Of course they’d probably shoot you, thinking you were a zombie (or maybe just because they could - I don’t know your neighbors).
The garlic could come in handy if they’re Matheson-style zombies. (If Romero’s ghouls are zombies, so are Matheson’s viral vampires.)
One subject that doesn’t seem to have been treated much: let’s say we’re talking about real zombies, as in “dead people walking around”, rather than “people infected with rage/super-rabies/whatever”. So, the type where the body is dead, but the brain keeps it moving somehow, and individual body parts don’t have a life of their own.
Being that they’re dead, they should decompose, right? So, after maybe a month or so, all the zombies that were created in that first wave should be more or less falling apart, their muscles too ragged to hold their skeletons together, their connective tissues dried out and crumbling. In that case, all we’d have to do is wait it out, a month, maybe two, and the problem resolves itself, right?
It depends: whatever is enabling their bodies to continue moving around may also prevent decay.
I wrote a little song awhile ago to remind myself of my zombie plan:
*Inch by inch, hill by hill
We’re gonna fight these zombies 'til
There’s no more zombies left to kill
And no more cries of “BRAINNNNNS!”
House by house, town by town
We’re gonna take these zombies down
Pile them up in a great big mound
And send them up in flames.*
Daniel
:eek:
Come over to our house - we’ve got a lot of windows and are on somewhat high ground, so you can easily shoot any zombies that approach. Some of our friends are gun nuts, so there’s plenty of weaponry.
Added to that, we’ve got a lake in the backyard and ceramic water filters from camping, so our water supplies are good. The wine cellar/root cellar has wine and canned food, there’s firewood nearby to keep warm, and my mom, the Master Gardener, will be there to help us learn how to grow our own veggies. The difficult part will be in knowing whether or not the zombies are smart enough to destroy peoples’ gardens. That’s the current hang-up in our plan.
I know where my crowbar is.
I’d do my very best to get to the local CostCo. It’s very easy to defend (with door shutters and no windows) and is stocked with plenty of food. There’s also a nice flat roof with no direct ground access, and lots of space inside to fortify. The only problems are that there aren’t any guns and I imagine I wouldn’t be the only one trying to get there.
Yeah, well… being that they’re dead, they shouldn’t be walking around either.
I know. I can’t explain it. For whatever reason, I tend to have extremely low-budget genre dreams.
I disagree. There really aren’t many of us who have thought about, and mentally prepared for, the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse. Most people will insist on barricading themselves in their (poorly stocked and nearly defenseless) homes.
Of course, my plan is only a good one if the store is currently closed. If the undead start walking at night, CostCo would be a fantastic place to go. If the store is open when the hordes of undead are unleashed, it’ll be full of poorly-prepared zombiesnacks. A simple drive-by will confirm whether it’s filled with edibles for humans or for zombies.
If the store is occupied, I keep heading past the store, into the mountains. Get above the snowline, and for a good portion of the year 'round these parts, all you’ll get will be zombiecicles. There’s a nice ski resort within easy driving distance, and even biking the distance (~25 miles, relatively easy slope) wouldn’t be that hard.
“A simple drive-by?” Just going to pop by CostCo in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, are we?
“Well, dag nab it, the dead appear to be rising from the grave to feast on the living. Guess I’d better hop in the Bonneville and swing by the CostCo to see if it’s swarming with ravenous undead. Maybe I’ll grab a McRib too if the traffic’s not too bad.”
Man, you are SO dead. You might as well just turn in your flesh right now.
Hubris is always Man’s fatal flaw in Zombie attacks. 
My house is on a hill, and has wooden stairs to the two doors on the main floor. The main floor windows are all at least 6 feet above the ground and the basement windows are all those little horizontal just above the ground things that should be easily fortify able. I think we would be good to live here for some time, we live in a town of 60k, so we don’t have the population density to create really huge mobs so the initial wave should be pretty easy to ride out.
Once the initial wave has passed we have plans to hit the nearby farm supply store for guns/ammo, clothing, food, etc. It should be easily fortify able–so if we want to stay there we can. There is also a warehouse to supply that store a few miles out of town which would also be a good place to supply up. I doubt the majority of the people here know about it, prolly just the employees.
If we are in this for the long haul, I’m gonna take as many supplies as I can and move into my old high school. There is a huge courtyard, as well as the fenced in football field that would be great for growing crops. There will be plenty of rooms for housing survivors in small family units, which would be good for morale.
I have to agree with the assessment that any place with supplies will be a foolish death trap. People naturally go to the store in the event of ANY potential disaster, it won’t be different during the zombie outbreak.
The best case scenario is you get there first. What do you do? You only have a few moments before the crowd arrives, and they will be grabbing everything they can too. Even worse, one of them WILL be infected. It is a matter of time before every store is simply a zombie pit.
In reality, there is no way you will be the first to know. By the time you hear the news, Wal-Mart will be even more Zombie filled than it usually is.
Really, I think the best plan is to just lay low and barricade your own home. I think at any given moment I probably have enough to sustain myself for a week. Sure I’d be eating catsup on dogfood at the end, but I could get through. After a week and everyone is zombified, than the scouting begins. Wait ‘till things look clear, raid my neighbors’ supplies, and keep house jumping like that.
In a zombie outbreak I think all people, alive and dead, are the enemy. Simply staying quiet and alone is the key to survival.
Start eating people to blend in.
Actually it would be a relatively large amount of stored food if you think that the stores are stocked with feeding millions of people in mind, but there was a sudden die-off of millions.
First I’d dust off my copy of the Zombie Survival Guide.
I also had a zombie dream the other night. Except these were leaping zombies. I was on the second-floor roof of a mall, looking over into the parking lot, which was being overrun with zombies. One leaped up and started gnawing the neck and shoulder of this guy next to me. I remember thinking, damn, if that guy had laid low, I’d have had a great hiding spot. They’d have needed zombie helicopters to see me up here.
That probably means if a real zombie apocalypse hit, I’d be dead meat. I don’t have the survival instincts.
Well since I am in New York city the first order of business would be to fortify a building. My friend’s coop has generators of its own but it’s way downtown. The trick would be getting downtown. I’d probably want to wait it out uptown until some of the chaos has died down, IE enough zombies have been killed in the panic.
There would be no reason to worry about vehicles because plenty of vehicles would have their keys in them and you could just raid an apartment building or corpses for keys and go to a parking lot until you find the vehicle that matches a set of keys. You’d have vehicles until basically the gas and oil in the engines spoil. This would also be your fuel for your generators.
The initial panic would result in people raiding the local supermarkets, this is true, BUT as the people die off there would be canned goods in every apartment. Remember Zombies don’t need eat Campbell’s soup or Ramen noodles. So there would be plenty of food to eat for a good long while.
If you can clear one whole building you can create a castle of sorts where you can build a community. Once one is secure, you clear another, and then another, and then another. There will likely be plenty of dead cops and empty police stations. Getting ahold of ammunition shouldn’t be too difficult.
The biggest problem would be the initial couple of weeks. You’d have to work to organize groups of people, and you’d have to systematically work to keep zombies at bay. People would have to organize into assault teams and learn to fight together very quickly. You’d also have to make it a point to kill a few zombies every day in the hopes that with enough people doing that you’d eventually rid Manhattan of its zombies.
Your next big challenge will be the Mad Max phase where some people become total nihilists and just prey on each other. They may as well be zombies but they’re just basically feral humans. It’s imperative to get hydroponic greenhouses in effect. This should not be difficult as you will be sitting on top of the world’s greatest library.
Once Manhattan is liberated you can build an autonomous city state from which you can rebuild civilization. It comes complete with a natural moat, so that provides you with good defenses and you can get people from the surrounding countryside to settle there. It also will have the world’s greatest stock of salvageable parts to build whatever you need.