In A Real-Life ‘Walking Dead’ Zombie Outbreak, Science Says You Should Head Here

Where would you go if a zombie outbreak happened? A serious question that might be posed during a commercial break of "The Walking Dead" or after a horror movie now has a scientifically sound answer. Researchers from Cornell University used a statistical disease model to come up with the safest location in the U.S. to go if zombies started appearing across the country.

Avoid cities due to the sheer number of people and the likelihood of getting bitten, the research findings suggested. Ideally, everyone would head to the northern Rockies for a few months. A zombie outbreak would not affect every region equally; the researchers think urban areas would be hit faster than rural areas, and it could take weeks before the undead show up in a small town off the beaten path.

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"If there is a zombie outbreak, it is usually assumed to affect all areas at the same time, and some months after the outbreak you're left with small pockets of survivors. But in our attempt to model zombies somewhat realistically, it doesn't seem like this is how it would actually go down," Alex Alemi, a graduate student at Cornell University, said in a statement. Heading to the Rockies will buy you several months from the undead horde and a better chance of survival.

The zombie model used by the researchers is similar to one used for disease modeling. The undead model includes four states -- human, infected, zombie and dead zombie -- and several random variables to better approximate an actual outbreak scenario. Future models can add even more-complex scenarios and incorporate social mechanics to see how a zombie outbreak unfolds when you factor in air travel, a mass panic, quarantines and other interactions.

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The researchers are presenting their Statistical Mechanics of Zombies study at the American Physical Society meeting in March.