Z-Rated - Mitigating the threat

of Ataxic Neurodegenerative
Satiety Deficiency Syndrome:
A White Paper on Defending
the United Kingdom from ANSD
Carriers
Department of Homeland Security

Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State of Homeland Security

By Command of Her Majesty
September 2011

G.A.R 1968

Z1317

About the Authors

Roger Cooper is a freelance architectural designer working in
and around London, U.K. With a background in urban design
and landscape architecture, he is interested in the design of
multifunctional & sustainable architectures. Currently Roger is working
at Nick Hancock Design Studios, exploring sustainability with the use
of lightweight structures and prefabricated building components.
www.avaganda.org
Jordan J. Lloyd is a PhD architecture researcher at the University of
Sheffield, studying resilient systems and their applications to make
cities perform more efficiently. Other interests include UI design in
a soon-to-be-released beer tracking application for smartphones, a
design handbook on productivity, and rocking out to The Sword.
www.jordanjlloyd.me
________________________
With special thanks to Alice Ross and Nick Hancock for their time,
contributions and feedback.
www.nickhancock.com

Department of Homeland Security 2011

The text in this document and accompanying material for information and entertainment
purposes only. Just in case anyone actually thought the zombie apocalypse may actually
happen and (wrongly) concludes that this is a real report.

Foreword by the Assistant

to the Secretary of State of
Homeland Security

1
For more detailed
information on ANSD, see
the work of Dr. Steven C.
Schlozman MD, Assistant
Professor of Psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School is
the world leading authority
on the neuro-biology of the
recently deceased.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/
Zombie-Autopsies-SecretNotebooks-Apocalypse/
dp/0593067878/ref=sr_1_1
?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1
317369758&sr=1-1

The threat posed by Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome1 and its
carriers is a very real and grave situation for the citizens of the United Kingdom. HM
Government has worked with the Armed Forces, Security Forces, and our foremost
experts in contagion spread and control in an attempt to highlight and mitigate the
threat of ANSD in an epidemic that is very likely to wipe out the entire population within
less than a decade.
However, mitigation and national defence cannot come from government alone.
Mathematical modelling of the spread of the ANSD contagion is very likely to
overwhelm our emergency and law enforcement organisations very quickly, despite
our preparations. Therefore, it is recommended that ANSD mitigation becomes
an initiative at the heart of the Big Society. Were only going to make life safer for
everyone in this country if everyone plays their part - if defence in our communities is
driven from the bottom up.
Some people have been dismissive about this. The national media have
sensationalised the content of our recommendations, comparing ANSD humanoids
to zombies popularised by Hollywood, and implying that our recommendations are
impractical. The Department of Homeland Security has been working with the public
and private sectors to deliver a comprehensive set of commercially viable mitigation
measures, from home furnishing catalogues now containing approved home mitigation
furniture to consumer advertising raising awareness of the ANSD contagion.
The inspiring examples in these pages have achieved a level of awareness of a
contagion that is fatal to our livelihoods. Heeding the information contained within
will produce real, tangible benefits that not only will increase our survivability, but in
addition boost the national economy through informed consumer purchases.

Mjr. Henry West

Assistant to the Secretary of State of Homeland Security
3

Z-Rated:
Zombie-proof your own home
Were doomed.
2
WHEN ZOMBIES
ATTACK!: MATHEMATICAL
MODELLING OF AN
OUTBREAK OF ZOMBIE
INFECTION. Philip Munz,
Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad,
Robert J. Smith

3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_zombie_films

Mathematical models of a zombie contagion2 conclude that the spread of infection will
far exceed any organised resistance, unless aggressive counter tactics are employed.
In the United Kingdom (and indeed most countries in the world), citizens do not have
the benefit of the Second Amendment to carry firearms like our American cousins;
resulting in a much lower survival rate for untainted humans.
Popular media portrayals of the Zombie Apocalypse3 show frightened individuals
aimlessly heading for an unknown destination, accruing a gang of other frightened
individuals fighting their way out of unfamiliar environments, usually ending in military
intervention once most of the protagonists are (un)dead; with any survivors being
relocated to a centralised military run facility to re-populate the Earth when the
contagion has run its course.

Defence begins at home.

Our solution to the idea of a zombie apocalypse is not a one-off mobile fortress,
but rather a socio-economic strategy, culturally embedded in our social psyche in
the way we know best: the cult of consumerism. Rather than create a zombie-proof
house, it is instead proposed to zombie-proof your own home in the event of a
zombie apocalypse. The proposal approaches designing a zombie proof house from
a perspective which assumes a future of everyday (albeit unwanted) co-existence
with the undead. Z-Rated: Zombie-proof your own home projects a typical suburban
London based strategy for adapting ordinary Londoners homes for protection against
the marauding zombie threat.
If establishing the prime objective of the zombie-proof house is to increase ones
chances of survival, this approach has a number of pragmatic advantages:

Good defence is based on familiarity, and no place on Earth is better known than
your own home;
Strengthens communities;
The familiarity of the home will help frightened untainted citizens adjust to their
new-found unwanted co-existence with the undead;
Should our current communications infrastructure break down (i.e, phone,
Internet), any untainted close family, friends and neighbours will instinctively head
towards a trusted home;
With forward planning, neighbourhoods can become zombie-proof, creating a
safe, self-sufficient haven where life carries on relatively normally until military
intervention;
When military intervention arrives, zombie proof houses/neighbourhoods become
stage points for a military counter-strike over a decentralised network;
Creates a resilient system where the human survival rate becomes much higher
and is based on existing community clustering and co operation
4

Big Society in action.

4
http://www.communities.
gov.uk/communities/
bigsociety/

A government response to a zombie contagion considers a strategy without the options

of an antigen or vaccination. Integrated into Prime Minister David Camerons vision
for the Big Society4, a parliamentary response is prematurely distributed online, and
runs as the main headline in a popular free London newspaper. It describes a strategy
using Big Society rhetoric: building communities, decentralised power and localism. In
short, getting the proles to pay for everything themselves, in the perfect union of the
public and private sectors.
One quarter of the UKs housing stock are tightly knit terrace typologies, clustering
in cities and industrialised market towns, representing a significant part of the
population. Demand for housing in London and the south east of England is high and
growing each year. Z-Rated: Zombie-proof your own home locates itself within an
already present demand for new space in the city. The strategys biggest intervention
introduces a string of building regulation approved loft extensions that litter the roofscape of London, typically providing a extra bedroom and bathroom for an expanding
family or space for a new tenant, until such a time it is needed to provide genuine civil
defence. An opportunity exists using the combined flat roof-scape of loft extensions
to provide a secondary elevated street/battlement protected from the zombie threat
at ground level, allowing citizens to engage in a variety of mixed programmes from
leisure to food growing - at a comfortable distance away from the undead.
Like ordinary streets, the secondary street is envisaged to provide numerous
programmes including:

5
http://www.amazon.co.uk/
Continuous-ProductiveUrban-LandscapesAgriculture/dp/0750655437

Elevated walkway/battlement;
ANSDiesel & solar powered street flood lighting;
Zip wire as a low tech means of crossing the street quickly to other terraces;
Space to grow food (continuous productive urban landscapes)5;
Seating and street furniture;
Means of emergency escape and supply deliveries - helipad;
Elevated surveillance of immediate vicinity

When the crisis is too big for emergency services to handle, in order to provide the
volume of extensions that might be required nationwide, a public/private sector
initiative is initiated using army and sponsored RAF air transport facilities to rapidly
deploy prefabricated loft extension units produced at pre-existing commercial
production facilities. The same mechanism provides a quick extraction if the elevated
street is compromised: the lofts cleanly cut away from the existing house when airlifted
by air transport and redelivered to a designated safe zone.
A popular international home products retailer is a key commercial partner, being the
only company that has suitable worldwide production facilities, understanding of the
commercially marketable home, with a suitable track record of high quality design and
manufacturing.
5

Z-Rated: The Executive Summary

How many people can you fit
in your safe house?

As the proposal works on the principle of zombie-proofing your own home, the amount of
people varies between households.
When referring specifically to the loft extension/survival pod, the minimum is 8 persons, scaling
up indefinitely depending on the width of the roof and the demand from people. There is
nothing stopping an entire neighbourhood of people co-existing within a single pod should they
wish to.

How are you handling power,

potable water, and waste?

6
http://www.
conservationmagazine.
org/2009/01/themushroom-messiah/

Neighbourhoods would be initially reliant on the National Grid until such a time the system fails
due to lack of resources and maintenance. At this point, they would switch to a closed loop
isolated servicing infrastructure, based on a combination of conventional renewable sources
such as solar or wind power depending on the geography.
The remainder of electricity and heat is generated from ANSD organic material, and fed into a
decentralised neighbourhood power generation scheme. A renewable fuel based on mycofungal principles synthesises a bio-diesel called Zyconol,6 using ANSD organic material as a
substrate - thus directly aligning power generation through recycling a near limitless supply of
material (the undead).
Thankfully the UK is a wet place, with significant rainfall each year. Rainwater is harvested and
collected in large 4000 ltr. tanks, supplemented by condensers. The water is purified through
myco-remedial mats, using mycelium to filter rainwater for drinking use. All water consumption
is heavily rationed.
Waste is diverted to the same collection tanks as ANSD for processing into Zyconol.

How are you handling access

to your safe house?

As a localised strategy, there a number of access points with increasing securty depending on
the severity of the ANSD problem.
Should the houses be compromised, the survival pods and upper street level have single
access in and out and is incredibly difficult for zombies to open based on their limited motor
function.

How many days do you plan

to stay in your safe house,
and how much food and water
are you providing?

The scheme assumes a future co-existence with the undead, therefore is designed to be
operational 365 days a year, until the ANSD threat is eradicated or humanity extinguishes itself
in one last frenzy of desperate violence.
Assuming neighbourhoods will coordinate their defences with the Armed Forces, then the
programme areas on the upper street level/battlements and existing back gardens will provide
continuous vegetable and poultry farming all year round. Additional supplies are provided
by the HM Government and delivered via sponsored Royal Air Force Chinook or Blackhawk
helicopters via parachute drop.
Water rationing will be imposed and regulated where proximity of neighbourhoods cannot
access central water facilities. As stated, large water tanks will store collected rainwater.

How will you escape in the

event of a zombie intrusion?

The upper levels of the scheme are designed to be quickly extracted in the event of the
neighbourhoods being compromised. There is a single access in and out of the upper level
survival pods. Should air transport be delayed, the pods themselves could sustain occupants
for a period of time based on stockpiled water and food rationing.

How will you keep zombies

out of your safe house?

On street level, first line of defence come in the form of large makeshift barricades or cages
depending on the level of preparation. Rear gardens are trenched and filled with furniturecum-weaponised low tech defences.
Assuming the zombies make it past these, then the next level of defence is the front door and
access to the houses themselves. With preparation, doors and windows will be significantly
barricaded using furniture, specially bracketed as a product from the schemes commercial
partners.
Other defences include a reverse cycle on ground source heatpumps to literally melt zombies
on impact.
The upper levels represent maximum security with single access and visibility. The scheme
proposes numerous items that can be appropriated as weapons.