Both Lawn Love and Texas Monthly did articles about how this city or that city would survive a zombie apocalypse. Neither of them listed San Angelo. Since we're not that big a city, we often get left off these lists.

We often get left out when restaurant chains decide to open restaurants as well, as we wrote last year when McDonald's announced a new San Angelo location.

Restaurant Chains We'd Like To See in San Angelo

But I digress.

Using the criteria that both publications used to come up with their list of the best and worst cities to survive a zombie apocalypse, we are able to draw some conclusions about how San Angelo would do.

Here is a list of the factors Lawn Love factored into their decision-making about how a city would do in a zombie invasion.

Renee Keith
Renee Keith
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Vulnerability 

This includes population density.  San Angelo is spread out and the fact that there is a lot of wide open space just outside the city limits so we're good there. Other factors include:

Physical Inactivity Rate: We're in trouble with this.

Share of the Population in Bad Health, we're about equal to the Texas average.

Hospitals per capita: Sam Angelo is above average here.

Military Base Access. Score a point for us. Especially, when you consider that, even though it's a "secret" everyone knows they have alien technology at Goodfellow AFB. Oh, did I write that out loud? Something tells me I'm going to get a visit from the Men in Black.

Hideouts

This includes Average Home Square Footage, Share of Homes with Basements, and Bunkers. Available homes with complete kitchens, bathrooms, and off-grid friendliness. This is a wash. The average home size in San Angelo may be a bit below state averages. San Angelo may have more homes with basements than average in Texas or at least good sturdy storm or root cellars.  Score a point for us.

Supplies

San Angelo scores big here. Zombie survivability is determined by the number of super center supermarkets, grocery stores, convenience stores, shopping centers, department stores, pharmacies, and hardware stores/farm supply stores all per 100,000 Living residents. Because people come from a large area to shop here, San Angelo actually tends to have more of these types of retailers than other similar-sized cities in Texas.  Score another one for San Angelo

Protection

This is where San Angelo hits it out of the park. For this category, they consider Hunting-Gear stores, weapons and ammunition stores, and outdoor-gear stores per 100,000 residents. In San Angelo, it's common to buy your eggs and bullets right next to each other in the same supermarket.  We are strapped. It is almost impossible to calculate all the places to get these items in San Angelo.

Happy Gun Store Owner
IPGGutenbergUKLtd
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Mobility

In this category, zombie survivors have to be able to get the heck out. By my calculation, San Angelo does fairly well Factors in this category include biking friendliness, hiking friendliness, and campsite access. They also give points for port access or marina access.   San Angelo does well in all categories except biking friendliness and port access.

Conclusions:

Texas Monthly rated Amarillo as the top city in Texas to survive a zombie apocalypse. They say it because it is spread out and the people there are well-armed. If that is the case, then San Angelo is even better. Plus, San Angeloans are far less likely to be distracted by the smell of crap from the huge stockyards.

It's not that we don't have crap. It's just not as much.

The Verdict:

By all the metrics used by Texas Monthly, and  Lawn Love, San Angelo and this area of West Texas is the perfect place to survive a zombie apocalypse. We all learn how to shoot, many of us before we can even walk.

Plus, many San Angeloans already have experience dealing with zombies.  There are a lot of mornings when it would seem that Bryant Boulevard is a scene from a zombie movie.  In fact, someone needs to write a screenplay called "Dawn of the Driving Dead" It certainly applies whenever anyone is running late for work in San Angelo.

Photo: Joseph Browning
Photo: Joseph Browning
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Let's hope there are no zombie attacks.  If there are, I think we'll be just fine. Besides, how many zombies will drown trying to get to the mermaid in the middle of the Concho River?

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