Zombie Contingency Plan: Manila (Part 5)

3. Know your enemy. If they're slow-moving, plan your moves. Panic will only kill you. If they're fast movers, run like hell. Fortify your Defense Ground. And pray to God they don't know how to climb walls.

Zombie Contingency Plan: Manila (Part 4)

III. UTILITIES

You may ask, why should you should concern yourself with utilities during the zombie apocalypse? In fact, utilities will play an important concern of your Defense Ground with regard to water, electricity (power generation and supply) and communication (including the Internet).

Water may be present in the water pipes a few months after the zombie apocalypse. But afterwards, when the water stations have been left unmanned, it's certain that potable water will become a precious commodity (especially in a tropical country like ours). Gathering water bottles from supermarkets and convenience stores will be one stop-gap measure but it would be better if you can commandeer the equipment of those water filtration shops that sell bottled water. With the equipment, you can filter your own drinking water.

Certain apartment buildings and condos have their own water tower where they store emergency water (in response to those waterless years in the '90s). Determine which buildings have these. Some houses have their own water towers as well. Another option to consider are swimming pools. Drain these pools of water (which has chemicals) then let it fill up, either via hose (if there's water still coming from the pipes) or when it rains. With this reservoir of water, you can now use your filtration equipment to make potable water.

With regard to power generation, most of the buildings have their own emergency generators (also in response to those electricity-less years in the '90s). Find out which ones have these generators, determine which need gasoline to run, and which buildings have a nearest gasoline station to siphon gasoline from. However, be warned that the profligate use of electricity such that your defense ground (i.e. your building) becomes so well-lit, it might as well be a neon arrow pointing at you, saying to zombies, "eat me" or to fellow human scavengers, "attack me".

With your emergency power available, you can now use telecommunications equipment like cell phones, radios and the internet to gather news on the status of the rest of the world. You can also use these to communicate with other survivors and network on a possible push-back of the zombies.

Zombie Contingency Plan: Manila (Part 3)

II. LOCATION

Location of your Defense Ground-- or the areas around it-- is important because you will need materials and supply during a zombie apocalypse. Therefore, keep in mind where to find the important materiel. These include: easily-preserved food (like canned goods), water and liquids, weapons and ammunition, medicine, building supply, vehicles and gasoline, and light supply (like storm lamps, oil, matches, etc.). In other words, you'll need to know where you'll get your survivalist equipment.

Whether or not you will stay in the city during the zombie apocalypse, you will still need material and supplies. Before, during and after the zombie rising, mark those areas where you can immediately grab the most number of material and supplies. For example, in the Ortigas area, you can raid malls like SM Megamall, Edsa Shangrila Mall and Robinson Galleria Mall for your food and equipment. You can also get weapons and ammunition at the weapons shops in SM Megamall (at the top floor) and Robinson Galleria Mall (at the 2nd or 3rd floor, near the hobby shops). There are also weapons shops at the basement of Makati Cinema Square and at the outskirts of the Cubao commercial areas.

If you need a quick raid for food supplies, Ortigas is also a good choice given the number of 7-11 and Ministop convenience stories at every corner. (Packs of cigarettes will also come in handy to keep you awake and destressed. Liquor like whiskey also serves as good explosives though watch out you don't get caught in your own blast!) And if you need more weapons, remember that police stations are your friends-- unless the police have already carted away the firearms for their own protection.

However, what's important to remember during a zombie apocalypse is that you'll need vehicles to keep you mobile to gather your supplies or to serve as escape options. Bicycles and motorcycles will keep you moving light and fast but you'll need some form of protection. You can use SUVs or vans, something large but with added engine power. Buses with added protection are also good; have a blowtorch handy to add metal sheets, gun ports and barbwire. Don't know how to use it? Learn fast.

What's interesting to note that some of the secondhand automobile lots that sell imported vehicles in Ortigas also offer bulletproof vehicles with high-powered engines. The lot beside Tektite Tower has a number of them being offered. Learn also how to hotwire vehicles on the more than likely chance that you won't be able to find the keys to start these machines.

And obviously, remember where all the gas stations are. You definitely won't get anywhere if you don't have gasoline in your fuel tank. In addition to this, know what kind of gasoline your vehicle: unleaded, premium or diesel. It's a bitch to find a mechanic during the zombie apocalypse who can fix your engine if you flood it with the wrong kind of gasoline. (Gasoline can also serve as good fuel for your explosives.)

Zombie Contingency Plan: Manila (Part 2)

2. Determine your Defense Ground, Weapons Supply and Escape Routes.

Once you verify that the reports are truthful despite going against all logic and science, look around and assess your situation, whether you're in the office, in school, at the mall, or at home. Keep these three things at the back of your head always in order to survive.

A. Defense Ground

Your Defense Ground is dependent on three things: access points, location and utilities. The first one is the most important, which are the access points into and out of the structure (whether building, warehouse or home) where you're hiding out.

I. ACCESS POINTS

Know all the access points to your location, whether doors, gates, windows, height of walls, and underground passages. If it's not defensible, leave it for a better one. But before you do, find out which are the best.

A house with a sturdy door and windows you can lock is good, a house with a gate and walls are better, which is the norm in any middle-class suburb in Metro Manila. Think of Quezon City, Marikina or Paranaque. Take advantage of the security-consciousness of Filipino homeowners with their penchant for grilled windows, triple-lock doors, high walls, and easily-secured garage gates.

Buildings like high-rise corporate centers and condominiums are indefensible unless used as waypoints to a better position; there's only one way up and down the stairways especially once the power goes out (and the elevators). Granted, the stairways can be defensible (like what they did in 28 Days Later) but only to a certain point. Once the building becomes surrounded and infested, you have no choice but to go up. Options like flight or jumping to the next building will be then become prudent. Likewise, a building has too many hiding places to be thoroughly secured. (There are exceptions to this but we'll get back to that later.)

A house with high gates with spiked walls is better, but a subdivision with high walls and a secure gate is best. There are a number of exclusive subdivisions whose security is top-notch with its high walls and gated roads, like Dasmarinas, the Valle Verde series, Forbes Park and Ayala Alabang. Of course it remains to be seen if these can be secured against the massed zombies. Admittedly, you'll need manpower trying to secure these areas given how big these subdivisions are. However, these can be considered as secondary goals to be achieved once the push-back to reclaim the city is initiated.

If you're trapped in Metro Manila, one of the best places I could consider as a good place to secure is the Alexandra Condominium compound in Ortigas, Pasig City. This compound with several low-rise condominiums is bounded on two sides with a deep canal (almost a moat!), high walls at the frontage and back of the compound with easily defensible gates, and high walls beside several structures.

The guardhouses of the compound need to be reinforced with sandbags and steel sheets but the roof is high enough for a guard outpost on top of it (a sniper or a heavy machine gun or even an improvised flame thrower). The gates of the compound can be secured furthermore by covering them using steel sheets and using a number of the SUVs and vans parked in the compound as mobile weights which you can reinforce the gates. The vehicles will keep the gates blocked in cases of massed attack (or even a raid by rogue survivors) but you can also move them in case you have to bring in vehicles into the compound. However, be careful if you do use a flame thrower on top of the guardhouse as we all know what happens when someone becomes careless with a flame near parked cars.

Zombie Contingency Plan: Manila (Part 1)

1. The most important thing to remember is this: when in doubt, DO NOT.

If you see TV news reports on ABS-CBN or GMA 7 and hear it on the radio like DzMM about a possible zombie uprising , don't be a dumb shmuck and ignore the signs. You seriously think that if the local or national government can't even tell you when the metro is flooded like during Typhoon Ondoy, it'll tell you that the zombies have come back from the dead to eat your brains?

Keep track of all information. Note the first occurrence, the secondary attacks. See where the incidents are spreading towards. Likewise, don't limit yourself to mainstream media. Use the Internet: social networks like Twitter and Facebook worked during the Ondoy flooding, maximize your use while it's still available.

Sleepless in Seattle (and almost anywhere else)

Here's something interesting I found out on the 'net.

I've always thought bangungot-- or a male dying unexpectedly in his sleep due to natural causes (i.e. "nabangungot sya")-- was-- if not a local-- at least an Asian phenomenon. According to folklore, bangungot (or batibat in Iluko/Ilocos) was a fat old woman who would sit on the male's chest while he slept so that he couldn't breathe. The male-- though half-awake-- wouldn't be able to move and the only way he could wake himself from the horror of suffocation and death was by wriggling his toes.

Fortunately, in today's 21st century, medical science seems to have managed to give this deadly phenomenon a reason and a name: sudden unexpected death syndrome or SUDS. (How's that for elaboration?) Moreover, they cite a change of diet in Asian males as a possible way to avoid experiencing this.

A done deal, yes? But I never would have thought that this phenomenon was also present among some non-Asian males-- i.e. caucasian or Northern American and British males-- as well.

While I was surfing the web at work, I chanced upon the term 'Old Hag Syndrome' and I looked it up. Wikipedia (whether trustworthy or unreliable, YMMV) states:

"Folk belief in Newfoundland, South Carolina and Georgia describe the negative figure of the Hag who leaves her physical body at night, and sits on the chest of her victim. The victim usually wakes with a feeling of terror, has difficulty breathing because of a perceived heavy invisible weight on his or her chest, and is unable to move i.e., experiences sleep paralysis. This nightmare experience is described as being "hag-ridden" in the Gullah lore. The "Old Hag" was a nightmare spirit in British and also Anglophone North American folklore."

Sound familiar? As the lyrical poet told me, they may be all the one and the same: nightmares that haunt our sleep. But if that's the case, how come the mythology is the same, that of an old woman who sits on top of the male's chest and stealing their breath?

Why the similarity of a myth from two places halfway across the world? Anyone care to speculate?