Salutations, Sarcophages!
Spleen-melting viruses that cross the species barrier from animal to human faster than Scooby Doo and Norville "Shaggy" Rogers after a few Ecstasy tabs too many; Homophobic racists openly tea-bagging each other in the streets and Sydney's skies turning blood-red (not due to the wildlife for once)… Clearly the world is just about due for the Global Zombie Apocalypse foretold aeons ago in Judy Blume's chillingly prophetic "Are You There God? It's Me Margaret" (What? You thought it was just censorship over-reaction?! The world's libraries keep banning Blume's books for your own good!)
So, given that your neighbourhood will soon be up to its communal armpits in flesh-hungry undead, what can you do to keep your precious, valedictorian brains safely in your skull and not passing through the putrescent, wormy colon of some blasphemous revenant?
Have slightly-more-than-No Fear, Gentle Reader, as I present to you these tried and true NIGH-FOOLPROOF TIPS TO GETTING THROUGH A ZOMBIE ARMAGEDDON WITH AT LEAST THREE LIMBS INTACT. It's the only Zombie-battling pamphlet that George A Romero swears by ("What? Cocking Zombies? Fuck off back to Australia kid, I'm semi-retired").
1. In the event of the ambulatory undead chowing down on the flesh of the shrieking living, it is wise to find someone with experience in these matters. And you thought all those years of cyber-stalking Milla Jovovich and Bruce Campbell were good for nothing but several cease-and-desist orders and your own personal file with the FBI! Break out the chloroform, handcuffs and maps to the stars homes, it's time to save the world… or at least take someone far more famous down with you.
2. Guns are a waste of time—they inevitably need ammo, and noone ever has enough ammo lying around the place—except Charlton Heston, and his cold, dead hands are reaching for your delicious, warm brains right now. What you need is something long, barbed and sharp, that can decapitate a zombie from a distance—like say, Simon Cowell's tongue attached to the end of a hockey stick.
3. At the first whiff of zombie, move into a crypt smack dab in the middle of your largest local cemetery. This is not as suicidally stupid as it sounds—when the undead break free from their graves, they're not going to want to hang around some corpse-stinking old boneyard; they want their humans fresh, so they'll move outwards away from you, towards all the lovely free-range humans in the city proper.
4. Know thine enemy! There are numerous sub-species of zombie:
American zombies want to eat your braaaains. They are usually the most mobile zombie—if there's one thing an American corpse is good at, it's having enough food left in its stomach to power the creature until it snags some Vitamin B-rain.
British zombies don't seem to want to eat you at all, but prefer to engage their victims in sprinting competitions (though being bad sports, they will kill you if they win).
Italian zombies usually opt for the intestines of their victims (possibly confusing them with pasta) and although they sometimes are content to just rip the clothes off female victims, occasionally they will attempt to take your breasts home with them, independent of you. Fortunately, the Italian zombie is easily distinguished by their inferior makeup and terrible dubbing.
Australian and Kiwi zombies tend to be harmless comic relief, though they may prove deadly if Peter Jackson is in the vicinity.
Haitian zombies are solely interested in killing Bill Pullman.
5. Since zombies are after your brains, never leave the house without strapping several Republican "Birthers", and Intelligent Design advocates to your person, thus fooling any attacking zombies into looking elsewhere for a satisfying meal. Also, try looting the bins behind mental institutions for pre-frontal lobotomy medical waste you can smear on the walls of neighbours' houses to distract the undead from your own home.
6. Cameron Diaz, Gary Busey and Kirsten Dunst all have overly prominent mouths and teeth—watch them closely, as they may be in the process of zombification. Similarly, Sherri Shepherd, Kirk Cameron, Perez Hilton and Bill O'Reilly are all showing the classic symptoms of long-term brain death, and should be immediately quarantined for the public good (actually, whether it turns out they are infected or not, it will be in the public good regardless ).
7. If being attacked by the currently in-vogue sprinting, marathon-runner type zombie, calmly turn to them and explain that running undead are not physically possible, as death impairs the flow of electrical stimulus from the brain to the muscles controlling the legs and feet, and that the build up of stagnant blood in the extremities means that the oxygen-deprived limbs are unable to function anyway. They should immediately collapse under the weight of your logic. If they don't, give them Danny Boyle's address and tell them to go eat him for introducing the bloody stupid concept of running zombies in the first place.
8. Don't think that any superheroes are going to save you, either—have you read MARVEL ZOMBIES? Last time I checked, primary-coloured latex tights and a talking animal sidekick didn't do dick to protect you from zombiefication. Even Wolverine became a zombie, and he has a healing factor that can automatically purge his system of any toxin, disease or bacteria, which means he would cure himself and not be a zombie anymore, except he didn't because he's a zombie, which means his healing factor didn't work, only that's impossible because…auugh! Error, error, Geek Paradox overload…
9. View the TWILIGHT series not as reading material/emergency toilet paper, but as a way to become familiar with the undead mindset. Do not attempt to also use it to understand the mindset of the average tween—that way lies rainbowy, unicorned, Hello-Kittied madness.
10. The Sponges (Porifera) are animals that are able to live a perfectly functional life without possessing a brain, or internal organs of any kind. Spend time with them, study them and adopt their way of life until they accept you and you can live as one of them. Note: don't not attempt to make friends with any chatty pink starfish unless you want people to think you are gay.
