When I was a kid I read everything I could get my hands on about Scott and Amundsen, the Brit and the later day Viking who raced for the South Pole. This probably has something to do with why The Thing was my favorite scary movie, and why I was on YouTube looking for ice station documentaries. You see, I think the most interesting aspect of most apocalypse scenarios is what happens with the few hundred people we have stranded at the South Pole. The most interesting aspect of a ‘zombie apocalypse’ would be the Antarctic perspective.
The everyday pain-in-the-ass aspects of building this thing in an environment which compromises tools, materials and people to such a savage degree, makes it a must case study for serious sci-fi writers.