The High Line
“It gets you off the streets, and it’s probably the safest patch of soil in the city for growing your own food. It wouldn’t take much to render the staircases and entry points zombieproof, and once you’re up there, you can build temporary access routes into adjacent buildings for supplies and jury-rig nearby water towers to collect rainwater. Set up a secure shelter in the high floors of a nearby building, and maintain multiple escape routes and backup safe houses for when fires or looters achieve what the zombies can’t.” —Kevan Davis
The Bronx Zoo
“Once you’ve freed the animals, the enclosures are a perfect place for you to stay safe—that is, once you’ve filled them with supplies.” —Brian Ralph
The Upper East Side
“More blue-hairs around as zombie fodder. And older zombies are slower zombies.” —Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, screenwriters, Zombieland
The USS Intrepid
“There’d be no better place to stand your ground. It’s a steel island far from the zombie horde. You’ll be safe there once you’ve cleared it of visiting zombie Boy Scouts tours.” —Ralph
The Islands: Rikers, Ellis, Liberty
“My zombie contingency plan for San Francisco, where I live, has us grabbing a boat and rowing across the water to Alcatraz. Prisons offer an easy way to quarantine new groups of human refugees to make sure none of them is harboring the zombie infection. In New York, there’s Rikers Island, although that offers a challenge in that it might still be full of prisoners, some of them zombies. You could also consider rowing to Ellis Island or Liberty Island.” —Bradley Voytek,neuroscientist, University of California, San Francisco
Times Square
“It’s wide open, so you can see the undead coming, and there’s enough space for a helicopter to land, so there’s a chance for evac. Of course, if they’re fast zombies, out in the open is the last place you want to be.” —Paul W.S. Anderson, director, Resident Evil: Retribution
The Queens Cemetery Belt
“Contrary to popular belief, zombies don’t rise from graves. Cemeteries offer the lowest population density in an urban environment, and no one thinks to go there, which is important. In a zombie crisis, stay away from other people!”—Matt Mogk