BTW to all those who opted for the Costco/Memebership store as the apocalypse hideout option:
Think we could last a whole year in those things? Its a good place to wait out the intial chaos but what if those things walk around for a long length of time? We’re gonna run out of ammo and fresh clean drinkable water. I wouldnt trust tap water, and the utilities will cut off within the week anyways. Generators take up gasoline …
Hey! I just thought of it, my Costco store has a gas station near it. But its about a good 300 yards from the building entrance in a very wide open parking lot that would be an easy place for a zombie ambush with all the abandoned and shot up cars. Forunately, i can be easily covered by a sniper on the roof, unfortunately Costco doesnt sell hunting rifles and ammo and the nearest store that does that is 2 miles away. …Gotta remember to loot for a sniper rifle with telescopic sights and laser pointers.
Is it a horror/comedy zombie apocalypse?
If so, you can probably pull off a “pretend you’re a zombie” trick once or twice to escape a tight situation.
Never turn your back away from the window you just boarded up. (specially not with a grin of satisfaction)
Remember to always rise to the occasion. jeje
Try hard to develop a love interest.
Don’t ever fall behind of the group.
A thought; Would you really NEED generators, anyway? I’d imagine that the big food-freezers in a Costco would take up most of the power you’d generate, if you could wire up enough generators to keep 'em running, not to mention figuring out how to hook them up to the generators, anyway, which might be a bit tricky if you’re just a Mr. Joe-Average-Zombie-Survivor, without any electrician’s experience. And if you don’t get to the Costco before the city’s power grid went down, the food inside the freezers might have gone bad already…and even if the city grid’s still up, the food might still go bad if you have the freezers turned “off” too long while you’re hooking up the generators.
PLUS the fact that you’d have to be devoting time and manpower to hooking up the generators while barricading yourselves in the store, AND to be safe, you’d have to keep some “guards” standing by the people working inside, in case there were zombies still lurking inside the Costco somewhere.
I’d cook and eat as much of the frozen food as you could during the first few days of your “siege,” and throw the rest off the roof. If you’re lucky, you might be able to use the rotting food to lure zombies to a “kill zone” outside the store, and use snipers to pick off as many as you could. To save ammo, you might want to pick up some slingshots, bows and arrows, or even crossbows at the sporting goods store, and use those against the zombies visible outside the store’s walls, but who aren’t presenting a real threat of breaching your barricades.
And don’t bother with the generators…or at least, scale back their use. You can probably do without electricity a great deal during the day, using battery operated devices (Costco should have a good supply of duracels), and perhaps using rechargeable batteries hooked up to a solar panel. And at night, unless you needed to repel the zombies with floodlights, a laThe Omega Man, you probably wouldn’t want to attract attention to your base with a lot of lights, anyway…for fear of human scavengers or hooligans. If you’re expecting or hoping for rescue, from the government or some such, they’d be searching from the air anyway. So just write a big “HELP! SURVIVORS INSIDE BUILDING AS OF 06-05-2003!” message on the Costco’s roof, updating the “date” part every day. A few strings of Christmas Lights on the roof could illuminate the message at night, without being especially noticeable from the ground.
Water might be “doable”…with a little work. FYI, According to this site at least, a human needs a minimum of 2 quarts of water per day to survive. But preferably at least 3 gallons, for drinking and hygiene. Under normal, middle-class, non-zombie infested circumstances, a person uses up to 100 gallons a day.
I can’t remember if Costco carries much in the way of bottled water…but you might be able to pillage enough from a smaller supermarket, like a Safeway, assuming you can find one that hasn’t been looted by panicking humans, or already infested with Zombies.
If the Costco has a few display bathtubs or Jacuzzis, you might be able to fill those with water if the city water supply’s still running for a while, and use them as makeshift reservoirs. (Remember to boil the water before drinking it, if you’ve been storing it for a while.)
I like to take a long-term view of the zombie apocalypse… the zombies will be a nuisance for a while, but they don’t breed, and they’ll “die” off before too long. Afterward, though… it will take a long time for civilization to set itself back up again.
This is a GOOD thing, and I’m ready!
I’m on the coast, with a large Navy base and a large USAF base nearby. This gives me easy access to lots of useful military equipment, as well as large boats.
This area is warm 10 months out of the year, giving me a good, long growing season for producing my own food.
There are several offshore islands, any of which could be cleared of zombies, given time. Block or blow the bridges, scuttle the boats on the mainland side, and I’m pretty well sealed off from either zombies or humans, while still having boat access to the mainland if I need it. Obviously, I’m surrounded by edible fish.
I possess a wide range of practical skills and knowledge, which will be a great asset when it comes to rigging up electric power, water de-salinization gear, traps, etc.
So… I’ll start out with a large boat, and use that as my base until I can establish a foothold on one of the islands. I will be on the lookout for allies, but I’m prepared to kill humans who compete with me for scarce resources, like ammo and canned food.
I’ll collect useful items (I actually have a long list!) as the opportunity arises, and will eventually control the island, where I can establish a self-supporting mini-society. With care and luck, my little settlement should be able to remain unnoticed and unmolested by zombies, thugs, warlords, and any fledgling governments that might try to bring us under their rule.
