State report · The First State
Delaware
Delaware is better zombie-survival territory than its size suggests. It has serious weaknesses — flat terrain, limited strategic depth, chokepoints, and proximity to the Philadelphia/Baltimore/Washington corridor — but it also has unusually strong agriculture, groundwater access, extensive waterways, productive coastal resources, and a major military logistics presence.
Personal assessment
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Delaware scored three times
A state that handles shamblers can get erased by sprinters. Here is how Delaware performs under each outbreak model.
Slow zombies are the best possible news for Delaware. Small size stops being fatal when nothing sprints, and the farmland, wells, marshes, bays and rural southern counties all start counting. Water becomes a wall.
Flat ground offers nothing. The state is too narrow to maneuver in and there is no wilderness to disappear into. And the zombies do not care that Philadelphia is in another state.
This one is decided by food, water and whether you can build something that lasts. Delaware has farmland, wells and fishing. It is also warm and wet, which is not ideal if we are accepting fictional fungus rules.
What helps
- Roughly 520,000 acres operated as farmland, in the second-smallest state
- About two-thirds of Delawareans on groundwater — Kent and Sussex counties entirely
- Around 263 million broiler chickens produced in 2025
- The Delaware River, Delaware Bay, three inland bays and the Atlantic
- Wetlands and marshes that complicate zombie movement
- Freshwater, estuarine, bay and ocean fishing plus shellfish
- Dover Air Force Base and the country's busiest military aerial gateway
What hurts
- Population concentrated in northern New Castle County
- Philadelphia is effectively next door, and the I-95 corridor runs right through
- Almost no elevation and no mountain barriers at all
- Very little true wilderness
- Bridges and a handful of primary routes carry everything
- Winters are not severe enough to reliably slow anything down
Personal assessment
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Get my free ZSI scoreThe reason for the score
Delaware's mountains are made of water
Look at the elevation map and Delaware looks like a disaster. That is only half the story. The state packs an unusual amount of water geography into a very small area — DNREC identifies four major drainage basins here — and against slow zombies, water does the job mountains would.
1 · It deletes directions of attack
A deep river, bay, canal or marsh can be worth more than open land. A position with water on two or three sides needs a fraction of the perimeter defense.
2 · Boats don't need highways
This is the hidden advantage. When the roads fail, the water is a second transportation network that does not depend on I-95, Route 1, Route 13, bridges, fuel stations or traffic control.
3 · Renewable food
DNREC manages fishing, hunting and boating access across roughly 68,000 acres of public land. Agriculture gets the attention, but fishing is what makes the food picture resilient.
4 · Defensible ground without hills
Peninsulas, marshland and narrow coastal strips are not mountains, but they channel movement and cut down the number of approaches you have to watch.
Where water bites back
- Saltwater is not drinking water — the bays and ocean replace nothing
- The best water-adjacent spots are also the flood-prone ones
- If your escape plan needs one bridge, that bridge is your plan
- Boats only help if you reach one, can run it, and beat the crowd there
The framework
25 survival factors, scored 1–10
Every state is measured on the same 25 factors. Weighting shifts by scenario — terrain matters more against sprinters, agriculture matters more in a long collapse.
Tactics
What works, by scenario
| Strategy | Walking Dead | World War Z | Last of Us |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rural farm | Excellent | Good | Excellent |
| Private well | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent |
| Boat access | Excellent | Excellent | Very good |
| Coastal barrier | Excellent | Good | Good |
| Remote Sussex location | Excellent | Very good | Excellent |
| Dover AFB proximity | Wildcard | Wildcard | Wildcard |
| Highway evacuation | Poor | Terrible | Poor |
| Sheltering in Wilmington | Poor | Terrible | Poor |
Geography
Where to be
Rural Sussex County
Combines every one of Delaware's strengths at once: farmland, groundwater, low density, fishing, waterways and coastal access.
- Agricultural land with outbuildings
- Private well, secondary road access
- Nearby waterway, boat access if possible
- Enough elevation to dodge flooding
- Distance from the beach towns
Rural Kent County
Agriculture, groundwater, Delaware Bay access and a central position. Dover AFB is the wildcard — a logistics miracle if order holds, a magnet for desperate crowds if it doesn't.
Inland-bay Sussex
Near the inland bays but not on them. You get boats, fishing, water barriers and rural land without inheriting the Atlantic beachfront crowd.
Where not to be
Wilmington & the I-95 corridor
Highest-risk area in the state. Density, interstate traffic, Philadelphia next door, regional commuter movement and nowhere to disappear to. Bad against walkers. Still bad in a long collapse. Against World War Z zombies, you have made a terrible mistake.
Beach towns, week one
Rehoboth, Dewey and Bethany have genuinely good long-term geography. The problem is timing. A defensible beach house is not defensible when forty thousand other people had the same idea.
Any single-bridge plan
The water that stops zombies also funnels humans. I-95, Route 1, Route 13 and the bridge crossings become the bottleneck — which is why Delaware scores 4/10 on chokepoint dependency.
Verdict
66 out of 100 · Grade D
Delaware is better zombie-survival territory than its size suggests. It has serious weaknesses — flat terrain, limited strategic depth, chokepoints, and proximity to the Philadelphia/Baltimore/Washington corridor — but it also has unusually strong agriculture, groundwater access, extensive waterways, productive coastal resources, and a major military logistics presence.
Against slow zombies it is legitimately strong. In a long collapse it has what sustainable survivor communities actually need. Against World War Z?
Method & sources
Where the numbers come from
The Zombie Survival Index is a fictional entertainment ranking that uses real public data as its inputs. Every state is scored on the same 25 factors, and the overall number blends baseline readiness with performance across the three outbreak models. Scores stay preliminary until all fifty states are assessed.
- U.S. Census Bureau, 2025 Population Estimates — population and land area
- USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2025 Delaware Agriculture Overview — farmland acreage, farm operations, broiler production
- Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control — groundwater, inland bays, drainage basins, wetlands, fishing and boating access
- Delaware Climate Office, University of Delaware — statewide temperature and precipitation averages
- U.S. Air Force / Dover Air Force Base — 436th Aerial Port Squadron logistics role
- Delaware Emergency Management Agency — statewide preparedness capability