Weekend Diversion: Night Of The Ponies
Pedway, First Store Open At Block 37
Around Town
Red-Light Cameras Not So Special?
Even though vampires are the terror du jour, zombies still have a strong foothold in the popular psyche - the multitude of Zombie Pub Crawls and Thriller recreations will tell you that. With the release of a Canadian study questioning humanity's survival in the face of a zombie invasion floating around the internets today, we're posing the following question:
Come the Zombie Revolution, where would you hide out in an attempt to survive an Undead Chicago?
Now, presumably you've poked through the Zombie Survival Wiki, and read Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide to gather the basics. So where would you hole up? Do you find a lonely skyscraper a la "28 Days Later?" Would you go for the old "Dawn Of The Dead" standby and hide out in the Fox Valley Mall? What about just boarding up your 3rd-floor walkup and hoping for the best?
We're about to blow our zombie cover and kick off the discussion by telling you where we'll be camped out. It's called the North Branch Pumping Station, a huge fenced-in brick compound complete with thick glass bricks in the windows and a dock on the Chicago River for a quick escape if need be. Sure, it's primarily used for shoving sewage around, but when the excrement hits the oscilator, we'd rather be odorous than deceased. Not only that, but it's got a bitchin' late-1920's Art Deco look. Check it out:
It wouldn't last forever, but given a bit of warning that's where we'll be headed. If you feel safe enough to let us know where you'll be hunkered down, we can consider creating a Chicago Zombie Defense Network. Remember: Blades don't need reloading, and keep your head so you don't lose your head!
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That strikes me as not at all easy to defend. You need some place with a limited number of entrance points in an isolated location, without much foliage or ground cover.
If I could manage to lay in supplies for a long siege, I might try the underside of one of the bridges ... say, something like that little corner of the Lake Shore Drive bridge over the Chicago River, where that homeless guy was found living a few years back. Or there's an access panel in the sidewalk of the Webster St. bridge leading down to a little catwalk. Only one way in, but if things start looking bad, you can jump into the water.
what is the reasoning for hiding in a pumping station. There is no food there, right? Me, I'll be at the Sara Lee factory until the zombies find my fat cake filled body.
LOL!!!!! Winner.
BOOOOOMER!
That new Whole Foods near North Ave. and Kingsbury. Despite its size it doesn't have a lot of doors to guard. There's lots of expensive food and designer water. And it's not too far from the river so I can hightail it to my waiting boat and get the hell out of Dodge is it gets hairy. Who's with me?
"...And so it was that Stealth led a rag-tag bunch of survivors in one final stand against the forces of the night, one final declaration of humanity in the face of darkess. Their very surivival depended on luck, faith and organic instant oatmeal multi-grain with flax..."
That is a fantastic idea. We should also use the old train tracks somehow...
It would have been even better if they didn't finish renovating the North Ave bridge, since then we could run across and collapse it.
One of the water cribs might be an ideal situation, but you would need a boat obviously. and then at some point you'd probably want to establish some sort of self-sustaining eco-system out there
Also...
Are we talking fast 28-Days-Later zombies or slow-walking-(Blank)-of-the-Dead zombies?
And if that pumping station is your hideout, you'll be zombie-waste in an hour. WAY too many ground-level windows...
how easily can zombies climb stairs? I can't remember from reading World War Z. I'd say the Wrigley Field bleachers but mindless zombies have been hanging out there for years!
ZING!
disclaimer: I'm the site's biggest Cubs fan
I have spent more time thinking about this than is probably healthy. The answer, is of course a Wal-Mart. Preferably, of the Super variety. Lots of sporting goods for weapons, lots of food and drink. Some of the even have garden centers; the beginnings of a renewable source of food. Lots of medicine too. Plenty of electronics to build communications equipment with. Lots of tools and supplies to build barricades at the entrances. I'll be at Wal-Mart.
For overall impregnability, I'd go with the Daley Center. Get up above the first floor and all you have to do is block off a couple of stairwells and you're golden.* There'd be plenty of room to stockpile supplies, clear lines of sight (and fire) out to the plaza and streets nearby. And if you had to evacuate, I'm pretty sure it has access to the pedway, so you'd be assured of a terrifying sprint through a pitch-black tunnel, something which is required in every zombie scenario.
* Unless the zombies can scale the elevator shafts, in which case you're probably screwed regardless.
If you can make it to the 5th floor of City Hall, Illinois zombies will keep voting for you forever.
If you read the study that prompted this story, you can see they modeled based on the "Classic" view of zombies. With that in mind I think Wal-Mart is a pretty good choice. You could defend it while you were barricading those HUGE windows up front. My boyfriend and I actually scope out buildings while we go on walks and debate how they would hold up in a zombie attack. Lovely to know we're not alone.
I live right across from the National Guard Armory on North and Kedzie and you can bet your ass I think about this every time I look out the window.
Ditto!
Thats exactly what the national guard buildings are made for- suppressing zombie and/or citizen rebellion
In defense of the Pumping Station:
Day of the Dead clearly showed that numerous Zeds would be stopped by a chain link fence. That's barrier #1.
The facility is nearly entirely brick, and those glass walls are really more like glass brick - much easier to reinforce than the basic plate glass walls that run the front of your avg. Wal-Mart or Meijer.
Thirdly, the presence of the river means you only need to defend 3 sides - the likelihood of a ghoul climbing up on to that dock is slim to none.
That said, if you want to save your ass in a Wal-Mart in Chicago you'd better call your Alderman and have them support the new locations. And that's a conversation I'd love to hear.
Um. Podcast? Please? Perhaps Manny Flores and Scott Waguespack jointly?
Hmmmmmmmmmm.... Wonder if they'd be game.
Did you not see Land of the Dead? Bodies of water do not necessarily stop zombies...
In a zombie apocalypse, everyone in Chicago is doomed. No one gets out of a major city. They just don't.
I'll be at 6701 W. Forest Preserve Dr. ;) Someone has to guard it and it's gonna be me!
There's a Target on Peterson and Damen that would be perfect, except for the fact that it's surrounded by cemeteries. But the Target itself is actually above the ground one level, with the parking on the ground level.
Getting out of the city would be good, for the smell alone would be...strong.
But if that was not in the cards, I'd say the Schmitt Academic center on the Depaul Campus. It's built in this semi-brualist style. Minimal entrance and exit points and the 2nd floor on up can be cut off easily, something I learned in a blackout when the escalators/elevators went down and the fire doors were chained.
The college kids would scatter as the zombie plague broke out, as would many of the lincoln park types, leaving food and supplies all over the area.
Set up a zipline and you could even cross to the student center where all the cafeteria food is.
Start a rooftop garden, run a rain collection filter, some solar kits. You can make a real go of it.
Sounds better than my place now. Damn you fictional zombies!