Illinois & Missouri Towns Top Best Zombie Survivability

Zombie fiction has a clear, dominant hold on the pop culture psyche. The Walking Dead is one of the highest rated and most watched shows on television, with the books being comic book top sellers. The Last of Us is one of the most well regarded video games of all time. To make no mention of World War Z, Z Nation, Dead Island, iZombie and the enduring love of George Romero's classic films. Just about everyone I know has a "Zombie Survival Plan" because we're sick, twisted people who secretly hope that it happens so we have our time to shine, machete in hand (and it'll wipe out any existing student loan debt, so there's that).

It turns out two of the best places to survive are a short distance from us. Website "Find The Home," which helps research housing markets for consumers, conducted research to find the ideal locations in each of the 50 states for riding out the Zombie Apocalypse, or Zompocalypse, as I like to call it. It just rolls of the tongue.

According to Find The Home, you want to head to Macomb, Illinois or Town and Country, Missouri. Not only are they the #1 location in each state, but they're the #2 and #3 locations, respectively, of all 50 states, with only Ridgeland, Mississippi outranking them.

Find the Home looked at three key statistics for determining survivability: demographics, resources and defensibility. The younger, more educated the population, the better the chance for adaptability to the stark new circumstances of the world. The Midwest scored very high for resources, due to the abundance of food, water and tools or hardware stores. The Midwest also scored high for access to guns and ammunition.

Taking all that info at face value, it seems the like the smart move would be to immediately head to Macomb or Town and Country when the Zompocalypse happens. As someone who has spent way too much of his free time thinking about this sort of thing, I do see some holes in their reasoning. Macomb makes sense, it's tucked away, kind of remote, I could see that as place to go to. On the other hand, Town and Country is a suburb of St. Louis. The population density is super high, increasing the the number of possible zombies.

And don't even get me started on guns in the Zompocalypse. I see the appeal, but they're loud (attracting zombies), they're high maintenance (zombie horde descends, the gun jams), and they run out of ammo. Everyone will make a guns & ammo run right at the start, so they'll be increasingly difficult to find. Your best bet is to up your fitness level and go with melee weapons. But that's for an entirely different post.