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David Nguyen

Mr. Zwinge

Economics

Zombie Apocalypse Project

It’s been a 2 years since the disease spread globally. The fungus was originally identified

to be Ophiocordyceps unilateralis and infected dead ants to reanimate them only to have them

die and spread to another host. After much study was done to find how they do so, they evolved

after successive treatments with antibiotics to rid the ants of the fungus, and eventually allowed

the fungus to live in a human host. This, however, didn’t do anything until the host was dead,

and the first report of a dead human twitching had been reported in South America on June 1,

2005, and there have since been many more such sightings around the world. The bodies infected

with the cordyceps fungus would begin flailing wildly and, since the fungus infecting those

bodies wouldn’t get very far, the fungus evolved to crawl but not quite walk or run. Eventually

safe havens were created in the largest cities around the world including Toronto, New York

City, San Francisco, Beijing, New Delhi, Tokyo, Seoul, and many others. Contractors became

immensely useful and valuable, and as a result people were fighting over who to hire to build

walls around the cities around the world. Filters on water were developed at a rate never seen

before and implemented in a matter of weeks. This was all done without any higher government

intervention since it would have taken too long and the federal government was concerned with

the political side of the situation. Eventually, more rural areas had become either completely

affected or had so many of the animated dead bodies that they frightened the rest of the

population to leave. There was also immense paranoia on letting in outsiders into the new safe
havens because of worry of infection. The fear mongering towards the epidemic was not

necessarily the infection itself, as it laid dormant until death, but the other infection that ensued.

Because the bodies were not properly living and simply being reanimated, the muscles still

experienced rigor mortis, so the decaying flesh festered and eventually a strain of bacteria

evolved to be flesh eating, destroying the host body and would spread elsewhere.

Me and my buddy were very lucky in this situation since we both lived in New York

City, so we were already safe from the disease. In addition, we happened to be construction

workers, so we were not in any danger of not having work, and therefore, money. Money was the

other thing that changed drastically. Because of the sudden loss of over 70% of useable cash in

the United States, at least, deflation occurred rapidly and the dollar nearly quadrupled in value.

It has been over a decade now since the disease began and the country has changed

drastically. Because the federal government toppled, another governing body made up of

advocates and leaders of the safety movement came to power and renamed the east of what was

previously the United States, the Coastal Eastern Republic. Walls have been built around the

major safe havens as well as a glass dome and irrigation with water filters. A sort of modern

subsistence/war-time economy has developed where labor is traded for goods and goods are

traded for other goods. Because transportation outside each safe haven is not recommended, each

safe haven is becoming increasingly crowded especially after a full decade of being quarantined

from the fungus. Because of this, the goods that are worth the most are essentials such as food

and other necessities. Often times, labor is greatly devalued as most work that doesn’t pertain to

survival is seen as foolish, and labor such as farming isn’t traded as they simply trade the goods

they produce themselves. Mostly, goods are bartered, and services such as construction and work
in the medical field can be traded for useful goods. Currency is not used since the country is very

small and not well organized since it has been a mere decade since the fall of the United States.

Food is relatively scarce considering the population size since there is extremely scarce farming

land in what was the greater metropolitan area. Food is mostly created in laboratory factories that

utilize scientists to generate formulas and factories to mass produce the food. As for the war-time

aspect of the economy, there is a focus on providing materials for research since that is the main

priority of the nation: to end the epidemic.

The country exists in separate districts that have managed to find new ways of

communicating, but this took on huge risk for those working outside of the safe havens. Because

of this, construction workers became more scarce as casualties rose when work became highly in

demand. After four years, the infrastructure was revamped and communication within the

Coastal Eastern Republic was possible and was near the level at what it was previous to the

epidemic.

Our makeshift government is a sort of oligarchic republic, with no one single ruler but a

ruling body. The leaders attempt to recreate the previous government, there are separate

branches, with one body of members per branch. Because the size of the nation is much smaller

than the original country, dispute over population is not great since each district was a major city,

so there will be a flat number of representatives from each of the districts and, because they can

not convene because of the hassle of transportation in the epidemic of the outside world, they use

video calling. Much in the same way that the Congress and the Supreme Court needed a majority

to move an action, the same will be true in the executive branch. Instead of having multiple

people advising one person, there will be a board of members that will serve the same function
and will all have different specialties to discuss how the motion affects each of their respective

divisions. For example, if a agricultural person were to be on the board and had to decide

whether spraying a toxic pesticide over the rest of the United States was a motion that should be

passed, he would consider how it affects farmland and why it is ignorant since it is only useful

for the short term and defeats the purpose because it makes that land no longer fertile. It would

essentially be a cabinet that advises itself instead of a person to make the educated choice on a

particular matter.

As for the safety of the citizens, there will be patrol on the inside of each of the exits of

the wall, and people and only pass if they have the authoritative clearance to do so, political

leaders, or are given clearance by sid political leaders. As far as the epidemic itself, the

contagion is already taken care of with a series of water treatment plants so that the fungus does

not enter the safe havens. There are successive levels of electric fences to paralyze the bodies

since the fungus controls the brain, and by giving the body many electrical signals, the brain

experiences major trauma and damage.

Currently the government is pushing for the majority of children, teenagers, and young

adults to pursue research in combating the virus and is gearing towards implementing curricula

to focus on the dangers of the epidemic to protect from it. This would be a barrier of protection

until a proper cure or method of ridding the fungus is possible. There are plans in place and are

expected to take upwards of 20 years to complete an seeks to reunite the other nations that

occupy the contiguous United States to reform it and then solve the issue of the epidemic and

implementing it nationwide so the chance that the fungus evolves to be resistant is greatly

diminished. There is hope that communication will be possible across the oceans to Europe and
Asia, but this plan is strictly concerned with the United States. Some possibilities are being

hypothesized and some have already been tested to be effective on a small scale, but fail

miserably on a much larger scale. One of the first ideas that was considered is a large scale

chemical spray over all areas that are infected, but the only problem with this is that the chemical

that is used for this is toxic to humans and is not biodegradable. This would mean that once an

area is sprayed, it would no longer be habitable for the next hundred years much like radiation.

.Once the operation to clear the fungus is successful, there would be walls on both the northern

and southern border of the United States to quarantine the virus outside the nation. The

abandoned towns and cities would be returned to and would be repopulated, and over time, the

nation would return to its former glory. This however would most likely take over fifty years as

there is no urgency to do so, and the only reason that the nation reacted so quickly to the disease

in the first place was the urgency of the safety of its citizens and the daunting prospect of

possible death. The economy will allow everyone to get what they need since everyone has

something to offer, whether it be goods or time to do labor.


The blue, red, and orange are the colors that represent New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia

respectively. These are the three biggest cities on the East Coast and the colors take up the flag

according to their population size. The triple dashed equal sign symbolizes that the cities are

united, but the symbol also means equivalent, which is appropriate since the cities, no matter

what the size, are important in the struggle to survive.

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