The Walking Dead: Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars

Alright, as tempting as it is to keep running and move on to the next (well, previous) Romero film, I do want to keep a little mix in the topics of my posts. So for those Kirkman fans out there, I've gone on to re-read the third Walking Dead volume, Safety Behind Bars.

Now I know it isn't a surprise, but this one is freakin' awesome. I'm not 100% certain why, but there is something about this series that I just love. Well, I don't love the prospects that it suggests for those of us preparing for the zombie apocalypse, but the Walking Dead story delivers a refreshingly honest and realistic scenario that I can easily imagine a survivor might experience. It hits the fundamentals by addressing food, shelter, and weapons, but it goes on to explore relationships, psychology, children, and more. I think I find this series so rewarding because the gloves are off. No one is safe. This story acknowledges that there are no untouchable heroes, and anyone, evil, innocent, or heroic, can be cut down at any moment.

*Warning* Spoilers

[LONG-TERM DEFENSE]

Now, while the concept was introduced in the final pages of Miles Behind Us, I wanted to wait for this post, before discussing the topic of taking up residence in a prison complex. Just mentioning the idea can easily bring up a list of pros and cons, but, as I suspected, re-reading this volume brought forth even more questions to address.

As can be expected, a moderate sized prison offers buildings, open grounds, and lots of security. Now, if the world has been over-run by the undead, you'll have to man those security check points yourself. However, prison infrastructure can easily enable a small group of people to secure a rather large area. Two or more perimeters of "prison-grade" fencing (yeah, that's probably not official terminology), multiple guard towers with 360 degrees of observation, clear stretches of land inside and outside of the fences, and a limited number of survivors could have a fighting chance at holding off the zombie hordes for a good while, perhaps indefinitely.

While I would consider the security infrastructure to be the biggest plus, the assets inside those fences are a close second. Living quarters, kitchens, food stores, recreational facilities, and most excitingly, large open stretches of land that could accommodate gardens and possibly a small farm. This last feature is critical because it offers a measure of sustainability to the survivor's circumstances. I do believe that the scavenging-for-essential-supplies strategy has its merits, and should be employed at some level, but like I mentioned in my post on Land of the Dead, this isn't a viable long-term solution. There is only so much that can be salvaged nearby, and it won't be long before you're traveling great distances to find anything of value. Sure you won't be growing new shotgun shells in your garden patch, but at least you won't be starving to death.

[SURVIVOR FIRST CONTACT]

Ok, now that I'm done raving about the upside of prison life after the undead apocalypse, there is one little downside that should be mentioned, its former inhabitants. It is an interesting situation because I'd guess that the prison population, or at least some portion of it, would have a better than average chance of surviving the initial carnage, and establishing a sustainable measure of safety for themselves. I wouldn't say this is guaranteed, as they could easily be left to starve in their locked cells by fleeing prison personnel. Or even if they weren't locked up, the design of prison facilities are such that it wouldn't take too many infected to corner and quickly butcher the entire population.

Regardless, I don't think there is any way to know what to expect, besides danger. If the infection swept the prison, then you're looking at hundreds, or even thousands, of zombies packed into very tight quarters. If some percentage of the prisoners did survive unscathed, it's time to initiate diplomatic relations with a group of tough, wary, and possibly murderous men, who may not be to happy about the idea of you moving into their home. I honestly don't know what to recommend, other than extreme caution. A prison facility would be a monumental discovery, but assess the risks and rewards carefully.

[CORPSE DISPOSAL]

Moving on from the simple ups and downs of finding a prison, lets say you do manage to secure the complex, and you've finally bashed in the skulls of each and every shambling, moaning, former inhabitant. What do you do with all the corpses? Since we can only guess as to the nature of the zombie plague, there is no way to definitively say what will or won't be hazardous about a rotting zombie corpse. To venture some theories, I think it's probably safe to say that they'll still be toxic. You also want to consider that, given their previous state of living death, it might take an unusually long time for them to fully decompose. These two possibilities alone make this a rather important issue. You could always just pile up the corpses somewhere out of the way, but do you really want that potential source of future infections laying around indefinitely? You could dispose of them in a mass grave, but I'd still be a little nervous about how they might affect anything grown nearby, not to mention the possible contamination of ground water sources. While not without it's own hazards, I'd say that the Walking Dead characters handled it best by simply burning the bodies. There is no guarantee that fire will completely neutralize the toxicity, but I think it is the strongest measure available to most folks. Hopefully fire will incinerate the contagion completely, but at the very least, you'll now only be dealing with a pile of bones, and not a mountain of stinking rotting flesh.

[ZOMBIE PHYSIOLOGY]

Taking a moment to be critical, I'm not crazy about the idea that everyone who dies, bitten by zombie or not, will soon awaken and join the ranks of the undead. I'm not sure what this concept stems from, or where it was first introduced (it did make an appearance in Land of the Dead and Rise), but it really doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Yes, anything is possible, but this idea suggests that everyone living is already infected. I can easily imagine an airborne virus achieving this, but I don't understand how this contagion could infect everyone, but not actually turn anyone into a zombie until they'd been bitten, or died of natural causes. I can imagine a scenario where the "zombification" process might not be triggered until the physiological properties of death had taken hold, but if that were the case, I don't see how getting bitten and exposed to something you already have in your system is going to cause any more harm than being bitten by some rambunctious youngster.

Obviously being eaten alive is guaranteed to be hazardous, but the danger in a single bite is the exposure to the contagion. I personally think that if this plague occurs, our uninfected dead will rest peacefully.