Six unlikely people you'd want on your zombie survival team

The key to successfully surviving the zombie apocalypse lies in selecting the right kind of people to join your squad. Sadly, this might mean letting go of your friends and family in favor of people who’d be more useful in certain scenarios.

 

Fortunately, countless films, shows, and video games show us that a zombie invasion tends to unlock survival skills that people never thought they had.

Take The Walking Dead, for example. Who would have thought that a deputy sheriff, a pizza delivery boy, a small child, an alcoholic, and a crazy sword-wielding woman who keeps zombies as pets would survive for so long under such horrifying circumstances?

 

Leave your (living) friends and family at the camp, and go with these rather unconventional choices for your zombie exploration/survival party.

 

1. An Aeta

Arguably the first people to ever reach Philippine shores, our Aeta brethren have been here for some 20,000 to 30,000 years—long before anybody even had a name for the archipelago. That the Aetas managed to survive and endure despite the constant meddling of outsiders seemingly hell-bent on annihilating every forest, lake, and mountain in sight should tell you how resilient these folks are.

 

Naturally, surviving this long under such harsh conditions means learning to capture, incapacitate, or maim things before they can do the same to you. In fact, the Aetas were so well-known for their jungle survival skills and fighting prowess that even the US military trained with them to become better prepared for the unforgiving war zone that was Vietnam.

 

Still need convincing? Look at this fellow move, and tell me you don’t want someone as quick and agile on your survival team. Seriously, look at how skinny those trees are, and notice how he barely even makes them shake while he’s climbing them, like some sort of tribal Spider-Man. Zombies have nothing on these guys.

 

 

2. A veterinarian

This one probably isn’t that much of a surprise, especially since The Walking Dead has already shown us that a veterinarian would indeed be a good companion during a zombie apocalypse. However, it’s still a rather unconventional choice – why would you choose a vet when you could go with, say, a doctor or a medic?

 

There are five reasons why, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). The list kicks off with an adorable and very “dad” witticism about vets being experts at avoiding bites – because zombies bite you, and vets are used to dealing with critters that bite, nudge nudge, wink wink – probably because they were itching to get that joke out of the way before moving on to reasons you can actually take seriously.

 

Thankfully, the next few reasons are significantly more credible. They’re trained to handle ALL species, which stops you from worrying about whether you’d start craving dog food after receiving care from Dr. Doolittle. Survival means maximizing all resources and able bodies at your disposal, and that includes animals, which vets can obviously help with. Additionally, vets are good at making sure that your food is safe, and if you give them enough time, they could even prove to be instrumental in finding a cure for the zombie plague.

 

Sure, the AVMA might be biased, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t make sense.

 

3. A chef

No, the chef isn’t here to make five-star post-apocalyptic meals for you. That’s just silly.

 

Chefs have a variety of skills that are actually quite useful in this scenario. Chefs are great at working under pressure and making the most out of what’s available, which in this case would equate to “not a lot”. Chefs are also great team players, precise, and quick learners, and they work with grace and finesse. Most importantly, chefs are quite knowledgeable about science – specifically chemistry and alchemy – and have an admirable familiarity with nature, mainly because they work with things that come from it on a regular basis.

 

Plus, chefs are especially handy with knives:

 

 

4. A mathematician

You’re probably thinking, “The hell is a mathematician going to do in a zombie apocalypse, grab a copy of Advanced Calculus and use it to beat the zombies to, uh, whatever passes as death for the undead?”

You’d be wrong for two reasons: one, because carrying a 500-page book around with you is a terrible idea when you’re trying to put as much distance as possible between yourself and the zombie hordes, and two, because relying on primitive brutishness when you have a sharp, analytical mind at your disposal is like ditching a lightsaber in favor of a plastic knife.

 

You need a good tactician on your team – a logical thinker who sees patterns and knows how to use data in order to formulate a good battle plan. Still doubting the devastating power of good ol’ number-crunching? Don’t worry, University of Ottawa professor Robert J. Smith? (yes, with the question mark) is ready to give you a lesson in apocalyptic math.

While you might be tempted to argue that any advanced mathematics class is an apocalyptic scenario in itself, you have to admit that coming up with a model to explain the zombie apocalypse is pretty cool. According to his team’s research, the best way to deal with the undead horde is by blasting their butts regularly – a strategy stemming from the rather impressively-named “impulsive differential equations”.

Granted, we already learned that in Left 4 Dead, but it sounds way smarter (and much more legit) when a math whiz explains it.

 

 

5. A zombie (surprise!)

There’s a good reason why Michonne from The Walking Dead had two zombie companions with her when she first showed up. When her boyfriend and his best friend got bitten and subsequently drafted into the undead legion, she noticed that the other zombies ignored them.

Apparently, zombies ignore their kin – they can tell from the stench – and go straight for living targets, proving that being dead doesn’t stop people from being sadistic jerks. This idea is also referenced in the recent zombie romantic comedy (man, what a strange combination of words) Warm Bodies.

Actually, the very same study mentioned in the previous item takes this into consideration, basing the variables on the condition that “zombies do not attack/defeat other zombies”. Besides, when your zombie has outlived (out-died?) his usefulness, you can hand him over to your vet, mathematician, and chef, and have them work on some sort of cure (or at the very least, some zombie repellent spray). Just make sure to do what Michonne did to her zombie companions before chaining them to herself – cut off their limbs and jaws first.

And take a long, deep breath.

 

 

6. Your old high school bully

What!? You need someone to throw at the zombies in a pinch.

 

 

— TJD, GMA News