Only Dead on the Inside

A Parent's Guide to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

James Breakwell

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786493439
• Print ISBN:
  9781786493422

Raising kids can sometimes feel like society has ended, so why not go one further, and actually plan for it?

From James Breakwell, who BuzzFeed called 'the funniest dad on Twitter', this hilarious book will help you through the rise of the undead, with helpful hints and tips on raising healthy, entirely human, offspring.

So, hunker down, stock up on supplies (alcohol, primarily) and get ready for the long haul. Or alternatively, take the more proactive approach. Ransack your kid's toy chest/weapons locker for zombie lacerating objects, bear arms with a terrorising lightweight buggy, or (not recommended) use your baby as a human missile. With kids and with zombies, the possibilities are truly endless. And with parenting in a zombie apocalypse, the rules change.

Bursting with twisted logic, questionable data, badly drawn cartoons and frank parenting advice, this is the witty book that everyone will be talking about this year. And who knows? It may even help you survive everyday life as well.

Reviews for James Breakwell

Hilarious! - The Sun

VERY funny Twitter feed - The Daily Mail

The most hilarious man on Twitter - The Telegraph

The funniest dad on Twitter - BuzzFeed

THE BEST BAD DAY OF YOUR LIFE

You can’t pick when and where zombies will attack. Even if you tried, the undead are notoriously bad at keeping appointments. That’s why you should be prepared at all times to fight for your life. This readiness should start well before civilization collapses. It’s easy to be on guard when the dead are already walking the earth, but it takes much more discipline to be vigilant when the biggest dangers in your life are being late for a parents’ evening meeting or burning a frozen pizza. For the record, the instructions were not as clear as they could have been, and the smoke damage was minimal. Remind me to send a gift basket to the fire department.

The zombie apocalypse won’t start everywhere at once. In some areas, it could be underway right now. It’s easy to mistake an undead assault for something else, like “civil unrest” or “boy-band concerts.” In other areas, zombie attacks could take months or even years to begin. Portland will be ground zero for the outbreak. (Shoreditch, for you British folk). People there do everything before it’s cool. San Francisco will be the last to fall. The undead can’t afford the rent, even for homes damaged by unexplained pizza fires.

The zombie apocalypse won’t start with fireworks and a laser light show. The undead are more understated than that, and besides, they don’t have the budget. Instead, it’ll be up to parents to look for subtle signs the dead are walking the earth. In some places, this will be easy to spot. In Canada, where the crime rate is zero and no one has said a swear word since 1982, even one zombie could throw the whole country into chaos. In other places, zombies could destroy everything and nobody would notice the difference.

As a parent, it’s crucial that you time your response exactly right. If you quit your job and pull your kids out of school too early, you’ll starve to death before the zombie apocalypse even starts. But if you wait too long, everyone you love could be eaten by zombies, which would make for an awkward family newsletter. Making the right decision requires maturity, vision, and excellent judgment. Too bad it’s up to you.

There are simple steps you can take every day to ensure you catch the end of the world right at the start. The first thing you should do when you wake up is look out the window. As a kid, I checked if there was enough snow to cancel school; now I check if there are enough zombies to cancel work. Most days, I’m disappointed. Never get your hopes up when it comes to Mother Nature or the damned.

Remember to always do a visual check. Zombies, like weather, are local. Just because the entire region is expecting a big storm doesn’t mean your house will get a drop of rain. In the same way, just because nobody else has seen a zombie yet doesn’t mean the very first one isn’t lurking in your bushes. Cut down all hedges as a precaution. At the very least, you won’t have to trim them every year.

Next, check the news. That term is misleading. As anyone who has ever watched or read it knows, there’s very little news in the news. If important stories get covered, it’s strictly by accident. Reporters are mainly interested in celebrities, sex scandals, and sensational crimes. Sure, they might mention a politician every now and then, but only if they’re involved in the sexy murder of someone famous. Even the most obscure legislator can make international headlines if his mistress dies in a sex swing accident at a petting zoo. That’s how “sexident” and “zooscrew” made their way into the dictionary.

Carefully screen any news story that sounds vaguely zombie-related. There are a lot of false positives. Stampedes and mass groups of panicked people killing each other aren’t proof of anything. Look at any Black Friday sale. If you won’t bite off someone’s ear to get a discounted TV, you don’t deserve it. The same goes for riots. Chaos in the streets proves the existence of a local football team, not zombies. Nothing shows civic pride quite like torching your own city.

IF IT’S ALL CLEAR

If there are no zombies outside your window or in the news, prepare for the worst: real life. The most awful moment on any morning is when you realize the world isn’t going to end and you have to go to work. Until humanity reverts to a post-apocalyptic barter economy, you have to earn a salary. I look forward to the day when I can pay for my daughters’ braces with a bag of pinecones.

The area might be zombie-free when you walk out the front door, but that doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way all day. A good parent needs to be ready for all hell to break loose at a moment’s notice. Undead swarms seldom call ahead. My wife and I both work, and it’s my job to drop off the kids at school and nursery. Parents still have a duty to protect their partners and children, even if they have to do it from a distance. If my family gets eaten, I won’t get another one. I beat the odds when I found one woman willing to reproduce with me. I will never, ever be that lucky again. Most other dads find themselves in the same situation. In a way, families with bumbling losers for fathers are the fortunate ones. Our wives and kids know we have to protect them because we don’t have a plan B.

To keep your children safe, carefully vet their nursery provider. This means daily, not just once a year. Shockingly, many parents refuse to take an extra five minutes before dropping their kids off to verify their nursery isn’t overrun by zombies. Children in that age range are unlikely to defend themselves effectively against the undead. For unknown reasons, the government discourages firearms training for toddlers.

The chances of a zombie outbreak beginning in a nursery are alarmingly high. Toddlers are walking Petri dishes. Every major illness starts with them. They are so contagious that NATO’s current germ warfare policy is to parachute toddlers into enemy countries. A single runny nose could wipe out North Korea. Little kids have undeveloped immune systems and love to eat food off the floor. To diseases, they’re Disneyland. Put twelve toddlers in a room together and you’ll have the deadliest germ laboratory in the world. Everyone knows the bubonic plague started in a nursery. I don’t see why the first case of zombieism will be any different.

Nurseries may be child death traps, but they’re also convenient. The only alternative is to have one parent stay home with the kids, and that’s a sacrifice most families won’t make. Love is good, but disposable income is better. The best compromise is to minimize the risks at nursery as much as possible while still working full time. Every day when you drop off your kids, ask four life-saving questions:

1.Does the teacher have any obvious bite marks?

2.Is the play space covered in dismembered body parts?

3.Are the children trying to satisfy their unending hunger for human flesh?

4.Is anything on fire?

If the answer to even one of these questions is “yes,” keep your kids home that day – unless you’ve already paid for the whole week. In that case leave your kids there, because money doesn’t grow on trees. There’s no point in asking for your check back. Zombies don’t give refunds.

The same plan works for school-aged children. Unlike nursery, school is mandated by law. You’ll need a very good reason to keep your kids home. Ongoing zombie attacks qualify, but only with a doctor’s note. Always know what classrooms your kid will be in at which times of day in case you need to pull them out in a hurry. Make a special note of any skylights should you need to enter through the ceiling later. I have a grappling hook for just such an occasion. Unless my wife is reading this, in which case I’m joking. Please don’t check the boot.

Stay-at-home mums and dads can skip all these precautions and sit at home, smugly judging the rest of us. But there’s a tradeoff for this haughty superiority. Stay-at-home parents don’t answer to a big boss at a corporation, but they do answer to multiple tiny bosses in their own homes. There are no sick days from that job, and good luck quitting. It’s against the law to give up on your children. So much for employee rights. I can’t protect my family as well as a stay-at-home parent, but at least no matter how bad my day at work gets, I’ll never have to change my boss’s nappy.

The rest of us have to monitor our family members’ safety from a distance. My kids don’t have mobile phones due to school rules and my own cheapness, but I text my wife throughout the day. I shoot her cute messages like “I love you” and “How are you feeling?” What I actually mean is “Are you still alive?” and “Should I leave work early to smash zombie skulls?” I can’t say either of those things outright, though, because it always leads to a huge fight with lots of crying. I can’t help it that I have overactive tear ducts. When I phrase my text messages more generically, my wife is more likely to reply. Once she messages me back, I know she hasn’t been eaten or turned into a zombie. The undead don’t text. It’s their best quality.

ON-THE-JOB SAFETY

The safety of your family is important, but your own wellbeing matters, too. You can’t protect anyone if you turn into a zombie – unless your family members tie you to the front of their car to use you as a meat shield. I don’t recommend that unless you want to void the warranty.

Your mission is to stay alive at work, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. At the start of the zombie apocalypse, the modern office is almost as dangerous as a nursery, just with fewer life-threatening diseases and more paper cuts.

As with escaping school and nursery, the key to getting out of work and back to your family is to make sure it’s actually time to get out. Fleeing work because of zombies is a one-shot deal, so it has to be done right the first time. If you’re a husband and you quit work when there’s no ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Welcome to the End
• Chapter 1: The Best Bad Day of Your Life
• Chapter 2: Kamikaze Kids
• Chapter 3: Eat or Be Eaten
• Chapter 4: What’s Yours Is Mine
• Chapter 5: Going the Distance
• Chapter 6: Hide and Weep
• Chapter 7: Pacify This
• Chapter 8: Pushing for Trouble
• Chapter 9: The Home Front
• Chapter 10: You Are the Law
• Chapter 11: So You Have to Cut Off Your Arm
• Chapter 12: Driving Off into the Sunset
• The End of the End
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright