Cardio

Columbus in the movie Zombieland used a set of rules to keep him alive. Rule number one? Cardio. That’s one of many reasons he was still alive at the end of the movie.

Your heart and lungs are going to get a gnarly workout just from the fear and anxiety that the undead are walking the earth. You’ll need them to be in top shape if you’re going to be regularly running for your life. Even if you think you’re in safe territory, running for 30 minutes a day can help get you ready for the untiring nature of walkers.

Stretch Regularly

Tired, sore muscles can build up lactic acid, a natural byproduct of muscle metabolism. Stretching can help release this buildup for more energy and agility.

Stretching your neck is extremely important because while you’re outrunning walkers, you want to make sure none catch up or hit you from the sides. Stretching twice a day is a good start.

Keep Your Legs Healthy

Do not depend on your car. While good for long distances, eventually we’ll run out of fossil fuels and that car won’t be anything but a zombie food incubator. 

High ground is the safest place in a zombie apocalypse. Thankfully, walkers are horrible climbers. Getting there while out-running the undead up stairs or steep hillsides is going to take some serious leg power. Sneak some squats in to make your legs stronger than any walker’s. 

Work Out Those Arms

You’ll need your arms not only for climbing trees in an emergency, but also when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. Your “guns” are going to fuel the power behind baseball bats, axes, machetes, and crossbows, so keep them loaded.

Grab whatever weighted item you can and do some free weight exercises, like curls or presses. If all else fails, you can’t go wrong with pushups or a few yoga poses. 

Use Polyphasic Sleep

It should be no surprise that you won’t be able to get a full eight hours of sleep every night. That’s why you should use the polyphasic sleep method: multiple short periods of sleep throughout the day. This method has been tested in extreme situations and studies have shown that it prevents inevitable sleep deprivation. 

The U.S. Air Force recommends naps long enough to get at least 45 minutes of sleep at a time. Two-hour naps are optimal, but hey, it’s the apocalypse. Get in what you can when you can while fighting in World War Z.

Protect Your Eyes and Ears

Your hearing and vision are going to save your life more than once. The sooner you can see or hear walkers coming, the longer you have to live.

Wearing sunglasses while regularly exposed to bright light can protect your vision and keep it sharp. As for your ears, if you know you’re going to be around a lot of gunfire, ear plugs or other ear protection can make a huge difference in the long run. 

Protect Your Skin

Your skin is your body’s largest organ. If you’re going to be out and on the move, you should protect it. Since sunscreen will be in short supply, your best bet is to keep your skin covered with multiple layers.

It not only protects from sun exposure, but it minimizes your bite risk when those walking undead scumbags get too close.

Stay Hydrated

This cannot be stressed enough. You’re probably not even drinking enough water now, while the dead remain in the ground. You better change that bad habit before the apocalypse. Water is the body’s most important resource. Your body will run like crap without it.

The trick is to find clean sources of water, such as bottled water or uncontaminated streams. If The Walking Dead taught us anything, it’s that you should always check the well before drinking out of it. You might have an aquatic walker down there. 

Stay Up on Your Proteins, but Avoid Canned Meat

You need proteins to keep your muscle moving, but during a zombie outbreak, you’re probably the only available fresh source of protein. As meat typically spoils quickly, hunting is your main option, but even that isn’t easy. Other sources, such as peanut butter, are portable, lightweight, and last longer.

If you come across a stash of canned meat, make sure you have plenty of water available. Processed meats are often laden with sodium, which can dehydrate you.

Take Care of Your Feet

Do not neglect your feet—you’re going to be on them a lot. Something as small as a blister or an infected hangnail can become excruciating, sopractice proper foot care. Find a pair of comfortable, sturdy shoes that fit properly. If you can, find a pair of waterproof boots with a steel toe. They’re fashionable and functional as a weapon.

Give your feet time to dry out after wading through rivers or other wet terrain.

Change into dry socks twice a day to prevent fungus and other foot problems, which will slow you down turn you into zombie food. 

Get First Aid Training

While you’re going apocalypse warrior, you’re going to get a number of bruises and scratches. While these may seem small compared to the horde of flesh-hungry walkers on your trail, you want to handle them properly. Learning proper wound care and first aid can keep your small problems small so you can actively work on the big one: stopping the spread of the zombie virus and repopulating the earth.

If you’re trying to fix yourself after a bite, you know what you have to do. It’s the right thing. 

http://www.healthline.com/health-slideshow/zombie-apocalypse-survival-guide#1

I think that is is so dumb. 

All that shit does is spawn judgement, hate, and self criticism. 

Like “Who wore it better”? Come on. Just because two people happen to like the same outfit doesn’t mean that comparing them is necessary. What does it matter how they look as long as they like how they look?

If magazines can critique Angelina Jolie, Emma Stone, Johnny Depp, Beyonce, George Clooney, Josh Hutcherson, and Jennifer Lawrence who are some of the most stereotypically attractive people in our society, then it means that us little people don’t stand much of a chance, do we?

Do the world a favor and stop reading celebrity gossip and focus on loving yourself and everyone around you instead of judging.

Posted by JacobSloan on September 14, 2011

The Guardian discusses research on the powerful link between empathy and reading fiction — a novel is a singular experience in terms of being immersed in the interior life of another person, forcing us to undergo events through the protagonist’s eyes and placing us amongst their thoughts. Studies have pointed to a stunting of empathy in young adults over the past few decades — could one reason be the decline of reading of novels for pleasure?

Burying your head in a novel isn’t just a way to escape the world: psychologists are increasingly finding that reading can affect our personalities.

Researchers from the University at Buffalo gave 140 undergraduates passages from either Meyer’s Twilight or JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone to read. The study’s authors, Dr. Shira Gabriel and Ariana Young, then applied what they dubbed the Twilight/Harry Potter Narrative Collective Assimilation Scale, which saw the students asked questions designed to measure their identification with the worlds they had been reading about.

Published by the journal Psychological Science, the study found that participants who read the Harry Potter chapters self-identified as wizards, whereas participants who read the Twilight chapter self-identified as vampires. And “belonging” to these fictional communities actually provided the same mood and life satisfaction people get from affiliations with real-life groups.

The psychology of fiction is a small but growing area of research, according to Keith Oatley, a professor in the department of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto and a published novelist himself, who details the latest findings in the area in his online magazine, OnFiction.

One of his own studies, carried out in 2008, gave 166 participants either the Chekhov short story, The Lady with the Little Dog, or a version of the story rewritten in documentary form. The subjects’ personality traits and emotions were assessed before and after reading, with those who were given the Chekhov story in its unadulterated form found to have gone through greater changes in personality – empathizing with the characters and thus becoming a little more like them.

“I think the reason fiction but not non-fiction has the effect of improving empathy is because fiction is primarily about selves interacting with other selves in the social world,” said Oatley. “The subject matter of fiction is constantly about why she did this, or if that’s the case what should he do now, and so on. With fiction we enter into a world in which this way of thinking predominates. We can think about it in terms of the psychological concept of expertise. If I read fiction, this kind of social thinking is what I get better at. If I read genetics or astronomy, I get more expert at genetics or astronomy. In fiction, also, we are able to understand characters’ actions from their interior point of view, by entering into their situations and minds, rather than the more exterior view of them that we usually have. And it turns out that psychologically there is a big difference between these two points of view. We usually take the exterior view of others, but that’s too limited.”

The findings could, Oatley believes, have significant implications, particularly in a climate where arts funding is under threat. “It is the first empirical finding, so far as I know, to show a clear psychological effect of reading fiction,” he said. “It’s a result that shows that reading fiction improves understanding of others, and this has a very basic importance in society, not just in the general way making the world a better place by improving interpersonal understanding, but in specific areas such as politics, business, and education. In an era when high-school and university subjects are evaluated economically, our results do have economic implications.”

(Source: disinfo.com)