ZU Zombie Survival Discussion

Originally Posted by Variant Knight

I mean places like Walmart, gas stations, home, churches, that sort of thing. I do somewhat allow the military surplus store if you actually do visit it already.

I think those places will probably be cleaned out as soon as the infection hits. You're probably better off going for suburban or rural stores instead of big cities...

The risk of infection vs. the reward of supplies is too high in large cities. But I guess if you can get there soon enough, a gun store or a military surplus store is probably the best case scenario.

I am asking where do you think it would be best to be when it hit out of those sorts of places. Realistic starting locations.

Well, best case scenario is to have already colonized Mars at that point, but barring that, those in rural areas are going to fare better than those in urban areas, in general.

I live in a pretty secluded place--50 people around, spread out over a couple square miles, and my house is on a hill, stocked with guns, canned foods, and contains all sorts of hardware supplies for barricades. I'd definitely do a lot better there than somewhere like Nashville, where I go to university. There's too many people around. There are a ton of supplies, but like I said, there's a pretty good chance I'll get infected trying to scavenge them.

It'd be funny if the original source of the outbreak came from Mars somehow.

Ok, in a slightly more suburban area, with no prior knowledge of the outbreak, you aren't allowed to be at home, where would you pick as the best location?

Hardware store?

If it's a pretty suburban area it seems like a safe bet. As long as it's relatively empty, building a barricade and stockpiling supplies until I can either move to a safer area or build a more permanent structure sounds pretty good.

Really, I don't know what I would do. Any area with a concentrated amount of people is a no-go for me.

Yeah, though depending on the location people would run out immediately. I personally like my local walmart, because they have a nice survival section, hardware, vehicle maintenance, weapons, the whole nine yards. I mean, If it were either early morning or late day when it happened, and there were not a lot of people in it, I would not actually mind being in one. Only a few main entrances, though the back entrances may cause a problem. If any of the employees are willing to join you though, you could have a nice temporary location, and possibly even semi permanent location. I think gun stores would be bad ultimately because it is where everyone would go first. The same goes for police stations, and even slightly militarily oriented locations.

Originally Posted by pawptart

So let's talk about something else for a moment. Let's just say you have to venture into town for food/items/search for survivors, which is a realistic probability, especially if you haven't built a self-sustaining encampment yet. At this point, the game becomes offensive instead of defensive. How do you prepare yourself for walking around in an urban environment?



I think I'd probably travel by night (again, zombies are limited by their eyesight just as much as we are, if not more). Sometime with low visibility, at the very least. Definitely needs to be quiet and preferably windless, generally good weather conditions, so noise threats can be assessed carefully. Rain or snow would reduce both visibility and ability to detect noises far too much to be safe. Depending on what I was doing, I'd probably need no more than 3 - 4 other people with me to watch each other's backs--any more becomes a liability. A handful of people can easily be monitored for infection regularly to ensure our integrity isn't compromised. We'd probably need to travel there by bike, as urban environments are probably not navigable by car, and are loud and require gasoline.

Clearly not the ideal situation to have to go TOWARDS danger, but again, it could happen. So what would you do?

No. Humans are a daytime species. We're not optimized to be active at night.

Trying to go nocturnal would only result in decreased ability to adapt to the environment. Especially when your predators aren't likely to be restrained as such (modern convention is zombies are just as active, if not more so at night).

It would be better to trade the possibility of a decrease in being detected for the guaranteed increase in awareness and visibility. You want to be able to see any zombie around.

Along with that, a lot of sources seem to point at zombies as being reluctant at best to come in daylight. I know that personally though, I can't operate in full daylight without sunglasses. I would probably prefer to go about sunrise. Get low light so you aren't blinded, but you still know you will have light on the way back home.

Originally Posted by Great White North

No. Humans are a daytime species. We're not optimized to be active at night.

That's the point.

Originally Posted by Great White North

Trying to go nocturnal would only result in decreased ability to adapt to the environment. Especially when your predators aren't likely to be restrained as such (modern convention is zombies are just as active, if not more so at night).

I'm banking on zombies following a biological model moreso than "convention", but if what you say is true, then I'll adjust my strategy.

If they follow the biological model also, we have tech to bypass nighttime.
I just realized that almost nobody has ever thought to mention the possibility of using drones, like military drones or anything similar, to find supplies. If the zombies go for us for food, then they probably won't go for drones, at least after the first time or so.

But what are the odds that you'll have drones to use in the first place?

Michael Daniel Accused Of Killing, Eating Dog On K-2-Fueled Rampage

IT CONTINUES

THE END IS NIGH

Worst place for a zombie break out is during the yearly zombie walk.

You could always try to make a homemade drone of some sort if you had any electronic skill. Just a remote control car and a camera with some sort of wireless interface for both. Instant scout.

An RC with a camera would be invaluable for scouting out urban areas. You probably run out of power sources really quick though.

See, because of how small the battery capacity is, that would be a good use for solar cells to recharge it. Most things just take too much energy to use, so you have to charge like all day to get even a moment.
What I was thinking might be interesting though if you have a group that can actually do this, is set up base in a forest with solar panels at the center, and then wire the power through a transformer to get a really high voltage. Have some spools of copper thread hooked up and string the around the trees at about leg level. Will hopefully wipe out zombies if they maintain the human weakness to electricity, as well as keep any human intruders at bay. I mean, most groups seem to agree that there will be human enemies as well. Not everyone will be out for the same purposes.

Originally Posted by Zecora

An RC with a camera would be invaluable for scouting out urban areas. You probably run out of power sources really quick though.

Conserving fuel for use in a generator is probably more practical than using it for locomotion.

As long as you can find rechargeable batteries, that is.

*Lives virtually next door to a massive MoD storage facility where they have at least one warehouse full of ammunition, as well as armed guards, tanks, and self-propelled guns for the really BIG hordes.*

I'm actually writing a zombie survival story at the moment. You have no idea how helpful this thread is.

---------- Post added at 11:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:28 PM ----------

Originally Posted by pawptart

I'm banking on zombies following a biological model moreso than "convention", but if what you say is true, then I'll adjust my strategy.

Bilogically, a zombie has incredibly impaired visual capabilities, as the eyes would rot very quickly. Night would be roughly the same as day for them (ie still really bad) and much worse for you.

Still there is the chance that they could be more like RE zombies. Enhanced instead of impaired. What would really mess people up is if they were a cross between RE and I Am Legend. Semi-intelligent, fast, constantly evolving, only real weakness would be light. That would be awesome, just in a really bad way.
Fuel isn't necessary for the RC though. If you have an electric one, you an either self recharge it like with the self windup flashlights, just more electricity, otherwise you can use a solar cell hookup to recharge it. Only problem would be getting it back if it ran out of energy. Still though, you would have wonderful intel for rescuing it. If you had like two or three, you could probably map out the entire area before even trying to rescue one that ran out of power.