I must object to this. Utah should be #1 thank you very much. Obviously, the makers of this list have not read Uprising USA.
I must object to this. Utah should be #1 thank you very much. Obviously, the makers of this list have not read Uprising USA.
Maybe it’s the more moderate weather in Kentucky, George. We don’t get much snowfall or seriously cold weather, and we tend to be reasonably damp the rest of the year.
Backlash for “nuking SLC” 😉
PS–I know it wasn’t a “nuke”
Wouldn’t the cold weather help against the zombies…freezing and all that?
“We’ve got some interesting news.” The man in the white lab coat said.
I looked up from the receiver of my M-60 and put the oily rag down. “What is so interesting that you’d come all the way from London, still wearing your lab coat, when you could have sent a text?”
We were set up in a camp in the foot hills of some mountain I don’t know the name of in Germany. We were on the way to Switzerland and we wanted everything to look clean and shiny and presentable.
The Swiss represented the only nation to survive almost completely intact from the uprising. Their borders have been closed since everything started. Neutrality has been enforced by armed barricades. Two days ago the message came that the Swiss wanted to talk to me, and cordially invited me to come visit. This meant only one thing. They wanted to trade.
Switzerland is not completely self sustaining. They have resources and agriculture… but they don’t have enough agriculture for themselves, and they don’t have the mineral resources. These things, they have to import.
We on the other hand, have a lot of agriculture and mining resources… but we lack something critical ourselves. Man Power. Most of Europe was dead, undead, or fighting to not become either of the others.
The man in the white coat was tall and bearded. I remember his face, but not his name. I had given him all the research we had taken from Cheyenne Mountain about the zombies. “I found it,” he said.
“You found what, exactly?”
“The 3rd strain.”
“Yes, we know there is a third strain… three bacterial and one viral… the Zombie Plague.”
“Right, but we didn’t know what the 3rd Strain did.” The doctor wound himself up into lecture mode to tell me what I had broken into Cheyenne Mountain to get. I didn’t stop him. “The first Strain converts proteins into sugars. Feeding tissues vital energy… when the zombie is stressed, the production goes into overdrive, giving the zombie that corpselike appearance even if the heart never stopped beating. The second strain of bacteria produces oxygen as a bi product, which is why zombies can’t drown. They don’t need to breath. The virus causes the brain damage that basically wipes a subjects mind of human behavior.”
I was now impatient. “Yes, yes, we knew all of this… cut to the chase.”
“Well, in all the studies, we could never find what the third strain did.”
“And.”
“Well the reason was because we never observed the strain under the right conditions.” The doctor said with a voice that sounded as if that response would answer all the questions.
I tapped the machinegun with a .308 cartridges and raised an eyebrow.
“Well, we had taken a tissue sample and somehow it was put in the freezer.”
“So?”
“That’s what activate the 3rd Strain!”
“Doctor… please…. for the love of all that is holy… I’m about to shoot you in the knees.”
“Cold was the right condition!”
April was shaking her head. I pulled out my STI 10mm, “Tell me, right now… or I’m going to shoot you… What does the 3rd Strain do?”
“When they get cold, they produce Threitol and Sorbitol.”
I put my gun down and sat back. “Ah… so when they get cold they produce alcohols… which act as an anti-freeze.”
“Precisely,” the doctor said. “This protects cellular walls in freezing temperatures.”
I nodded, grasping this information. “Which is why zombies can freeze in the winter, and thaw out and revive in the spring… just like that beetle does.”
The doctor looked puzzled. “Beetle?”
It was now my turn to lecture the doctor. “In Alaska there is a beetle that can freeze solid, but every spring when it warms up they revive and go about their little lives.”
“Remarkable. I didn’t know that.”
I looked at him. “You didn’t know that? I thought everyone did. Hmm.”
“Well, the zombie plague has the same effect on the human body.” He paused. “If this research could be put to use… we could prevent injuries from frostbite with an inoculation.”
“That is the exact type of thinking that created the zombie plague in the first place. Doctor, listen to be carefully. What I want from you is a way to kill the zombies… Agent X works after awhile but in the mean time it makes the zombies a hundred times more dangerous until they finally die. Agent 11 and 12 works too slowly. We need something that works fast, without turning them into even worse monsters. That is the only research I want you to be doing. If you can’t do that, you can help someplace else, like in one of the refineries, power plants, or fishing. You’re choice. Now get out of my sight before I become irritated.”
The doctor looked shocked and turned and walked out of the tent.
“A little harsh, don’t you think?” April said quietly as she pulled a bore-snake through her ACR.
“Maybe.” I stood up and walked to the tent flap and held it open. The doctor was stomping across the field, hands in fists. I picked up the mic from my lapel. “Caroline, do you see the man in the white lab coat walking west?”
After a second, “Yes, my Ogre, I see him.”
“Tell him I said thank you and given him some food rations… make sure he has everything he needs.”
“Roger that.” Caroline said.
I turned my attention to the vehicles in the field. Men were scrubbing them with soap and water, cleaning off dried blood and mud. Even my Land Rover looked good now.
I looked back at April, she looked great but her uniform looked dusty from the long day of fighting through German towns. I looked down at myself. I looked about the same.
“Do we have any clean clothes at all?”
“Just some BDU’s” She said, looking up at me.
“I think we need to go shopping. We need to look presentable when we go see the Swiss.”
April grinned, “There was a nice store in Engen.”
“Take the Girls and a team and see what you can find.”
How do we get signed copies of all four?
Oh and Ogre ever get a chance to read “Recon of Worlds” on Amazon Kindle? Just asking cause I can’t stand not knowing!!!
I’ll look into the Recon of Worlds…
I’ll do a Box set once my four are done.
Nice Uprising Europe teaser! Good work, George. I ordered my t-shirt yesterday!
FORTH?!! Alaska is fricken FORTH?
I read the comments about the map, the map maker based it on states with the highest number of gun sales in 2010. Screw that. we only have 600,000 people. I’m 100% sure there’s enough guns in Alaska to arm every man, woman and child with at least two.
On top of that, there’s only ONE ROAD into or out of Alaska. Heck, blow up two bridges and Anchorage would be cut off from the rest of the state. We pump oil, all the gas, diesel and JP used in-state is refined in state. All our electricity is generated in state, we’re not connected to any grid that runs outside Alaska.
All of that and Kentucky is #1 in zombie survival. Well, when the real zombies come, I’ll be glad to live here.
You will like Uprising USA then. Alaska becomes the R.O.A. Republic of Alaska.
Now you’ve given me a reason to read your book.
R.O.A. About fricken time!
Oh, and it’s a frog we have that can freeze during the winter and come back to life in the spring.
National Geographic showed a beetle. Frog too? Interesting… but I used the biology base the bug had. Don’t know anything about the frog.
Yeah, a frog is a step closer to people than a beetle is.
Don’t worry Utah is #1. They use NICS data to proxy firearms in the state, BUT Kentucky runs NICS checks on CCW holders once a month, grossly inflating the NICS reports.
Ya but in the R.O.A. SaraP is the dictator in cheif, got to be a back story and fight there…you did not paint a very comfortable picture of the soccor mom in the Uprising USA story Og.
Ugh. Never mind my previous comment if you put that stupid $%*&* in charge again.
She gets something special before the series ends…
Excellent!
WTF?! West Virginia is #41?! That’s ridiculous! Does NOT compute!
I’m trying to figure out how Arizona is at #25.
As usual, SC ranks low. So we’re unemployed, dumb and can’t survive zombies. Yay us!
Wyoming at # 40? 40? You’ve got to be joking. Casper would most likely fall, and maybe Cheyenne, but the rest of the state? No way. Infectable population centers would be few and far between. The maps base data is all wrong.
Utah at number 2? Maybe. But the Wasatch Front would be a friggin’ WAR ZONE. If we’re talking state wide data, this map is, pardon the language, all fucked up.
AHHHH taunting me with uprising I don’t have in my hand! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
UK is coming very soon…
P.S I loved Uprising USA if you didn’t grasp that 😀