In a Surprise Finding, Garland Might Not be That Zombie-Friendly

Garland shouldn’t be happy about this.

Of the top 100 cities ranked by Lawn Love for the best place to survive a zombie apocalypse, Garland is 141st on this list. Frisco, which always ranks highly in all the lists, is the top-rated Texas city at 22nd. Plano is 75th.

But Garland has a reputation to uphold when it comes to the undead. In the 2009 movie, Zombieland, Garland was referenced. In one of the opening scenes, Jesse Eisenberg’s character is at a service station running from zombies. In a voiceover, Eisenberg’s character says: “I’m in Garland, Texas. And it may look like zombies destroyed it, but that’s actually just Garland.”

Garland city manager Bryan Bradford took the reference and had fun with it. Bradford starred in a tongue-in-cheek, public-service video promoting Garland as zombie-friendly. The video was shown in local theaters to preview the 2019 sequel, Zombieland 2.

You want this kind of message as new residents move into your community. Despite being ravaged by zombies in film, Garland ranked eighth on SmartAsset’s list of best cities for new homebuyers last year.

But Lawn Love, inspired by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations, ran the data, using the metric of share of available homes with basements/bunkers to hunting-gear access — and Garland didn’t fare so well. In the movie, Garland looked like it held its own, and Eisenberg’s character was probably just in a panic.

But can you argue with the data? Lawn Love is a San Diego-based landscaping company that hires freelancers to analyze similar studies with public data. They ran the numbers based on 23 key indicators of the nation’s 200 biggest cities.

For what it’s worth, North Texas as a region didn’t fare that well. McKinney was ranked 120th, Arlington 143rd, Grand Prairie 164th, Dallas 165th, Fort Worth 166th, Irving 175th, and Mesquite 196th.

Nationally, Huntington Beach, Calif., was regarded as the best city to survive a zombie apocalypse. Laredo was the worst at 200th.

So, the moral is: If and when the zombie apocalypse arrives, just hunker down at Stonebriar Centre, IKEA, or The Star, and it should all blow over.