Zombie attack? Try Tesco
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My colleagues and I have a rich and varied selection of discussion topics to choose from on a daily basis. In a department consisting of six very different individuals, there are all manner of possibilities from our own life experiences that could keep us occupied for months during those quiet periods at work. Then there's news and current affairs, the weather, holidays (no, I don't work for a hairdresser) and, if we get really desperate, work itself.
It would seem, however, that we crave still further intellectual stimulation from our conversations. We like a challenge. And the possibilities presented by an invasion of the undead are too good to pass up.
First and foremost, we decided that it's important to have a good understanding of what it is we're up against. Leaving aside the sword-toting skeletons of Jason and the Argonauts fame (because that's hardly realistic!), your typical 'raised from the dead' zombie is a slow-moving, unintelligent being that resembles a (usually) fairly recently deceased human (or, from experience, a recently awoken bus user). Expect pungent aromas, evidence of decay and, possibly, entrails (also true of the bus user).
Often, these creatures are summoned by some undead master, such as a necromancer, though it's not unheard of lately for similar monstrosities to be created through a form of infection. Unless otherwise controlled by an intelligent master, your typical zombie is only interested in finding and eating brains or living tissue. According to popular lore, the best way to take out a zombie is to severe the head or otherwise destroy the brain (the zombie brain; not the one they're eating—that just annoys them).
From six different people come six different perspectives on what to do. As a department, I therefore feel that we're covered. For example, one of my colleagues used to be a farmer, and as such he has a good working knowledge of machinery that could be used to slice and dice our undead pursuers. Another suggested running them over in a car, at which point the ex-farmer suggested a combine harvester.
Generally speaking, we reasoned that we should be able to outrun most zombies (the zombies from 28 Days/Weeks Later aren't really zombies in the traditional sense). The chase itself shouldn't, therefore, be a major concern, providing we're not surrounded, but sooner or later we're probably going to need somewhere to stay.
One thing we all agreed was that the best place to be was probably Tesco. We have a particularly large Tesco supermarket in Coventry and, once all the exits/entrances were suitably secured, we felt that we'd have enough supplies to wait out the worst of the invasion.
Like most offices, we have an area of wall space dedicated to health and safety notices (because as office workers we're too stupid to use common sense at work and would likely fall over, into, onto or out of all manner of hazards without them). Unlike most offices, however, we've added a separate sheet of our own entitled 'What to do in the event of a zombie attack'. Because you never know.
Bootnote: If you are worried about being attacked by zombies, try not to panic. Our friends at the BBC have just the guide for you: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A6875715