UTMC

I needed a day away from bikes...so, I finished putting my "Zombie Kit" together.

Just picked up a brand-new SKS yesterday...done.

What's in your "kit"?

<a href="http://s443.photobucket.com/albums/qq16 ... ie_kit.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i443.photobucket.com/albums/qq16 ... ie_kit.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

You'd better get a machete into that kit. Guns run out of ammo, and zombies keep coming. In a zombie apocalypse, ammunition will become scarce, and should only be used when absolutely necessary. And sure, you may think you're well stocked, but when it's you against a million zombies, you're toast - not to mention armed hordes of the lawless living roaming the country pilaging from survivors. If that kit is "finished", I have very little confidence in your survival success.

Get a machete. Fire is good too. Flammables and ignition sources can save you a month's worth of ammunition in one attack simply by burning large crowds of ghouls rather than trying to pick them off and wasting rounds. Center mass doesn't apply to the undead, remember? Gotta get the brain.

More important than weaponry during this inveitable catastrophe will be stategic location. I chose my condo/townhouse specifically with this crisis in mind - there is only one way into my home, and it's up a long flight of narrow stairs, which I can use as my own little Thermopylae, funneling the screaming undead into a small avenue in which I gain the advantage of high ground. All of my windows are inaccessible from the ground, nothing is getting in here. Zombies can't really climb, are not superhuman (in fact, depending on their individual degree of decomposition, they are much weaker than a human - because they are dead). On the other hand, I have multiple escape routes, and can even smash,cut through a wall into the next unit in a pinch. Almost like a tree-fort that I can defend. I feel it's better to have a small fortress that you can easily defend than a large place that you can't monitor every inch of.

I'd also worry more about food than guns. Horde this before hording bullets. The minute, nay - the second that the power goes out, the world will crumble into chaos. A modern nation like the US without electricity is something that nobody living here today could comprehend (aside from a homeless man under a bridge, who will have an advantage over the average soft, stupid American). Modern humans, by and large, simply cannot "survive" anything. Sure, people in 3rd World nations have a leg up on us, as they are accustomed to living with little, but not here. As soon as the lights go out, everyone pretty much dies. Getting your hand on food will be a far greater problem than even legions of zombies. Living People will kill each other, and you, to get the ever dwindling food supplies. Zombies are easy to battle, as they have limited capacity for thought due to rotting brains. Live humans on the other hand are crafty and dangerous, posing a far greater threat. So be ready to kill a lot of people. A year worth of food for a small family will take up a lot of room (1000 cans of Spaghettios is big, and that's one can each for a 3 person family for a year).

Then there's the water - even MORE important. Once the power goes out, so goes the water. With nobody to maintain treament facilities (either dead, undead, or in hiding), the country transforms into a giant sewer. Waste is not processed, fresh water disappears. Water storgage takes up even more space. Use every square inch of your stronghold to this effect. Every square inch. And when it comes down to it, when it's time to kill your fellow man, make sure you find out if he has any stashed before slaying him - under torture if need be.

Medicine! At first news of Zombie Holocaust - go immediately to the closest pharmacy with that shotgun. Kill the proprietors if need be, and strip the shelves of everything from antibiotics to laxatives. First aid materials too. They key to survival is going to pe preparedness, but the key to preparedness is getting the jump on everyone else. You don't want to walk into RiteAid and find 7 people in there doing the same thing. (If so, dispatch all of them without discussion or hesitation - they will do the same to you if not). On the way out - remember to take every battery in the store. Becasue you'll need...

Light. Nobody in America has experienced a dark world. It will not be as it is portrayed in so many movies. Load your Maglites - the big D units (if you don't already have one, I doubt your ability to survive on that fact alone) and some smaller easy-carry Mags. Batteries will become scarce quickly, so these lights are not for reading books with. Learn to do everything in the dark, using the lights only when life depends on it. A 6D Maglight will kill man or zombie in one strike if needed - extra bonus weapon. Have the light everywhere you go, and never have to look for it. The one time you do will be the last time, surely. Batteries also power radios, walkies, and other communication tools, since no power means no telephone, cellphones, internets. A generator at your fortress sounds like a neat idea, but it requires fuel, and the noise attracts unwanted attention, living or otherwise. And you'll need fuel for your vehicle - don't waste it on stupid crap like light and refrigeration.

Motorcyclists have many advantages in post-zombie attack world. More mileage, easier maintenance, speed, maneuverablity, and you can better hide the machine from bandits and pirates. I would sacrifice the security of the car or truck for this.

Guns will mean very little when the dead finally rise. Helpful, yes - but you'd better not count on them for survival. Preparedness, speed, and craftiness are much more important. And a machete.

Yeah, I gotta get me a machete.

Damn, forgot the machete!

You've gotta be careful with fire. When setting large hordes of the undead ablaze, you've got to realize that they will likely keep coming in your direction until their motor capacity is destroyed. They can light your house or hiding place on fire, and then you've screwed yourself unless you've prepared for that.

Do you really need an SKS? Wouldn't a .22 LR be sufficient to hit the brain of a zombie? You can horde a shitload of .22 LR as well. Now, the shot gun. I would like to see a duckbill choke on it. Maybe you could cut a couple-a-three in half with one round. That would slow them down enough to be able to pick them off at leisure. I also have alot of bookcases in the house for barricading and obstacles. Can you eat a zombie or would that turn you into a zombie?

I have a crowbar. I plan on buying an orange jumpsuit and some square, black-rimmed glasses.

All kidding aside, if you want to see what happens when society comes unglued in the US just look at the L.A. riots following the Rodney King verdict, the immediate aftermath of hurricane Katrina, and the 1977 NYC blackout. (see http://gothamist.com/2007/07/13/the_new_york_ci.php )

From Wired article:

In all, 1,616 stores were either looted or damaged during the blackout. More than a thousand fires were set, 14 of them resulting in multiple alarms. And in the biggest mass arrest in city history, 3,776 people were thrown in the jug. The jails were so overcrowded that the overflow had to be held in precinct basements and other makeshift gaols.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoverie ... ntech_0713



Rioting, looting, burning. Every man for himself with law enforcement unwilling, unable or simply absent - sometimes for days if not longer.

Stuff like this is why I own guns for self-defense when I live in states where that is possible.

stiles wrote:


Rioting, looting, burning. Every man for himself with law enforcement unwilling, unable or simply absent - sometimes for days if not longer.
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Eliminate the power grid, and it's forever. There would be no return to normalcy in the world. That's why zombie preparedness needs to be forever by default.

Ya'll are starting to scare me. Maybe it's time head out to Montana and live in a 12x12 shack?

If I had to pick one gun and had to leave the rest, I'd take the Nylon 66, absolutely no question about that. My 10/22 is a great little gun, but when it comes to reliability...the Remington has it beat. Besides, I can carry a lot more .22 ammo than any crap I'd need for an SKS or shotgun.

These guys REALLY take it seriously...

http://www.preparedsociety.com/forum/

I don't have to imagine this shite- I lived in NOLA during Katrina. And for a week after...
The fucked-up thing about this is I lived in LA during the 'King riots as well... Lived about 5 miles from that shit. Then, follow that up with the Northridge quake, and the chaos that ensured from that... SoCal-ians are USELESS without electricity, and cell-phones.

I have seen the Zombie Invasion. I have seen the usefulness of firearms.

I have a veritable amory in the house, now. No, I will not post the contents....
Y'all can see it in person if you like.

VFRF2 wrote:
These guys REALLY take it seriously...

http://www.preparedsociety.com/forum/

Those guys are in a dreamworld! There's a forum on livestock, and another on money and investing! That entire group of people on that forum will be the first to go when the zombies come. Generators. Bah. Nothing but road pirate bait and zombie attractors. Those people are the kind of people I would steal my food from. While they are sitting in homesteader communes planning next year's crops, I will be planning to burn down the entire affair and pilaging their village. Best to fly as solo as possible, allowing for less baggage and setbacks.

This is a better link:

http://www.zombiecrisis.org/index.php

The most sensible course of action would be to simply destroy on sight everything that moves, living or undead - thereby eliminating any and all question as to the intentions of other survivors. There's no problem forming a survival alliance with some others, but always keep your finger on the trigger...

I think that global End Of Days catastophes are really the only thing I might be truly cut out for. Some people are born with athletic ability, some are poets from the womb. Maybe I'm genetically predisposed to being Omega Man!

Don't worry guys, if you show up on my doorstep as a shambling corpse, I promise to get pictures before turning your head into a spray of spaghetti sauce. I will keep a photographic record of all of the undead Terrorists I had the pleasure slaying, on the off chance that humanity rebuilds a century from now, creates more interwebs, and the last progeny of the last Terrorist standing resurrects the UTMC. I'd expect the same respect in return should I take a bite during battle and become a leather-clad, flesh-seeking zombie. Sewn into a gash in the skin of my thigh and healed over will be a vial containing a list, on which will be written the secret locations of my motorbikes, backup motorbikes, weaponry, food-stashes, and wrinkly porno mags. It will be my post-mortem gift to the Terrorist who has to knock my head off with a rusty shovel.

leftlaneguy wrote:I don't have to imagine this shite- I lived in NOLA during Katrina. And for a week after...
The fucked-up thing about this is I lived in LA during the 'King riots as well... Lived about 5 miles from that shit. Then, follow that up with the Northridge quake, and the chaos that ensured from that... SoCal-ians are USELESS without electricity, and cell-phones.

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And that shit was only short term. Multiply that by forever, and that's true Zombie Holocaust! I will make my way to Tenessee if my stronghold is breached.

VFRF2 wrote: <a href="http://s443.photobucket.com/albums/qq16 ... ie_kit.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i443.photobucket.com/albums/qq16 ... ie_kit.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Is that a Nylon 66 on the far right? I have one too. My brother has a black one. I believe green is the rarest.

Priest wrote:Those people are the kind of people I would steal my food from

Is you name Boyd, by any chance?

ejworthen wrote:

VFRF2 wrote: <a href="http://s443.photobucket.com/albums/qq16 ... ie_kit.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i443.photobucket.com/albums/qq16 ... ie_kit.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Is that a Nylon 66 on the far right? I have one too. My brother has a black one. I believe green is the rarest.

Sure is, I picked it up a couple of months ago. The prices have really gone crazy on them at some of the major online gun brokerages. Yeah, the Seneca Green one's are the rarest. I picked mine up for under $200 at a pawn shop in Baltimore last month, it's in great shape, very little usage.
My brother bought one brand new when were kids, he still has it. All of my brothers and I wound up getting to shoot it though. Pardon the pun, but...they are practically bullet proof.

I'm looking for a Brazilian-made CBC version now...they are getting a little hard to find.

DerGolgo wrote:
Is you name Boyd, by any chance?

I'm curious as to the fur coat and no pants portayal.

It seems you're assuming that the zombies will be slow and non-contagious.

Machetes are useful in a lot of situations, but I worry about splatter.

As discussed in other threads, I'm a proponent of the Ruger 10/22 loaded with CCI Stingers or other hyper-velocity rounds.

guitargeek wrote:It seems you're assuming that the zombies will be slow and non-contagious.

Machetes are useful in a lot of situations, but I worry about splatter.

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On the first part, logic dictates that as one decomposes, that muscles will incrementally cease to funtion properly, eventually leaving them rotting in the street and harmless if they keep their heads long enough. At their very best, even a fresh zombie couldn't be any faster than the man/woman he was before infection. Hopefully you will not find yourself in a position in which you live along the route of a marathon when the crisis begins, because then you'd pretty much be fucked - zombies with speed and endurance.

This brings up our own health. If you can, get healthy now. You may have to run. Far. I cannot run let alone walk more than a few blocks anymore, therefore I will remain and battle it out, and rely on sneakyness over athleticism. But if I could, I'd be jogging to get ready.

On the contagion issue, I guess we will have to see.

I guess it also depends on how you define "zombie".

Romero zombies are reanimated corpses. The move slowly and moan a lot.
2004 Dawn zombies are also reanimated corpses, but they move quite quickly.
Both types of undead zombies need to be shot or bludgeoned in the head or decapitated, anything to disconnect the brain's motor center.

28 X Later zombies aren't corpses at all, just people with shorted frontal lobes. They also move quite quickly, but anything that'd kill a normal person will kill one of these.

Infection is spread through biting, but can also be spread from splattering of any bodily fluids, so blood borne pathogen precautions should be taken. Machetes are cool so long as you're wearing a hazmat suit...

guitargeek wrote:I guess it also depends on how you define "zombie".

Romero zombies are reanimated corpses. The move slowly and moan a lot.
2004 Dawn zombies are also reanimated corpses, but they move quite quickly.
Both types of undead zombies need to be shot or bludgeoned in the head or decapitated, anything to disconnect the brain's motor center.

28 X Later zombies aren't corpses at all, just people with shorted frontal lobes. They also move quite quickly, but anything that'd kill a normal person will kill one of these.

Infection is spread through biting, but can also be spread from splattering of any bodily fluids, so blood borne pathogen precautions should be taken. Machetes are cool so long as you're wearing a hazmat suit...

Christ, Zombies are high maintenance...

The Zombies around here are all either at the maul, or driving to or from the maul in Japanese or German made, four wheel drive station wagons. They can all be easily avoided by walking about 50 yards into the woods.

I'll have to do some research as to how things were handled "back in the day"

hehe

Zombie-pocalypse discussions always amuse me, because- perhaps appropriately- they quickly devolve to the short-term. What's necessary to survive now. We won't need zombies to make a mess of things if the lights go out. The living will cause huge problems on their own and must be dealt with appropriately. Add zombies to that mix, and all of your effort must be put into just staying alive.

That makes sense, but end-game dissolves. What's the point of staying alive if the only point is to stay alive? Perhaps just to keep going in hope that some point will make itself obvious later on? To outlive the zombies so that society can be rebuilt? In either of these scenarios, while it's more convenient to go raiding and kill the still-living to take their resources and reduce competition, that diminishes the chances for eventual reconstruction. There will, of course, be an initial stretch that requires drastically thinning the herd since we have so many too many people right now, but cooperation becomes necessary eventually, because we can't reproduce without cooperation on a fairly large scale, and if we want to go on, we have to reproduce. With such large defense and resource collection costs, it's not like one person can potentially protect and provide for two others, so that burden must be spread among many others for humans to have any chance of going on.

Personally, I don't really give a fuck about any of this. I'm not particularly worried about whether we continue as a species or whether my genes carry on to the next generation, but I do have some respect for worthwhile people who have those as goals (and I assume that most people who survive more than a few weeks and still have those as goals will be worthwhile). I like the idea of going on and experiencing the most I can, but if I didn't fall into a role that was productive in some way, I'm not sure that I could justify to myself taking things from people who wanted to get out of the mess.

These are just thoughts, of course, and meaningless unless one managed to avoid the initial outbreak and the first few weeks of violence, which would involve more luck than anything else. Luck that wouldn't be possible without preparedness, sure, but luck nonetheless.

Me? I'd have a motorbike, a hatchet, a machete, and a shotgun. Whatever armor I could get. Go light, go fast, and pick up supplies where and when possible.

My only hope is that the zombie-pocalypse occurs during this time of year. My plan involves fleeing to the Thousand Islands region of New York. Get out on the St. Lawrence. Use and abuse the multitude of camps on the little islands. Resupply at the multitude of small shops and stations along the river. Naval battles with like-minded folks will be an unfortunate necessity.

Hopefully these will be the animated corpse variety that continue to rot as time goes on. Then my only hope, sitting on the porch of a small island cottage, would be a hot and humid summer to rot the bastards before the freeze. Zombies can't swim, but once the ice hits, I'm fucked.

Two defense items for small hordes - fishing nets and bowling balls.

What about long distance weaponry ?
I'm not sure if the short term benefits of this have been discussed yet, but I think it would be prudent to get to the zombies before they get to you. So, I'm thinking about building a trebuchet capable of launching items we will not have need for ; a piano, an SUV or a politician. It will be nothing fancy since it will have to be abandoned, unless it can be built on a mobile platform.

I've done some research on this topic and it appears that Vikings have mastered this tool of siege so I will try to bring Glorious Viking Bastard onboard as a consultant

As much as I'd like to argue the relevance of my zombie-opolypse kit's relevant capability to help me survive as opposed to another's kit...

I guess I have three points to add / digress / stir the conversation.

1. The more I think about the coming undead or infected or infested-undead hordes... I begin to think it would be better to NOT have a clip fed assault or "sorta-sault" weapon. Reason being... one instinctively drops the clips in those things to reload to the next clip in a panic / necessity to fire off a lot of shots situation.

Then... sooner or later... you're out of clips, or down to one... and those things don't reload quickly.

Therein... I'm thinking the best medium range tactical weapon would be a 5-7 round shotgun - semi-auto - ideally something with minimized recoil like the Beretta Xtrema series... with a mixed load of sabot slugs, 00 buck, and maybe a birdshot. Carrying a vest full of shell choices, with the fairly rapid pace those reload compared to a handgun, with the damage potential would be, I think the best choice for that scenario.

Obviously you need to keep the handgun handy. Ideally a high-capacity 9mm, or one of the Springfield Armory Xm series that go into higher calibres (.40 and .45) with high capacity. Good hollow point shots so even if you just graze the head you'll hopefully take out enough of a chunk to drop the Zombified ones.

2. Long range weapon...
I think it is a must. Either held up at a mall, at a cabin in the woods, wherever, you're going to want something that can target from a distance well beyond 100 yards, and therein give you a scoped opportunity to determine if that thing in the distance bobbing and weaving is a live motion sapien type - or a zombified target to be obliterated before it gets a good scent off your grey matter.

Therein - I'm in favor of a well built .308 with clip capacity rather than bolt action. Semi-auto offers you the ability to re-site without necessarily taking your eyes off the target, or your finger off the trigger in the event you miss. I'm partial to H&Ks - the 91 series, particularly the PSG-1... but with the rarity of finding one of those except in SWAT or QRT arsenals - there are knock offs like the PTR-91 that are actually affordable to own and keep around.

One of those with a good dozen pre-loaded clips would not be a bad plan... plus... the .308 round is common enough you should be able to find refills on ammo should you need to venture out from your hideout at any local sporting good store, walmart, or even mountain gas station in many cases.

Finally...
3. Short range close quarters weapon that is NOT a firearm.
Machete is good... but why discount the precision cutting nature of a well built Katana? Designed for severing limbs (heads included) those things offer a good 28 - 32" of bladed edge compared to what? 16" of a machete? Plus - they're cutting power is only slightly reduced with one hand comapred to two.

I'd gladly throw my bat'leth at a zombie and grab a trusty Paul Chen or Bugai katana any day over a machete!

Them's my $.03 on the topic.

A 32" sword might be hard to swing in a small room or a hallway.
The machete still has its advantages in close quarters.

But that brings us back to the contamination aspect of slinging zombie goop everywhere with a blade.

I handled a real Katana once, many years ago. Nothing quite like it.