PHYSICAL AILMENTS

Any kind of physical ailment is liable to slow down your progress in surviving a zombie apocalypse, be it a minor case of indigestion or a complete lack of legs. Either way you’re just going to have to suck it up and get on with it if you want any hope of surviving at all. Anyone can survive a zombie apocalypse. It’s not about your physical capabilities, it’s about your knowledge and how you use it. And the knowledge that physical ailments pass on to the undead is good to know.

Death is not a magical cure for all physical ailments, and if you have kidney stones when alive, unless something is done about them, they will remain when you are dead – and hence when you are undead too. But although kidney stones might be painful to a living human, they are not going to affect a zombie who is impervious to pain, so that piece of knowledge isn’t particularly important.

Here’s the important bit: if a person is blind in life, if they are bitten and become a zombie they’ll be blind too. If a person is deaf in life, once reanimated as a zombie they will still be deaf. If a person is paralysed then it figures that when transformed the zombie will also be paralysed. So, should you know the person who has been transformed and know of any physical ailments they possessed in life, this may give you the edge you need to defeat them.

This is also true of age. Becoming a member of the undead does not suddenly imbue you with superhuman strength. A child zombie will still only have the strength they had when a child and, likewise, an older zombie may suffer from advanced joint problems if they’ve not been taking their cod liver oil regularly.

Being aware of this will enable you to make informed decisions regarding the safest place to secure yourself and scavenge, as you must also know your own capabilities. (See Demographics). If you are not the kind of person who could survive a fight with a gang of football hooligans, don’t go to a otball stadium. Likewise, if you really don’t feel you have the physical strength to take on a horde of old ladies, steer clear of bingo halls.