How to Survive a Zombie Apocalpse With Data

28 Feb 2014

So, the Zombie Apocalypse just broke out. Now, how do you survive? Thankfully, UChicago’s Zombie Readiness Task Force runs a simulated zombie outbreak each quarter, and there is a weath of data on what happens when somebody gets infected.

First, the rules. The game starts with 1 human infected. Humans where bandanas on their arm, while zombies wear them on their head. A zombie can convert a human by touching them, while a human can stave off infection by hitting the zombie with a nerf gun (this stuns the zombie for 5 minutes). More rules can be found on the HvZ Website.

Okay. Now we know the rules. Let’s use some of the data to figure out how to avoid getting killed. Ideally, we’d first want to know what time of day to go out in. Thankfully, Kevin Zhang (Developer of the HvZ site) has allready computed that data for us.

So it looks like you around 6pm. Really, near Lunch and Dinner is a bad idea. I’d recommend you go nocturnal.

What about location?

Again, the data gives us some idea of where each person was killed. We can see that Ellis Avenue is a clearly place to be walking, as is anywhere near the Regenstein or Barlett Dining hall. However, University avenue is relatively free. I hope to add data from the University’s walking survey sometime soon to see if there are any outliers based on where students normally walk compared to the HvZ data.

Anyways, more to come.