Zombie Research Society
ZRS contributor Christian Lowell suggests taking an unusual precautionary measure in a catastrophic zombie outbreak: disabling your wifi.
Lowell argues that wifi signals can be used as primitive homing devices, making you vulnerable to attack even if your house appears to be abandoned from the outside. All a clever gang of looters needs to do is drive down residential streets with their laptop set to search for available wifi. A signal means jackpot for them, and trouble for you.
“Your house may be completely blacked out, but an active wireless network lets the bad guys know there’s a potentially lucrative target in the immediate area.”
Once the gang gets a hint that someone is sheltering nearby, all they need to do is search two or three likely houses until you’re discovered. At that point, zombies are the least of your worries, as your food, water and other supplies become things of the past.
So when the undead rise, consider plugging in or shutting down. Though the internet may last longer than grid utilities like power and water, it’s not worth the risk as people become more and more desperate to survive.
Besides, nobody will be reading your Facebook updates anyway.
i would not worrie at all that is what my 45mm AA gun is for! good luck
As a network security specialist. By definition you’re describing what is known as war-driving where someone will have a wifi capable device set to scan the area for a signal. That’s a primitive assumption that turning it off will not lure people to your house. And unless the assailant happens to have higher end detection hardware it’s pretty much hit or miss. Specially if one were living in an apartment complex where multiple signals can be found.
Personally, I would be more concerned about making sure my loved ones were safe over checking my FaceBook status.
also what about wasting power on the computer probably not a good idea except for important things. another thing on the computer is music blasting rock music or jazz is not a good idea
Here is a better question…when the power goes off, who wants to waste energy on powering a internet connection? I think we’d have more important duties to attend to than getting on the internet. So just unplug the thing when the power goes out.
And besides, if the power goes out, won’t the WIFI signal go out as well? If nothing is powering the router, the signal doesn’t exist.
I know almost nothing about computers, so if I’m wrong about this, please let me know.
This advice is primarily intended for BEFORE the power goes out, I think. Meaning: there could several weeks of power before a complete collapse. It’s likely that food will run out first, and law and order will break down before power outage. So you could have roaming gangs driving the streets, while you’re inside surfing the net for information on what’s happening.
Ah, true enough. But you know there would be somebody getting on to play games instead of research. So I suppose this is for those people. As someone who plays World of Warcraft(casually), there are a lot of people addicted to that game that’ll be throwing fits when the servers go down. lol
lol i wanna see that!
well there is another stone age option it’s called an ethernet cable. No wireless is needed. No pesky broadcasting signal.
This won’t work against skilled people, but if you REALLY need wireless, most good routers can be set not to broadcast the SSID (works best when used with MAC address filtering). If your computers are already configured to connect to it, it will connect fine, but most people will be unable to find the network (it is possible to, but this requires more skill than most people would have. It is still a better idea to completely disable wireless though.)
Dude. It’s Still super Easy To Figure Out If There Is An Active WiFi Router In the Area, Even If It’s Set Not To Broadcast It’s SSID. It’s So Simple, I Can do It On My iPod. WiFiFoFum. It Tells You There’s A Network, Just Says “”. It Accomplishes the Purpose Though, Correct?
aww crap idk how to shut off our wifi except with a boomstick