How To Survive The Coming Zombie Apocalypse

Any exposure is good exposure.

We have slow zombies, fast zombies, ugly zombies, pretty zombies, rotting zombies, and mindless zombies.

We even have cute little crime-fighting zombies in "iZombie," a Netfilx show. (Header Image)

Move over vampires and werewolves. Team-Z is here, and the odds are stacked in their favor.

Those aren't the type of zombies I want to talk about. 

There's a whole other type of Zombie Apocalypse. It's just as dangerous, maybe more so.

It isn't coming. 

It's already here. It's been here for ages.

The good news is that the Zombies are losing and losing badly.

The bad news is that you may be a Zombie and not know it.

Let's take a step back. 

What the heck is a zombie anyway?

In a nutshell, a zombie is an undead thing. More accurately, it's a dead thing that refuses to admit it's dead. It's just different or in transition. 

There are plenty of Corporate Zombies out there.

Many are dead and don't know it. 

All of us are at risk. 

How one becomes a zombie is open to discussion. 

In "The Walking Dead," you must be bitten by a zombie. In "iZombie," a simple scratch suffices, so does having sex with a zombie.( In "iZombie," it may just be worth it.) In "Game of Thrones," an Ice Walker resurrects your corpse.

In business, you become a zombie when your business model no longer applies, or another business model builds a better path to your customer. 

I'm sure manufacturers of buggy whips and horse-drawn carriages were certain those noisy, stinky, oil-spraying self-propelled contraptions were just a fad. They weren't even much faster than a horse. 

They couldn't possibly catch on. 

Besides, it would take a whole network of smoother roads. What would those magic roads be made of? Everyone knows there's only so much compacting you can do to dirt. And, you'd need to regrade and recompact them after every rainfall.

Can't happen. 

Stay the course. The fad will die a natural death. That's when sales will come back.

Some carriage manufacturers didn't think so. They saw the coming apocalypse for what it was. They converted to building horse-less versions of their products.

More recently, what happened to all those companies that printed phone books? For years, that was a license to print money, big money. Where are they now? What are they doing? 

Seriously, I'm asking.

The examples don't end there.

Blockbuster saw the writing on the wall but didn't foresee video-streaming. That would have required significant bandwidth that no one had at the time. It's impossible to stream video on a dial-up modem. They experimented with different takes on the same old story. 

Technology rarely sits still.

Surprise, surprise, compression technology, and increased capacity, lower cost consumer broadband spawned NetFlix.

Blockbuster busted.

There's no such thing as too-big-to-fail.

Originally, NetFlix was a mail-order video rental store. It didn't work all that well. They looked to streaming. Their Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness plan worked nicely.

Now they face another. Zombies are like that. 

Netflix' early success drove up the cost of licensing content. Another preparedness plan kicked in. Netflix started creating their own content.

I'm curious to see how they'll handle the next challenge and what it may be. My guess would be private streaming and/or cloud-shared PVRs.

It's all about a better path

Once someone else figures out that better path, you're screwed. Your only hope is that your Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness plan figured out that better path before you competitors did. 

Until the next better path shows up, of course. This isn't a one-and-done thing.

Sometimes it's a mystery why a company becomes a zombie.

Sears started life as a mail-order catalog. You would think they were uniquely well positioned to take advantage of eCommerce. It should have been a simple transition from a print catalog to a web catalog. They even had drop-off/pick-up centers already worked out.

Apparently, it wasn't all that simple. Sears is currently reinventing itself. It may be too late. If they hadn't dropped the eCommerce ball, would Amazon even exist?

Maybe not.

Taxi vs Uber

The Taxi Industry has many advantages over Uber. You can't flag down an Uber. Uber drivers can't use reserved Taxi lanes. Uber drivers can't use Taxi stands. You would think that taxi drivers would add the Uber arrow to their quivers and cover all the bases. 

They don't. 

Instead, they rant and rave about how Uber is cutting into their right to make a living.

How's that? What right?

Did Blockbuster have that same right? Do taxi drivers boycott NetFlix in solidarity for their fallen brother?

I didn't think so. 

Here's a prediction

I was going to call it a fearless prediction, but it's really more a foregone conclusion. 

Within a few years, barring major advances in mobile bandwidth and mobile storage capacity, and mobile battery technology, mobile apps will die or be replaced with portal-like mini-apps.

The general idea behind apps is great, The general implementation of apps is silly. It isn't the developers' fault. The concept is inherently flawed.

You need to support two major platforms and one minor one. (Android, iOS, and Windows Phone) 

It doesn't end there. Lots of stuff can get online.

What about smart-TV? What about IoT? Smart watches? Tablets? Phablets? Smart glasses? Cars? What about that new game-changer thingy that isn't even invented yet? 

How will you support everything? The short answer is, "You can't."

Data and software is held on the device. Keeping an app updated is a bitch.  

Think about it. A major app has millions of copies of itself all over the world. Not only do they all need regular updating and patching, every instance needs to check periodically to see if any such updates and patches are even available.

That is just plain wasteful. One could argue that it's back asswards. At best, it's a throw back to an earlier, ancient time (2010).

Keeping an app installed is an even bigger, nastier bitch. The average lifespan of an installed app is under a minute. I had one I really liked until it started serving me 2-minute ads. Seriously? 

Google will hammer the final nail in the App Coffin. Google pushes the Responsive Web. That means that you should be able to access a web site and automatically have it respond to your device. It doesn't matter if that device is a laptop, a 4G TV, a phone, a watch, or a processor embedded in your mastoid bone and connected to a contact lens viewport. (okay, so that one might be a ways off. Sue me.)

You get a version customized for any device, past, present, or future. Web sites will act like apps do now, only better, cheaper, and more user-centric.

There would be one place where the App lives. One place where the data lives. One place to update and patch. It will always be current. One instance that is device-agnostic. 

Data processing will eventually move off-device. That means ever smaller devices. Think more terminal less computer. They would focus more on throughput ability rather than unneeded processing power. Maybe that mastoid implant isn't as far off as I first thought.

One application will work on anything that can access the web. No installation is required. Little or no on-device storage is required. Better, faster, cheaper data plans already exist. They will get even better, faster and cheaper as time passes.

It's a better path. Worse yet for all you app developers, it's a better path championed by Google.

You're screwed. 

You're zombies.

What will Turn YOU into a Zombie?

Plan for the Apocalypse. Start now. I mean right now. Stop reading and get on it right away. It isn't a question of if but of when. 

Like in "The Walking Dead," everyone has the zombie virus. Eventually, it will manifest itself. All we can really do is hold back the Long Night again and again and again. 

We can't really win. We can only not lose.  

Do you find that sad? It isn't. 

It's called, "Life." 

What technology do you depend on? What happens when it is superseded? What happens when a new one takes over?

What technology that doesn't yet exist, or isn't quite there yet, will bite you in the ass? 

It doesn't need to be earth-shattering. Sure, a Star Trek-like transporter would wipe out FedEx, UPS and the entire shipping industry in no time flat. That ain't likely to happen anytime soon. 

Look smaller.

It can be something as simple as a new use for an existing thing. Something like random placement of goods in a warehouse coupled with AI-driven order picking software (Amazon). The more the possible places to pick stock from, the more paths the AI can use, the faster orders are picked, the faster the fulfillment, the lower the cost. 

That's a relatively minor change that will hurt Amazon's competition.

How efficient are your processes? What squeezes through the cracks? Find those leaks. Plug them. 

What can be done better? Faster? More effectively? Cheaper?

Do it.

What secondary niches can you access? Today's niches may be tomorrow's industries.

Access them.

It isn't only about technology.

Is your market changing? Sorry, that's a silly question. Of course, it is. 

What are you doing about it? 

I'm a writer. I can crank out 2000 finished words a day without breaking a sweat. There is significant downwards pressure on rates. My rates are half of what they were 3 years ago and a quarter of what they were 6 years ago.

At this rate, I'll be paying my clients within 6 years. 

I'm a zombie.

Fortunately, I'm a multi-talented zombie with a ton of transferable skills. Like Sears, I'm reinventing myself. Hopefully, I'm not too late.

Every Industry is at risk, it always was

How's that? Yours isn't? 

Bad news, my friend. You're a zombie. 

To butcher Mark Twain's immortal words, "It ain't the stuff you don't know about that will hurt you. It's the stuff that you know for sure can't happen, but does anyway."

Innovation doesn't sleep. Innovation doesn't stop. 

It's relentless. It's ruthless.

Innovation is the Law of Fang and Claw in its most brutal form.  

Innovate or Die. 

No one is immune.

The best way to avoid becoming a zombie is to actively look for how it will happen and stay two-steps ahead.

Once you have a yearning for human brains, once the rot sets in, it's too late.

Is ending with my usual, "Cheers," incongruous? Maybe. This post is on the darker side. But, the zombie metaphor is not perfect. 

So, I think it's not incongruous at all.

Cheers

Header Image shows Rose McIver as Liv Moore in the Netflix series, "iZombie"

Okay, so character naming needs some work. Zombie Liv Moore (live more) has a boy scout ex-fiancee named Major Lillywhite (OMG) and there's a military contractor/private mercenary force called Fillmore Graves. LMAO

The show is still very entertaining. I liked it.