When the zombie virus sweeps through cities and turns friends and foes alike into brain hungry walkers, chances are you’re going to be doing a lot of running. To prepare for the upcoming apocalypse of the shambling dead you might think of hitting the gym, but chances are good you’d be better off getting fit by increasing your hiking and running endurance.

Since May is Zombie Awareness Month according to the Zombie Research Society, we at SiliconAngle have been researching how you can use your smartphone to prepare for and stay alive when zombies become aware of you. Also check out how to survive the zombie onslaught with a smart home (another article in this series.)

There’s a lot of apps out there to get people more active, track distance, speed, calories burned, but you might be wondering what the wearable and mobile solutions look like.

Keep reading for a discussion of what you can use with your smartphone to keep your brains in your head.

Fitness is your friend to help outrun the ravenous undead hordes

Almost everyone already has a smartphone, but the wearable revolution has shown that wearables can provide a huge boost to understanding exercise and peak fitness. You want to be ready for when power fails, when the streets are dangerous to walk, and survivors will move in small groups to find supplies without drawing attention from the legions of walking dead.

The Apple Watch is the first obvious choice for staying fit and it has the added benefit that it will work great if you have an iPhone. Apple, Inc. built the Apple Watch with a lot of health applications in mind, and developers are producing more every day. The Watch provides apps for tracking exercise routines, prevents you from being too sedentary, lets you program out a calendar for activity, and even tracks calories burned and your historical best. There’s a lot going on in this little device on your wrist.

The Samsung Gear line has a wearable called the Gear Fit. Compared to other watch-like wearables, the fit has a narrower form factor that is designed to be more of a band than a watch–nothing to clip or get snagged (on say a fence.) The Gear Fit is dustproof, waterproof, and weighs on 27 grams–it also has an AMOLED display that should last quite a while, which is important if you can’t easily buy a new one. Finally the Gear Fit integrates as an S Health Partner, meaning that all fitness and health information can be analyzed and accessed in one place.

The FitBit isn’t just one wearable device, but a bunch of interesting wearables. The FitBit Zip and One are keyfob-like devices that stay out of your way, but still track movement and send it back to the FitBit app. The rest of the line–Flex, Charge, and Surge–are all watches designed to wear on the wrist. All of the FitBit devices link to a number of Android, iOS, and Windows mobile devices via a health tracking app. And, for those into personal health analytics, can take advantage of a health dashboard full of tidbits picked up by the FitBit.

For the more discerning zombie outrunner who doesn’t need a display, the Jawbone UP tracker might be more your speed. The UP Move is a button clip (with a strap if needed), UP2 and UP3 are wrist straps. The latter two contain not just fitness trackers for detecting movement, but the UP3 also has a heart monitor. Connect the UP to an Android or iOS smartphone and take advantage of an entire ecosystem of smart fitness apps to help you become a better runner, lose weight, and even sleep better.

With any of the above trackers, sleep could be a big deal–after all, in the cold nights after contagion sweeps over the world and zombies prowl the streets rest will be fitful at best.

Run! Cross-training for the zombie apocalypse

You may not know this, but there’s already a great way to mentally prepare yourself for running from scores of undead on the street, while honing important survivor skills, all with the help of a single smartphone app.

Zombies, Run! is a video game app for iOS and Android (so you can get it on your favorite smartphone) that puts you in the shoes of a post-apocalypse survivor via an immersive running game.

The brainchild of writer Naomi Alderman and Rebecca Levene, Zombies, Run! had a successful Kickstarter in 2011 which raised more than five times its ask at $72,627 from 3464 backers. The game is published by Six to Start and deserves its popularity in the zombie fitness genre.

This game is perfect for cross-training because it works as an Alternate Reality (AR) game that works with your running/walking schedule. Meaning, you start the game on your phone, go for a run, and play the game as you go. Each time you go out for a run, you get a mission, and listen to a narrated story. The game has two seasons so far and over 80 missions.

While on the run, and listening to the mission, you will pick up virtual items such as ammunition, water, food, and items for your base. For most of the time, it’ll be just like a normal run, but the ever present threat of zombies is never far away. When the walking dead come for you during a run, you will need to run faster for a short period of time.

The game also can record distance, time, pace and even calories burned during the mission by using the phone’s GPS or accelerometer. As a result, running missions for the game couples extremely well with other fitness programs and it adds the extra dimension of preparing runners for the inevitable zombie outbreak.

As of May this year, Zombies, Run! is free-to-play so you can download the app and start training today! Get it for Android or iOS.

Once the time comes, keep your smartphone charged

So far so good preparing for the plague of the living dead, but what happens when you do find yourself running from zombies down a windswept, desolate street? No doubt you’d like to keep your smartphone powered.

What if you could recharge your phone just by running from zombies? Well, there’s already a few people working on just that.

AMPY is a kinetic charger you wear that turns your movement into charge for your phone. Users strap the device to an extremity or waist, then every motion (say running from the brain-eating dead) can be used to stay at max battery. AMPY ran a highly successful Kickstarter campaign in November, 2014 that raised raised $309,324 USD with 2,573 backers. You can even pre-order it now for $99. We can just hope it will ship before the outbreak reaches the laboratories of AMPY’s mad scientists.

Next in line is SolePower, an aptly named technology that uses specialized insoles to charge a batter that can then be connected to a smartphone to give it a boost. The battery is called a PowerPac and is affixed to the shoe via the shoelaces, that way it won’t come loose when running frantically, leaping over fences, or even kicking your now-bitten neighbors in the face. Once charged, the PowerPac can power up any device that charges via USB. You can get on a pre-order wait list for the SolePower, which will sell at an expected price of $199–which includes two insoles and power packs (one for each shoe.)

Finally, if the above are not quite ready to repel the unquiet grave there’s the nPower PEG, one of the original kinetic generators made by Tremont Electric. The device is one of the earliest chargers developed capable of powering up from running and motion and it also uses a USB cable to charge mobile devices. Unlike the AMPY and the SolePower, the PEG is a bit unwieldy and is shaped like a flashlight. The nPower PEG appears to be out of stock at time of writing, but maybe if you’re lucky you can still score one.

It’s the end of the world but not the end of strong legs

If you have a smartphone it’s a good time to start researching fitness apps to help you run that 20 zombie mile. You’ll be thanking us at SiliconAngle for suggesting this now.

If you’re looking to stay healthy the wearable fitness devices listed above will certainly aid you in that goal. And, mentally preparing for running from zombies will also be important so be sure to download Zombies, Run! (after all it’s free-to-play.)

Be sure to look great with your fitness apps, health wearables, and charged smartphones for the undead photographers! Credit: Scott Beale via photopin cc

And, not to mention, now is a good time to find something that will help you keep your smartphone charged when the zombies do come for us–after all, your smartphone got you that far, why not make sure it gets you further.

After all. If you don’t take advantage of your smartphone, the zombies certainly won’t–all they want is your tasty brains.

If you’re still craving some technology information about how to outlive zombies, check out our article on how to weather the undead hordes with a smart home.

Images credit: Image credit: via FitBit “annie3.jpg” and Zombie Walk via photopin (license); Apple Watch via Apple, Inc.; USCPSC via photopin cc; Zombies, Run! banner via Six to Start; AMPY kinetic charger via Stryde Technologies, Inc.; Scott Beale via photopin cc