Zombie apocalypse: The best and worst Australian cities revealed

Perth would be the first Australian city wiped out in a zombie apocalypse, researchers from the University of Melbourne have concluded.

It would take just four days for 100,000 people to be infected with a zombie-like flesh eating disease in the WA capital, the University of Melbourne's Centre for Disaster Management and Public Safety (CDMPS) concluded. That figure is the worst zombie infection rate per capital, though Melbourne and Sydney would have more victims in total.

The CDMPS ranked cities in Australia and New Zealand according to the Zombie Survival Index, with a higher number indicating a location's vulnerability to zombie attack. 

Darwin would fare the best, thanks to its isolated location, its willingness to protect others in the community and the likelihood its residents would take up arms to take on zombies.

Queenstown in New Zealand is ranked second, though that's probably due to it being too expensive for zombies to stay there for more than a few days.

Melbourne is ranked third because its survivors are most likely to stay in large groups for protection.

Now Pickle doesn't want to quibble with the University of Melbourne's methodology, but if every single zombie movie has told us anything, it's that the large groups are the problem, not the solution.

The only people who are banding together in large groups for survival in zombie movies are the zombies themselves.

Pickle also questions whether letting strangers into your home is a plus, as the study concludes. In a zombie apocalypse, surely isolating yourself from the risk of infection is the better option.

Sydney is ranked below Melbourne because of its high population density and a false sense of survival security.

Meanwhile, Auckland is ranked worst than Perth, thanks to its close proximity to other cities and its many ports, which act as the starting points of an attack.

The study was commissioned by Xbox Australia, which is using the research to promote their new game State of Decay 2.

Pickle supposes it is comforting that this research was conducted with private sector money as opposed to taxpayer dollars.

But it was a big enough study that Xbox Australia could get a professor involved.

"Our best chance of survival would be to contain an outbreak early by overpowering and removing zombies from the streets while they were still few in numbers," said Professor Greg Foliente.

"We would have the best chance of survival if the outbreak began in Darwin, with its isolated location restricting its ability to travel easily, coupled with 50 per cent of residents claiming they would take arms to defend themselves against the walking dead – the highest in the country."

Most respondents in the study said they would sacrifice a neighbour to save their family pet, because duh.

The study also concluded the best and worst places for a zombie apocalypse to originate.

"Zombies don't represent anything in my mind except a global change of some kind. And the stories are about how people respond or fail to respond to this. That's really all they've represented to me."
— George A. Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Within the past couple days or hours, something very strange has happened. Maybe the Synthetic Plague the government was working on got unleashed. Maybe a voodoo priest's spell went awry. Maybe an alien space probe broadcast a weird signal at the Earth, or fell to Earth and brought radiation with it. Maybe there's just no more room in Hell.

Whatever the cause, the result is the same; the recently dead have risen, en masse, to feed on the living. With each victim they claim, their numbers swell, and no force on Earth can contain them. As society collapses, it's up to the Big Damn Heroes (or a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits) to fight their way to safety or keep shooting until things blow over.

The Zombie Apocalypse has arrived.

While Horror is assumed to be an inherent part of the zombie apocalypse, not all the horror and conflict comes from the zombies themselves. Instead it can come from the reaction of the living humans involved, and how they respond to the state of fear and violent chaos brought about by the zombies. Often, the answer is "not well". The breakdown of society, the fear that your Fire-Forged Friends could be infected and turned against you without warning, are at least as important to a zombie story as the zombies themselves, if not more so.

Common to virtually all Zombie Apocalypse tales is that, regardless of the reason zombies attack living/non-infected people, they never attack other zombies. Whether they'll attack animals other than humans varies, but it's rare for The Virus to affect other species, probably because it's cheaper and easier to film humans in make-up than to work with animals, whether trained, animatronic, or CGI.

Due to the threat that zombies pose (they did just become the apocalypse, after all), protagonists of more serious works are required to become very smart very quickly (but will be ignorant with regard to the word "zombie" itself). Failure is often the only option in these stories; rarely do they have an ending that could be considered "happy" by typical standards, or indeed one where humanity survives as a species. Another main staple is that things will always, always go From Bad to Worse. Either from the character's actions or circumstance which are out of their hands, no matter how improbable it is.

Since trying to plot a zombie outbreak from Patient Zero is long and difficult, most zombie stories are set either After the End, have zombies turn very quickly, or have a significant mass of people infected all at once by some sort of bioweapon.

The Militaries Are Useless trope is usually a must in such a movie, if only to avoid the film ending in five minutes. If they ARE actually competent, they'll likely happen to be evil.

The collapse will also take place very quickly, over a period of weeks or months, instead of years. This prevents society and/or the main characters from adapting, and also makes Convenient Comas somewhat plausible. In the occasion where collapse occurs in a couple of months, a nuclear submarine, aircraft carrier, or other large vehicle could realistically be expected to weather the entire outbreak start to finish in perfect isolation and safety. Characters may also assume that their portable radios have infinite reception and frequency range, and local dead air means a completely global collapse. The audience may not need to speculate about this, if a Spreading Disaster Map Graphic crops up in the opening credits.

Another common staple of the Zombie Apocalypse is that the zombies are often not the most dangerous enemy that a survivor will face. It's usually other survivors, power-hungry maniacs or regular-hungry people who want to attack you to get at your food and shelter. Sometimes Humans Are the Real Monsters will occur (after all, a zombie is just a degraded human!)

Subtrope of Our Zombies Are Different. A member of The Undead trope family. See Night of the Living Mooks for cases where zombies don't threaten the end of the world. See also Zombie Gait, Everything's Deader with Zombies. Raising the Steaks is what happens when humans are not the only creatures that can be infected by The Virus. The zombie apocalypse is almost always a case of Guilt-Free Extermination War requiring that everybody be armed. Expect a healthy dose of Improbable Infant Survival — for despite a population of millions of children at any given time in any human population very few will become (visible) zombies — and the few that do are for audience effect. Also expect the Incongruously-Dressed Zombie to turn up for occasional comic relief. Contrast Friendly Zombie, who is not there to make an apocalypse. (Attractive Zombies also generally tend to avert this, due to Beauty Equals Goodness).

The trope Zombie Apocalypse refers to any kind of undead apocalypse, with the common traits of this trope are that the undead spread rapidly, wipe out humans primarily by eating or biting them, and are usually highly infectious — even if the undead happen to resemble vampires or yet another kind of monster more than zombies. Vampire versions of this nearly always involve Feral Vampires.

If you are looking for different types of Zombie, see Our Zombies Are Different. Not to be confused with Vampire Apocalypse: The Series by Derek Gunn. Sometimes the 'zombies' might be a case of the Technically Living Zombie, but the overall narrative usually plays out the same way regardless.

A Zombie Apocalypse can be considered a sort of Came Back Wrong on a very large scale.

Also known as a "Zombocalypse". 

An arrival from Melbourne Port or Tullamarine Airport would be most devastating, but a zombie infection originating in Geelong Port would be much easier to contain. Sorry Geelong.

In Sydney, an outbreak from the International Airport would be the costliest in the first few weeks, but the most damaging origin point for an outbreak in the long-run would actually be Newcastle Port.