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:
Here's a link to the actual paper: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%...l.pone.0040961
And a more reader friendly analysis: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-n...lu-jfk-lax-mit
And another, even more basic analysis: http://io9.com/5928463/these-are-the...m_medium=email
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