Pop culture has in recent years been saturated with zombies thanks to “The Walking Dead,” “World War Z” and other television shows, movies, video games and books. But even before Twitter was exploding because a favorite character was unexpectedly taken out by soulless corpses, would-be survivors debated the nuances of a simple question: How would we survive a zombie apocalypse?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even released a guide to zombie preparedness.
“There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for,” wrote Assistant Surgeon General Ali Khan. “Take a zombie apocalypse for example… You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this.”
The CDC urges Americans to put together an emergency kit and discuss a family emergency plan. But for those who want to get a little more in depth and start considering where might be the best place to ride out such an event, Find The Home, a site that pledges to give you “everything you need to find the perfect home,” has you covered.
“To assess the zombie-readiness of each place, (we) judged each city by a combination of three factors,” explains Natalie Morin, “resources, defense, and demographics. The higher the overall score, the better equipped the region is to survive.
“The cities that scored highly in the resources category were those with lots of hardware stores, sources of water, grocery stores or crop farms,” she continues. If you want to make sure you can defend yourself, areas with access to guns, ammunition manufacturing and military bases are the best places to go. Finally, towns with low population density and predominantly young, educated populations were deemed fit to adapt best to such an apocalyptic event.”
After crunching all of the numbers, the team at Find The Home produced a list of the Top 10 American cities to survive a zombie apocalypse. Coming in at No. 6 on the list is our very own Huntsville, Alabama.
The Rocket City scored a sky-high 90.0 (out of 100) on the Zombie Index, which indicates a city’s overall ability to serve as a safe harbor during the impending zombie apocalypse. As you might expected, Huntsville’s large military and aerospace industries led to a Defense Score (80). Its relatively low population density and young, highly-educated workforce resulted in a Demographics Score of 77.8. The city’s only shortfall appears to be its lack of water and farm land, which led to a Resource Score of 42.0.
But even with those concerns, an escape plan to Huntsville — or Madison County in general — is going to be your best bet when the zombies show up at your doorstep.
Other areas around the Yellowhammer State that are well suited for the zombie apocalypse include Dale County, Pike County, Baldwin County and Lawrence County. But whatever you do, stay away from Coosa County. Its abysmal Zombie Index Score of 35.3 is a clear indication that it will be the first area of the state to turn into a real-life version of “I Am Legend.”
Check out the interactive map below to see how your area of the state would fare.
