During a recent Zombie Research Society seminar focusing on helping women plan and prepare for a zombie apocalypse a lot of time was spent talking about tampons and how women can make due without them.

It turns out there are a number of options, but upon further consideration, I think it is safe to say that any person preparing for a catastrophic world-ending event should have a stockpile of tampons and maxi pads. The first reason should be obvious enough.

Beyond that immediate usage, however, tampons and pads have several other qualities that could be put to use by anyone, man or woman.

The first, and perhaps most obvious, of these is as a wound dressing. The modern maxi pad actually makes use of technology developed for the military during World War I. The wood-based fiber, called Cellucotton by the Kimberly-Clark Company, replaced true cotton bandages on the battlefield. It wasn’t until after the war that the product was repurposed into the Kotex brand. Today, feminine pads are at least five times more absorbent than a cotton bandage of the same size and weight.

Tampons are often made of cotton, but they have an advantage over pads when it comes to treating puncture wounds. Like the pads, they come in individual sterile packages, but they have an applicator that allows them to be placed inside the wound rather than on it and a tail that makes it easy to remove when needed.

The devices are actually so useful for this purpose that the U.S. military includes them in field medic kits in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. There is even some anecdotal evidence to suggest the practice goes as far back as Vietnam.

This article appears in issue number 3 of our digital edition. It can be downloaded for free here:http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/421912.