Hopefully you’ve found this book/blog to be both an interesting read and a motivating tool to help revamp your usual exercise routine. I’d like to think it made you take a fresh look on your life and come to appreciate a more holistic approach to fitness and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, for both yourself, your friends and family.
We’ve covered a lot of important topics and I’d like to briefly review them here:
* Cardio - you have to be fast and agile to escape from zombies, as well as have excellent stamina and endurance to keep going when pressed to the limit. In a post-apocalyptic world you might find yourself doing a lot of running for your life, so you might as well start your cardio training now.
* Strength Training - you have to be strong to fight zombies. Muscle strength will be required for lifting and carrying heavy objects, as well as physically interacting with the zombies. Hard labour in the form of building new shelter or just fortifying a structure will take some serious brawn among other activities. As well as core strength to carry your supplies with you as you go down a challenging path.
* Flexibility - your body will have to be fairly limber to perform the tasks required to survive a zombie apocalypse. Stretching and pilates will help give your body a wide range of motion, help prevent injury and keep you flexible during what might be the fight of your life.
* Spiritualism - maintaining a healthy body-mind-spirit connection is essential for survival and holistic health. It will reduce stress, keep your hope and faith alive, and give you a clearer reason for pushing on in search of a brighter future and mental well-being. A healthy spiritual connection will help you through this very dark period. A positive mental attitude can help you get through some of the worst life situations you could possibly imagine.
* Diet & Nutrition - in order to have a strong and fit body you will have to eat healthy. Its important to fully understand the components of a healthy diet including: essential micro/macronutrients, caloric and water requirements for your body under both normal and stressful conditions. As well as how to obtain and prepare food in a very different environment.
* Specialty Training - during a zombie apocalypse, there will be no doubt you’ll have to defend yourself and most likely kill the attacking zombies to survive. In order to do this you’ll have to learn how to fight using martial arts skills, basic weapons training, and basic SWAT tactics. It will help you stay in shape, possibly deter attacks from other individuals and ultimately stay alive.
Hopefully, you’ll take away some of the tips and suggestions I’ve made in each of these chapters, and in several small ways, you’ll begin to create a fitter, stronger you; able to survive in a difficult world. Its not always easy to do, but its worth it.
Besides these skills relating to mental and physical fitness, there are other important traits that most survivors possess (besides good luck, of course). These include adaptability, awareness, determination and resourcefulness. If you start developing these skills now your chance of surviving the zombie apocalypse will improve dramatically.
Hopefully after taking advantage of the advice in this book, you will now have the knowledge, skills and training to survive a potential zombie apocalypse. Remember just like any health and life insurance, the time to train and get fit is before the apocalypse hits, not after. Its survival of the fittest out there, and hopefully you’ll be fitter than the zombies.
Good luck out there, you’ll need it!
And now to properly conclude this personal training guide to survive the zombie apocalypse, let’s check in with Morgan Wilder and see how she’s doing in her own fight. Will she prevail and reach her goals? Or will she fall short of her goals?
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Morgan’s Story - “Prevail”
Chapter 8. Conclusion
Morgan wasn’t sure how long she had been running. It felt like a long time, she knew that. She wasn’t sure how far the strip mall was from the harbor front exactly, she had never walked it, or more aptly ran it until today. She had always drove it before. But she figured it couldn’t have been more than ten kilometers at most. So if she was running hard she would probably do it in an hour, but as it turned out the journey was more of a stop and go sprinting routine. A lot of zombie spying and scanning. Hiding behind trees, fences, sheds and whatever shelter she found along the way. While she had become more confident and efficient at killing zombies over the last couple days, she wasn’t a fan of all the blood shed, and preferred the stealthy route to the bloody route.
Eventually after what could’ve been ten kilometers of this ducking, hiding and sprinting, she finally saw the first hints of blue water peeking out from between the trees. At last, she was so close now. She stopped to double check her gear before she proceeded. She didn’t want to drop anything or have anything clanking before she moved through what she imagined could be the last zombie zone of her journey. To be safe, she unpacked the fireman’s axe she had tied to her knapsack, which had replaced the smaller camping hatchet she had started with originally. It felt much heavier in her small hands, but the weight was comforting considering what might be waiting for her inside the terminal buildings.
The waterfront was the oldest part of town. The first to be settled, where the merchants and oldest stores were built and maintained for hundreds of years. The old brick and stone were resistant to both the elements of weather and fires that raged through the town over the years, and had apparently done much better holding up during the zombie riots than the wooden structures like the community centre and modern supermarkets built in more recently. While none of the buildings had any glass remaining in these post-apocalyptic days, their walls and roofs remained true, thus the harbor master and port authority buildings still stood, as well as the ferry terminal. The wharves that were made of concrete remained in decent shape, however, the private launching pads and smaller wharves that were built of wood were now in rough shape. Many of their planks cracked or even burnt. So too were their wooden shop fronts. Any of the remaining boats that were unfortunately still tied to their docks were burnt out husks. Shells of their former selves, some still floating, others with only bits of their bows or masts left poking above the waterline, their naval bodies now resting on the sea floor.
Yet, there were still some boats left floating in the harbor. However, these were about a kilometer off in the distance, a safe reach from the stragglers left behind on land it seemed. They appeared to be in good working order, no burn marks, and all still floating safely. That was a positive sign at least. She couldn’t see any signs of movement from them, but it was hard to see anything at all from this distance. Her eyes weren’t what they used to be now in her thirties. She wished she had gotten that laser eye surgery she had been considering over the last year. She made a mental note to do that if society got through all this madness. It was good to have goals for the future. Something to look forward to. She was hesitant about the lasers cutting her eyes, but after all she had been through these last few days she figured she was tough enough for that procedure now. She almost laughed at herself thinking about it. Better lasers than zombies any day! Ha!
Refocusing her thoughts, she figured her best bet to understand what had happened here would be to check in with the harbor master. Not that she thought for a moment he would even still be in his office, but there might be some sort of record of events inside where she could piece together the events and the path forward to safety. So she made her way out from the woods on the far side of the waterfront, down the remaining hillside and back onto the paved street of Harbourside Drive. At that moment, looking out over the water, as far as the eye could see, it felt eerily like she had reached the end of the earth.
Gripping her axe for reassurance she slowly climbed the steps to the Harbor Master and Port Authority building. The heavy wooden doors had come off their hinges but still held in place. There was a gap between the two doors that she easily slid between by temporarily removing her knapsack and turning her body sideways. Through the doors, she replaced her knapsack on her back and looked around the old office building. As expected, it was in complete disarray. Chairs knocked over, metallic file folding cabinets tipped over; pens, papers and folders scattered over the desks and floors. It looked as if a tornado had blown through the building. Not seeing anything helpful in the mess of the reception area she moved towards the back of the building where the more senior offices were located. She figured that’s where the more important documents and items would be kept, if anything remained, of course.
Soundlessly she crept down the hallway. Although the building looked deserted from what she could see, it was impossible to be sure there weren’t any zombies lurking around the corner. She came to the head office of the Port Authority. There was no secretary sitting at the front desk, so she walked past the small desk and pressed her ear against the office door. Silence emanated from inside so she reached for the doorknob and turned the handle. It creaked as it turned but gave way to her prodding. The spacious room was airy and empty. Papers were flung over the desk, but other than a messy desktop the room was remarkably spared from the chaos it seemed. Morgan started leafing through the papers on the desk, looking for a clue on where to go from here, when she surprisingly received her message in audio form. A radio crackled on the desk top in front the large bay window which overlooked the harbor passage. Static blared from the receiver and then a voice came across the airways, “Hello, hello! You there in the office. Can you read me?”.
Morgan reached for the radio receiver. She fumbled with the mouthpiece, unsure of how to use the equipment. She figured it was something like the intercom switch used in her apartment building, so she pressed the button on the transmitter and spoke, “Hello? Hello? Is there anyone there? I’m here in the harbor master’s office. Where are you calling from?”. She released the button and more static blared from the radio.
“This is Captain Sullivan on the HMS Caribou. Who am I speaking with?”
“I’m Morgan Wilder. I’m looking for my family. Where is everybody?”
“Well... those that didn’t get out of town are probably dead from the outbreak. But there are many people on the safe passage boats here in the harbor. The HMS Caribou being one of them.”
“Is my family on the boat? The Wilder’s? My parents are Anna & Thomas Wilder.”
“I don’t have the log book with me. I can check later for them.”
“Can I come on? How do I get to the safe boats?”
“Well you have to first pass through the quarantine period on the floating platform. We have to see you’ve been clear for 48 hours before you can come aboard. We can’t risk infecting the others. But they’re not making any more runs because the last of the life rafts were destroyed by the infected during the last run.”
Morgan picked up the binoculars that were resting next to the radio and scanned the water for the position of the boats. She saw a series of small boats and rafts that were anchored about 500m off shore, then another 500m away were the safe passage boats, including the HMS Caribou where her hope was literally floating.
Morgan picked up the receiver again, “I can make it to the quarantine platform. I’m a good swimmer. If I swim out and wait there for the 48 hours can I come aboard?”
There was a long pause on the other side of the radio but eventually he agreed, “Yes, we’ll take you, but only after the full 48 hours. But you’ll have to reach us on your own. That’s the best we can do for you.”
“OK I’m on my way! Watch for me!”
“We’ll be watching and waiting. Good luck Morgan Wilder!”
Morgan dropped the radio receiver, looped the binoculars around her neck and made her way down to the docks in all haste. Finally, a clear way out of this hell hole. She slipped back through the heavy front doors and made her way around the back of the building where the government wharf met the street. It was still in half decent shape, being made of durable concrete, as opposed to the private wooden wharves - the fires had taken their toll. Gazing down the shoreline, she suddenly saw the devastation from a much closer vantage point, and some of the much more disturbing visuals came into view. What she saw from a distance as piles of burnt objects were actually bodies, piles of burnt corpses, blackened and charred. What she had to assume were the infected individuals who had been charging the lifeboats as Captain Sullivan had said. The fires were out now, and the infected long since dead, but the smell of burnt bodies still lingered in the air. Morgan put her hand up to her mouth, tried not to gag and made her way to the end of the concrete wharf.
Captain Sullivan was right, there were no life boats left. She had to swim out to the quarantine rafts if she was going to reach safety. Morgan dropped the knapsack, binoculars and axe onto the wharf. She sat down and unlaced her boots, and stood barefoot, the concrete cool on her feet. She was hesitant to leave all her worldly possessions, especially the axe, behind her, but there was no way she could make the 500m swim carrying the heavy objects. She felt vulnerable but knew it was the only way. She scooped up the binoculars for one last look at the HMS Caribou and was encouraged to see what looked like several people on its decks. Setting the binoculars back down on the wharf, she stripped down to her t-shirt and underwear and dove head first into the cool sea water.
Whatever doubt remained was quickly replaced by the urgency of swimming through the cold deep water. Without the assistance of her swim googles, the salt water stung her eyes, and she came to the conclusion that this was going to be much harder than she first thought. Steeling herself against the elements, she steadied her breath and fell into her swimming rhythm - freestyle front crawl, taking a single breath on fourth stroke. Kicking steadily with her legs, she glided through the water, thankful there was no wind to cause chop. She was used to swimming in pools, not the open-water, but now was not the time to dwell on those thoughts.
After about five minutes she began to fatigue. She stopped swimming and tried treading water to catch her breath. She couldn’t tell how far she had gone, but there was a lot of water between her and the wharf, but still more than that to the quarantine rafts. She had to keep going. She decided to do the back crawl for the next five minutes and then switch back to the front crawl to finish. She didn’t want to miss the rafts, the less time in the water the better. She was losing precious body heat the longer she was in the frigid water. On that thought she starting swimming towards the rafts again with renewed haste.
It felt like the longest swim of her life, but she eventually reached the quarantine rafts. There was no easy ladder to climb up, so as tired as she was, she had to pull herself up and over the edge without any help. It took a couple tries but with a strong dolphin kick and both elbows up over the platform edge, eventually she pulled her cold shivering body onto the floating raft. She looked towards the ships in the distance and through her blurred vision she convinced herself she still saw the people on the decks, but now they were waving to her and jumping. Christ she was tired. She laid down on the raft and closed her eyes. Maybe she could try to nap. It was going to be a long 48 hours out here. Just waiting, with salvation so near, yet so far.
Time passed slowly on the quarantine raft. After about 12 hours she became so hungry that she actually considered swimming back to get some of the food she left on the wharf. But then she thought she’d have to start the quarantine time over again and she decided she’d rather just wait out the remaining 36 hours than do another additional 12 hours out here on the cold and wet platform. Sometimes when she missed a meal the hunger just went away on its own, but she always had something to busy herself with, work or chores to keep her going. She was so bored out here, and her wandering thoughts didn’t help. She decided to try to meditate for a little bit to see if that might help pass the time.
The sun set and she passed a fitful nights sleep out on the water. One day down. One to go. She started to wonder what the signs and symptoms of early infection might be. She put her hand to her forehead, she felt way too cold to have a fever. She looked over her arms and legs, there were a few scrapes, scratches and bruises from running in the woods, but didn’t see any bite marks, no rash either. Besides her shivering from the cold and her hunger, she felt pretty good considering what she’d been through. She thought suddenly that she must have been a pretty strong person to get through all this. Just one more swim left was all. She could handle that. She knew it. She just had to stay positive.
Looking out at the sun setting on the second day she thought back over all she had gone through. All the miles she ran, zombies she had killed and fear she overcame. She was proud of herself. And what a story to she had to tell! She spent the last night on the quarantine raft pondering the last few days and how glad she was that she found the courage to leave her apartment and find a better life for herself. She knew it was out there, she just had to go get it.
A blare from a megaphone came from the boat across the water and woke Morgan. She didn’t realize she had fallen asleep again. She was exhausted from the last few days.
“Morgan Wilder! Are you OK still? You can come aboard. You have passed the quarantine period. If you can swim to the boat you can join us.”
That was all she needed to hear. She dove into the water and swam the last 500m with the vigor of an olympic athlete. No stopping to tread water this time, she propelled herself to the edge of the boat where she was lifted into the arms of her family who were waiting for her on the deck. Her mother, father, sister and nephews all embraced her in a loving hug, the warmth of their arms removing the chill of the cold sea water from her veins. Her ordeal was over. She had prevailed. She was safe and with her family once again.
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