Chapter 5: Surveillance and Raspberry Pi equips you to monitor your undead neighbors from a distance. “Project 7: Monitor Zombies with a USB Webcam” shows you how to set up a webcam and analyze the video for movement detection in Python. “Project 8: A Wireless Zombie Surveillance System” helps you make your surveillance system more practical by extending your observing range with a low-cost Wi-Fi webcam.

Chapter 6: Add Remote Access and Detect Open Doors helps you keep the zombies out of your base. “Project 9: Remote Door Lock” shows you how to set up a door with an electro-mechanical door latch so that you can unlock it remotely using a wireless option, and “Project 10: Door Sensor” will notify you when someone (or something) opens your door.

Chapter 7: Environmental Monitoring contains projects to protect you against other postapocalyptic hazards, because zombies aren’t the only things you have to worry about when you’re trying to survive. “Project 11: Quiet Fire Alarm” shows you how to hack a loud smoke detector into a more discreet alarm that’s integrated with Arduino. Then, you can use “Project 12: Temperature Alarm” to monitor temperatures and set alarms to avoid burst pipes or other disasters.

Chapter 8: Building a Control Center for Your Base lets you take all the sensor feedback, detection systems, and so on from previous projects and monitor everything on one screen. In “Project 13: A Raspberry Pi Control Center,” an Arduino monitors for door and zombie movement, temperature changes, and battery warnings, while the Raspberry Pi displays a status window. You can also add wireless communication between the Raspberry Pi and Arduino on the Control Center by following the instructions for “Project 14: Going Wireless with Bluetooth.” This way, you’ll put more distance between you and the dangers you’re monitoring.

Chapter 9: Zombie Distractors shows you how to draw zombies’ attention away from you so you can escape. “Project 15: Arduino Flash Distractor” uses scavenged disposable camera flashes to distract zombies, and “Project 16: Arduino Movement and Sound Distractor” does the same job with the sounder from a smoke alarm and a servo motor waving a flag.

Chapter 10: Communicating with Other Survivors shows you how to find other humans in the zombie-ridden wasteland that used to be your town. Use “Project 17: A Raspberry Pi Radio Transmitter Beacon” to attract fellow survivors with an FM transmitter, hack a low-cost FM radio to scan the air waves for messages from fellow survivors with “Project 18: Arduino FM Radio Frequency Hopper,” and flash out messages to would-be recruits to your survivors group (or warn people away) with “Project 19: Arduino Morse Code Beacon.”

Chapter 11: Haptic Communication is an essential build if you want to coordinate a group of survivors on a supply run, and it’s probably the coolest project in the book. “Project 20: Silent Haptic Communication with Arduino” allow you to press a button on one device and have the other device vibrate (and vice-versa). The project uses an Arduino, low cost 2.4GHz RF modules, and a vibration motor.

Now that you’ve seen an overview of the projects that will save you from the zombies, you might like to order some parts. Each project includes a parts list specific to that build, including quantities, and Appendix A provides details of where you can buy all the parts listed for each project in the book.

RESOURCES TO DOWNLOAD BEFORE THE ZOMBIES RISE

The book has its own web page at http://www.nostarch.com/zombies/, where you will find further information about the book including errata and links to the source code used in the project. That code is all available on GitHub at https://github.com/simonmonk/zombies/.

Before the apocalypse strikes, be sure to visit both URLs, download all necessary files for the projects, save them to a flash drive, and keep that flash drive in your go bag. The Internet will very likely cease to exist during the apocalypse, whether because everyone at your ISP becomes a zombie or because the electrical grid itself collapses, but if you download these files ahead of time, you’ll be one step closer to outlasting the undead.

With your files loaded and ready, let’s look at what you can expect to happen during the apocalypse.

1

APOCALYPSE BASICS

Before you start working on the zombie apocalypse survival projects in this book, I want to show you exactly what kind of undead you’ll be dealing with and share some tips about how to survive in a zombie-infested world.

Of course, you’ll need parts to make your projects. Fortunately, one of the few benefits of a postapocalyptic world is that there’s plenty of scrap material to scavenge! So in this chapter, I also include a guide to finding the parts you’ll need.

But first, let’s look at the background of zombies.

ZOMBIES

I find that people tend to consider themselves either zombie lovers or zombieindifferent. Since you’re reading this book, there is a good chance you’re a zombie lover like me.

The appeal of zombies lies both with the zombies themselves and in the postapocalyptic scenario that the survivors face. You could likely defeat a single, slow zombie quite easily: a baseball bat to the head should do the trick nicely. But in numbers, zombies become a serious threat.

If you look up “Zombie” in Wikipedia, you’ll find two entries: “Zombie (fictional)” and, rather worryingly, just “Zombie.” The nonfictional zombie is, according to Haitian folklore, a corpse that can be raised by magic to do its master’s bidding. These folklore zombies are never going to be present in significant numbers to cause the sort of apocalypse portrayed in popular culture. For a situation where most of the human race has died or been turned into a zombie, we need some fictional zombies.

TYPES OF ZOMBIES

Fictional zombies have roots in 19th-century fiction, with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but they became prominent in modern times through movies such as Night of the Living Dead (Figure 1-1).

Figure 1-1: Zombies from Night of the Living Dead

The zombies depicted in Night of the Living Dead are classic slow zombies. Slow zombies shuffle around as if in a daze, searching for human flesh to eat. Interestingly, the zombies in this movie are able to use tools, breaking windows with rocks and bashing doors with hefty sticks. Most zombies lose this skill in later film and TV depictions. The portrayal of slow zombies may have reached its cultural zenith with the hit TV show The Walking Dead.

Slow zombies are the most common fictional zombies, and this book focuses on the threats they pose. There are, however, many other types of zombies, as different filmmakers have sought to put their own imprint on the concept. Table 1-1 lists some of the most important modern zombie portrayals along with some features of each type of zombie.

Table 1-1: FICTIONAL ZOMBIE VARIETIES

All zombie types have a number of factors in common. Chief among these is a desire for human flesh. Another, almost universal, truth is that the only sure way to kill a zombie is severe head trauma. Decapitation is highly effective.

ARE ZOMBIES REALLY DEAD?

One important question is whether a person has to be dead in order to qualify as a zombie. In some films, such as World War Z, the zombies are not dead but rather living humans who have been mentally altered by a virus or other parasite. Some would argue that such creatures are, strictly speaking, not zombies at all.