How the Zombies Got to Hawaii

[Cabbage Patch]

One of the many interesting questions we're still pondering is how the zombie outbreak could have hit Hawaii so hard, so early in the story. A new report by researchers from MIT may have the answer. In a paper titled "A Metric of Influential Spreading during Contagion Dynamics through the Air Transportation Network" they studied the travel patterns of people flying from point to point around the world, on the assumption that this would show how contagion would travel around the world.

The most surprising finding? Honolulu plays a surprisingly large role in the spread of contagion. It ranked 8th out of the 40 top US airports, despite having a much lower volume of flights than the top tier airports. It's all about the connections that happen in Honolulu, where flights come in from the US mainland and Asia.

So, assuming a "slow-turner" model for the early infected, maybe the first zombies in Hawaii arrived by plane!

A map showing air routes between US cities from the study:
http://www.zombiepodcast.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=2063&d=1343237410

Here's a link to the actual paper: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040961

And a more reader friendly analysis: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/jul/24/contagion-honolulu-jfk-lax-mit

And another, even more basic analysis: http://io9.com/5928463/these-are-the-most-likely-places-an-epidemic-will-begin-the-united-states?utm_source=io9+Newsletter&utm_campaign=c9112f2c26-UA-142218-29&utm_medium=email

[Zombiphobe]

I was actually thinking along these same lines, too. The visualization really helps.

I remember Colonel Kimmet mentioning two hotspots in the San Francisco Bay Area, and there are a couple of large airports there: San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.

It might also explain some of the major sities mentioned early in the series (Chicago and New York) that don't seem to fit into a Ring of Fire scenario.

[nikvoodoo]

All that was said about other cities was there was rioting. No mention of zombies.

If this outbreak is due to natural things, hawaii would easily be a"target" because of all the volcanic activity. I don't think planes are involved.

[Witch_Doctor]

This could fit nicely into the story BUT this research was published this year and KC started writing years ago. Awesome find, none the less.

[Vlarken]

I swear I heard something like this being discussed on We're Not Dead. If the outbreak happened because of tectonic activity around the Ring of Fire, opening up those deep fissures in the ground like the ones Saul and Victor found in Inglewood, then that would mean that all these places along the Ring of Fire got hit at the same time. So the outbreak would have occurred in LA and Hawaii at the same time. So if that theory is correct, it has nothing to do with planes.

[Zombiphobe]

All that was said about other cities was there was rioting. No mention of zombies.

True, but the new reports of LA had no mention of zombies either, they were only calling it a "riot". It did not seem like the media knew about the zombie-creatures yet and were interpreting zombie outbreaks/massacres as rioting. That is why I suspect the riots they were reporting might have been other outbreaks/hotspots.

[nikvoodoo]

The initial news report in chapter 1 mentioned "men and women attacking each other. Biting and thrashing at one another"

Kimmet also said it started in the west and traveled to the east in about a day and a half.

[Zombiphobe]

The initial news report in chapter 1 mentioned "men and women attacking each other. Biting and thrashing at one another."

Right, "men and women", not zombie-creatures. After that, Michael gets the call from Angel and heads out. While bogged down in traffic, he hears another report on the car radio that continues to refer to it as a riot. Then Michael gets his first glimpse of the creatures first hand. His journal states "The news made it sound like it was people gone mad, but the way they moved made me think they weren't people at all." It seems like the media was reporting it as people rioting in LA (crazy people acting crazy, but people all the same) and not as some sort of zombie-type-outbreak. So there might have been more behind the other "riots" that they were reporting as well.


Kimmet also said it started in the west and traveled to the east in about a day and a half.

Kimmet said that it multiplied and spread across the country in about a day and a half. I took that to mean the country was saturated after a day and a half, reaching all of the remote regions. In that case, the initial outbreaks on the East Coast could have been earlier than that. There are a lot of details that we are missing about the rest of the US/World, so its hard to say for sure.

I do like this theory. Does it explain everything? No. But I definitely feel it could have helped the outbreak spread across the US and the globe.

Where I get hung up with this theory is that Kalani said the Hawaiian outbreak started on the Big Island and not on Honolulu.