Patinator's PAT-ented Zombie Outbreak Plan
Don't worry, my puns are not part of it.
This follows the same, what to call it... Q&A thing as McFox's reply on the first page.
PREPARE FOR A LONG POST.
A flesh-feasting bugger stumbles into your room. What do you do?
Forget long-term planning. How do you escape your room when he blocks the door? Weapons? Diversion? Window? What's your escape?
Well, if I’m to base this off of how things are as I type this… I’ve got a few options.
My house, though sizeable, has very, very few walls- they line the perimeter, bathroom, pantry, and… That’s it. I could easily hear it coming up to my room, though I spend most of my time in the living room.
For means of simply escaping…
If I were upstairs, I COULD jump from one of four windows, but it’s a two-story-level house, so that’d hurt QUITE a bit. Possibly murder my legs…
I could also jump over the rail that lines the ‘hallway’ between rooms, landing on the loveseat or couch. From there, I could go outside and rush to my neighbor, Shane, to the north, a mere… I’m no good judge of distance, but perhaps an acre, two-hundred feet? More on Mr. Godsey later.
If I were downstairs, I could do the same things as above, minus the jumping. If there were zombies blocking the doors, then I’d resort to the… Heh… Actual
fun method of zombie survival…
I’ll start with downstairs when it comes to fighting back.
If I were in the living room… Aside from throwing things, such as a sharp-headed lamp, using a lamp itself (AWESOME), etc., we’ve got four fireplace tools, only three of which would be useful though. A log-grabber, which I could poke with or crush a zombie’s neck with, a coal shovel, self-explanatory, and a fire-poker, which would be akin to a weightier rapier. All are about two and a half, three feet long.
If I were in the bathroom, one of two rooms with a door, I’d be out of luck for the most part. I’d try to barricade the door with SOMETHING, and jump out the window. There’s a shower curtain rod, but that’s pretty much it. No, kiddies, plungers don’t work.
If I somehow couldn’t use the lamps and whatnot in the living room… There are an absolutely large menagerie of harmful objects in the literally hop-skip-and-a-jump-away kitchen, as to be expected- I’ve often entertained myself wondering how many things there are to kill someone or yourself with in a kitchen…
These things range from big butcher knife-like knives, to a sturdy wooden dowel rod, to a frying pan. And I’m not even a princess.
But I wouldn’t choose those. Though I’ve sadly never touched a gun… There’s a beautiful .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol on the refrigerator that belongs to my father. With training in the future, I could easily (Hopefully) wipe out zombies that come near me. There’s a big table to hide behind as well.
Now that I think of it, there are many oddball things in the pantry- tons of canned stuff, my BB gun (u_u Yeah right), a rapier-like umbrella (
), and I suppose you could use a telescope as a weapon…
There are empty glass bottles as well- fill those with gas, use a lighter and rolled-up paper towel or something, and bam- a makeshift makeshift grenade, AKA makeshift Molotov cocktail.
As for upstairs…
Though I really, really doubt a zombie could get past my good hearing coming up the stairs, who knows? That’s right, no one. There are fewer possible weapons upstairs, but the ones that exist are probably more deadly…
First off, there’s my mom’s computer. Sorry, ma, but my schooling means **** when there’s a zombie outbreak. Algebra won’t hardly help me in real life, neither will it do so in a zombie outbreak! D:
There are also dresser drawers and a small metal folding chair, AKA the weapon of champions. There’s a rolling computer desk chair as well, which is too heavy to pick up, but it could knock a zombie back down the stairs, or at least knock him OVER.
In my “parents’” room, there’s a closet filled with perfect distractions- tons of shoes and clothes. But even
better…
…Is my father’s rifle, hidden in a closet. I don’t exactly know what it means, but he refers to it as a ‘.30-aut six’. As I said, I’m clueless as to the meaning of said phrase, but it’s a beautiful gun, with boxes, and boxes, and BOXES of ammo- he used it for elk and deer hunting, and he nearly used it for self-defense when we lived in Florida…
And that’s just inside. If I’m outside… I could probably escape pretty easily, but if I had to fight, well, that’s where the REAL fun would begin.
I swear, I could make a ‘101 Ways to Kill People with Household Objects’ book. Just beyond our porch is a metal stick with a sharp, pointed end. It holds our rain gauge.
There are light, but durable and long logs that separate our flower garden from the new grass my mother is trying to grow.
There are four-foot long wooden stakes that would act like a non-bendy rapier.
Bludgeon-friendly objects like logs, pieces of wood, or even BOARDS are all around our… Repository, as we refer to it over the crude word ‘shed’. *scoff*
And then, of course, there are the garden tools. If a zombie’s trying to get up, VROOM-VROOM, he gets tilled or lawn-mowed to pieces. Or, he gets his head hacked off with my axe or stabbed off with our pitchfork. The shovel’s a good all-around bludgeoning or chopping weapon, as is our metal rake with sharp tines.
Even with the vast amount of things listed above, ingenuity abounds more when needed for survival than when planning.
Alright. So you've escaped your room and told me how.
Five minutes to grab some items from your house. Take your pick!
I’ll assume my father and mother are still alive, and present.
We’ve got a few traveling bags and suitcases we good fill to the brim with canned food. We don’t have a way to keep water, but I’m sure there’s someone around here who does. Well, actually, we’ve always got, at maximum, six jugs of milk, so there’s six gallons of water right there.
My axe, our pitchfork, all the gun ammunition my father has and his guns, about three changes of clothes, and most of the stuff in our pantry. It’d either get stuffed in our car trunk, or backseat.
Entertainment would be good too, so we would probably bring my game systems, laptop, chargers, and a neighbor’s television since ours is too large to realistically fit safely in our car.
Within those five minutes, I’m sure one of us would go up to Shane’s. Shane’s a hunter, and as such I’m sure he has plenty of guns and ammunition, perfect for such an occurrence.
There’s also my friend’s family; they’re like two minutes on foot, while Shane’s less than one, said family lives just behind Shane. They’re farmers, so they have gardening stuff- tractors, tools… You name it. My pal’s grandfather has a sword, it reminds me of a samurai sword, so that’d be good, I don’t think it’s real though. u_u
About two minutes by car, a minute if you’re fast, are two more neighbors. One family has a school bus driver, so that’d be REALLY good. The other two have a bunch of tools laying about their yard, like a sledgehammer, along with a van.
Oh, the family of the bus driver is big on hunting, so more guns. Yay.
I don’t know about many others around here, but everyone’s close, so it’d be easy to get everyone to get their stuff together, meet up, and go. Some of our neighbors have cell phones too, so that’s also a plus.
Okay, your five minutes are up and you have to get out. Time to find a safe haven.
What's your haven? I have a long-term zombie plan, but there's no time for it if a zombie just got in my room. You need a big safe haven with all the supplies you'll need for the years it'll take the zombies to rot/starve. Arranged in order of increasing zombie urgency... (if you choose to make one, pick one pit stop per haven)
Haven #1
Caution - Just enough zombies everywhere to put any long-term plans to rest, but enough to travel at least half an hour.
Considering no one’s gonna get in the way of a BUS (Humans anyway. Some humans. Heh.), and the direness of the situation, we could very easily speed to the nearby Piggly Wiggly semi-supermarket, which is in the middle of the actual town part of Decatur. Dollar General, Hardy’s, and plenty of gas stations are nearby. We could make it here in ten minutes or less if we went as fast as possible.
But we could pretty easily make it to the larger, Wal-Mart equipped Athens within thirty minutes. We’d probably make a pit stop at some food store, maybe the Pig, getting gas at the same time with gas cans while the more lithe members of our group stand guard. That’s a good thing about having plenty of people in your survival group- you can get more stuff done faster.
We’d use either the Pig or Wal-Mart, preferably Wal-Mart, as our safe haven. Actually, we WOULD use Wal-Mart. We’d put up as much defensive stuff as we could. We’d pile up bags of fertilizer and the like to make a ‘wall’ in the garden center. TVs and other mechanical stuff would be noisy if knocked down, so that’d be great for another ‘wall’. We’d pile up shopping carts for walls in the front, and keep some for us to use as weapons.
And this Wal-Mart has a big selection on guns and stuff, so that’s great too.
Pit-Stop: As said before, we’d pick up all we could at the Piggly Wiggly and Dollar General, as fast as possible. With our large group, that’s like within five minutes, considering we’d just knock stuff into the buggies and not delicately put them in.
Now that I think about it, I think there’s a pyrotechnics shop or something somewhere around here. We could probably pick the shop owner and his stuff up.
Haven #2
Imminent - Travel time limited to half an hour or less:
If we hurried, we could probably make it to Wal-Mart in half an hour. A bus can get going pretty fast.
Pit-Stop: Same as before.
Haven #3
Danger! - Zombies are everywhere. Travel time limited to fifteen minutes.
If we didn’t make any stops, we MIGHT make about twenty minutes to Wal-Mart. If we don’t have that leeway, we’d just have to use the Piggly Wiggly, or maybe the Court House instead…
Pit-Stop: Yeah… No. We’d use the Pig if the Court House would be better, which it probably would be. Maybe. If we make with all haste, we could follow through with my plan involving the pyrotechnics guy, if he’s not just a figment of my imagination.
Haven #4
Abandon all hope - Travel time is limited to running distance. Two minutes by car, if that.
T-T-Two minutes by…?
My Wolf…
I’m not sure, but we could possibly make it to the south elementary school by then if we made absolutely no mistakes, and drove as fast as we could while remaining sane.
If we couldn’t do that, the closest thing we have to a fortress would be, umm… Sadly, a small log church, or one of our houses. That’s it.
Holing up in our houses would be easier, though. My house is very well-built, and Shane’s is pretty good too. It’s within easy visibility, so we could possibly split our group up.
Okay, picked your haven? 'Kay. Let's assume it's one of the less bleak Zombie Imminence levels and you have time to summon friends and family. Be warned: You don't have time to save the weak, not anymore. Think up your own skills and those of your closest friends and family... who could really help you if you had to survive the end of days? What role/skills do they have? It's time to assemble... your zombie posse.
Note: Try to figure out what role they play (not necessarily one of these I've listed or even one already seen in zombie lore), why they are essential in combating the undead, what skills they have, etc. And remember, this is limited to people you know well in real life and in your immediate city or township. No uncles from the East Coast, unless you live near said uncle on said Coast. Oh, and try to say where they'd get their weapons from.
I had listed this up there before I saw this. Heh.
It’s not organized by role, but meh.
Me – Currently, I’m not terribly good when it comes to athleticism, but there’s power behind my swings. But the more people you have, the more manpower you’ve got. My weapons of choice would be some sort of handgun, like a pistol, and either my axe, or some sort of sharp weapon.
Justin – My best friend. He’s much more fit than me, and could probably wield what I can. He may even have some kind of shooting experience, I don’t know. His weapons would be the farm tools and whatnot on his grandparents’ farm.
Carl, Shiela, and their sons – Carl’s a hunter, as are his sons. Shiela’s the bus driver, not good for much else, I’m sorry to say. I’m pretty sure Carl and his sons would have their own guns.
Shane and Kim – Shane’s a good hunter, I don’t know about Kim. They’ve got some pretty young kids at like less than five years of age, so we’d probably take them along just so they wouldn’t lose such precious things… Shane’s got his guns, and like I said, I don’t know about Kim.
Don and Dean - Yeah, we’d only bring Dean so Don would come. Don’s got a cell phone, and he’s the man with… A van.
Dean and Don are kinda aged, and not very fit. I doubt they could do much but serve as manpower.
My parents - Though aged, my father is and has always been a fighter. Even when he was in a stupor of anesthesia, he was knocking doctors on their backs while he was in the hospital, heh-heh. My mom’s pretty lithe, and she could DEFINITELY pack a punch. ._.; I’m sure my dad would have his rifle, my mom may have the pistol. My father also knows at least SOMETHING about everything- he’s done gardening and carpentry since he was a kid and was in the Coast Guard. He’s a good mechanic as far as our needs would go, too.
Justin’s relatives – Peggy and Larry are Justin’s farming grandparents. I don’t know too much about their physical capabilities. His mother looks like she could probably put up a fight, if she had to… And I’ve never seen his new dad. u_u; His sister, Brittany… I don’t know about her, but she’s probably just as fit as Justin. I dunno about weapons here…
The fireworks guy – If he actually exists, you can guess his role in our group. Rockets and fireworks make for great weapons if the zombies are far away. Modern ballistae, baby!
And don’t doubt that I could easily think up more. One of my dad’s many strong points is his ability to think on his feet, and the rest of us could follow.
So there’s my Zombie Outbreak plan. Well, most of it. Remember Murphy’s Law, everyone. D:
This would be much different if we were talking about the planned future, though. Heh, what can I say? Alondite replica anyone? Yeah… B)
