Cities Most Likely to Survive a Zombie Attack

Sid Lipsey

Here’s a disturbing thought as you prepare to celebrate Halloween: it’s the perfect day for the zombies to take over.

People will already be dressed as zombies, so they’d blend right in. Sure, zombies aren’t exactly known for their ability to strategize, but what if they decided to wise up by, oh, say Saturday? We could be looking at a full-blown zombie takeover before we even get to give out our first piece of Halloween candy.

The forward thinkers at the job site CareerBuilder.com have prepared for this eventuality. Teaming up with Economic Modeling Specialists Intl. (EMSI), a firm that analyzes labor market data from around the nation, CareerBuilder has crunched the numbers and figured out which cities are best prepared to survive an invasion by brain-eating zombies — and which cities are doomed for a zombie takeover. 

Related: 7 Travel Tips for Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse

Looking at the 53 biggest U.S. metro areas (with populations of one million people or more), CareerBuilder assigned each city a weighted average score based on four factors crucial to surviving/not surviving a zombie apocalypse:

1.) Defense: This is based on the number of available firearms as well as law enforcement and military personnel in the area who stand locked and loaded to kick zombie butt at the first sign of trouble.

2.) Containment: This is the ability to keep the zombies out. This score is based on the number of engineers and construction workers in each city, who presumably would be called upon to design and build a wall or other such zombie deterrent.

3.) Cure: This is based on the city’s biomedical research scene who’d of course be tasked with finding a cure. As anyone who watches The Walking Dead can tell you, if you’re bitten by a zombie or you come into contact with zombie-infected blood, a flesh-eating virus will turn you into a zombie.

4.) Food: Each city was scored by the presence of food manufacturers and wholesalers in each location —which would be crucial if the uninfected population has to hunker down in hiding and outlast the zombies.

CareerBuilder says its purpose wasn’t all fun and games. “We thought this study would be fun, creative way to take some of the vast labor market information that’s available, break it down and help organizations and individuals understand the connection between economies, people and work,” CareerBuilder spokesperson Mary Lorenz tells Yahoo Travel. Still, the list does serve as an alarming wake-up call to cities that need to improve its zombie-fighting prospects should World War Z break out this weekend.