Mapping Zombies Book Chapter Now Available!

Not often do we get to write about zombies, internet geography, German Wikipedia articles, cats, and goatse.cx all in the same chapter. But that is precisely what we got to do when working on our newest book chapter "Mapping Zombies".

Feel free to download a pre-publication version of the paper below:

Graham, M., Shelton, T., and Zook, M. 2013. Mapping Zombies: A Guide for Pre-Apocalyptic Analysis and Post-Apocalyptic Survival. In Zombies in the Academy: Living Death in Higher Education. Eds. Whelan, A., Walker, R., and Moore, C. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Abstract:

Zombies exist, though perhaps not in an entirely literal sense. But the existence, even the outright prevalence, of zombies in the collective social imaginary gives them a ‘realness’, even though a zombie apocalypse has yet to happen. The zombie trope exists as a means through which society can playfully, if somewhat grimly and gruesomely, discover the intricacies of humanity’s relationship with nature and the socially constructed world that emerges from it. In this chapter, we present an analysis of the prevalence of zombies and zombie-related terminology within the geographically grounded parts of cyberspace, known as the geoweb (see also Haklay et al. 2008 and Graham 2010). Just as zombies provide a means to explore, imagine and reconstruct the world around us, so too do the socio-technical practices of the geoweb provide a means for better understanding human society (Shelton et al. 2013; Graham and Zook 2011; Zook et al. 2010; Zook and Graham 2007). In short, looking for and mapping geo-coded references to zombies on the web provides insight on the memes, mechanisms and the macabre of the modern world. Using a series of maps that visualize the virtual geographies of zombies, this chapter seeks to comprehend the ways in which both zombies and the geoweb are simultaneously reflective of and employed in producing new understandings of our world.

SheepCamp 2012: Matt Zook on Mapping Zombies

Matt Zook's talk comes from a book chapter entitled "Mapping zombies: a guide for digital pre-apocalyptic analysis and post-apocalyptic survival" (co-authored with Mark Graham and Taylor Shelton) and compares the ways in which the zombie trope can inform society as to how the socio-technical practices of the geoweb provide a means for better understanding everyday cultural spaces.

For the full zombie chapter (including stuff that we had to cut from the final chapter) please see our earlier posting.


SheepCamp 2012, Matt Zook from UK College of Arts & Sciences on Vimeo.

Matt's Website: http://www.zook.info/ and www.floatingsheep.org
On Twitter: @mattzook
Zombie Name: Graaagh "Eeeooorgh" the Bloody

A few final holiday maps (that is if you consider zombies festive)

As part of the Floatingsheep quest to determine the mythological and ecclesiastical contours of the Web (and of course protect all of humankind from the impending zombie apocalypse), we present a final few maps for your enlightenment before the new year.

Wishing everyone a happy new year!

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We were a bit worried about North Carolina (and wonder if the Charlie Daniels band picked the wrong state) until we remembered Kill Devil Hills is the likely reason for this cluster.

Devil vs. Jesus

Similar results can be found in the map of Santa vs. Devil.

Devil vs. Santa

Given our earlier concern about the Zombie-Satan alliance we thought it would be worthwhile to see what the fault lines might be if the two sides had a falling out. Plus since we've been a bit overly U.S. centric, we thought a change of location was in order. The good news is that the U.K. seems generally safe from Satan but the bad news is that London is seemingly overrun with zombies...which explains a lot about my last visit.

Satan vs. Zombies

HO! HO! HO!

The Holidays are Upon Us: A Contest for Our Readers

This month marks the two year anniversary (more or less) of the Floating Sheep blog and we've made a tradition out of having some fun with mapping Santa. In 2009, we did a general mapping of Santa and Reindeer and last year we did the twelve posts of Santa where we looked at the geography of various local names for Santa Claus in Europe.

This year we're taking a look at the age old question of which is more popular, Santa or Zombies? OK, not really an age old question but we've been on a bit of a zombie kick as of late and thought it was a question worth asking. And just for the fun of it, we decided to add include some searches for the anti-Santa: Satan... which strangely enough is almost the same text string. Then because adding in religion is always fun we included a range of terms from Christianity and other religious traditions. After all, what are the holidays without the faux "annual war on christmas" controversy? Then, just because we thought of it, we added in the search term "Fat Man" to see what that might bring.

But the most innovative thing we're doing is passing along the data the data directly to you [1]. Including shapefile and excel versions. See the excel version for the metadata and other information.

We'd like to see what kind of visualizations readers can create. To add a little incentive, we're making it a contest with the winner receiving a honest-to-God Floating Sheep ornament and a Slacker strata t-shirt. Both of which are also available for your purchase and pleasure. They make excellent gifts, no matter which holiday you celebrate this time of year!

Contest Rules

1. Email your entries to zook@uky.edu
2. Entries must be received by Monday December 19th by 8 am EST. (Apologies for the tight deadline but we're getting this post up later than planned). We'd like to post all the entries to the blog by the 20th.
   
3. By entering you agree to allow us to post your visualization on the FloatingSheep.org blog and under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
4. Winners will be decided by the FloatingSheep collective as advised by comments to the posts here.

If you have any questions... feel free to ask us in the comments section.

[1] And no, we're not just passing along the data because were lazy. For the record, while we are undoubtedly lazy, we actually have mapped the data and will be posting the maps next week.

Happy Halloween from Floating Sheep, Part II: A Zyberscape of Zweets

The denizens of Floating Sheep space are beginning to explore Twitter and there is a need to experiment with the API interface and various datasets. So what better way to do this than to use zombies! [1] So that we can visualize "a zyberscape of zweets"!

Location and Relative Amount of Tweets referencing Zombies (Zweets) Worldwide

The kmz for this (including the individual tweets) can be downloaded as well

Ate Poorthuis (a Ph.D. student at the University of Kentucky) spear-headed (pun intended) the zombie data collection process, which is relatively straightforward. The method was to use Twitter's Streaming API to download all zombie-related tweets between October 28 and October 31. We collected all messages containing references to zombies, undead and the apocalypse which appeared at a rate of about 45 tweets per minute for a total of 230,000 tweets. That's a lot of zombie angst!

We also thought it would be interesting to look at other forms of zombie-tude and turned to the fount of all knowledge to search the term "zombie politician" which returned many references to Newt Gingrich. So we added Newt to the list of search terms. Unfortunately there were so few geocoded tweets referencing Newt (perhaps lending some credence to the zombie politician label) that the resulting map looked as sparse as the teeth in a .... wait for it .... zombie. Rimshot!

Unfortunately, only 1.1% of those tweets were geocoded. While the profile of each Twitter user also contains a user-defined location field we decided to only use the coordinates of the actual tweet. These can be generated by a GPS-enabled phone or by 'smart' Twitter clients. Most tweets are geocoded to a specific point but others refer to a polygon (e.g. a city), in which case we've used the centroid of the polygon.

In any case, the end result is a database that shows the location of geocoded tweets containing the keyword "zombie". A few tweaks and the acquisition of a nice zombie icon later resulted in the cyberscapes (or perhaps more accurately zyberscapes) of zombie tweets (also know as Zweets) featured above and below. While the normal patterns of technology use are present (high concentrations in the U.S. and Europe) there are also a relatively large number (compare to other aspects of the geoweb) of references in Indonesia and South America

And for those interested in a closer look at the U.S., please see below.

Location and Relative Amount of Tweets referencing Zombies (Zweets) in the U.S.

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[1] OK, there are probably lots of other and better ways to do this, but its Halloween!

Happy Halloween from Floating Sheep: Zombie Corn Mazes

The Floating Sheep collective is always looking for new aspects of socio-spatial life to map and holidays are always a good excuse. Unfortunately, between teaching, cleaning out the rain gutters, writing, traveling, cleaning out the $%#* gutters again, reading, and day-to-day life, Halloween has snuck up on us. So to quote Monty Python, the maps today "have been completed in an entirely different style at great expense and at the last minute".

Regular readers already know about our fascination with the zombie trope (See our seven part series on "Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse") and it should come as no surprise that we return to the topic today. Especially after the massive zombie walk in downtown Lexington last night. This time, however, we decided to spice up the map a bit albeit at the loss of such "optional" things like a legend, an orientation reference and the ability to convey information in a clear manner.

References to Zombies

Shifting from style to substance, we now present an extremely basic map that shows the relatively concentration of references to "corn mazes" in Google Maps. The key thing to remember about this map is that this data is NOT standardized but represents the absolute number of references at these points. It is therefore very intriguing to see the much higher number of references to corn mazes in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas then the coastal regions. Much of the geoweb is concentrated in the big urban centers on the coasts but this example shows how locally relevant material does find its way onto the geoweb.

References to Corn Mazes

So after this brief foray into insight, we return again to the world of style over substance (and that's a very generous interpretation of style) with a map of something that is truly scary, Voldemort. After all, those death eaters probably had to flee England and it would be good to know where they set up shop. Apparently New York is the most likely location with a strong concentration in Chicago!

References to Voldemort

Happy Halloween, stay tuned for some more analysis on zombie tweets!

Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part VII: Vampires and Finance

The following is pulled from the cutting room floor of our upcoming chapter in the edited collection Zombies in the Academy: Living Death in Higher Education.

Although it is of less academic interest, and therefore not included in our chapter, the geographical relationship between zombies and other undead is of clear practical value. After all, one should never bring a wooden stake to a zombie fight. While some independent researchers have studied the zombie versus vampire relationship, their findings seem of limited value, cinematically or otherwise. So we instead offer our nervous readers these helpful observations based on the maps below...

The Undead in the U.S. of A.

Vampires seem to have something going in the Northwest. Maybe there is some truth to the Twilight series!

Other than that, it seems there are a lot of zombies and vampires throughout the entire United States. Seems like your best bet is to hunker down in Northern Nevada and wait for them to battle it out.

Zombies and Vampires in Europe

Zombies really have something for the Spanish seashore...while vampires apparently have grown tired of turning to dust in sunny Spain.

Both Germany and England seem to be run by vampires which some how seems appropriate given the recent financial restructuring arrangements made for Iceland, Ireland and Greece.

Come to think of it, the first map above cleary shows that New York is a center for vampires. So perhaps there is a closer relationship between the parasitic relationship of vampire-human and finance-economy than we first imagined... I always thought bankers looked kinda pale!

Be sure to check out the previous iterations of our Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse series in Parts I, II, III, IV, V and VI.

Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part VI: Mapping the Living Dead

The following is an excerpt of our upcoming chapter in the edited collection Zombies in the Academy: Living Death in Higher Education.

Building on our earlier analysis of zombie-related keywords as a way of understanding the geographies of the undead, it is also helpful to return more directly to one of the cultural sources of zombies by mapping references to some of the most important and seminal zombie films: George Romero’s Living Dead series.

Geographies of George Romero's Living Dead

One of the most noticeable elements on the map of references to the films is that there are many more references to “Day of the Dead” than any of the other film titles. While also the third film in Romero’s series, Day of the Dead is much more notable as a Mexican holiday to commemorate the deceased (Dia de los Muertos). The geography of references to Day of the Dead, in which references are largely clustered in heavily Hispanic areas of the US southwest and northeast, strongly suggests that most references are to the holiday rather than the film. Here again, we observe the ways that online representations mirror material sociospatial practices, including the religious and spiritual practices of Mexican immigrants in the US, even if it was not necessarily intended as the object of focus.

The second discernible spatial pattern is the clustering of references to Dawn of the Dead, with some mentions to the other film titles, in Pennsylvania. This is unsurprising given Romero’s connections to the state and the fact that the film was set and filmed there. This connection (like that of AK-47 references in Eastern Europe) is a useful way of illustrating how cultural artifacts and practices are intimately tied to material places, not just physically, but also in digital reflections of material places. And in this specific case, forming a virtual “zyberscape” of undead references splattering and spotting the cartographic representation of reality.

Be sure to check out the previous iterations of our Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse series in Parts I, II, III, IV and V.

Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part V: Artifacts of Zombie Elimination

The following is an excerpt of our upcoming chapter in the edited collection Zombies in the Academy: Living Death in Higher Education.

As we try to move our analysis beyond the simple mapping of references to “zombies”, as was shown in Part IV, references to other zombie-related keywords can be particularly revealing of a variety of socio-spatial patterns, whether they be medically related keywords, such as Max Brooks’ fictitious “solanum” virus, or even a comparison between the relative presence of the zombie food source “brains”, as compared to what we presume to be the inverse, “salad”. While these selections are certainly amusing, they provide little insight on the connection between the zombie metaphor in the geoweb and the lived realities of different people. A potentially better line of exploration lies in mapping references to various material artifacts related to zombies, in this case the weapons used to kill zombies in literature and cinema. After all, upon finding out where exactly the zombies are, the next task usually involves getting rid of them.

Using the following keywords – “machete”, “shotgun”, “crowbar”, “AK-47” and “flamethrower” – we mapped the relative prevalence of each term across Europe and the US. As is par for the Floatingsheep course, each color dot signifies a point at which there are more references to that keyword than any of the other four weapons. Although this does not take into account the absolute number of references to each keyword, it highlights the dominance of references to any particular weapon and its concomitant cultural implications in a particular place.

Zombie Elimination Artifacts in Europe

There are three noticeable spatial patterns visible in the first map. First, a cluster of references to AK-47s exists in the former Eastern bloc countries. Given the weapon’s origin within the Soviet Union, the prevalence of references in Eastern Europe is unsurprising. Second, the dominance of references to shotgun in Great Britain is the most noticeable pattern, especially because it broadly conforms to the boundaries of the island. Third is the fact that most locations within Europe have no references to any of these keywords, a fact that indicates that their usage on the internet, like that of zombies, is concentrated in very particular places.

The references to weapons in these maps have the effect of mirroring distinct socio-cultural traits in offline, material practices. The second map, depicting the same keywords mapped across the United States, is, like England, blanketed with references to shotguns. This, compared with the dearth of references to any of these weapons throughout much of Europe, is indicative of a greater degree of the embeddedness of the artifact of the shotgun in the cultural practices (e.g., real or perceived levels of violence), and by extension the virtual representations, of some parts of the world.

Zombie Elimination Artifacts in the United States

While not resolving the debate of whether “guns kill people” or “people kill people”, this analysis makes evident that in the event of a zombie horde, shotguns would likely be killing zombies in the British Isles and the USA. On the other hand, continental Europe would likely draw upon a mélange of machetes, crowbars, Kalashnikovs and the occasional flamethrower. Choose your weapons carefully, friends.

Be sure to check out the previous iterations of our Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse series in Parts I, II, III and IV.

Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part IV: Zombies in the City

The following is an excerpt of our upcoming chapter in the edited collection Zombies in the Academy: Living Death in Higher Education.

In our book chapter, "Mapping Zombies", we attempt to discern how the spatial patterns exhibited by geo-coded content are reflective of some underlying social structure. One of the more obvious trends was the concentration of most zombie-related content in just a handful of places -- generally the world's largest Anglophone cities.

Using a simple keyword search for “zombies”, the following map visualizes the absolute concentrations of references within the Google Maps database. The map reveals two important spatial patterns worth consideration. First, much of the world lacks any content mentioning “zombies” whatsoever. Second, and related, the highest concentrations of zombies in the geoweb are located in the Anglophone world, especially in the largest cities.

References to "Zombies" Worldwide

The lack of content referencing zombies can likely be explained by two factors: language and socioeconomic inequality. First, because the searches for the keywords were conducted only in English and Latin characters, all references in other languages and scripts are absent. Nonetheless, many non-English speaking countries still had a number of references to zombies, meaning that language cannot be assigned complete causation. Because previous research indicates that socio-economic factors like income and internet access play a significant role in explaining the contribution of online content, it is likely that this accounts for much of the remaining difference. This ultimately means both that much of the world is left out of processes and practices of information sharing and generation, and that content is concentrated in a relatively small number of places rather than ubiquitously distributed across space.

Even within Europe and North America (i.e., the parts of the world containing the most zombie-related content), there is a significant concentration of content in just a handful of cities. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, for instance, contain the greatest number of online references to zombies, a fact that reflects their status as important nodes in the world’s information ecosystems. Information, much like zombies, is attracted to existing centers of activity as part of the historical process of urban agglomeration.

As of 2008, the world’s population was evenly divided between those living in rural areas and those living in urban areas. Given the sharp upswing in urban inhabitants through history, that ratio will increasingly favor those who live in cities. Given this oft-cited fact, it is unsurprising that, if we are to accept that zombies are an extension or a representation of society-at-large, references to zombies are clustered in urban areas. Such connections between zombies and urbanism are not unique to the geoweb, as May (2010) has argued that “recent zombie films offer a vision of the city that articulates the corporeality and bodily ambiguity of the zombie simultaneously with depictions of urban space” (285-286).

While the cognitive connection between zombies and the city is apparent, what the mere concentration of references cannot tell us is what exactly is being referenced. Each mention of “zombies” could be positive or negative, earnest or facetious, though there is no established way of discerning this context. References to zombies could refer to the location of annual ‘zombie walks’ or a place to buy a children’s zombie costume for Halloween. There seems, however, to be an interesting contradiction in the possibilities for zombies in the city.

On the one hand, zombies represent a dystopic future for the city. As one mathematician discovered, a zombie outbreak in a city of 500,000 people would take less than one week to eradicate all non-zombie life (Smith? 2009). Given startling, if still fictitious, statistics such as this, it’s hard not to imagine the city as the locus of the zombie apocalypse in the vein of Bladerunner or any number of books by Mike Davis. On the other hand, the city is something of a safe haven from zombies. The zombie attack in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead begins in rural Pennsylvania, and the characters in The Walking Dead comic book series take shelter from zombies in the sprawling metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia. This alternative understanding is perhaps more in step with the urban fetishism of some recent scholarship which views cities as the solution to the world’s problems (Glaeser 2011).

Ultimately, drawing on our previous post outlining our approach to zombies in the geoweb, it is apparent that there is some important connection between zombies and the city, though we are unsure of what exactly it may be. Nonetheless, the fact that zombies are highly concentrated in only a handful of places is reflective of the importance of cities to society and of those particular cities as command and control centers for the global economy.

References
Gleaser, Edward L. 2011. Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier. Penguin Press.

May, Jeff. 2010. Zombie geographies and the undead city. Social and Cultural Geography 11(3): 285-298.

Smith?, Robert. 2009. A report on the zombie outbreak of 2009: How mathematics can save us (no, really). Canadian Medical Association Journal 181(12): E297-E300.

Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part III: Zombies in the Academy

So you're probably wondering why we've resurrected the zombie series... we've got zombies on the brain (get it?! zombies?! resurrected?! on the brain?!). Well, we've just finished a chapter for a book called Zombies in the Academy which is scheduled to be coming out by the end of the year, is edited by Andrew Whelan, Chris Moore and Ruth Walker.

Our chapter entitled "Mapping Zombies: A Guide for Digital Pre-apocalyptic Analysis and Post-apocalyptic Survival" is relatively short (3000 words) but intellectually rich -- exactly the kind of material we like to put on FloatingSheep.

...and let's be honest, the past two weeks have been a bit slow with original posts -- almost congealing in a sticky pool of guest maps and Hungarian folk dancing.

THIS. STOPS. NOW.

The publisher and editors of Zombies in the Academy are willing to let us post some excerpts from the chapter in serialized (as opposed to cerealized form, which would actually be a nice project for our DIY readers), and somewhat adapted, form. We'll also be posting some maps and analysis that didn't end up making it into the submitted chapter. This post, however, sets the stage for the maps to come, as well as parts I and II of this series from a few weeks ago. So, gentle reader, enjoy.....

Mapping Zombies: A Guide for Digital Pre-apocalyptic Analysis and Post-apocalyptic Survival

by Mark Graham, Taylor Shelton and Matthew Zook

Zombies exist, though perhaps not in an entirely literal sense. But the existence, even the outright prevalence, of zombies in the collective social imaginary gives them a realness, even though a zombie apocalypse has yet to happen. The zombie trope exists as a means through which society can playfully, if somewhat grimly and gruesomely, discover the intricacies of the humanity’s relationship with nature and the socially constructed world that emerges from it.

In this chapter, we present an analysis of the prevalence of zombies and zombie-related terminology within the geographically grounded parts of cyberspace, known as the geoweb. Just as zombies provide a means to explore, imagine and reconstruct the world around us, so too do the socio-technical practices of the geoweb provide a means for better understanding human society. In short, looking for geo-coded references to zombies on the Internet provides insight on the memes, mechanisms and macabres of the modern world. Using a series of maps that visualize the virtual geographies of zombies, this chapter seeks to comprehend the ways in which both zombies and the geoweb are simultaneously reflective of and employed in producing new understandings of our world, albeit with a slightly more references to blood, gore and decapitation than is the norm for academic publications.

Just as the zombie metaphor has been deployed in recent years to explain everything from epidemiology to surviving graduate school, neoliberalism to colonialism, even the themes of life, death and resurrection in Christian thought. Needless to say, zombies are a flexible metaphor that can be adapted to explain any number of social phenomena. And while virtual, rather than metaphorical, the user-generated content of the geoweb represents a similarly flexible means of understanding and representing the world.

Because this content can be created by anyone connected to the internet, the geoweb is theoretically open to a myriad of representations of the world, creating palimpsests of meaning in these hybrid material/virtual spaces. Due to the mutual constitution of the material and virtual spaces in the geoweb, termed cyberscapes, these virtual representations are often reflective of elements from our material lived realities, albeit often in highly distorted ways.

To better illuminate the relationships between the material and virtual, this chapter uses the trope of the zombie as an entry point into debates about the Internet, the spatial diffusion of culture, and the hybridization of online and offline spaces. The undead offer a powerful lens for understanding the spatialities of the information age without the gory details of their material manifestations.

By mapping the virtual geographies, or ‘cyberscapes’, of zombies we are able to understand not only the digital and geographic contours of a hugely popular trope, but also the ways that those digital mappings of zombies are reflective of cultural augmentations encoded onto lived, material spaces. In addition, the cyberscapes emerging from the zombie trope itself offers a useful narrative for understanding the ways in which the publics of the Internet produce and reproduce objects of attention and bias and differentially augment lived realities.

Stay tuned for the maps....

Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part II: Brains or Salads?

The following is pulled from the cutting room floor of our upcoming chapter in the edited collection Zombies in the Academy: Living Death in Higher Education.

Following our first post on understanding the coming zombie apocalypse, we thought it pertinent to pose, and attempt to answer, another set of questions using the collective wisdom of the geoweb. While our earlier post sought to understand the spatial dynamics of the zombie apocalypse by finding where there were relative concentrations of references to "zombies" and "old people", we all know that a healthy supply of food is an important factor to consider when staking out places to hide from zombies.

We all know that zombies eat human brains. It's almost so widely accepted that I just wasted 15 seconds typing these two sentences. So what is the opposite of the human brain? The exact thing that zombies would not, under any circumstances, have any interest in consuming? The answer: salad. Why on earth would zombies want to eat salad? It makes no sense. Presuming this fact to be true, we can measure the relative concentrations of references to "brains" and "salads" in order to know where might be good places to avoid, and where might be good places to hide out in the case of the zombie apocalypse. Or, in a less dire scenario, where there might be lots of vegetarian restaurants to eat at next weekend.

References to Brains and Salads Worldwide

At the global scale, the distribution of brains and salads appears to heavily favor salads. This is especially good news for most of the United States, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and some pockets of Europe. Japan and China, however, appear to have much higher concentrations of brains, making them ripe for future zombie attacks. Who knew that all of that focus on education could end up being a bad thing? However, because continental Europe displays such variability, it is important to take a closer look at how brains and salads are distributed.

References to Brains and Salads in Europe

There appear to be a few patterns worth mentioning. First, coastal areas appear to be more secure given the prevalence of salads in coastal areas across most of Europe. While there is no clear cause for this, it seems plausible that it could be because coastal areas present more opportunity for fleeing from zombies, since water poses a considerable obstacle to the undead.

Second, there appears to be a clustering of brains in the Normandy region of France and in parts of Germany. While this contradicts our earlier finding that France and Germany are seemingly safe from the zombie apocalypse given the large number of old people, perhaps our shot in the dark about zombies masking their presence in these places was more founded in evidence than we suspected. Probably best to avoid anyone over the age of 25, just to be safe.

Given the smattering of brains across the continent, it appears that no place is entirely safe from the zombies. It's also worth noting that just because there are more salads than brains in a location does not mean there are no brains worth consuming. Just because zombies don't receive as much payoff in these areas doesn't mean they can't make their way there should all other tasty cerebral resources be exhausted.

And you thought Mad Cow disease was bad...

Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, Part I: Zombies or Old People?

The following is pulled from the cutting room floor of our upcoming chapter in the edited collection Zombies in the Academy: Living Death in Higher Education.

With all the recent talk of the zombie apocalypse, including our own forthcoming book chapter on a similar topic, we've been worried that the older and slightly disheveled population has been put at greater risk of personal injury due to their being confused for the undead [1]. Always eager to lend a helping hand, the Floatingsheep collective has turned to the infinite wisdom of the collective internet to map the relative prevalence of zombies and old people. It is our hope that this guide will help lower the level of zombie hunter on senior citizen violence that has plagued human kind for generations [2].

Zombies and Old People in Europe

Europe, for example, presents a quite clear picture of the spatial variation in the zombie and elderly populations. Word to the wise for our transatlantic zombie-hunting compatriots: hold your fire in France and Germany. Though we have no idea why there are so many old people, do make note that these are innocent citizens. Unless, however, the zombies have established a colony in these countries and have just effectively been able to hide their presence under the guise of retirement homes [3].

Do, however, be on the lookout in the low countries, as zombies appear to be rampant in the Netherlands as well as much of Belgium [4].

Zombies and Old People in the USA

When looking only at the United States, however, there is no such easily discernible spatial pattern. Though much of the eastern seaboard appears to be dominated by zombies, this corpse cluster is bookended by small concentrations of the merely elderly in both Washington, D.C. and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Given our earlier finding of Cape Cod as being the highest concentration of "fun" in the United States, we're not sure if this should be surprising. While many may not consider shuffleboard and iced tea to be the most fun things in the world, I believe we can find some general agreement on the fact that a zombie apocalypse is most certainly NOT fun. If it is a choice between spending a weekend with the undead or the old-fashioned, I think we're all going to pick grandma and grandpa.

Ultimately it appears as if zombie hunters in the United States will be forced to use their best judgment, rather than the tools of spatial visualization, to determine who needs to be taken out in the event of the zombie apocalypse.

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[1] No senior citizens were harmed in the making of this crass, terrible attempt at humor. Plus it was Mark's idea. We also thought "confused people" might be mistaken for zombies as well but despite our expectations -- and considerable evidence all around us in the material world -- searches for for references to the phrase "confused people" in the geoweb did not produce many results.

[2] And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the zombies of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of male and female zombies, were twelve thousand, For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the zombies of Ai and a good deal of the older and slower moving people as well. Book of Joshua, Chapter 8, versus 24-26

[3] The lack of cognitive abilities on the part of zombies does make this theory somewhat less plausible. But when you're talking about the zombie apocalypse, you can never be too careful.

[4] Or, perhaps if we had also done a search on "stoned people", the pattern would be different.

Cybergeographies of Peace and War

Which parts of the world are defined by peacefulness? And, maybe more importantly, which parts of the world are blanketed by references to war? To answer these questions we decided to do global-level keyword searches for the terms "war" and "peace."

The map below shows that these terms have very complicated yet compelling geographies. On the global scale there seems to be two stark war/peace divides. The first one appears to run roughly along the Prime Meridian, with most places in Europe to the east of the line having more references to war, and places to the west of it with more placemarks contain the word peace. In North America, we see a clear difference between Canada and its larger neighbour to the south. Very few parts of Canada are represented by more references to war than peace. The United States in contrast has a far more complicated geography of peace and war.



It is difficult to discern any coherent spatial patterns in the zoomed-in, North American map of war and peace. We do, however, see that Colorado and eastern Massachusetts are pretty peaceful places. (I'm sure we're going to get lots of comments on that one). Also, despite the abundance of references to war, almost everyone on the continent can escape close to somewhere else dominated by virtual references to peace.


We see quite different geographies of these terms in other parts of the world. Much of Asia is not characterised by references to either term. But, there are a few clear patterns. The Bangkok metropolitan region is covered by a cluster of references to war. The reasons are unclear as to why, but perhaps link back to our Thai findings in the analysis we conducted on the geographies of virtual references to zombies. OK, we're grasping at straws on this one.

Japan and Korea in contrast are defined by far more references to peace. However, note the line of war references along the South-North Korea border.

The European war/peace map is perhaps the most interesting in the set. The starkest difference is between mainland Europe (far more references to war) and Switzerland the British Isles (far more references to peace). This is something you would expect in Switzerland given its long history of neutrality, but why the British Isles home to Manchester City fans and other assorted football holligans?.

One explanation is that on much of the continent a lot of the references to war can probably be traced to frequent use of German in placemarks (the word "war" in German means "was" in English so is probably used quite often). For example, "Ich war ruhig, bis das Zombie nach Hause gekommen war und versuchte, mein Gehirn zu essen." or I was peaceful until the death-challenge individual came to my house for a snack.

Yet this fact only strengthen's Switzerland's highly peaceful cyberspaces. Despite the fact that German is a widely-used language in the country, there are still more virtual references to peace in most parts of Switzerland.

There are also some intriguing similiarities between more references to peace and the battlefields of WWI and II. Especially the differences between Northern France and Southern France.

In peace...

Braainss...Maapss....Braainss....Zommbiess

Much has been written about the living dead. We certainly know what they eat and the many ways in which they can be killed (or re-killed) is well documented. There are a number of theories about their origins (e.g. Dawn of the Dead tells us that "when there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth"). Yet one thing that we don't really know that much about is where they are. And when you think about it, that really is the most important question.

Documentary Photo from the Floating Sheep Archive

We've shown that mapping geo-content indexed by Google is a relatively accurate reflection of economic, social and political trends. But what about zombies? Can we map out zombie geographies using some of the techniques that we've developed?

We certainly can try, and the map below an initial attempt to geo-locate zombie demographics. As you can see, zombie references are littered throughout North America and Western Europe: a fact that can only lead us to speculate that zombies are clustered in those places. In Europe, Zombies references are curiously mostly found in the UK and Germany and are largely absent from much of the Mediterranean and almost all of Scandinavia.

Distribution of Zombie Placemarks Worldwide

An initial hypothesis was that zombies are cold blooded and therefore can't spend much time in the far northern reaches of the planet. However, according to the Zombie Research Society it is possible that zombies are able to produce a glycoprotein that can prevent their blood from freezing. In contrast World War Z clearly documents that zombies freeze if they go too far Noth.

So it is still very unclear why references to zombies (and thus the locations of the undead) are so clustered. One final theory could simply be that we are only capturing the very beginnings of a global epidemic and that the zombie infection will start to move across the globe in the same manner in which plague did in the 14th century.

There is one final important issue to bring up. If we examine the Google Trends data for the term "zombie" we see that in most of the countries in which there already seems to be a major zombie outbreak there is already a great deal of vigilance (i.e. people doing searches for zombie related topics).

Google Trends Data Indicating the Number of Zombie Related Searches

However, why are Thais, Swedes and Finns doing so many searches? We can only suspect that the outbreak has already spread to those places, but has not yet been picked up by Google Maps at this early stage. Equally worrying is the fact that Germany is absent from this list. Either most Germans are blissfully unaware of the zombie rampage sweeping through their country, or it is already too late and most Germans have already joined the legions of the undead.

Hmm...the latter hypothesis would explain A LOT about our last visit to Germany.