Friday 15 November 2013

As promised: Zombies in the petrol station

Hello all, hope you're well and that the scratching sound outside is the cat trying to get in and not the undead hordes trying to chow down on your grey matter.

This update, which has been unpublished for almost 2 years is designed to get you through a zombie attack in a petrol (or gas for those of you reading elsewhere in the world) station.


Look around you. Don't you feel safer already. There's food there that may last for years and years and enough cigarettes to keep you in lung cancer for a lifetime.

What's that you say? You're sat on top of a huge reserve of a highly flammable substance at a time when the whole world's gone to hell in a hand basket?

Oh, yeah, I see your point.

But there are sweets and chocolates in abundance, is that not good enough for you?

You want to escape alive and take the chocolate with you?!

Fine, I'll see what I can do.

Higher function destroying blood infection / Risen from the dead:
Oh yeah. This thing's plodded up to the glass and seen you buying a mars bar and is now gawking at you through the window. Depending on the layout of the shop area you're now going to be confronted with one of two things.

A zombie bumping repeatedly into reinforced bulletproof glass
This is actually potentially the best scenario to buy you a little time. If there's no automatic door or you have a handle that says PULL from the outside you're probably relatively safe… for now. Assuming there's only a small group of the breathingly challenged outside the door you've a fairly good chance of dispatching them without incident. As well as lifelong snacks you most likely have some vehicular supplies within your grasp.

Tire iron / fire extinguisher:
Reach for the old favourite the tire iron or failing that the fire extinguisher most petrol stations have on site. You will potentially need to force the door open with some effort to give yourself room to get out of the shop and give yourself room to manoeuvre.

When you get outside DO NOT BE TEMPTED TO LIGHT ANYTHING ON FIRE. It doesn't end well as can be seen here.

I know a lot of people say this but here it is particularly important. You are just going to end up with everything on fire and ultimately an explosion will happen. Get as much gas into the best vehicle on the forecourt you can and drive away as safely as you can - don't get nailed at the intersection leaving the forecourt because the adrenalin's pumping.

If you're in scenario two and there's automatic doors that Joe Dead has just wandered through and is now ambling down the aisle toward you then there's a bit more of a problem. Knocking over a display stand may buy you some time to get to the tire irons if they're behind you but what if they're behind the zombie near the door. Chances are, they will be because people want to grab stuff like that on their way to the counter. What you do have at your disposal may be a cash register or a baseball bat if you can lean over the counter. If the clerk's still at his post and not pissing his pants it may be polite to ask rather than just reaching over and grabbing the weapon in question. That and he may not take kindly to being lunged at when there's a zombie in front of him already.

Fast moving / rage infected zombie:
In this scenario fire may help the human race but you're pretty screwed. Lighting the whole place up may be the noble thing to do.

If on the other hand you're a coward and would like to save your skin and not die in a blaze of glory that no one will ever know of here's your tiny ray of shining hope and it comes from a fairly unexpected source.

Grab something solid with a point from nearby. Your best bet might be a pen knife or a safety glass breaking tool if one is available. If not get the heaviest metal object you can such as something tinned. Smash the front of the microwave you generally get in most convenience stores and point it at your assailant. You never know, you might get the time to cook the fool before he gets to you and if not you can throw it over his head and hit start providing distraction while he gets 800W to the brain.


They do say that microwave food in service stations can kill you right?

Thanks for reading and apologies for the length of time this took to publish. Hoping it was worth the wait.

Did I forget to hit post? Ooops! UPDATES

Well, it's been a LONG time.

Updates: 
Had a daugther, now 2. Very cute.

Got a job. Entertaining but always busy.

Lost 5 stone in weight (Alternate Day Fasting)

Zombies? Still nowhere to be seen.


Apologies on the lack of updates in spite of the promise to publish them. Between work and life commitments the blog has been rather overlooked.

The good news is that I've got a new idea. I'm writing a book and getting a whole splurge of writing done all in one go rather than the dribs and drabs I've been getting on here.

When it's all finished I hope to have a version available to download on Kindle and/or iBooks.

Unsurprisingly it's about zombies and you will see a very similar writing style to that used here on ZSP.

There'll be prerelease copies sent out to those of you who were here from the start and I look forward to your feedback.

At the moment though, must type on.

See you on the flip side, and you never know, as the ideas flow more blog posts may pop up.

Much love,
Alex