Z-Rated - Mitigating the threat of Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome: A White Paper on Defending

the United Kingdom from ANSD Carriers

Department of Homeland Security

Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State of Homeland Security By Command of Her Majesty

September 2011

G.A.R 1968 Z1317

© Department of Homeland Security 2011The text in this document and accompanying material for information and entertainment

purposes only. Just in case anyone actually thought the zombie apocalypse may actually happen and (wrongly) concludes that this is a real report.

About the Authors

Roger Cooper is a freelance architectural designer working in and around London, U.K. With a background in urban design and landscape architecture, he is interested in the design of multifunctional & sustainable architectures. Currently Roger is working at Nick Hancock Design Studios, exploring sustainability with the use of lightweight structures and prefabricated building components.

www.avaganda.org

Jordan J. Lloyd is a PhD architecture researcher at the University of Sheffield, studying resilient systems and their applications to make cities perform more efficiently. Other interests include UI design in a soon-to-be-released beer tracking application for smartphones, a design handbook on productivity, and rocking out to The Sword.

www.jordanjlloyd.me________________________With special thanks to Alice Ross and Nick Hancock for their time, contributions and feedback.

www.nickhancock.com

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The threat posed by Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome1 and its carriers is a very real and grave situation for the citizens of the United Kingdom. HM Government has worked with the Armed Forces, Security Forces, and our foremost experts in contagion spread and control in an attempt to highlight and mitigate the threat of ANSD in an epidemic that is very likely to wipe out the entire population within less than a decade.

However, mitigation and national defence cannot come from government alone.

Mathematical modelling of the spread of the ANSD contagion is very likely to overwhelm our emergency and law enforcement organisations very quickly, despite our preparations. Therefore, it is recommended that ANSD mitigation becomes an initiative at the heart of the Big Society. We’re only going to make life safer for everyone in this country if everyone plays their part - if defence in our communities is driven from the bottom up.

Some people have been dismissive about this. The national media have sensationalised the content of our recommendations, comparing ANSD humanoids to zombies popularised by Hollywood, and implying that our recommendations are impractical. The Department of Homeland Security has been working with the public and private sectors to deliver a comprehensive set of commercially viable mitigation measures, from home furnishing catalogues now containing approved home mitigation furniture to consumer advertising raising awareness of the ANSD contagion.

The inspiring examples in these pages have achieved a level of awareness of a contagion that is fatal to our livelihoods. Heeding the information contained within will produce real, tangible benefits that not only will increase our survivability, but in addition boost the national economy through informed consumer purchases.

Mjr. Henry WestAssistant to the Secretary of State of Homeland Security

1

For more detailed information on ANSD, see the work of Dr. Steven C. Schlozman MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School is the world leading authority on the neuro-biology of the recently deceased.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Zombie-Autopsies-Secret-Notebooks-Apocalypse/dp/0593067878/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317369758&sr=1-1

Foreword by the Assistant to the Secretary of State of Homeland Security

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We’re doomed.

Mathematical models of a zombie contagion2 conclude that the spread of infection will far exceed any organised resistance, unless aggressive counter tactics are employed. In the United Kingdom (and indeed most countries in the world), citizens do not have the benefit of the Second Amendment to carry firearms like our American cousins; resulting in a much lower survival rate for untainted humans.

Popular media portrayals of the Zombie Apocalypse3 show frightened individuals aimlessly heading for an unknown destination, accruing a gang of other frightened individuals fighting their way out of unfamiliar environments, usually ending in military intervention once most of the protagonists are (un)dead; with any survivors being relocated to a centralised military run facility to re-populate the Earth when the contagion has run its course.

Defence begins at home.

Our solution to the idea of a zombie apocalypse is not a ‘one-off’ mobile fortress, but rather a socio-economic strategy, culturally embedded in our social psyche in the way we know best: the cult of consumerism. Rather than create a ‘zombie-proof house’, it is instead proposed to zombie-proof your own home in the event of a zombie apocalypse. The proposal approaches designing a zombie proof house from a perspective which assumes a future of everyday (albeit unwanted) co-existence with the undead. Z-Rated: Zombie-proof your own home projects a typical suburban London based strategy for adapting ordinary Londoners homes for protection against the marauding zombie threat.

If establishing the prime objective of the zombie-proof house is to increase one’s chances of survival, this approach has a number of pragmatic advantages:

• Good defence is based on familiarity, and no place on Earth is better known than your own home;

• Strengthens communities;• The familiarity of the home will help frightened untainted citizens adjust to their

new-found unwanted co-existence with the undead;• Should our current communications infrastructure break down (i.e, phone,

Internet), any untainted close family, friends and neighbours will instinctively head towards a trusted home;

• With forward planning, neighbourhoods can become zombie-proof, creating a safe, self-sufficient haven where life carries on relatively normally until military intervention;

• When military intervention arrives, zombie proof houses/neighbourhoods become stage points for a military counter-strike over a decentralised network;

• Creates a resilient system where the human survival rate becomes much higher and is based on existing community clustering and co operation

Z-Rated: Zombie-proof your own home

2

WHEN ZOMBIES ATTACK!: MATHEMATICAL MODELLING OF AN OUTBREAK OF ZOMBIE INFECTION. Philip Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad, Robert J. Smith

3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_zombie_films

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Big Society in action.

A government response to a zombie contagion considers a strategy without the options of an antigen or vaccination. Integrated into Prime Minister David Cameron’s vision for the ‘Big Society’4, a parliamentary response is prematurely distributed online, and runs as the main headline in a popular free London newspaper. It describes a strategy using Big Society rhetoric: building communities, decentralised power and localism. In short, getting the proles to pay for everything themselves, in the perfect union of the public and private sectors.

One quarter of the UK’s housing stock are tightly knit terrace typologies, clustering in cities and industrialised market towns, representing a significant part of the population. Demand for housing in London and the south east of England is high and growing each year. Z-Rated: Zombie-proof your own home locates itself within an already present demand for new space in the city. The strategy’s biggest intervention introduces a string of building regulation approved loft extensions that litter the roof-scape of London, typically providing a extra bedroom and bathroom for an expanding family or space for a new tenant, until such a time it is needed to provide genuine civil defence. An opportunity exists using the combined flat roof-scape of loft extensions to provide a secondary elevated street/battlement protected from the zombie threat at ground level, allowing citizens to engage in a variety of mixed programmes from leisure to food growing - at a comfortable distance away from the undead.

Like ordinary streets, the secondary street is envisaged to provide numerous programmes including:

• Elevated walkway/battlement;• ANSDiesel & solar powered street flood lighting;• Zip wire as a low tech means of crossing the street quickly to other terraces;• Space to grow food (continuous productive urban landscapes)5;• Seating and street furniture;• Means of emergency escape and supply deliveries - helipad;• Elevated surveillance of immediate vicinity

When the crisis is too big for emergency services to handle, in order to provide the volume of extensions that might be required nationwide, a public/private sector initiative is initiated using army and sponsored RAF air transport facilities to rapidly deploy prefabricated loft extension units produced at pre-existing commercial production facilities. The same mechanism provides a quick extraction if the elevated street is compromised: the lofts cleanly cut away from the existing house when airlifted by air transport and redelivered to a designated safe zone.

A popular international home products retailer is a key commercial partner, being the only company that has suitable worldwide production facilities, understanding of the commercially marketable home, with a suitable track record of high quality design and manufacturing.

4

http://www.communities.gov.uk/communities/bigsociety/

5

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Continuous-Productive-Urban-Landscapes-Agriculture/dp/0750655437

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Z-Rated: The Executive Summary

How many people can you fit in your safe house?

How are you handling power, potable water, and waste?

How are you handling access to your safe house?

How many days do you plan to stay in your safe house, and how much food and water are you providing?

How will you escape in the event of a zombie intrusion?

How will you keep zombies out of your safe house?

As the proposal works on the principle of zombie-proofing your own home, the amount of people varies between households.

When referring specifically to the loft extension/survival pod, the minimum is 8 persons, scaling up indefinitely depending on the width of the roof and the demand from people. There is nothing stopping an entire neighbourhood of people co-existing within a single pod should they wish to.

Neighbourhoods would be initially reliant on the National Grid until such a time the system fails due to lack of resources and maintenance. At this point, they would switch to a closed loop isolated servicing infrastructure, based on a combination of conventional renewable sources such as solar or wind power depending on the geography.

The remainder of electricity and heat is generated from ANSD organic material, and fed into a decentralised neighbourhood power generation scheme. A renewable fuel based on myco-fungal principles synthesises a bio-diesel called Zyconol,6 using ANSD organic material as a substrate - thus directly aligning power generation through recycling a near limitless supply of material (the undead).

Thankfully the UK is a wet place, with significant rainfall each year. Rainwater is harvested and collected in large 4000 ltr. tanks, supplemented by condensers. The water is purified through myco-remedial mats, using mycelium to filter rainwater for drinking use. All water consumption is heavily rationed.

Waste is diverted to the same collection tanks as ANSD for processing into Zyconol.

As a localised strategy, there a number of access points with increasing securty depending on the severity of the ANSD problem.

Should the houses be compromised, the survival pods and upper street level have single access in and out and is incredibly difficult for zombies to open based on their limited motor function.

The scheme assumes a future co-existence with the undead, therefore is designed to be operational 365 days a year, until the ANSD threat is eradicated or humanity extinguishes itself in one last frenzy of desperate violence.

Assuming neighbourhoods will coordinate their defences with the Armed Forces, then the programme areas on the upper street level/battlements and existing back gardens will provide continuous vegetable and poultry farming all year round. Additional supplies are provided by the HM Government and delivered via sponsored Royal Air Force Chinook or Blackhawk helicopters via parachute drop.

Water rationing will be imposed and regulated where proximity of neighbourhoods cannot access central water facilities. As stated, large water tanks will store collected rainwater.

The upper levels of the scheme are designed to be quickly extracted in the event of the neighbourhoods being compromised. There is a single access in and out of the upper level survival pods. Should air transport be delayed, the pods themselves could sustain occupants for a period of time based on stockpiled water and food rationing.

On street level, first line of defence come in the form of large makeshift barricades or cages depending on the level of preparation. Rear gardens are trenched and filled with furniture-cum-weaponised low tech defences.

Assuming the zombies make it past these, then the next level of defence is the front door and access to the houses themselves. With preparation, doors and windows will be significantly barricaded using furniture, specially bracketed as a product from the scheme’s commercial partners.

Other defences include a reverse cycle on ground source heatpumps to literally melt zombies on impact.

The upper levels represent maximum security with single access and visibility. The scheme proposes numerous items that can be appropriated as weapons.

6

http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2009/01/the-mushroom-messiah/