I was trying to decide what to write
about for your Zombiology Class today and the words of Fred Cox brought a
pretty important topic to mind. Fred and his crew are planning a sortie run to
Pryor today to see if it is as abandoned as Vinita was. If Pryor was decimated
quickly and the hordes have moved on, there is a real gold mine of supplies to
be had.
Langley to Pryor is about 25 miles but
Fred always stresses that travel time will not equal 25 minutes. Do you
remember that scene in Back to the
Future, Part III where Marty and Doc Brown ask the train conductor if he
could get his locomotive up to 90 miles per hour? And the guy responds with a
line, I cannot remember it exactly but it is something like, “Tarnation, son,
who'd ever need to be in such a hurry?” Fred takes a similar approach when they
are out driving.
When a crew goes out, they don’t drive
at speeds much more than 35 miles per hour when they cannot see for long
distances. One of the last things you want to do is come over a hill and find a
wall of zombies shambling along the road. If you are going slower, you have a
chance to stop, do a three point turn, and head the other direction.
You DO NOT want to plow head long into
a wall of these things. Imagine two hundred pounds of dead flesh slamming into
your car. It is going to do some damage. I am not a car guy but I would think
getting a hole punched into a radiator would be pretty darn bad.
I think that is probably the first
inclination of people driving. These are just dead bodies shambling along.
Can’t we just run them over? Again, puncture a radiator and then how far are
you driving? What if there literally is a horde of them? If you attempt to plow
through them at high speed, your car is going to get smashed to pieces.
Don’t forget, trains put cowcatchers
on the front of their engines to keep from a couple thousand pounds of meat
lodged under their wheels. Could you imagine running over enough zoms that you
get high centered while in the middle of a horde? There would be no escape.
I firmly believe that these things
could smash through a car window or windshield. And if one of them can’t, ten
of them can. So you just need to slow down and avoid any accidents and you can
do that better by traveling at 35 miles per house as opposed to 65. Besides,
why are you in a hurry? Have you looked around lately?
I will say this about the world
post-apocalypse. Before, the world seemed to be flying along at supersonic
speeds. High speed internet, video streaming, drive through windows, swiping a
card instead of writing a check… Everything in this world seemed to be fast
paced and hectic. After the zombie apocalypse hit and after we had the store
barricaded and locked down, life really began to slow to a crawl.
I gotta admit it took quite a while to
get used to but if you ever needed to stop and smell the roses, it is now. So
take my advice… slow down. The life you save may be your own.
