Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of the zombie genre. Even more so than the actual zombies, I’m interested by situations that take average people out of their comfort zones and force them to think how best they’re going to survive. The subject is of such interest to me that my next novel, (working title: “Sword of Jai Lin”) is a story about a zombie apocalypse that occurs 150 years after global civilization has collapsed and people are living in loose tribes and fiefdoms.
However, while the genre always piques my interest, I can’t believe how often these next three things are portrayed wrongly!
#1. Gasoline and fuel in general. Okay, so I wouldn’t expect most laypeople to know this. Heck, I didn’t know it myself until I saw it in a documentary a year or so ago, (I believe it’s in this Nat Geo doc). Get this: Gasoline denatures into an unusable state after about a year or two. The additives they add to gasoline to make it perfectly volatile for combustible engines also makes it less stable and thus more prone to evaporation. I love how in the Walking Dead or the City of the Dead, they show people driving cars and trucks as if all it took was to siphon out some gas from some abandoned cars. It doesn’t work that easily. Even diesel, a more stable form of gasoline, denatures after a few years. Therefore, without gasoline refineries, which I highly doubt would be operational in a post-apocalyptic world, ready transportation in the form of cars and trucks would be a thing of the past. Hello, horses!
#2. Nuclear Power Plants. Many attribute Rome’s fall to it being spread to thin and having its hand in too many corners of the world. One little hiccup somewhere could set off a chain reaction all throughout the empire, as it ended up doing. What if nuclear power plants were suddenly left unattended? Well, according to yet another Nat Geo doc, devastation would quickly follow. In a zombie apocalypse and the subsequent meltdown of civilization, there would be no one left to man the nuclear power plants in a sufficient capacity, if at all. Without regulating the reactor, a meltdown would surely occur, poisoning vast amounts of flora and fauna for thousands of acres around it. In most zombie stories, the heroes never have to deal with things of this nature, though it would be a very real threat to anyone who was a survivor.
#3. Treehouses, or lack thereof. This one is more tongue and cheek than anything, but c’mon, why is everyone always running from the zombies? Wouldn’t a zombie apocalypse be the perfect excuse to build an awesome town of tree forts? Zombies don’t climb trees. You could eat squirrels and pigeon, collect rainwater, and basically reenact Fern Gully to your hearts content. Makes a zombie apocalypse seem like a blessing in disguise, no?
Jared Rinaldi 