How fast would zombie outbreak spread

The area with the greatest one month zombie risk is north eastern Pennsylvania, itself being susceptible to outbreaks originating in any of the large metropolitan areas on the east coast. Of course, this doesn't cover a Walking Dead , everyone-who-dies-becomes-a-zombie scenario. Then all bets are off. This only works if the transformation is almost immediate, so that air travel and don't contribute to the spread.

Otherwise the map would color red much faster. The A. With some geographical isolation, the situation would be a tiny bit better for humans. Assuming the zombie virus had to spread through contiguous regions and that zombies were somewhat limited in their ability to travel not leaving their current region until there were , zombies roaming there , human survivors would number by day , the study found.

A more realistic model might assume that each zombie could find fewer human victims over time, the students wrote, because there would simply be fewer humans to find. But never fear: In a follow-up paper, the students did just that. They extended the zombie life span to one year in order to up the challenge a bit, but also gave each human a 10 percent chance of killing a zombie each day. They also accounted for human reproduction, assuming reproductive-age women would be able to have a baby once every three years.

These assumptions provided some hope for humanity. So when zombie apocalypse does hit, the lesson is to get the hell out of whatever major metropolitan center you live in.

But where should you go? The simulation suggests Montana and Idaho. No wonder so many survivalists live there! It would take months for the undead show up in the Northern Rockies. San Franciscans might want to head to the closer Great Basin in Nevada, also not a big destination spot for zombies. For this useful travel information we owe much to the computer simulation whizzes at Cornell, who have demonstrated that important Ivy League-level research need not be too serious.