How Long Would Food, Fuel and Ammo Last in the Zombie Apocalypse?
October 29, 2012 in Editorial
At the end is a table. The rest of the article is our logic and workings out. If there are zombies outside now, head straight to the table. Or a rifle. Actually, rifle.
“Gather supplies. Kill Zombies. Repeat.” This is our Zombie Defence Plan at Centives. But we got to wondering just long we could go on gathering food, fuel and ammo before supplies ran out.
First, we looked at fuel. After the apocalypse, chances are petrol will no longer be delivered to gas stations. The idea is generally to drive around emptying what is left of their reserves, before moving on to the next station. How long do supplies last after deliveries stop?
Well, in March 2012 UK petrol delivery drivers went on strike. It turned out that in a fit of panic buying, supplies of fuel ran out in just 2 days; although if they had not panicked, supplies should have lasted about double that time.
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No deliveries, panic buying:
About 2 days of fuel. No deliveries, not panic buying: About 4 days of fuel. |
But this was without mass-apocalypse casualties reducing demand. The fewer people survive, the more fuel per person there is. If 10% of people are still around after the global catastrophe, there is enough fuel for 40 days of normal usage. 1% survival rate; 400 days usage, and so on. If you think a 1% survivor rate is rather low, then keep in mind that this would put the world population at 70 million, which is greater than what the Roman Empire had. We suspect most of us have a far smaller survival rate in mind when we think ‘apocalypse’.
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Petrol usage may decrease if car is surrounded by zombies. |
Note however, that we’re assuming that people use their cars in much the same way as they would do pre-apocalypse. People may use vehicles less, but equally they may start using generators, so we believe that consumption rates stay reasonably constant. This is, however, up for debate.
Well we have an estimate of fuel supplies, but presumably food would run out first?
This surprised us, but no.
We have only looked at the warehouses that supply supermarkets, not shop shelves, as warehouses are where most of the food really is. And we believe that there are warehouse supplies of 8.25 days’ worth of foods that are non-perishable. At a 1% survival rate, that is 825 days or a bit over 2 years of food available.
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There are warehouse reservesof 13.5 days of ‘slow moving groceries’, 9.5 days of ‘fast moving groceries’ and 9.5 days of ‘frozen groceries’
Around 75% of total grocery stocks is ‘slow’ About 2/3 of all groceries are non-perishable |
Which is considerably longer than the amount of time our fuel supplies would last.
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Although alternative means of travel could be explored. |
Now as any zombie-hunter knows, food and fuel only get you so far. You may be able to run faster than a braindead shuffler, but eventually you’ll need to take them out and by far the best way to do so is a shot to the head.
Actual ease of access to weapons varies hugely, so we’re only looking at world averages. The World Bank suggests a figure of around 500 million small arms available worldwide. Bearing in mind a global population of 7 billion, this means that your chance of having a weapon is 1 in 14; odds that we don’t really like the sound of. Happily, this figure changes dramatically at a 1% survival rate, where there are around 7 firearms per survivor.
A bigger concern is likely to be ammunition:
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Annual ammunition production:
Active military shelf life: Global stock: 24 billion rounds Bullets per person: 3.41 |
But bear in mind that unlike food and fuel, ammunition levels don’t exactly improve with lower population survival. At a 0.1% survival rate, you may have 3,410 rounds per survivor but there are still only 3.41 bullets per zombie. This works out to survivors needing to hit zombies in the head 29.3% of the time or you’ll run out of bullets before you run out of undead.
To summarise, at current consumption levels, fuel runs out about twice as quickly as food, and although weapons are reasonably available on a worldwide average, this depends on your location. A survivor’s biggest problem, unless you’re an excellent shot, is likely to be ammunition.
Percentage of Survivors |
Post Apocalypse World Population |
Fuel per Survivor |
Food per Survivor |
Firearms per Survivor |
Rounds of Ammunition per Survivor |
Rounds of Ammunition per Zombie* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100% | 7,047,000,000 | 4 days | 8.25 days | 0.071 | 3.41 | N/A |
| 25% | 1,761,750,000 | 16 days | 33 days | 0.284 | 13.6 | 4.54 |
| 10% | 704,700,000 | 40 days | 82.5 days | 0.71 | 34.1 | 3.78 |
| 1% | 70,470,000 | 400 days | 825 days | 7.1 | 340.6 | 3.44 |
| 0.1% | 7,047,000 | 11 years | 23 years | 71 | 3,410 | 3.41 |
| 0.01% | 704,700 | 110 years | 226 years | 710 | 34,100 | 3.41 |
| 0.001% | 70,470 | 1,096 years | 2,259 years | 7,100 | 341,000 | 3.41 |
| 0.0001% | 7,047 | 11,000 years | 22,600 years | 71,000 | 3.41 million | 3.41 |
| 0.00001% | 705 | 110,000 years | 226,000 years | 710,000 | 34.1 million | 3.41 |
| 0.000001% | 70 | 1.1 million years | 2.6 million years | 7 million | 341 million | 3.41 |
*Bear in mind, ‘Rounds of Ammunition per Zombie’; that’s per zombie. Not per survivor. You don’t have 3.41 shots per zombie, worldwide there are 3.41 bullets for every zombie.
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If you here about an outbreak but its not near you use most of your money to buy gas, food, guns, ammo, and other stuff and save you credit card to buy gas even though money has no worth.
Chernobyl would not happen. The safe guards that are on all power plants in this country would have it safely burn itself out. Maybe one or two out of the whole united states would go bad, and that would be with some very odd circumstances. Like people trying to take the easy way out, nuclear style. Otherwise, the plants can remain operational for up to 500 days because of the fuel, though it would most likely be for much less time because of the safeties that are embedded. Not to say the power grid would remain functional.
What about biofuel – this can be made from cooking oil. Or alternate transportation – the bicycle? Anyway before you the survivor worry about the shortage of fuel, the unmanned unmaintained nuclear power plants will be a major problem when they go Chernobyl and you’ll have your ammo rate halved fended off two headed mutant zombies!
well i have about 12000 .22 rounds in my house and 1500 rounds for 12 gauge and like 40 of 222 so yer should be ok for a day or two
That amount of .22 would be well enough, way more than you would use before you need to move and leave some it behind or get raided!
Why can’t we just use zombies as biofuel?
love the humor.
yeah maby its like sun flower fuel
If there is an outbreak but its not near your but you heard it use all you money to buy gas, guns, ammo, and food.
Maybe the armies of the world would use nuclear bombs to wipe out the biggest towns… so the ammo may be sufficient for the rest of the zombies
i hope its not a town that I’m in. Though I’m sure the authorities would not hesitate to nuke an infected town with out any regard for the numbers of non-affected.
Yay, radioactive zombies! Chemical gas weapons may be more effective (as in World War Z book) by killing prospective zombies before they are infected.
Depending on environmental conditions, gasoline can degrade to the point of uselessness in as little as 3 months. So the chances of finding any usable gas after a year would be nearly zero. Diesel would last longer, but the fact remains; there would be no usable fuel after a couple years without refining it yourself.
Bullshit. Fuel would be fine for years as long as it wasn’t contaminated.
Actually, gasoline has a shelf life of 3-6 months. Ethanol draws in moisture, which then degrades the fuel. Ultra low sulfur diesel is also said to have a shelf life of 3-6 months, and a study by the University of Idaho found that low sulfur diesel degrades as much as 26% in the first month. Stabilizers can increase the shelf life of both fuels to perhaps a year or two. In theory, both can last longer in some situations, but they have a listed shelf life for a reason. Ignoring that when planning for the worst does not seem like a very sound strategy.
Buy a pussy tesla then.
An electric car would still need a power plant to generate. Hopefully there is enough solar around or the tesla’s gonna be junk before the gas powered vehicles. Biodiesel is the best bet. Old diesel engine with cooking oil or something similar. Only worry is the oil freezing in cold weather.
could i power it off of smirnoff?
Of course supply centres – especially gas stations – are likely to be zombification hotspots during the panic, so that may preserve more supplies than might otherwise be expected. Ammo, on the other hand, is likely to be wasted at horrendous rates during the panic. Time I learned to make crossbows and swords, I think.
build a C02 powered lawn dart gun. you could muzzle load it and make it out of pvc.
An important variable has been left out of this analysis – how fast does it spread? The calculations above assume that the human population is zombified instantaneously – if 1% of the population survive they get to use 100 times their share of supplies. But that’s not how epidemics work.
It’s unlikely that 99% of the population would be zombified instantly, or even in a single day. The infection/curse/whatever is likely to start in one or more localised areas and then spread, increasingly rapidly until it hits saturation point and then more slowly as the pool of unaffected humans dwindles. Standard S-curve stuff. Supplies will be used up in a reverse S-curve – at normal rates until the problem is widely known, then quickly until most people have succumbed to zombification. How long the die-hards can expect to have supplies, depends on how much gets used up during the panic.
Remember to always double-tap zombies in the head.