Why Kalamazoo Is the Best Place to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse

Not that there's any good place to be during armageddon, but Kalamazoo-ites are well-provisioned to pull through if the undead begin ravaging the country.

Zombie hoards marauding across Michigan and the country would be bad. Living in Kalamazoo gives you a good chance to be a survivor. To stay alive after a catastrophe requires access to safe drinking water, health care, fuel and firepower. Oh, and crowds might be a bad thing; there's no such thing as safety in numbers if the undead are shuffling about.

Finding yourself in a highly populated urban center, competing with violent crowds for dwindling resources, will usually not end well. If the scarcity doesn’t get you, the resulting chaos certainly will. On the other hand, being in a low-density rural location, with more abundant natural resources, and far fewer mouths to feed, will dramatically increase your chances of surviving the crisis.

-Richard Duarte, Surviving Doomsday author

Kalamazoo is ideally placed to bolster your chances of surviving a zombie apocalypse . We don't know why (let's assume someone on staff is a Walking Dead fan), but Realtor.com looked at ten key metrics of real estate listings to calculate the odds of winning on this bleak battleground. They looked at listings with lakes or ponds for fresh water. Homes with a bunker or fallout shelter, safe room or panic room added to the scores. Population density was factored in, including the percentage of health care workers, active military personnel and manufacturing workers. Homes with solar panels or hydro power were favorable, assuming the grid would go down if mindless flesh-eaters began roving the landscape.

Of course, none of this is "scientific." Authors have imaginations and get paid to use them, and data can be manipulated to show almost anything you want it too, but it was interesting that a national story singled out Kalamazoo as one of the best places to weather an undead invasion.

Best Places to Survive the Zombie Armageddon

1. Lubbock, TX
2. Deltona, FL
3. San Luis Obispo, CA
4. Oklahoma City, OK
5. Kalamazoo, MI

Worst Places to Be 

1. New York, NY
2. Chicago, IL
3. Washington, DC
4. Las Vegas, NV
5. Cedar Rapids, IA

So, if the idea of having mindless zombies trying to devour your brains has kept you awake at night, rest easy, Kalamazoo.

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