Back in the 70s to the 90s, a lot of
stores featured big glass windows where they could paint seasonal messages and
signs on the windows and let natural light in. For whatever reason, businesses
started to get away from that. Maybe it was an aesthetic choice. Maybe it was
people couldn’t drive cars through the front for a quick smash and grab. But if
you look at the front of most Walmarts, they feature more of a fortress look
than the big glass fronts from back in the day.
I am thankful that last year, the Reason’s
company did a massive facelift on the exterior of the store which meant
changing the look of the front of the store to a more enclosed environment. It
probably saved on heating and cooling bills. I am not looking that gift horse
in the mouth because I do not see how we could have barricaded off large
windows.
Our store does feature some glass
windows, like in the pharmacy, the front doors and few other select locations
but thankfully, we came up with a way to deal with this. And it was easier than
you might think of to deal with. The answer?
Aluminum Foil.
Yep. As easy as that. See, we are
still studying but the logical theory is that zoms hunt on instinct. They hunt the
same way we would, which means they hunt by way of sight, sound, and smell. I
think for those in our direct area, sight is clearly their dominant hunting
sense. Sure, gunshots might lure them in from miles away but once they can get
in our vicinity, sight has to be their number one targeting method. I certainly
would not try to pull a Jurassic Park
and assume that if you don’t move they can’t see you.
We are just guessing right now but it
appears to be a logical assumption that these things are attracted to anything
out of the ordinary. Obviously, seeing meat is going to drive them into a
frenzy but we also need to disguise our surrounding. And that is where the
aluminum foil came in.
Foil is light, easy to work with, and
completely blocks out the light. When we started covering up the windows, I
really didn’t think we would have enough but a single, cheap roll of aluminum
foil spreads out to 75 square feet. Combine that with packing tape from our office
supply section and we were not even through the Always Save cheapo brand before
we had all the windows covered. We didn’t even have to break into the supplies
of the upscale brands like Reynolds Wrap.
So now we cannot be seen from outside.
There is also a second advantage. Bright fluorescent lights shining out of a
window against the dark of night is going to bring anything in visual range of
that light coming to investigate. And the more lights that wink out as time
goes by, our bright beacon on the hill will become even more of an attractant. The goal was to completely cut off light to
the outside world to make us as uninteresting as possible, just another blob of
darkness.
We just make like a hole in the world hoping they will
just pass us by. So far, it is working…
