37 replies to this topic

[Dagnome]

*Whips out the Zombie Survival Guide*

Zombie Apocalypse strikes the planet, what are your plans?

[Atlai]

You know, some running..screaming...until my tacos are done, then ill take the entire zombie force out with a turkey.

[Mei Song]

I am an idea, i cannot be beaten by the likes of Zombies.

[Tice Daurus]

I know this might be made for fun, but if this really were to happen, what would be your plans? And your plans would most likely have to be made on if the zombies are slow moving like Walking Dead or 28 Days Later Zombies where they are quick and fast moving zombies and they have both speed and strength.

Me? First things first...get the guns from the attic. My dad has a 22. rifle and a shotgun, but they are packed away and we don't have ammo. I've been meaning to get my dad to stock some and the guns probably need to be serviced and checked because I haven't fired a gun or rifle. Ever. Next...immediately secure the house or location I'm at depending on where I'm at when this happens.

If things get too crazy, I need to be able to move quickly and find a secure location. Luckily, I have one in mind as I work as a telecom technician and the area I work at is a secured location with gates and it's a solid concrete structure, so I'd have to get to it. Next, if possible depending on if I can, I'd have to find my kids. God even thinking of this is morbid.

[ChaosGrinder]

I´d just stay put for 6 weeks and then conquer the world. Starvation will kill them

[dal10]

a good chunk of my grade in high school had a dedicated zombie plan. There is a small Island in the middle of a lake near where I live. it has about a 5 foot seawall as the lake used to be a bit higher and it is a man made island. about half a dozen large houses and a small campground. easily defensible has several back up generators with about a months worth of fuel. (I helped set up the damn things... so freaking heavy...) on top of that, we have the location of every single war vet that we know of in the area marked on a map, we were going to try and bring them on board, particularly the vietnam vets, they tended to bring the most equipment back with them. One even has a MA2 .50 cal machine gun with about 5 boxes of ammo. (helped my brother do some work on his basement, my brother is a bit of the local handyman). We had teams set up to secure things we need, with at least one back up team for every kind of objective, in case the other team could not get together or was lost to zombies. whole plan was set in motion when the zombies were reported around 2 days away, or when people started fleeing en masse, whichever came first.

we were kinda prepared for this, also I was on the initial fortify the base team, we were to head straight to the island while making a little detour to a hardware store on the waters edge for lumber and other such things to start the fortification of the island.

so yeah, I had a plan.

Edited by dal10, 12 November 2012 - 08:38 AM.

[aspect]

I have 750rds 55gr M193 5.56mm, ~200rds 230gr .45acp, 40 gallons of potable water, and ~50,000 calories worth of awful meal bars in my garage and closet, haha. Not for zombies, but it kinda fits into the theme of this thread I figure...

The most important thing is probably communications. Everybody should get their HAM license! I have a yaesu fr7900r in my truck, and with my smallish antenna I can talk to someone 100 miles away on a good day.

I'm not crazy, I swear...get out of my teeth!

[Dagnome]

ChaosGrinder, on 12 November 2012 - 08:29 AM, said:

I´d just stay put for 6 weeks and then conquer the world. Starvation will kill them

As zombies (Or "Ghouls") do not require nutrition to survive and they will last as long as the brain matter takes to rot completely This gives the average "Fresh" zombie approx 5-6 years to walk the earth feeding on human flesh.

Edited by Dagnome, 12 November 2012 - 09:52 AM.

[Catamount]

First, thoughts on guns: In a SHTF situation, a good .22 is what you want. A 10/22 with a good 25rd magazine is about the most practical gun in existence, imo, and that's really my zombie gun. It's good for hunting small things to eat, should be more than enough to dispatch a zombie, it's got low report so every shot doesn't attract everything within 10 miles, and you can carry hundreds of rounds of ammo with little weight/bulk, not to mention the guns are light (my 10/22's maybe 2kg, vs 4ish for the SKS). .22LR ammo is also ubiquitous; a decently stocked Walmart probably easily carries >10,000 rounds. The 9 and the SKS would be coming too (I've got 1000rds between them all, 500 of it .22), but the 10/22 is my go-to gun unless I'm in a firefight with other humans, and mine folds right up to pack into, well, anything. It's got 2 magazines and an open red dot scope with a few spare batteries (CR2032, easy to come by, or cannibalize from computers).

If I ended up alone and mobility became an issue (10-15kg of gun/ammo isn't easy to haul on foot), the SKS would be the first to go. I'd miss it (has a Tapco T6 stock and 20rd mags, decent scope, reliable without maintenance as long as the firing pin is kept in check) but it's the heaviest and 9mm/.22LR ammo is a lot more ubiquitous than 7.62x39 (which is mostly imported by Tula). The 9mm is a Ruger SR9, so even if I had to ditch the ammo for weight, I'd keep that; it's accurate and very rugged/reliable, even dirty.

The landlord has a semi-auto .22 (Colt Courier) and a .38 revolver as well; I'd probably take both, but not use the .38 ; it might make a good item for bartering down the road and it's small, so might as well have it, but it'd be a terrible zombie gun (high report vs power, ammo hard to come by).

TLDR version: get yourself a .22 for survival, all other firearms are secondary, but still very desirable (especially a good handgun, 9mm is good since the ammo is very plentiful).
So, plan:

Plan A, or the "everything worked out just right" plan, might just be to hold up here. Boone, NC is a large town with maybe 20-30k people, a disproportionately large number of which are the nation's best and brightest, because it's a college town, and it also has a decent number of soldiers at any given moment (you see them all around campus). Between potential land for agriculture and the large amount of available game, the food situation should be reasonably sustainable (with decent surpluses to get us started), and being a mountain town >3,000 feet up, it should be reasonably easy to lock down, since there are basically two or three ways in (depending on how you think about it), and one of them is basically a road between a sheer cliff and a vertical rock wall that would be untraversible by zombies once blocked. Even the other two are far from open routes, as they're basically roads with steep mountainous hills on both sides. Beyond that, we're a relatively isolated place, with no nearby communities besides the small community of Mountain City, TN. We should have sufficient food, power, weaponry and expertise to hold up and preserve the majority of our knowledge and technology to restart civilization, benefiting from experts in fields ranging from agriculture to ecology (to manage our wild food supply) to microbiology (to find a cure!), to engineering. The relatively harsh winter and large snow volume would allow us to be physically isolated still more for about 1/3 of the year (if the outbreak happened in, say, December, we'd be all set since we'd just stop plowing the roads in).

As morbid as this sounds, the hope would be that there would be few enough survivors left outside that we'd be able to take in any who made it to us without straining our resources. If a 10,000 person mob came along, we'd probably have to turn them away (resources AND the risk that unturned infected might be among them), and that would be the hardest thing about it, potentially, just because you might end up reaching a point where you wouldn't be able to grant sanctuary anymore.


Plan B is the super SHTF situation, and perhaps more the type of outbreak you see in films or the Walking Dead. This is a faster and/or more widespread outbreak that's more serious. In that case, I'd take a very small group, probably just the landlord and I, try to contact/reach immediate family if possible (my family's in Charlotte, NOT the place to be), we'd carry all the guns and supplies we could, and I'd make for Frenchville, PA, where Ilithi Dragon lives. Same idea at that point: hoard weapons and supplies, and use the remoteness and rough terrain and weather for refuge and start over, only with much smaller numbers in case we had to move. Getting to PA could be tough; flying would be out, especially since airports would probably be the first place to be overrun with people (and in turn, zombies), but there are plenty of remote routes to get up North by vehicle. The biggest remaining problem would be avoiding the mass exodus of people into Canada, mostly from the Baltimore/DC area, which the hoard would inevitably follow. If necessary, moving would be fairly easy because our group would ultimately be small, and we'd have enough supplies, weapons and ammo to keep a small army stocked. Long term, leaving PA for even more remote areas slightly south and west might be advisable, or if a good refuge or cure came about we'd go that way, but again, we'd be mobile so that's all no problem.

Tice Daurus, on 12 November 2012 - 08:20 AM, said:

Me? First things first...get the guns from the attic. My dad has a 22. rifle and a shotgun, but they are packed away and we don't have ammo. I've been meaning to get my dad to stock some and the guns probably need to be serviced and checked because I haven't fired a gun or rifle. Ever.

If I were you, I'd take to learning, and not just because of zombies. Knowing how to shoot is a practical skill, and a .22 is cheap to learn on, and good to learn good technique on (no real recoil, so it's easy to identify and address problems with your actual shooting).

Edited by Catamount, 12 November 2012 - 10:29 AM.

[aspect]

Catamount, on 12 November 2012 - 10:19 AM, said:

If I were you, I'd take to learning, and not just because of zombies. Knowing how to shoot is a practical skill, and a .22 is cheap to learn on, and good to learn good technique on (no real recoil, so it's easy to identify and address problems with your actual shooting).

+1

[Swiss Beats]

A MechWarrior's Guide To

Surviving A Zombie Apocalypse:

You can survive. You can live through a zombie apocalypse and you won’t have to have a cache of high caliber weapons counter, protective clothing, or special training in order to do it. The secrets of survival are:

Know The Swarms True Dangers
Know The Steps You Take To Escape Them

To begin with, you must realize that a zombie apocalypse is just another day at the office for you, the MechWarrior. While a zombie apocalypse holds has a lot of death and destruction, its total zombie power is definitely limited.

Because the power of of a hoard of zombies is limited, your chances of living through an zombie apocalypse are much better than you may have thought. In the city of Krishna, slightly over half the people who were in the city proper during the Great Zombie Apocalypse of 3019 lived to tell their experiences. Today, thousands of survivors of these zombie apocalypses that happened in the past live in new houses built right where their old ones once stood after being ravaged by zombies. The zombie apocalypse may have changed their way of life, but they are not walking dead. Their children are normal. Those who were temporarily unable to have children because of the lack of human companions now are having children again….

Just like protesters and groups of hippie tree-huggers, zombies cause most of their death and damage by sheer numbers overwhelming you. So first let’s look at a few things you can do to escape these two dangers.

More than half of all wounds from zombies are the result of being bodily tossed about or having your brain eaten while you are screaming in pain. If you lie down flat, you are likely to be die. If you have time to make it to your mech, there is less chance of your being swarmed by hungry undead.

Regardless of all you may have heard or read concerning the dangers of hungry zombies on the loose, usually they won't show up unannounced at your door. Most zombie swarms, are so widely and so thinly spread that are very unlikely to offer any real dangers to a MechWarrior in a 30 foot tall, 100-ton mech. Thousands of zombies would have to be crawling all over your mech before serious damage would occur and only if they figured out how to disable your mech….

Even if you have only a few second’s warning, there is one important thing you can do to lessen your chances of injury by zombies: squash them flat with your mech. That's right MechWarrior, you have a zombie killing machine at your disposal that will provide endless days of pleasure while protecting you from having your brain eaten! Simply climb in your 100-ton mech, power up and start stomping undead flesh! If that was not enough you have lasers at your disposal and a few quick flicks of the joystick and you can melt swarms of zombies into pools of molten slag lickety split.

To sum up, always remember that your mechs and large lasers are the two greatest dangers zombies face. The things that you do to protect yourself from these dangers usually will go a long way toward providing protection from the being eaten by a hoard of hungry zombies.

Edited by demonr6, 12 November 2012 - 12:09 PM.

[kragmoor]

Dagnome, on 12 November 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

As zombies (Or "Ghouls") do not require nutrition to survive and they will last as long as the brain matter takes to rot completely This gives the average "Fresh" zombie approx 5-6 years to walk the earth feeding on human flesh.

doesn't matter how long your brain lasts if you don't have the muscles to walk

[Catamount]

kragmoor, on 12 November 2012 - 03:56 PM, said:

doesn't matter how long your brain lasts if you don't have the muscles to walk

There are definitely some assumptions about zombies here that need to be made before one thinks about how one would respond. The first and foremost on my part is always going to be that these aren't magical "ignore the laws of thermodynamics" zombies who run around with an infinite energy supply without having to feed on something. Realistically, a given zombie shouldn't stay up for more than 4 or 5 days before dying of dessication. Basically, they'd drop dead of thirst. Continued zombie numbers would just be due to new infected. Of course, this wouldn't apply if the zombies were intelligent enough to stop and take a drink every so often.

Beyond that, we should basically be dealing with 28 days/weeks later zombies; they wouldn't be immune to non-brain damage like Walking Dead zombies (and would be wholly capable of bleeding out), or infinite-endurance zombies that don't need to eat/drink, and so there would be limitations to them and ample ways to kill them.

Edited by Catamount, 12 November 2012 - 05:47 PM.

[Tice Daurus]

Well the problem is it depends on the infection or disease causing either zombies or if you've ever seen the movie The Crazies, they probably would be fast moving, yet have a brain disease that would cause psychotic trama in which would allow them to kill without thought at the sight of another human being.
The trick...they would be infected, and depending on immunity, if you would be immune in such a case. If your not immune, well then, you don't have to worry, someone who is immune will be dispatching you soon.
If you are immune, you have to remember the government will be looking to CONTAIN outbreak. The trick is to leave the area as quickly as possible and make sure you do not have symptoms. Why? Because most likely the place will be fuel bombed or hit with a low level nuke to make explosive yet contain the radition with a possible lower yield 1-ton bomb. So with that said...where can you go?
Finding a radiation shelter underground bunker or underground cave and stocking it with supplies would be the best bet.

[RFMarine]

Dagnome, on 12 November 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

As zombies (Or "Ghouls") do not require nutrition to survive and they will last as long as the brain matter takes to rot completely This gives the average "Fresh" zombie approx 5-6 years to walk the earth feeding on human flesh.

there are different kinds of zombies. the supernatural kind can live forever without food since magic is the source of power, probably ending up as a walking skeleton.





the I am Legend kind are just humans with problems with their higher brain functions. They should require food and water just like normal humans


so it depends which kind of zombie you are talking about




also, decay does not take years unless the environment is favorable like in cold temperatures

Quote

In a temperate climate, it usually requires three weeks to several years for a body to completely decompose into a skeleton, depending on factors such as temperature, presence of insects, and submergence in a substrate such as water. In tropical climates, skeletonization can occur in weeks, while in tundra areas, skeletonization may take years, or may never occur if subzero temperatures persist.

http://en.wikipedia....Skeletonization

[Sen]

Quote

[color=#959595]they will last as long as the brain matter takes to rot completely This gives the average "Fresh" zombie approx 5-6 years to walk the earth feeding on human flesh.[/color]

Doesn't matter. The rest of the body will rot in a much shorter span of time depending on weather temperature, conditions, etc. In colder climates, since there is no heat generation in a dead body, the water in the muscles will freeze. In warmer climates, they'll maybe last weeks. in colder. . the question is will they reanimate when they thaw?

Currently i don't have much of a plan. I have an AWOL bag and a mixed assortment of bladed weapons, some of which I even have a little training in using. I know where to go to find stockpiles of water, and how certain corporations maintain their vehicle fleets. . as well as where they put the keys. Outside of that, i think Zombieland nailed most of the important rules really REALLY well.

Edited by Sen, 13 November 2012 - 08:43 AM.

[Aetam]

Well first it depends on the zombies. How fast are they? How easy are they to kill?

I suppose getting some weapons is always nice. Now guns might be effective but ammo will be short. While the world gets overrun you can not simply resupply. You have to depend on luck for that. So besides guns you might want some melee weapons. Like a sword/axe/hammer...
After basic weapons you need supplies. You will need food, water, clothing (the colder the region the more important) and maybe some camping stuff (tent,...).
The ultimate goal would be survival, meaning to escape the zombie hordes to somewhere where you are safe. So now it kind of depends on the global scenario. Maybe you have to leave your continent. Maybe the world is overrun everywhere and you have to find yourself some island. Maybe you just can fortify humanity somewhere and keep the hordes at bay.

So in the end it will be: grab supplies, rally survivors and move as group towards safety. Oh and kill everything that is in your path and screams "braaaaaains".

[Tombstoner]

Realizes that i can't survive an outbreak and begin to weaponize / armor plate my future zombie body.

hopefully turning myself in to a survivors worst nightmare.

get or make some hooks/ claws for my hands. so when I'm a zombie i can hold on to my next meal.

full body riot gear with fully enclosed head protection but with the mouth open for feeding. so no stabby in the ear, eyes, neck or under the jaw and into the brain., no clubs or axes to the head or body. no breaking bones.

also booby trap by body just in case i am take down and someone wants the armor. bomb vest under the armor rigged in such a way as to go off when armor is removed.

[Tice Daurus]

It would also depend on if the zombie infection is somewhat contained or not. If it's global, then you don't need to worry about nukes or fuel bombings as the military will most likely be using ammo not bombs to clear areas. If it's contained to one city or a particular area...get the heck out of the area if you are not infected.

If the zombie attack is determined to be viral, they'll get samples of infected, determine the cause, and if it is indeed viral, they will burn it out. Best way to burn it out...nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Thus you will need to get the F*** out of Dodge City and fast, and then seek help if possible from military to determine if you are indeed infected or not. If you are, then you're doing us a service to get brain-cased quickly so you don't spread it. If your not, they'll check you for anti-bodies, take 'em and use your DNA for future possible infections.

[Slab Squathrust]

Even in cold temperatures, bacteria grow well. Some even prefer it such as L. monocytogenes. These bacteria can even grow extremely fast at 4 ^oC. This is the average temperature of a refrigerator. Now assuming it was some sort of disease that turned everyone into zombies, it would be pretty safe to assume their immune system is shot. Otherwise, they wouldn't be zombies. The average human intestinal tract is filled with billions if not trillions of individual opportunistic pathogens. Without an immune system to keep these bacteria in check, they would spread throughout the body and would reproduce quickly. The average generation time for E. coli at body temperature is approximately 30 minutes. This means in the course of a day the number of bacteria present could double 48 times given adequate nutrients.

Now for the sake of easy math, lets say the zombie has 1000 individual bacteria at the time of transformation. 1000 * 2 ^ 48 = 2.8 * 10^17

the mass of each bacterium is roughly 10^-15 kg so
(2.8 * 10^17) * (1 * 10^-15) = 281 kg. A 160 lb human is 72 kg. Then number of bacteria would quickly be more massive than the original human.

Since growth condition would not be ideal (resources would become scarce, because the bacteria would derive their energy and nutrients from the human/zombie) it would take a few days to see this growth, but the moral of the story is that in the event of some outbreak of zombies, they would likely be a bloated mass after only a few days. If I was uninfected, I would wait it out and then enjoy shooting at these bloated masses as they wander around.