Originally published May 29, 2024 on gohavok.com.
When people warned us about the apocalypse, they never mentioned injuries. And I’m not talking about a zombie bite or breaking your legs or having a loose street sign fall and impale you while you’re trying to fish a Snickers bar out from the bottom of a drain… rest in peace, Donny. No, I’m talking about hernias, meniscus tears, and pinched nerves.
Welcome to the May issue of Apocalypse How, everyone’s favorite zombie apocalypse DIY magazine created by yours truly, Caleb A. Robinson, PhD. The sun is out, flowers are blooming between the cracks in the concrete, and it’s time to get outside and sprint from one hiding place to the next.
Unless you’re injured.
Back before this madness, if you needed to get fixed up, you could just pop by a chiropractor or slide in to see a surgeon, assuming you had insurance, a concept we can all be very grateful has since fallen out of popularity. If you’re too young to remember, the industry’s decline in favor is thanks to numerous companies trying to avoid life insurance payouts to families whose loved ones had turned into zombies. They claimed that being “undead” meant “kind of still living” and that they were, therefore, off the hook.
But anyway, now chiropractors are just friends lifting you up from behind and giving you a good shake. Surgeons are whoever is near enough to amputate a bite-infected limb. So, what happens when you’re in your mid-thirties and you sprint up a hill to get away from a zombie—that looks remarkably like your middle-school girlfriend—and you hear your knee pop?
I’m here to provide some practical, experience-based solutions to your problems. First, you turn around and kill that zombie. She’s not Natalie who couldn’t stomach dissecting a frog brain in seventh-grade biology. She’s a zombie who has no problem stomaching your dissected human brain.
Once she’s dead, all you have to remember is that old injury care acronym from the Before Times: RICE—rest, ice, compress, and elevate. Well, that’s what it used to stand for. I’ve adapted it for contemporary use:
Run through the pain.
It’s going to hurt a lot.
Cry about it later.
Everyone wants to eat you; we don’t have time for a pity party.
RICE. It’s that easy!
After you get to a safe place and your knee is swollen to the size of a watermelon—remember those? —you have a few options for long-term care.
The simplest option is just to limp for the rest of your life, and potentially have your knee give out right when you’re reaching for the ladder leading to your shelter. Next thing you know, you’re at the bottom of a zombie dogpile. You were so close.
On the plus side, limping might make you look more like a zombie and therefore help you blend in. One of my colleagues researched this tactic extensively, and I can confirm that he looks an awful lot like a zombie. Actually, I can’t be sure he isn’t; his moans and groans are nearly impossible to understand from the other side of the moat.
Your next option is to scavenge the nearest orthopedic hospital for a brace that fits and hope that makes up for the cons of the first option. Unfortunately, most of these have been stolen and repurposed for armor by now, so good luck. If you do find one, please bring it to me at 1812 Washington Avenue. For research purposes, of course.
This next choice is for people who want a speedier solution. Back when scavenging was still called “looting,” people stole lots of useless stuff like money, gold, and shotgun shells—see my April article entitled, “No One Alive Knows How to Fix These Things.” Lucky for us, the looters left behind the useful stuff like Chapstick and bikes. And since you can’t ride Chapstick, we’re going to talk about bikes. Obviously, the tires will need to be patched from time to time, but that’s not too hard, and there’s a surprising number of bike tires abandoned in garages… attached to bikes the owners promised to use but never got around to. This is a great solution as long as you never need to go into the forest, over sandy landscapes, through anywhere with broken glass, across a river, or up a steep hill. Just stick to perfectly flat, paved, clean roads without roadblocks and you should be just fine.
The last and probably best option is the old-fashioned peg leg. With this solution, you know exactly what your leg is capable of without having to worry about instability or pesky ligaments and cartilage. Better yet, your peg leg makes an excellent weapon if you opt for the spiked model. For the cherry on top, eye patches are easy to make. Sadly, parrots are hard to come by, and they’re dangerously loud, so don’t get your hopes too high for completing the look.
The only disadvantage with the peg leg is that to attach it you first need to saw off your leg above the joint. Here’s a tip: it’s easier if you get a friend to help. I assisted another colleague of mine with this operation several years ago, and her screams only occasionally haunt my dreams.
Maybe there were some advantages to insurance after all.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this month’s issue. In June we’ll be talking about how to turn broken shotguns into crutches. Good luck out there and remember to reach out if you find any good braces for a six-foot-tall male. My research is still incomplete without it, so your donation would be much appreciated. It’s for everyone’s good, really.
——Caleb A. Robinson, PhD (physically hindered dude)
