Surviving university - during a zombie apocalypse (Part 1)

On Halloween, my university had a 'Zombie Armageddon' event which I thought would be good training for a potential outbreak (as well as being pretty fun). Now I'm not saying that a zombie apocalypse is likely to happen, but I mean, I'm here for 5 years (not taking into account the fact that I might well fail a year...) and who knows what will happen between now and then? Better to be prepared than eaten, as the saying (should) go. So without further ado, here is part one of my guide to surviving the zombie apocalypse at university:

First thing to consider is how to know when there is a zombie outbreak. It's all well and good knowing what to do in case of an outbreak, but if you don't know when there actually is an outbreak, it's not going to be a lot of help.

Identifying an outbreak is actually quite hard to do at university - a school or office is (hopefully) better able to track when people are away, ill or being turned into zombies. But at university, where, once you pay your £9,000, they check you're there a couple of times a year and, so long as they aren't lecturing to an empty room, they don't really mind where you are (This is possibly a bit harsh, some unis, like mine, have weekly tutorials and the lecturers would quite like you to turn up, but this is assuming a worst case scenario here. Besides, even a week's gap is plenty long enough for someone to turn into a zombie without anyone noticing.) Also, some people might not leave their rooms in their accommodation much anyway, meaning their flatmates don't notice they're a zombie until they hear the wails in the dead of night...

There are medical centres on many campuses, it seems, but they seem to be rather out of the way. Students who haven't registered with the centres, or can't be bothered to walk that far, (hey, I can barely be bothered to walk to my kitchen 10m away half the time...) may not go to the medical centres when infected, and even if they did, would the centres really diagnose them with something so outlandish as zombie-ism or would they just call it stress and give anti-biotics for the bite? This leads to multiple, mis-identified students roaming around, beginning the outbreak.


Even once an outbreak has started, it might be hard to recognise. Campuses are loud, crowded places normally, with people acting weirdly at the best of times (like during our zombie Armageddon, when no-one stopped to ask what was going on...). Trying to hear differences between screaming and cheering and telling whether a crowd of people are running away from zombies or towards the bar is pretty hard initially.

So the summary on identifying a zombie outbreak at your university is be even more alert than normal and always be prepared to take action, because you might not know if the zombies are already there or not...