How Would Your City Do in a Zombie Apocalypse? This Interactive Map Will Show You

There’s a lot to consider when moving: the neighborhood, the schools, how well you’d fare if the dead rise…

If you’re curious to see how your region of the country would do once the zombies arrive, two Cornell University grad students have created an interactive map that charts the progress of an infection.

It’s called Zombie-Town USA, and it’s as straightforward as it is addictive. You simply select an area of the map to place the first zombie, and watch it all play out. You can even adjust variables that would effect the rate of the infection, including how fast the zombies can move, and how often a bite leads to death. It’s all very scientific.

The project also uses the most up-to-date census data, down to individual city blocks, to get a truly realistic simulation of a zombie epidemic. Cornell grad students don’t mess around.

If you’d like to know more about the algorithms behind the interactive map, the two students, Alexander Alemi and Matthew Bierbaum, have authored a paper on the simulation with professors Christopher Myers and James Sethna.