Maintaining a community

In the zombiepocalypse a community is constantly the subject of both internal and external threats. External threats come from the obvious zombies as well as from the living. There will be other groups, maybe tribes would be a better description, who are willing to take what you have by force. And in a world where people have been forced to revert to the most basic survival instincts, it is to be expected that they will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. So when there is an attack, the only two options will be between killing or dying. The topic of protecting a fortress has been explored to exhaustion by more military strategists than anyone could bother to count. From the days of Sun Tzu to today's teachings at military academies, I'm pretty sure that everything has been written. There are additional considerations to take for the particular case of protecting a fortress against a danger like the zombies who have one single drive and no self-protection instinct. This makes them more akin to legionary ants then to any other animal which is dangerous to man. Lions or bears would not attack a protected area, but the legionary ants just move forward and attack anything in their path. To increase the resistance of a fortress against zombies, good engineering solutions are necessary.

The enemy outside the walls

Walls

You will obviously need walls. Castles had them, prisons and other modern buildings have them. Fortifying a small town is not an easy task as manpower, building materials and knowledge are required. It could still be done as it has been done many times in the past. But for that to be possible one would have to have a large group working for extended periods of time with part of the group actively protecting the rest of the group. The best option is always to re-purpose some existing structure.

Zombie traps

Traps could be an important asset for the protection a community. By using simple sound and light producing devices, zombies can be attracted away from the village and caught in ditches or tricked into falling from a height sufficient to kill them in a more definitive fashion. If you use traps be sure to clean them at regular intervals otherwise they may get to a point where you cannot control them any more.

Topography

If possible use the topography to channel the zombies away from your living area. It is reasonable to think, although not necessarily true, that zombies will follow the path of least resistance, unless there is a stimulus that would make it act in a different way. For instance, it is reasonable to assume that zombies would not voluntarily climb a steep incline.

Sound barriers

Zombies are attracted to sound. It is expected that a community will produce sound and reducing that sound as much as possible would probably be a good investment. Part of that will have to come from the adoption of a certain discipline towards noise making. A garage band is probably not a good idea. But you could also achieve good results through some good old engineering. Highways have sound barriers and anyone would hardly fault you if you were to remove and use them for such a meritorious purpose. You would need help and a big truck, though.

Other enemies

Zombies will not be your only concern. Other people, gangs, or communities may represent a threat to your settlement. You may face open attacks or insidious infiltrations. Plan for each of these occurrences. Create mechanisms to vet unknown people coming in, create defensive plans, a defense force, defensive weapons. Stock up in ammunition, store food and supplies, identify water sources. Nothing new under the sun there.

The enemy within

Politics

Once you establish a community, you go back to the same old problems society has always faced. In this case, given that you would be living under the equivalent of a non-declared state of war, the stakes are higher and so will the risk be. The more you are able to recreate the mechanisms of a stable society the less risk you run of being stabbed in the back. However, this is not something which is easy to establish in a small community always at constant risk of attack or of running out of supplies. Executive, judicial and legislative bodies of government are not the easiest thing to setup. For a fairly small community you can probably get away with some sort of referend-based democracy. This may work for occasional decisions, but for under-stress situations doesn't work so well, There will need to be a leader and some sort of hierarchy.

If you are the leader of a community, other people will be after your job. Were you elected or naturally ascended to that position? Was it out of fear or of respect for your decisions? Are you running a tight, cohesive community, or are new members constantly joining? Above a certain rotation of community members, the cohesion will be low. This means that new elements will not necessarily recognize your value to the community or your leadership. New members may even be infiltrating your community in order to destroy or weaken it. Maybe to create the conditions for its subjugation or merger with another community. The best chance you have of keeping your community will be to prove to be a valuable leader. But are you a good leader? Do you have what it takes? Would you be providing a better service by taking some other role?

Whatever the situation will be, as in all circumstances where a group of people need to work together, there are politics involved. That will not change with a zombiepocalypse. 

Strategies to survive in an urban environment

With an estimated 50% of the world population living in cities and the natural tendency people have to gather in urban areas, the majority of people would find themselves in this kind of environment when the Zombiepocalypse started. There are several types of urban environments, from villages to megalopoli. The resources available in each type of urban environment increase with the size, but so do the risks. The following criteria should be taken into consideration when analysing an urban environment to establish a base or camp:
- availability of food, clothes, fuel and other useful items;
- availability of fresh water;
- possibilities of fortification;
- number of escape routes;
- concentration of zombies.

Exit/entry options

You know those superspy films when the agent takes mental note of all possible exits in any building he enters? You'll have to adopt the same kind of attitude whenever you select a building to fortify. If you find a building which can be easily converted into a fortification you should take into consideration that the best fortification in the world can easily be converted into the safest trap in the world if you find yourself under siege without the possibility to leave to find food and other supplies. So any fortification should have several exits. You should also consider making several options for entry available. Don't forget that zombies have very limited capabilities, so a simple ladder should be too much of a challenge for a zombie, leaving you with a simple solution to enter your base in a hurry.

Dangerous areas

Ground level building areas are hard to fortify, especially in recent buildings where there are often big glass surfaces. Another problem is that if you use ground level areas, to best fortify them you will probably have to cover windows and block doors which will result in very dark rooms. This will be both depressing and a security risk because if a zombie manages to walk in it is more likely to surprise you in the dark. The ideal solution would be to block any doors and windows with bricks, vehicles or whatever you have at hand that will stop zombies from occupying the lower levels and making that area an hazard zone. You should also lock down any access from the ground level to the higher levels of the building.

Locking down building areas

Modern apartment buildings are fairly easy to contain internally. Fire regulations mandate that accesses to internal stairwells should all have fire doors. These are usually metal doors which expand when exposed to high temperatures. Although having a big area available may seem interesting, the bigger the area, the harder the maintenance of the security measures and the higher the risks. Therefore you should limit the area of a building you are using to a manageable dimension. All other areas should be locked down to prevent access to the area in use. An easy way to do this would be to weld the fire doors. After welding you can sleep safely because those doors will easily hold a horde of zombies. Another advantage is that if in the future you decide you want to expand your living area, it is still possible to remove the welding spots. For the intended purpose, you won't need to be a master welder. A few well place welds will makecave dry batteries to which you just have to add destilled water to produce electricity. The good thing about these batteries is that as long as they are kept dry, they don't have an expiration date. The gas for option has a number of issues, namely the difficulty opinion obtaining gas canisters, for instance oxygen and acetylene, and there also risks of explosion if you don't know what you're doing.

To know your options take a look at this Wikipedia entry.

A roof and walls and be happy about it

Securing an apartment or a set of apartments is not going to give you much more than a dry and safe place. As you might expect, all the perks of modern society will have been stripped out of existence by a zombiepocalipse. There will not be running water, cooking gas or electricity. The good news is that two out of three have solutions. Cooking will depend on burning fuels like coal and wood, being that for coal you will only be able to count on with whatever is left in the local supermarkets and such stores. You may also be able to find camping gas canisters, which will bring your cooking experience to the pre-apocalypse era. For electricity you may be able to set up some solar panels but there is more to it than just dumping some panels on the ceiling. You'll need an inverter and batteries, which may not be that easy to find and set up. If you really want performance you could even assemble a solar tracker, but that's probably not a priority. Now, that is all very pretty, but in all honesty, cooking gas and electricity are a rich man's luxury. Without water everything else is superfluous. Without water you will not last long enough to care about the lack of electricity. So, running water may be too much to wish for in the midst of the zombiepocalypse, but you'll definitely need a minimal amount of drinking water, so that should be one of your top priorities. Bottled water is an obvious solution, but even if the area supermarkets haven't all been ransacked, you'll eventually have to find a way to collect water and purify it. It turns out that exposing closed bottles of water to sunlight can eliminate bacteria and microbes and render the water safe for consumption. This process works only if the water is clear enough to allow reading a newspaper placed under the vertically placed water filled bottle. The purification can take up to several days depending on the amount of sunlight available. There are other options like collecting rainwater. Drinking untreated water is usually a very good way to die slowly and painfully from intestinal parasites, so do invest some time in understanding how to purify water. It always pays.

Solving the drinking water issue is a big step towards long term survival, but there are other water related topics to take care of that you used to take for granted in a working city. The lack of running water, together with the absence of maintenance to the city sewers means that you will not be able to use a bathroom inside an apartment. Options will have to be considered, like the use of plastic bags and posterior treatment of the waste materials.You always have the option to throw human waste out the window like they used to do in the dark ages, but we all know that's not such a good solution. It will attract insects like flies which will eventually land on your food and cause dysentery. Not to mention the smell, the tell-tale that someone lives in the area and there's always the possibility that the smell will attract zombies. Who knows what teases a zombie's appetite?

This topic would require a blog by itself, but I think it is a good start for a series on urban survival on a zombiepocalypse.

Know thy enemy

 故曰：知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負；不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆。

"So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.
If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.
If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself."

Sun Tzu in "The Art of War"

As good ol' Sun Tzu knew well, knowing your enemy is half-way to a victory. In a Zombiepocalypse you will be face to face with hordes of zombies, so knowing how they work, what they can do, how they move, how they react, what attracts them and their weak points can be the difference between surviving and becoming zombie chow.

Since zombies do not actually exist, I can't see the point in getting into a big discussion on whether it would be possible for a zombie to function without circulating blood, or if they would be able to digest and so on. For the purpose of this blog a minimal number of zombie characteristics are more than enough to keep the fun going.

What is a zombie?

So, what is a zombie supposed to be? It's the body of a person which, after dying, has been reanimated by a virus which has infected the whole humanity. Simply put, if you die, you're a zombie. Zombies have a very bad temper and they have an appetite for human flesh of the living kind. So if you're not a zombie and you're next to one, it is highly likely that the blasted thing will want to taste your lovely buns. And the rest of you. Zombies don't eat other zombies. Why? Maybe they don't like the taste of rotten flesh. Or maybe their morals prevent them from turning to cannibalism between undead. Who knows? Who cares? They are also known to eat anything living or freshly killed. So if you manage to hunt a deer, think carefully how are you going to store it, because you'll not be the only one interested in eating it.

Their brains activate whatever muscles are available and the body does not have to be fully functional. A zombie can have all its limbs removed and it will still function. You can go as far as cutting the head off. The body will fall limply but the head will continue to move. So look around for autonomous heads, because they can still be dangerous. If you get bitten by a zombie head, you'll get infected, die and be drafted as zombie replacement.

Zombie behavior

Zombies have several operating modes. Sometimes they are in a dormant state where they simply do not move. This will change if there is some kind of stimulus like a noise or a smell or if someone touches them. So be wary of zombies lying or sitting, even if they are not moving. If it looks like the brain may be intact, then it's safer to assume that the zombie is functional and is just dormant.

When zombies are not dormant, they wander aimlessly. If you don't have anything more urgent to do, then killing it has two advantages. It serves as training and it contributes (even if only slightly) to reduce the number of zombies at the face of the Earth. You will need to be as efficient as possible in killing zombies so the more practice you can have in controlled conditions, the better you'll get at it and the more you'll increase your chances on a more dangerous situation.

Zombies also roam in packs. It is not clear if they have an objective or why they head on a particular direction, but these groups are very dangerous because if they perceive a prey they will zoom in on it. If you happen to be the prey you will find yourself having to deal with multiple zombies at the same time which is when zombies are more lethal.

Noises attract zombies so firing a gun or setting off an explosion is a good way to attract all the zombies in the vicinity. When they are not chasing a prey, person or animal, they usually walk slowly. However, if they spot a prey, they will move faster. Maybe not up to a full sprint, but still, faster. So don't hire a zombie to your athletics team yet. A zombie's speed of locomotion will also depend on how intact are it's limbs. Some zombies may just drag their bodies with their arms if their legs have been excluded from the package.

 

 

Weaknesses

Hit them where it hurts

Zombies do not feel pain. Cutting a zombie's leg or arm may slow them down, but the only real way of stopping them is to destroy their brains. So, basically, to kill a zombie you will need to puncture, smash or slash its brain. For that you can use any number of weapons or tools. Some examples:

• Swords;
• Hammers;
• Knifes;
• Baseball bats;
• Golf clubs;
• Axes;
• Spears;
• Bows and arrows;
• Crossbows;
• Guns;
• Tonfas;
• Screwdrivers;
• Anything which can be used as a club, like a wrench, a pipe and so on. Use your imagination.

As with many things in life, each of these weapons has its pros and cons which I will analyse in other posts.

Fire

Zombies are also vulnerable to fire, although setting them on fire as a means of defence is probably not very practical and it has serious risks associated. Even on fire the zombie will not stop trying to get you and eat you. So, if things go wrong, you may end up sharing the zombie's blazing fate. If that happens, the good news is that you will probably not turn into a zombie. You'll just be a piece of charcoal. But if you can corral a bunch of them into a limited area, preferably not the same where you stand, then setting them on fire should be a good way of getting rid of the things. And ends up being a 2 in 1, because burning dead bodies is always a good investment in terms of heath concerns. Actually it's a 3 in 1. If you burn the bodies in a certain area, next time you visit that area it will be easier for you to spot the danger. Burned bodies are ok, not burned ones may not be. So burning bodies reduces uncertainty and improves the accuracy of your danger perception.

Zombies are dumb

Zombies are not very sophisticated creatures. So it will not be very hard to trap them, lure them or trick them. This can be used to your advantage.

Strengths

Zombies do not get tired

You may be able to run faster than a zombie, but you won't be able to tire it down. If the zombie is too slow you may be able to put enough space between the two of you and you may be able to loose it. Zombies are not exactly bloodhounds, so if it can't see or hear you, it won't be sniffing your trail to find you.

Zombies can smell you

Saying that zombies are not bloodhounds is not the same as saying they cannot use their noses. If you are hiding and they pass very close by, it is possible that one of them is going to pick your smell.

Zombies feel no pain

As mentioned before, zombies feel no pain. So punching, kicking or slashing at them with a knife won't do much more than slowing them down. It will be a waste of your energy and time. The more time you take to kill a zombie the more you are putting yourself at risk.

Zombies are very focused

If it sees or smells you, it's not going to stop for a chat or a smoke. It will not stop until it looses track of you or starts eating you. Unless another target crosses it's sight, you're it.

Zombies do not drown

Zombies will probably look at water as barrier. But if one falls into a body of water it is not going to be any more dead than it already was. Its skin will loose cohesion much faster, but I'm not sure what will happen to the rest of the body. Don't assume you're safe under water. On the other hand, a zombie will sink to the bottom and will not be able to swim. So if you're out of depth, you're probably safe. Assuming you can swim, that is.

Zombies are coming!

AMC TV series

I'm starting this blog because I find it extremely stimulating to think about the challenges posed by a situation similar to the one portrayed by the AMC series, "The Walking Dead" and the american comics with the same name by SkyBound. Actually these credits are turned upside down, because the comics were the precursor of the tv series.

I realized this was quite a popular hobby when I was looking for a valid name for this blog. Every title with the word zombie on it seems to have been taken. Blogger kept puffing me back. ZombieThinking, ZombieThinkTank, Zombiepocalypse and so on, every single one I tried was considered invalid by Blogger.

The Comics

Not all was wasted on that exercise, though. It was how I found a fantastic site, Zombie Research Society. It has content about practically everything relating to zombies and surviving them that you can think of. So I'm not exactly creating my own blog about this subject because I expect to output something extraordinarily new about the subject. What I want to do is go through the mental exercise of thinking about the solutions by myself.

Why do I consider it so stimulating to theorize about this subject? I think it has to do with the holistic characteristic of the problem. There's the constant threat of the zombies, of course, but the challenges go way beyond that. People need clean water, food, shelter, medicines, contact with other people. Of the living kind, of course. And there are changes everywhere. Things we take for granted are not there any more. There's no electricity, no hospital, no law, no supermarkets with fresh food, no sewage. It's the absolute end of the world as we know it. But not all is bad. There are items of interest lying around which can be used as weapons and tools. There are buildings which can be fortified. There is abandoned food in supermarkets.

In the Zombiepocalypse, survival is as much a matter of knuckling up as it is of planning. Having survived the first hordes of zombies and corresponding destruction of society, if someone intends to survive longer then the next week, careful thinking is in order. What environment are you in? Is it an urban, rural or nautical environment? Each of these has its own advantages and disadvantages. Are you alone or in a group? How should you handle other groups? What are you going to do for food?

Although I don't really believe that zombies are a possibility, much of  the solutions for the Zombiepocalypse are applicable to other global calamities like extreme weather changes, an asteroid collision with Earth or WW III. I'll use this blog to theorize about these and other topics. Just for the fun of it.