feeding it. The first is obvious; without constant monitoring and effort on the part of specialized workers, we have no electricity, mass transit, or law enforcement. We'll come back to that later.
The second factor is actually more pressing. Here's the bottom line: Cities do not produce anything. No food comes out of NYC with the exception of specialty chocolates, which are apparently one of our major exports (who knew?) and even those are produced using raw materials imported from outside New York. We have no fields or livestock, and most city dwellers wouldn't even know what to do with a hoe except make the unavoidable pun.
Without a significant workforce dedicated entirely to the transportation of foodstuffs into the city, we would all starve to death.
Fortunately, New York is one of the few cities in the USA that uses no filtration system for its water. That's right, there is no water treatment plant for NYC. This is awesome for a zombie apocalypse. Assuming your building is topped by one of New York City's ubiquitous water towers (required for any building six stories and taller), even without power you should have at least a days worth of good clean drinking water if everyone in the building is using it at the same time. If it's just you (because all your neighbors are now swelling the ranks of the undead horde), you could have weeks of fresh clean water, with enough pressure to take a (cold) shower.

So what's a New Yorker faced with a millions strong zombie menace to do? Obviously, being in a city is not the ideal; when the zompocalypse strikes one of the first things to go will be our supply lines, thus no food. How can you get around this huge hurdle?
One word. Stockpile. You won't want to be one of the unlucky bastards stuck looting a Gristede's™ or crushing former passive-aggressive rivals underfoot down at the food co-op trying to snag that last can of beans for your anti-zombie apartment bunker. Instead, make sure you have a decent supply of canned and dry goods in your house so you can let some of the wacky looting fun die down a bit before you scavenge. We'll talk about urban foraging later.
As for water, like in the event of a potential natural disaster, fill lots of containers with water at the first available moment. Fill your bathtub. Stop up all sinks and fill those bastards too.

The city may be a death trap when the walking dead come to town, but that death doesn't have to be one of slow starvation or (significantly faster) dehydration.

I know we touched on some other topics here, like a dedicated work force, electric power supply, and looting, but I think we'll save those for another time.

As a last thought, if you're into the whole fortification deal, search around for the concept of Green Roofs. If your building is defensible otherwise, and you're planning on digging in and sticking to your guns, then find out if your roof infrastructure could support a green roof; having a garden available to you on the secure roof of a ten story building could mean the difference between life, death, and undeath.

- Shamble On -

It Begins

Welcome to The Shambler.

Let's start this off with some background.
New York City. Arguably one of the greatest cities in the world (not that I'm biased or anything). But is it the safest? More to the point, is it the most zombie-defense-viable...est?
When the undead rot comes to the big apple, how will its citizens fare?

Let's work this out together.

The point of this blog is to evaluate New York City neighborhoods for their safety and defensibility. How does BedStuy stack up to Midtown Manhattan? Park Slope to Harlem? SoHo to Fort Greene? Mott Haven to Flushing?
In doing so we'll be looking at what makes a good zombie haven, as well as what we'd want in our survival kits when the zompocalypse hits. We'll also discuss movement and escape through and out of the city, for those who want to stay mobile rather than digging in.
Throughout this, I'll be covering all sorts of relevant topics. While resilience psychology might not be as exciting as which shotgun you'll want for the zombie horde, knowing if your fellow survivor is about to freak out and ruin your survival plan and how to keep all your human resources sane is pretty important.

So.

Just so we're all on the same page, let's get some basic guidelines down.
Guideline the First: Unless specifically stated otherwise, the zombies we'll be discussing here are the slow shambling type (as referenced by the title of this work), dead, and transmit their undeaditude via bites or otherwise transferring bodily fluids (mainlining zombie fluids = infection). Finally, and perhaps most important, the only way to take out a zombie? Boom, Headshot. Destroy the brain.

Okay, now that that's settled, let's get started.

- Shamble On -