"Updated explainer: Composting during the zombie apocalypse" by Emma Burnett

Updated explainer: Composting during the zombie apocalypse

It’s not just food scraps and garden waste that can be integrated into home-made compost. In this updated explainer, we detail how to incorporate zombie corpses into your compost heap, ways to keep your compost heap healthy, and get the most out of these free-to-use resources.

Increasing your compost helps now that most of us have acquired our neighbours’ gardens and are reliant on home-grown produce.

Quick facts

• Invest in a larger bin for increased organic matter.

• Add extra cardboard and woody prunings to soak up the increased liquid.

• Brains should be separated and incinerated to prevent accidental cross-contamination.

• There is no need to invite a religious person, it’s not a cemetery!

Why incorporate zombies into your compost?

Since the tinned goods many people relied on have more or less run out, it’s time to dig in and get growing!

It is now well-understood that the Pandoravirus pathogen does not spread via contact with organic matter, so we wanted to make sure that home composters feel able to incorporate the bodies of the fallen into their homemade compost. For one thing, allowing corpses to rot in situ can attract scavenging pests – wolves, large cats, and other zombies may be drawn to them. For another, it can help you to consider them as harbingers of life rather than reminders of death. 

Think of this as apocalypse-era recycling. Previously human, zombies are full of vital micronutrients for plant growth. Once destroyed, zombie corpses can easily be composted and, if done right, you’ll find you have a light, loamy soil additive ready to use in your allotment or back garden in 6-12 months, depending on your localised climate.

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Using zombies in your home compost doesn’t just bulk it up. It adds chemicals like manganese that can be absorbed by your garden produce to make great flavonoids. This extra flavour will give your home-grown produce deeper meaning and can help you connect to those you might have lost.

And remember, you’re not constructing a cemetery. The souls of the zombies were lost when they turned. It would be a shame to lose their physical resources, especially after the heartache of having to dispose of their walking corpses. 

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Setting up your compost bin

Just as in our basic compost explainer, we suggest using two compost bins, side by side, one for fresh waste and one for current use. Wooden pallets are a great way to create larger composting spaces. You can get them from any delivery lorry after they’ve dropped off sandbags and armaments at the roadblocks. We recommend a lid with a lock for the fresh waste bin to keep out scavengers.

Bodies can be heavy, so you might consider putting in a ramp to make it easier to deposit your zombie bodies in the compost bin. If you’re limited for space or struggling with the weight, you can reduce the size of the bodies before depositing them into your bins.

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Be sure to cover fresh corpses with a layer of dry material. This helps keep the pests out, reduces the amount of runoff from the compost bins, and helps to mitigate the likelihood of traumatic flashbacks.

Remember to remove and incinerate the brains before composting. While there’s no evidence this is strictly necessary, it’s a good precaution. 

Regardless of how you dispose of your zombie corpses, we recommend always wearing heavy-duty leather gloves to prevent accidental transmission. Though rare, accidental bites can happen, and might wind you up in Agnes from Number 12’s compost heap.

Turning the compost

This may be off-putting at first, but you’ll soon get used to it. Industrial corpse heaps have to be mechanically turned, of course, but your home compost can be managed with just a garden fork, some elbow grease, and time. 

If you are unsettled by the occasional finger or humerus, you may want to ask a friend or neighbour to help with turning the compost. This can play the dual role of freshening up your compost heap and encouraging nervous gardeners to reach out and make contact with others.

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Alternatively, you could invest in these human-sized paper sacks that you can place the zombie corpses in before adding them to the compost heap. If there are a lot of zombies in your neighbourhood, these can quickly become expensive, but they are effective at containing errant limbs.

Turning your compost is also the perfect time to reflect on feeling connected to your lost ones. Prayer, song, quiet contemplation, rage digging. This is a good time to acknowledge your loss. We are all familiar with that feeling. Whatever you need, allow yourself this time.

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A final thought

This may not be the way you saw your future playing out: a compulsory gardener locked behind fences and barricades, having to work alongside your nosy neighbour just to keep invaders at bay, and feeling like the world is always on the verge of ending.

However, it’s long been acknowledged that a connection to the soil can help mental health, as well as gut health and physical wellbeing. We recommend using this time to not just refine your composting practices, but to reconnect with the bodies of those lost, who will, in turn, nurture the food that helps both your body and mind.

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Lamia Scourge writes to process. They enjoy solitude and gardening, and are finding the new world order surprisingly palatable.