To survive this, lucky and determination do play a big part. To survive you can’t be slow, skilless, and stupid.
I reject the CostCo plan, largely because it is so very very common… you really have to have a team, and be the first person there, otherwise you’re locked out, or battling with the other groups who plan to make it their go-to location.
Besides, once the power dies (within a day or two) and the generators are down (also probably within a few days) those freezers and refrigerators are gonna start smelling pretty rank.
I myself have a plan, though now that I have moved I should probably work up a new one. 
I live about a 5 minute walk from a national forest that is filled with deer and elk. My plan would be to just make it over the hill with my rifle and backpacking gear. I could survive a couple of weeks alone. After that I’ll head back and see what’s left.
The real question for me is; when to bug out? On one hand if I get surrounded in my house I’m hosed since one person really can’t shoot their way out but on the other hand I don’t want to be hiking that hill with a backpack, rifle and fishing gear every time the power goes out.
I guess to answer the question I’d do fine in the apocalypse at least short term finding a group is the only answer long term and that depends on who survives what happened to cause the apocalypse.
You may want to look into bow hunting. Silence, come the Zombies, is your friend. A gunshot on a clear day can be heard for miles…
Nothing like a campfire with a group of Boy Scouts to get your Zombie plans mapped out.
Yes - this was a discussion I had with several of my older Boy Scouts. We determined that our best bet was to get to the Newport Beach harbor, grab a sailboat, load it up with our gear, and head offshore. Tacking up the coast, fishing, hunting, and staying where only zombies that can swim can get close.
One thing about my hobby in Scouting - I have dried food, water purification systems, light weight stoves, tons of fuel, etc. Add to that, I teach Rifle, Shotgun and Archery Merit Badges using my own gear.
All we need to survive is a Troop of Girl Scouts to accompany us. Just for the cookies, of course.
Bow hunting in hard, much more difficult then using a rifle. If I need to be siltent I always pack my fly rod with me when I go backpacking and the streams around here are loaded with brookies.
Besides while a shot can be heard a long way in the canyons around here it can be difficult to locate where the sound came from but you’re right it would be sencible to only take shots while away from the camping spot.
Of course on the third hand I’m looking at buying some property out of town and if I do that i’ll take up bow hunting so I can hunt on my land without bothering my neighbors.
Can I hear the open one? 
I knew Costco was a shitty idea. You do have to the first person in a place like that. It’s essencially a game of king of the hill.
I am packed, and packing. I’ve polished outdoor, seat-or-the-pants living for decades. I have enough of the staples to survive through a winter without resupply. I would surely do some “supplementing” via local wild game, though.
If all electricity was cut off, as well as natural gas supply, my only concern would be firewood. My well can be hand-pumped.
But, yeah, I’d make it. So would the ones around me…if they pay attention.
Is “cookies” a euphemism here? 
The winter is as long as you’d have to last. The zombies will be frozen solid on the first day of single-digit temperatures, and the packs of hungry, feral dogs would eat them. Once the heat and humidity kicks in for the summer, any zombies that survived the winter would be eaten by flies. At least it would be flies at first, once their arms and legs started to fall off it would be vultures and other carrion eaters.
I’m pretty sure I could survive for a year. Grab my rod, bow, gun, pointy things, warm clothes, non-perishable food, and head into the forest. The only thing I really need is a solar/crank powered radio. Hell, I might even be able make beer out of wild berries.
The thing to remember is that Tech is going to jump pretty quickly 200 years backwards. Shelves run out of food, what then? Cities would be graveyards; there are no trucks shipping in food and there are no large tech-free sources of water.
Things you’ll need:
shelter
fresh water (self-replenishing supply)
food (self-replenishing supply)
weapons which you can make shells for or that won’t need shells
grit & determination
luck
the ability to go mobile (you get ‘treed’, you’re Done.)
Zombies would hear & see… they might smell, they might feel…but other than that they are stupid (and contagious). Think of places which have natural barriers against the stupid and which are a challenge for the skilled but still leave mobility. I thought Mt Washington (cold?) but maybe thats just a really a big ‘tree’ to get stuck up. Woods in the states around it though are possibly a good idea, but you’d always be on the run.
A boat (or a flotilla of boats) is a good idea, both as a means of travel & as an escape route. Think in terms of ‘Jamestown’, where you build an armed fortress, but retreat to the boats as a last resort. Of course someday you might run out of coast, but then again I don’t know what the half-life of a zombified corpse is either.
The question also remains: could there be islands which remain uninfected? The 1000 Island region on the St Lawrence perhaps, with regular hunting/raiding parties to bring back supplies? Also, with the end of Japanese trawlers (See? There Is a plus side) the Grand Banks might replenish their fish (just for the Halibut).
hey, someone has to repopulate the planet.
Campers make me laugh. Everybody who owns a gun and a sleeping bag figures on heading for the hills and living off the (at present) plentiful deer, elk, and other large game. There’s going to be some fierce competition among those people, as places where one can actually live long-term in them thar hills aren’t all that numerous. Camping and long-term wilderness living aren’t the same thing. The spots that are defensible, have drinkable water, and such are going to have lots of people who believe they are the ones who are entitled to live there.
Won’t take long, I figure, until they begin turning on each other with just as much savagery and ruthlessness as any zombie horde. There are already people in the world right now who will shoot you in the face, ass-rape your children, and burn your house down just for fun. In a world where society has gone all to smash, you and yours will be their natural prey.
If you want to live, you need a realistic plan, you need tools and supplies, a place to settle, and you need other people. The killers and spoilers are going to gang up, I guarantee you. People who cooperate with each other and have the modern equivalent of a fortified village up and running will be the ones who live. The ones who thought they’d go it alone, whether by bugging out or bugging in, will be lucky if the zombies get them. Getting eaten alive will be over fairly quickly. Getting raped, tortured, and/or used as a slave goes on and on.
Bow hunters will also have to consider the cause of the zombiefication. If it is a Romero-like blood infection then you need at least two separate sets of arrows. One for hunting and one for zombie killing, so you do not cross contaminate and end up zombifying your food source and you will need to be able to retreive arrows from fallen zombies or make your own.
Arrows and crossbow bolts are, to some extent, reusable. Talk to anybody who is into archery, though, and they’ll tell you that arrows and bolts get lost or damaged despite your best intentions and precautions. A couple other points about modern archery equipment:
- Modern compound bows and crossbows require carbon fiber, aluminum, or kevlar arrows. Wooden shafts will shatter in the archer’s face. Making your own replacement arrows won’t be easy.
- Bowstrings have to be replaced periodically and restringing modern compound bows and crossbows requires some pretty impressive equipment. How many people do you know who own a hydraulic bow press? The strings themselves are not something that you are going to braid yourself out of native grasses, either.
As far as guns that don’t require cartridges, I’d say your best bet is one of the pre-charged pneumatic big bore airguns. These have useful levels of power, can be recharged from a handpump, and (hypothetically at least) one could cast one’s own projectiles from salvaged lead if one had the correct mold available.
You were right.
Notice that everyone else is all about competition, and ‘Screw first lest thee be screwed’?
The only allusions to cooperation is to make sure you have a bigger team. Short, nasty, and brutish. No concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Eventually, the second part of my plan will be necessary, won’t it?
I guess that’d be because mean ol’ history indicates that is how things tend to play out during widespread social collapse. You “shooting the first guy who declares himself king” hardly places you on any moral high ground.
I kinda think this too. It’s been raining here lately. It would just take a good day or rain, or two, to get rid of them. It’s just a thing of if zombies were real, it’s about numbers.
Adds this to the long reason of why I’d off myself.
To be honest, I don’t think a village is great idea. Villages could attract the people you don’t want and zombies. There’s always going to be one person who’s not pulling their weight.
History indicates that villages are exactly what does work.