If a zombie apocalypse were to ever break out in North America, mountain-dwelling Albertans would face some of the best chances of not having their brains devoured, according to a new study.
Alexander Alemi, a researcher from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. has examined the consequences of a fictitious outbreak in his paper "You Can Run, You Can Hide: The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies."
In the chance that living dead overwhelm the U.S., the east and west coasts would suffer huge losses in a short period of time, due to their high population density, he told Kelowna Now.
“After four weeks, much of the United States has fallen, but it takes a very long time for the zombies to diffuse and capture the remaining portions of the United States. Even four months in, remote areas of Montana and Nevada remain zombie free," he said.
The secret, he says, is to escape to a place where there are relatively few large cities and people, and a place that would take the roving dead a long time to reach. The Canadian Rockies are a good example, he told CBC News.
Alemi and his team have created a simulation site where you can create your own zombie outbreak and watch how quickly — or not — it would take a zombie outbreak to reach certain parts of the United States.
Alemi admitted in a statement that zombie research is based purely on fiction, but insists it can be applied to real-life situations, as "modeling zombies takes you through a lot of the techniques used to model real diseases, albeit in a fun context."
Almei's team presented their findings this week at a meeting of the American Physical Society in San Antonio, Texas.
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