Why CERT Doesn’t Quite Work for the Zombie Apocalypse

Posted by diana

CERT is awesome, but it’s not going to work during the Zombie Apocalypse. Because CERT is all about search and rescue, and search and rescue is just going to spread the contamination.

My CERT class

To be fair, there are lots of skills that CERT teaches that will be invaluable come the day:

  • How to organize and create infrastructure
  • How to assess damage levels of buildings
  • How to handle fires
  • How to do triage
  • How to work in a team efficiently
  • How to communicate quickly
  • How to treat a variety of injuries (broke bones, bleeding, shock, burns)
  • How to prepare for a disaster

They also teach you a lot about a variety of disasters that could happen: earthquake, fire, flood, biological & chemical disasters/warfare. Because, after all, just because the Zombie Apocalypse is going on doesn’t mean there won’t be earthquakes and fires and such.

One of the most useful sections is actually the one about applying all your skills in the face of a biological disaster. It goes into dealing with contamination and limiting the spread of infection.

And this is what you have to keep in mind when it comes to search and rescue. In the Zombie Apocalypse, search and rescue is going to make you vulnerable and get you killed. You don’t want to bring back injured people to your safe zone, because some of those people are going to be contaminated. You have to leave them where they are. Which sucks. But. Otherwise, you spread the infection.

Which brings me to one of the absolutely key elements here that CERT gets right: Don’t be a hero. Here, let me repeat that:

Don’t be a hero.

For reals, folks. Have you ever watched Alien? You know that scene where the ground team is freaking out and trying to get their injured guy on board? And Ripley (wise, wise Ripley) says no, we’ve got to do decontamination and be careful here? And the captain (heroic, doomed captain) overrules her and brings the guy back on board without following procedures? And thereby seals their fates, dooming them all (aside from Ripley) to painful death? Yeah. Don’t be that guy.

Don’t go running off into dangerous buildings alone. Don’t heroically decide to risk yourself to save a kitten. Because, while it plays great in movies, particularly for our individualist focused culture, it’s going to get you killed. And it’s going to get me killed, too. And you know, if you want to make yourself a Darwin Award winner, that’s fine. But you don’t get to take me down with you.

The CERT motto is:

“To do the most good for the greatest number of people in the least time possible.”

And that means you keep yourself alive and in good shape. Because that means you can keep rescuing people. Instead of getting yourself killed along with the kitten when the burning building collapses, you’ll be able to save a dozen other people.  It’s like Spock says at the end of Star Trek II, “the good of the many outweighs the needs of the few.” Don’t disappoint Spock.

Why I love Cons

Posted by diana

I can say things like “I need to save up for laser eye surgery because, when the zombie apocalypse happens, I don’t want to be like Burgess Meredith in that one Twilight Zone episode,” and the people around me will get it.

Which is to say that FogCon was marvelous. The people there, on average, get my humor. I think at work, half the time people think I’m serious when I’m not. I’m just not sure which half the time…

I finally, after nine years, understood something Gardner Dozois said to me during Clarion (and yes, I understand why you wanted it to be a happy ending, Gardner. I just wasn’t there yet, myself). I’ve also found some other Zombie Apocalypse trainees who are interested in joining me (woo! I will begin a cult movement, yes I will). I also figured out my way into the dungeon1 story I’ve been wanting to write for years. Cassie Alexander and Daniel may recall my first few attempts. I realized tonight I had the wrong main character. Indeed, the main character is the one character I intended not to be in the story at all. Of course.

 

1 I realize here that many folks will, understandably, assume the wrong kind of dungeon.

Crunch Time

Posted by diana

I’ve never been in crunch before.

It’s not that different from grading marathons back at USC for final portfolios. The department would gather us up, stick six to ten of us in each room in the building, and make us grade all day. Each student portfolio needed to be graded by two teachers. So we spent something like 8 or 9 straight hours grading and eating donuts. Because if you’re going to stick people in a room all day and make them read frosh papers, you need to drug them somehow, and sugar is the most popular of the legal drugs.

I can’t speak for other gaming companies, but at Cryptic it feels a lot like that. Sometimes even with the donuts. We’ve been crunching for the last week and a half in anticipation of a visit from WoTC (the folks who own the Forgotten Realms/D&D IP we’re licensing). I have no idea what’s actually riding on this, but I know that our EP wants to show them something awesome. Which we can probably do. There’s lots of awesome stuff in the game, it’s just making it all run together smoothly.

So a lot of us came in last Saturday (which was actually kind of fun – I realize this is probably just the novelty of it, and that it will wear off soon). Most of us are staying late working to get things in game. I’ve been doing text passes on the tutorial and the subsequent four miniquests and one mainquest (mainquest is about 3 or 4 times as big as the minis, on average).

The crazy making part, for me, is that I never get to finish a zone. I’ll be working on the tutorial, say, and the designer will need it back to fix something (an FSM – which is what directs the complicated movements of the NPCs, or a cutscene, or what-have-you) and I’ll have to check the tutorial back in half done. I’ll start working on the first miniquest and be 3/4 of the way through that, and then the tutorial will be available. And the tutorial is higher priority, right? So I’ll go back to that, and check in the miniquest only partially finished. Rinse, repeat.

At the moment, I still have to edit a cutscene in the tutorial, and then finish one last miniquest and the mainquest. And it’s Thursday.

And the WoTC visit is Monday.

And FogCon is this weekend.

Seeing Eye Dog vs Zombies

Posted by diana

Remember the guy whose seeing eye dog led him and a bunch of other people out of the World Trade Center on 9/11? That was a pretty damn awesome dog. Of course, she was a seeing eye dog, so that almost goes without saying. But I find myself wondering: how would a seeing eye dog fare with zombies?

Hingson and his guide dog, Roselle, after 9/11

World War Z aside, it seems to me that being blind during the zombie apocalypse is pretty much a death sentence. (Or, you know, being me without my contacts. That’s a death sentence, too.) But, add in a seeing eye dog, well…

The dog is going to hear anyone coming a lot sooner than you will. And a lot sooner than a sighted person could see a zombie, I’m guessing. Likewise, the dog is going to *smell* a zombie in hiding (assuming zombies are wise enough, or lucky enough, to hide and then ambush you). The dog is also going to be expert at communicating and herding his person. But… with fast zombies, is that going to be enough? Can a dog move their person fast enough to get out of the way? Would the dog risk contracting zombie-dom by biting an attacking zombie?

Which leads to a slightly more general question of whether or not a dog (seeing eye or not) could take down a zombie. They’d have to deal with the same problems we would – pain will not stop the zombie. Normally mortal wounds would not stop the zombie.

How would dogs fare, in general, in the zombie apocalypse? I doubt they would abandon us, seeing as hundreds of thousands of years have gone into our relationship with them. Cats, on the other hand, would be gone in an instant, I suspect.

I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if guide dogs somehow managed to protect their people through a zombie apocalypse. They are pretty damn awesome dogs.

Wilderness Survival Training

Posted by diana

In the Santa Cruz mountains. Can’t think of a better place for it. These folks run a five hour class on surviving in the wild, as the native Americans might have. My guess is that they’ll be on the crunchy-granola side of things, but that’s fine by me. If the edible plants class we took up in Marin is anything to go by, they’ll be perfectly nice people. If a bit flakey.

Skills covered are:

  • Building Shelter
  • Making a Fire
  • Learning Edible Plants
  • Making Traps

The big question becomes when to do it.


Stickshifts and Motorcycles

Posted by diana

I was really tempted to call this post Stickshifts and Safety Belts, but that doesn’t actually work.

I drive an automatic. Most people in the US do. It’s the easy option. But, come the Day of Apocalypse (DoA – very appropriate, no?) you may need to know how to drive something else. Just imagine:

You’re running from a horde of zombies. Up ahead you see a car. Maybe the door is unlocked. Maybe you break the window to get in. Doesn’t matter. You get in the car thinking, oh, thank god, I can get out of here. And then you realize – it’s a stickshift. Shit. What do you do now? You kinda vaguely remember that one time you tried to drive stick and you stalled out the car in the middle of an intersection and your cousin, who was teaching you, laughed. Not promising.

Meanwhile, the zombie horde has caught up. They’re pounding on the car. If you didn’t break the window, well, they’re about to. You could get out. You could flee, and potentially mow a bunch of them down, except you don’t know how to drive the car. As the first one lays a clammy hand on you, you find yourself wishing you’d punched that cousin in the face and then gotten a better teacher to show you how to actually drive stick.

I do not want to be that person. Which means I’d better get someone to teach me stick shift. Someone other than Jason, since I’m specifically excluded from his insurance policy (thanks awfully, AAA). He’s also specifically excluded by my policy (thanks again, AAA).

Then, motorcycles. Not actually good defensive vehicles. Or good offensive vehicles. But, when you need to move fast and you’ve got your legs or a motorcycle… motorcycle. Those puppies are fast and maneuverable. They can go around turns and through small blocked areas that cars cannot. Admittedly, you’re road sushi as soon as you stop or get thrown anywhere near a zombie.

In a Mad Max world, you drive what you can get.

So. Time to learn to drive stick. But motorcycles… I’m not so sure about motorcycles. They kinda freak me out.

(In the process of writing this I realized there’s another skill you’ll need – hotwiring cars. Somehow, I suspect it’s gonna be harder for me to find a teacher for that one.)

Gone Shooting

Posted by diana

Did you know shooting ranges can provide you with zombie targets? I did not, though it seems obvious in retrospect.

Eight of us went shooting, and I wasn’t even the least experienced person! That was awesome.

We decided to go for an indoor range since it was cold out and we were worried about rain. It didn’t rain. And, ironically, the indoor range was far colder. Lucky for me that I had my typing gloves in my bag. Of course, it is good practice for fleeing to the frozen north.

I’d like to claim that all those shots on the zombie are mine, but they aren’t. I did land several, though.

Practice with firearms is clearly going to be a big deal. Even more so than, in, say, your standard post apocalyptic Mad Max style society where all you have to worry about are other people.

The threat of a gun would be sufficient to stop some folks, a flesh wound would be sufficient to stop others, and still others could be taken out via shots to key parts of the body. Even with the kind of mutated monsters you might be dealing with in a nuclear disaster style apocalypse, you can hit them in key areas to immobilize them.  But with a zombie, you always have to hit the head.

Which brings us to the key lesson learned that day:

Get a shotgun.

The Plan Moves Ever Forward, On Silent Cat Feet

Posted by diana

Six Months now has an open Facebook Group (feel free to join) We also have Events!

This weekend is an outing to a shooting range, so those of us who don’t know how to shoot can learn and those who do can show off and those who are gun crazy can play with their new toys (nine attendees in total).

Then there’s CERT at the end of the month (I’ve convinced three other people to do it, too!) And Edible and Medicinal plants at the start of February.

Tomorrow, I tackle the climbing gym. Not literally. Well, maybe literally. There is a climbing gym. I will go there. I will sign up for a month’s membership, because for the month of January they have no initiation fees at Planet Granite. Woo. This can double for Ninja Training as well as Zombie Apocalypse training. Perhaps it can triple for Cat Burgling, too.

Ah, the career options your high school career counselor never told you about.