Listing to Port

Dear Minister,
             first, congratulations on your new job! As I am sure you are aware, your position confers access to, and oversight responsibilities for, some of the country’s most secret programmes. I am writing to inform you of one such. More specifically, you may not be aware of the apocalypse readiness and contingency plans your predecessors have been working on over the last few decades. You may be pleased to discover that we have generated a comprehensive methodology for protecting as many of the cultural characteristics and treasures of our beloved nation as possible, even in the case that the entire population is wiped out. The necessary actions will vary depending on the existential threat in question, so we have approached this issue via a number of parallel projects, described below. Please eat this letter after reading. It is pleasantly banana-flavoured.

1. Project Z: to be triggered in the case of a catastrophic pandemic where the fatality rate is expected to be functionally indistinguishable from 100%. The serum is located in a refrigerated unit in the basement of the ministry. As well as the attached key, four other keys will open it: three are held by the project’s principal investigators, and another is under a flowerpot in the garden of your country residence. Following the call, you should aim to inject the serum into as many living humans as possible BEFORE self-administering. We believe it to be one of the more efficient zombification agents ever discovered. As I am sure you will appreciate, a nation of zombies is not an appealing prospect but in terms of cultural preservation it is significantly preferable to a nation of non-animated corpses. We might expect our citizens to at least continue to go about their daily routines as best they remember.
2. Project V: to be triggered in the case of a catastrophic atmospheric or solar system event involving permanent loss of sunlight to the Earth’s surface. In the sub-basement of the ministry you will find a triple-reinfoced cage system containing a breeding population of bats. Following the call, you should either contact the keepers by pressing the blue button on the attached pager, or in extremis enter the ministry yourself to release the bats. As with project Z, you will need to begin action preferably well before the extinction of the human race is complete. Based on our understanding of the intellectual and physical capabilities of our captive vampires, we expect the vast majority of the country’s cultural heritage to be secured in this scenario. The one exception is our gastronomic heritage. We anticipate making a full data release pre-apocalypse of the Ministry of Health’s artificial blood programme, including comprehensive instructions regarding each step of the necessary supply chains.
3. Project B: to be triggered in the case of invasion, catastrophic social unrest or revolution, where such actions threaten either the survival of the population or seem likely to result in the complete erasure of our cultural heritage. Agents for project B can be found in the bottom drawer of the reinforced filing cabinet in your office, which opens with the code ‘1234’. You, or your designated representative, should aim to self-administer FIRST and then head for a populated area. Note that after administration your body will react to other humans by attaching to their limbs or torso and assimilating your joint flesh into one huge blob. Do not be alarmed when this happens. Eventually, we project that the whole population plus any invaders will be contained within one vast, broadly self-sustaining flesh blimp, at which point they will jolly well have to start working together and getting along. We anticipate some changes to cultural practice in this scenario, including the necessary neglect of cultural relics, but overall a broadly acceptable level of preservation is projected.
4. Project G: to be triggered in the case of other catastrophic existential threats, for example asteroid strikes and/or mega-tsunamis. When the call comes, you should press the green button on the attached pager. This will alert the principal investigators of Project G, located in a secure bunker under the capital, to begin the raising ritual. In this scenario it is acceptable, indeed desirable, to wait until the casualty rate is already high, as we will be raising the dead rather than the living as ghosts. As we have not yet succeeded in our poltergeist programme, it is likely that the nation’s physical heritage will be fully or largely lost in this case. However, the level of cultural preservation is anticipated to be high.  
5. Project H: although our notes contain many references to project H, the details of it are obscure and difficult to understand. We have reason to believe that it may have already been triggered, in response to some past threat that we are either incapable of remembering or do not in our current state recognise as a threat. I am not sure what we humans were to our predecessors, or what they have lost by the transformation, but may Heaven have mercy on their souls.

You will appreciate that, due to the secrecy of the situation, I am unable to sign this letter. However, should you find yourself in a situation where you need to forget this information, perhaps upon resignation of your post, press the yellow button on the attached pager, and I will attend and do the necessary.
Yours sincerely.

1. Slow zombies. Shambling, gormless members of the living dead, often bearing an odd resemblance to the sort of humans the author believes should think more closely about their life choices and aspirations. Method of disposal: destroy the brain.
2. Fast zombies. As above, except able to sprint. Method of disposal: destroy the brain, but more quickly.
3. Immobile zombies. Members of the living dead who are in fact not able to move about at all. Method of disposal: as they are not particularly dangerous, this depends on how you feel about having dead people around the place. If you meet one, the nice thing to do might be to prop it up in front of a good film.
4. Ant zombies. Interestingly, the ant is particularly susceptible to zombification. It is quite hard to tell if an ant is a zombie one or not but obviously you should avoid being bitten by the zombie ones. Method of disposal: identify, then destroy the brain.
5. Zombles. There have not been Wombles on Wimbledon Common for some years, following an effective culling program by the local golf course, who objected to the mounds of earth left by their burrowing activities on the greens. Instead, the golf course now has to deal with Zombles. Although they are largely peaceful and still aid with litter-picking, they have a tendency to erupt from bins in a way that unsettles patrons. However, as they can be useful in chivvying up the slower players and still spend the majority of their time underground, the golf course has largely worked around the Zomble issue so far. It may be that they are concerned about the negative publicity that a highly visible extermination campaign might entail. Method of disposal: Zombles are remarkably self-contained and will not stray from Wimbledon Common. The easiest way of dealing with them may just be to admit the problem, seal off the Common and give it up for lost.
6. Zombie ghosts. Interestingly, if a poltergeist is bitten by a zombie it is possible for the resulting creature to be briefly unundead. Method of disposal: nature abhors a double negative, so infestations of zombie ghosts tend to clear up by themselves. The only problem may arise if there is a necromancer around to attempt a state of ununundeadness; this deeply unstable situation may result in a messy explosion.
7. Armies of zombies who have stored their brains in a massive locked cave full of zombie brains somewhere deep underground which is also guarded by lots of zombies. Method of disposal: probably you are screwed.