Washington: In the unlikely event of the zombie apocalypse, it would take less than two months for the walking dead to take control of the US city Chicago, according to a new study.
Using a computational model developed to study the spread of diseases such as MRSA and Ebola, scientists at Argonne National Laboratory in the US found that it would take only 60 days for two million Chicagoans to be zombified.
The project by Argonne researcher Chick Macal and his team tested their agent-based modelling simulations on a Halloween-themed slice of epidemiology, following the spread of a zombie virus and testing out "interventions" that could save humanity.
While the worst-case scenario found little resistance against the walking dead, strategies such as training populations to kill zombies or communications from city officials that tell people how to avoid them provided some more optimistic outcomes. "This offers great promise for countering the zombie apocalypse in Chicago," said Macal.
The playful experiment draws attention to the power of the group's city model, dubbed ChiSIM, for strategising during more realistic public health crises, researchers said. ChiSIM utilises a computational method called agent-based
modelling, which can simulate the complex behaviour of millions of individual "agents" representing, in this case, Chicago's 3 million citizens, they said.
The model also represents more than 2 million locations in the city, and simulates the movement of Chicagoans through that virtual map, encountering each other and - occasionally - transmitting disease. "The results can help officials and policymakers address ongoing crises and prepare for potential ones," researchers said.
For example, the research team conducts simulations of the flu or Ebola in case these diseases reach Chicago or surrounding counties.
