Contract Epidemiologist. Salary: $42,000 or less

You heard about the recent outbreak in Sierra Leone and ditched school the moment you could to put a résumé into WHO. By the time you hit Africa, every single one of your friends had sent you a text that said "You work for WHO?" Your contract is three months long, and you have no idea what you're going to do when it expires.

Statistician. Salary: $60,000

They give you the numbers, and you turn them into a sentence that normal people can understand. From what you understand, your work has gone on to convince senior city officials of impending threats, but you can't be sure. You work a lot of late hours and there are no windows in your office. For all you know, the apocalypse could have hit already.

Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer. Salary: $72,000

You work for the CDC and always seem to have the coolest job to talk about when you go to parties. People love to ask you about zombie infection scenarios and you love to answer them with way more details than they were expecting.

Research Team Lead. Salary: $90,000

You work for the city you grew up in as its senior public health care official. You spend each flu season tracking the flu, and every once in a while you trace waterborne illness through the municipal water supply. Sometimes you secretly wish that some terrible, life-threatening disease would hit the city instead. Just kidding. You would never think that. Probably.

Director of Regional Research and Medical Support. Salary $115,000

Working for big pharma doesn't win you any humanitarian awards, but it certainly brings in the paycheck. You've only been doing this sort of work for twelve years and you know people who've been in it for twenty who haven't even broken six figures. Suckers. Now if your job only provided better health care coverage...