Halloween is just around the corner. Zombie-fan favorite The Walking Dead just returned to AMC for its seventh season in a mind-blowing way. With that, many of our thoughts are turning to zombies. We ask ourselves, “How would I manage to survive in the event of a zombie apocalypse?”
According to a new — and deadly serious — study from CareerBuilder, your odds of survival largely depend on where you live.
So, when the dead inevitably rise in a quest to eat our flesh, would your city prevail or would it be overrun by hungry zombies? CareerBuilder answered this question with a study that gauges survival rates based on concentration of occupational skills and industries.
The research is comprised of a weighted index ranking the 53 largest U.S. metropolitan areas (with more than 1 million residents). A standard, flesh-eating virus transmitted via biting or contact with infected blood is assumed. The index is scored on eight different factors in four categories:
- Ability to defend against the virus
- Ability to contain the virus
- Ability to find a cure
- Ability to outlast the epidemic with an ample food supply
Check out the following chart to see where your city would rank in winning the battle against the living dead: (Sorry, New York.)
The index will come in handy at the office: In an earlier CareerBuilder study, 36 percent of workers said if they were a zombie they’d eat their co-workers.
In The Market For A Haunted House?
It’s a niche market to say the least, but there are many haunted homes for sale right now, including several with big price reductions and very motivated sellers. Here’s just a sampling of what’s currently available:
In Michigan, a former mental asylum that was so big it had its own zip code, bakery, and fire department is for sale at $1.5 million. The Detroit area asylum was part of Eloise, a complex of 76 buildings spread over 902 acres. Stories of ghosts, screaming former patients, and jars of human body parts have surrounded the complex for years.
In New York, a beautiful and extensively remodeled 5,000-square-foot home with five bedrooms and three baths on the water in Long Island is available. The storied house from the “Amityville Horror” movies is back on the market and priced to sell for $850,000, down from the $1.15 million dollar asking price just a few years earlier.
In Pennsylvania, proof that wealth does not bring happiness is shown by the tragedies experienced by A.B. Widener who built the 110-room Lynnewood Hall. When he invested with J.P. Morgan in the White Star Line, little did Widener know that his son and grandson would die on the maiden voyage of its flagship, Titanic. Consumed with guilt and grief, A.B. Widener died in his grand mansion three years after the sinking. It is said that the three Widener ghosts are still its caretakers, its only residents and legacy as the world’s largest ghost house. The mansion was listed at $20 million in 2014 and dropped to $16.5 million in 2015.
Many people tell of seeing Santa Claus in the middle of the night, but for those who drive U.S. Route 93 through the sweltering Mojave Desert between Phoenix and Las Vegas, the abandoned town of Santa Claus, AZ surely sends a creepy shiver down their spines. Most recently for sale in the 1980s at $95,000, all that remains today are tattered skeletons of buildings, the weathered Santa Claus sign, and the sad remnants of the children’s Christmas train now covered with graffiti.
None of the above terrifying enough for your taste? Visit TopTenRealEstateDeals.com for all Top 10 Haunted Houses, Ghost Towns and Insane Asylums for sale.