2023-06-05 16:04:12
DThe good news: There is a place in Germany where you would survive the zombie apocalypse. The bad: It’s the Eifel. Barren slate, extinct volcanoes, dead maars, dialect like Andrea Nahles. Apparently that’s too intense even for the living dead.
No, no – that’s not a joke, it’s science! The online apartment search engine platform “rentola”, which neither you nor I have ever heard of, has investigated, a Index created: “The best and worst places in Germany to survive a zombie apocalypse”. Why? So that people like me write articles like this and that we all have heard of “rentola” at least once. smart trick, bless them. It worked well in Canada too. And when it comes to zombies, at least I can’t resist.
Briefly summarized again: Depending on the zombie narrative, the dead are transformed, triggered by a) fungal infection (US series “Last of Us”), b) horror experiments (splatter classic “Woodoo – Terror Island of Zombies”) or c ) just like that (George A. Romero’s style-defining “Dead” series) in rotting tumble brigades that sneak through the botany in search of food (people).
Urdilemma of Warfare
They’re usually pretty lame (exceptions: “28 Days Later”, “Resident Evil”) and very, very stupid. You have to aim at the brain and pierce it, smash it, sever it – with every imaginable tool from the gun (“Night of the Living Dead”) to the baseball bat (“Zombieland”), also with an am arm stump mounted chainsaw (“Evil Dead”), to the samurai sword (“The Walking Dead”).
That sounds feasible in and of itself, and yet in every zombie film, in every zombie novel, in every zombie comic, a fundamental dilemma of warfare is negotiated: quality versus quantity. Here the clever and agile humans, capable of strategizing, wielding tools and weapons, and there the endless hordes of the dead, whose sheer mass (and growing with each sacrifice) at least strikes a balance. This is so fascinating that the sub-genre, which was regarded as the sleazy child of horror for many decades, has developed into a darling of the public.
No, noble vampires, pitiful werewolves, mysterious mummies don’t offer nearly as much potential as those made mainstream by The Walking Dead with all its spin-offs and the HBO smash hit series The Last of Us Undead. There is another aspect. And it’s as real as a zombie apocalypse, of course, isn’t. But it is a perfect simile about societies. Later more.
survive, but where?
So the Eifel. But why? The analysts from “rentola” have defined five data categories and compared them with the conditions in over 400 German towns and cities. Population density is one of these categories. Where many people live close together, viruses spread quickly – whether corona or zombie. Clear. Therefore, the big cities are automatically very far behind on this point, and in Berlin, for example, the Neukölln district in particular. Incidentally, that’s also where the apocalypse begins in the best German zombie novel. I need to know, I wrote it myself. And of course Berlin cannot be saved. But surely you knew that even without zombies. Anyway: points for the province.
On the other hand, cities and conurbations score points with better mobility values. Because as in every dystopia, the best course of action is of course: get out of here! First places in this category for Wolfsburg (in the middle of Germany), Frankfurt (airport), Bonn (no idea). Far behind Jena, Heidelberg and Potsdam.
But if you can’t flee, you have to fight. For this you need weapons and ammunition, which are available in specialized shops and on military bases. According to the data analysis, Leipzig, Eichstädt and Regensburg are ahead. Things are looking very bad in Gelsenkirchen, Aachen and Augsburg – but rather pleasant in unapocalyptic times because they are peaceful.
“Hideouts” are also a category of zombie researchers. There they see Kaiserslautern, the Southwest Palatinate and Cochem as the ideal places to hide in burrows, brownfield sites or simply in the forest and there, quote from the study, “to grow potatoes”. Munich offers hardly any protection, you hardly get an apartment there in real life.
Last data point: inventories. When civilization dies, you have to make do with what you have: food, fuel, clothing, medicine, heat pumps (just kidding). Here the province can make up ground again. In first place: Vulkaneifel, Bitburg-Prüm and North Friesland. Gelsenkirchen is at the bottom again in third from last place. But with the descent, they have just put an apocalypse behind them.
All of these categories have now been intertwined. Last place Gelsenkirchen, Aachen and Augsburg, Hamburg, the self-proclaimed most beautiful city in the world at 373, Munich at 188, and then the top three: Vulkaneifel, Freyung-Grafenau and the Eifelkreis Bitburg-Prüm. As an old fact checker, I of course immediately checked whether “renota” happened to have something on offer in the area. none.
One man wolf
But Berlin? Where is Berlin? Does not appear in the main list, but was examined by district. As mentioned, the lowest chances of survival are in Neukölln, the greatest in Marzahn-Hellersdorf. I personally thought my hometown, Wannsee, to be ideal for apocalypse survival situations. The three bridges connecting our island to the mainland have been blown up afloat (Zombies don’t swimmostly), cattle and sheep could graze on the golf course, there is a small clinic, there is still a small nuclear reactor in the Helmholtz Institute and we have enough ports and boats to send scouts into the Berlin ruins.
Maybe that’s the sore point. Too close to people. Because in the really captivating zombie apocalypses, the real bosses are never the dead, but always the living, the religious fanatics, the brutal looters, the dull-cheeked military, the post-dystopian dictators. One man wolf. Whether in the suburbs or in the urban jungle.
And I’m afraid also in the Eifel.
Peter Huth’s zombie novel “Berlin Requiem” was published by Heyne in 2014.
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