1. Location, Location, Location
There are a fair number of housing developments in the suburban towns surrounding Atlanta that are built right next to churches. More importantly, they're built right next to cemeteries. As with any major, metropolitan area, sprawl can be a problem and often times new shit gets built next to the old shit. Around Atlanta, many times the old shit is either a church, a trailer park, or a church trailer park. Many times there's a cemetery there too. Usually more with the churches than with the trailer parks, but I wouldn't be surprised. Many the times have we driven past these new housing developments and I say to my wife that there is no way in hell I would live to such places as when the zombie outbreak occurs, those people in the housing developments are the appetizers. I ain't about to get munched on by no zombie just because I wanted a swim and tennis community. Fuck that. I don't even play tennis.
2. Life in the Country
My county is pretty dang rural. In fact, not five minutes from me it turns into horse country and while horses have shown to be tasty snacks for rampaging zombies, they tend to live in areas that aren't very population rich. I'm not saying I live out in the boonies or anything, there is a SuperTarget about ten minutes from my house, but we don't have a lot of zombie rich environments: namely cemeteries and hospitals. All I'm saying is that when the zombie outbreak starts, I'll have plenty of notice before I start seeing walkers roaming up my driveway.
3. I Know All About Headshots
In trying to paint a realistic rather than campy image of a zombie outbreak the Walking Dead appears to take place in a universe that doesn't have fictionalized zombie outbreaks. I bet that for the majority of people reading this site, if I were to ask you how you kill a zombie, the answer would come out immediately: destroy the brain. The folks in Walking Dead don't seem to know this which I find odd. This seems to happen a lot with supernatural themed media. In vampire and werewolf movies, the only person who seems to know how to dispatch the beasty is some grizzled dude who has been hunting them his whole life. The rest of the people in the movie are all like "Really, turns into a wolf? That's so weird!" Supernatural seems to be the only show that tries to place itself in our universe, a universe that is steeped in monster fiction. I think it's part of why the show succeeds so well, as they can use the fictionalized aspect of monsters, silly tropes and all, to play with their version of monsters. But I digress. Bottom line is that I know how to fuck a zombie up and I ain't about to waste time while doing it.
4. Slow Jams
The one thing I have learned about Atlanta residents in my five years here is that they can not, to a person, drive to save their fucking lives. Traffic here is horrible, many times because Atlanta drivers become functionally retarded upon getting behind the wheel. I have hit traffic jams, like ground to a halt traffic jams, at the strangest of times. When Rick moseyed up into Atlanta (and yes, they actually filmed in Atlanta), and there were zero cars on the highway into the city, motherfucker should have known that the city was not where he wanted to be. If I'm heading into Atlanta and I'm not stuck behind some asshat who can't be bothered to put down his phone long enough to use his blinker, I know something's up and I'm turning around and going the other way.
5. OTP, Yeah You Know Me
In Atlanta, there are two types of people: people who live ITP, or Inside the Perimeter and people who live OTP, or Outside the Perimeter. In this case, the Perimeter is I-285, the freeway that encircles Atlanta proper. I live and work OTP and have very little reason to ever go ITP, except for the occasional rock show or cultural event. ITP folks and OTP folks usually don't hang together as it takes about three hours to go from one to the other. Plus, there are so many towns OTP that you don't have to go ITP for really anything, except the occasional rock show or cultural event. If a zombie outbreak were to happen here, you wouldn't catch me going ITP for shit, not even if I thought there were a refugee camp. Plus, CDC ain't even downtown so it's not like that's going to help. I'm sticking OTP where there's fewer people and more SuperTargets. I bet the toy looting will be epic.
So don't worry, gentle readers, I don't plan on being eaten by zombies of any stripe any time soon. Murdered by rampaging hordes of GI Joe toy looters in an abandoned SuperTarget? That seems more likely.
