My Zombie Apocalypse Plan

In honour of Halloween, Day of the Dead, Return of the Walking Dead and all things October, I have decided to share with you my plan for surviving the Zombie Apocalypse. Or the impending gigantic solar flare that will transform most of mankind into badly barbecued hotdogs. Or whatever the hell it is that those TV preppers are prepping for.  It’s a good plan and you should feel free to implement it yourself on the occasion of an emergency of humanity ending magnitude.

I’m going to be one of the first to die.

Brilliant in its simplicity, isn’t it?

I know it doesn’t sound like much, but there are a million reasons why this is a fantastic idea. I’ll hit the highlights for you and you can decide for yourself.

Living in a post-apocalyptic world will really suck. I know the movies make it seem glamorous in some sort of Pretty Woman meets Mad Max way, but think it through. No running water. No electricity. That means no microwaves, no air conditioning, no Starbucks. Everything good will be gone.

I am way too fat, lazy, sedentary, whatever the new phrase for lard-ass is, for a 5k. Everything I know about the world after the disaster involves running for your life through the woods, crawling through the underbrush, and climbing boulders. All this in whatever shoes you happened to be wearing when disaster struck. In my case that would be Birkenstocks. No thanks.

Food will be a problem. Since I have no plans to start canning rutabagas, I won’t have anything to eat after about a week, when my supply of Pop-Tarts runs out. I’m pretty sure the preppers are not going to let me into their bunkers and feed my useless ass since they are not the “sharing is caring” types. I like food. I don’t want to be stuck eating leaves and insects while wishing for a white pizza with prosciutto and arugula.

Whatever I do, I’ll have to drag two teenagers along with me. This is a deal breaker. My husband can do this hunter-gatherer crap all day long. My kids? They cannot survive without cell phones, Cheez-Its, Netflix, and all the other crap that is part of the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.  Now, I’m not suggesting they go ahead and die with me, but I sure as hell don’t want to spend years fighting zombies in the wilderness while listening to them complain about how I’m doing it.

What are you supposed to do when you have your period? Is this where the phrase “on the rag” came from? I am not going back to some medieval way of handing this, like shoving a bunch of ratty old towels in my underwear and washing them out every damn night. Besides, where I am supposed to get these rags? And how long will they last anyway? Then what? I try to fashion some sort of homemade tampon out of a twig and an old t-shirt? Screw that.

I’m too old for this shit. And I’m only getting older. Between my husband and I we have one bum shoulder, one messed up ankle, 4 creaky knees, and one iffy back. He takes high blood pressure and high cholesterol medication, has eczema and we both have allergies. A couple hours without Chapstick and my lips will be bleeding badly enough that I will look like I have raw hamburger all over my face. Unless we hole up in a Walgreens, we are in for a miserable existence.

I could go on about this for days – I mean, do you really want to be stuck with the people from those prepper shows? And don’t even get me started on skinning and gutting dead animals.

But I saved the very best reason for last:

Shortly after this cataclysmic event that we’re all supposed to be worried about actually happens, we will run out of coffee and wine. Gone. Over. Forever. Then there is no point to living anyway. In fact, if the zombies haven’t managed to get me by then, I will go out looking for them so they can put me out of my misery.

Melissa Coble is An Unfit Parent living in Phoenix, Arizona just trying to survive the teenage years with a lot of laughs, an occasional rant, and copious amounts of wine. You can find her counting the days until her nest is empty at An Unfit Parent and endlessly Facebooking.