perfidy

Not sure exactly how the gun laws work, but it would be poetic to drive to NH and use the $75 towards a new gun and / or ammo at Wal-Mart.

Take my word for it; you will want an accurate semi-automatic rifle or carbine when the zombies attack.

Bram,
I like the way you think.

I couldn't buy out of state because I'm not an FFL. And there is a note on each card that says "not for firearms or ammunition"; whether that really means you can't use them for that i don't know. But then, why would I buy out of state? Wal Marts here have long guns, but you have to go to the rural stores to find them.

You must bear in mind the first rule of accuracy, which I just made up: a weapon is only as accurate as your skill and physiology allow it to be.

Even with a zeroed M16, I was nearly useless beyond 300m. Even with my glasses, my eyes just get all squinty trying to target a torso beyond that range. Aside from the lenses usually getting fogged up as well.

My point is that realistically, I would want a rifle that *I* can use at ranges that a rifle is worthwhile for. 300m is a start, but hardly special.

Although, come to think of it, the one time I shot an SVD, even with fixed sights, I was hitting at 500m. I'm sure it had to do with the arrangment of the weapon and how it fits the body, because it surely didn't make me see any better.

But budget has a role to play too. We can't *all* have nice pre-ban HKs!

Now that I have a .45 and two shotguns, my desire to acquire more weapons has lessened. I'd like to get a long gun, but there are a lot of other things higher on the list now. A Mac, an iPhone, drywall for the basement...

If everything goes to crap and the zombies come, I figure the weapons I have now will get me to a gunstore for more thorough outfitting.

I actually think my .308 is too heavy for good zombie defense. I have come to believe an M1 Carbine is the ideal choice.

“Dawn of the Dead” was on Staz HD several times last weekend so of course I watched it. I came to realize where the people living in the mall made two critical errors in their thinking.

1. They assumed that they could never kill all the zombies around the mall to make a clean escape to a safer area. Wrong. Gunshop Andy shot a few zombies on the street for fun. If the people in the mall could have moved to his building with food supplies or run an overhead cable to his building to trade, they would have been set. The average gun shop has many rifles and tens of thousands of rounds of ammo. Once they had sufficiently armed themselves they could have eliminated the zombies in the area. (I assume they assumed they couldn’t because they didn’t even talk about trying.)

The constant shooting at medium ranges (25 to 200 yards) would warrant a carbine – either with a pistol round like the Kel-Tec or Berretta models, or a light rifle type like the M1 Carbine. Anything heavier would be too punishing on the shoulder to sustain good rates of fire. Eventually they might move on to longer range guns when all nearby zombies had been serviced.

The Math: 5 people shooting 3 zombies a minute for 8 hours a day = 7,200 dead zombies a day and over 50,000 after a week. At that point, they could probably stroll down the street in safety. (Some caution in the targeting might be required in order not to wall themselves in.)

2. Except for head wounds, zombies don’t die – but they do freeze. In Wisconsin they only needed to hold out until November before they were free to move.

Bram, your analysis raises some interesting questions. A well fortified group with essentially unlimited ammo could denude a region of zombies in relatively short order. The zombies seem however, to sense where the resistance is, and move toward it. Assuming you're in a suburban mall that is defensible, you might be able to pop all the zombies in the immediate area in a couple days of sustained marksmanship.

But large cities would not necessarily be the best place for this - as you'd have too large a pool of zombies. After clearing out the locals, you'd have an influx of fresh zombies from nearby areas. While the zombies aren't consciously acting to remove a threat, we could imagine that they sense when the population of zombies is lower, and move in that direction. Pull out a large number of zombies, you would get a proportionately large movement of zombies.

Your average gunshop might have thousands of rounds of ammo in various calibers. But how many? Not every shot is a head shot, we have to make allowances for that. Assume at least five rounds per definitively "killed" zombie in the early "target rich environment" phase of zombie killing where they're all milling about. Ten thousand rounds is therefore two thousand zombies put down. Not enough to clear a suburban infection zone, but enough to trigger the migration of more zombies from nearby suburbs or the city center.

Once you've run out of rifle ammo, you're down to pistol and shotgun rounds, and the accuracy rate will go way down.

The best situation would not be a suburban mall or gun store, but a guard armory or army base with a lot of ammo, located far enough away from large population centers to allow local elimination of the zombie infestation, without triggering a zombie swarming migration from nearby population centers.

You'd have to have hundreds of thousands of rounds to ensure clearing a town of only fifty thousand, most of whom can be presumed to be infected.

Another thing to consider is the fact that even though they are individually ineffective, zombies can saturate the defenses of most human holdouts, which usually only have dozens, at most, of shooters. That's the biggest obstacle for the defense of the living.

Well they might move toward the living because they want to eat their guts.

Doesn't affect your analysis, just sayin'.

But it seems, after reflecting on this grim calculus, that resitance ultimately would be futile. You'll never shoot all the zombies, and they'll always find you, sooner or later. Remember they're submersible, too, so that island sanctuary you're thinking about is on borrowed time just as much as your Idaho compound.

Sure it might take them years to walk along the seafloor to your fortress in Fiji, but they'll get there eventually.

So what is to be done?

Hopefully wiping out the local zombies would not be like trying to drain the ocean. If so, there would be no hope.

My plan is to acquire a couple of armored Humvees for the family. They seem to be the best compromise between security and mobility. I would obviously be scrounging large quantities of food, fuel, ammo, and seeds along the way.

The best place to wait out a zombie attack would be a sealed medieval castle. Unfortunately, there really are none around here. So, using back roads and avoiding population centers I would go here: http://www.historiclakes.org/Ticonderoga/tigallery.htm
or here: http://www.geocities.com/~jmgould/inland.html
and wait for winter.

See you there guys - bring some of that beer you made.

Buckethead - I would not recommend a National Guard Armory. They rarely have much ammo on site. The M16's in the arms locker are no more effective than similar firearms available at gunshops and they are locked in a massive vault. When I was in the Marine Reserves, they seemed to have more ammo on sight - but I would have no idea how to open that vault without an anti-tank rocket.

GreekLethal,

FWIW, most military weapons, from the time of the Civil War till today, are designed for a 300yd effective range. yeah, they carry a LOT longer, and can be accrurate for longer distances, but the factor limiting the effective rage is the good ol' MkI Mod0 eyeball.

That's right. The human eye has difficulty recognizing and engaging a single man-sized target beyond that range, so for longer shots, optics are required. True enough, there will always be a few eagle-eyed fellows, but on the whole, your standard GI is of the 300yd limit type.

Like most rifles, accuracy always depends most on the "nut behind the buttplate".

Respects,

AW1 Tim,
Well, I believe that. And I never had much trouble qualifying, but with those 350m and 400m shots impossible for me, I only shot Sharpshooter once and Expert was never gonna happen.

I mean, no big deal then or now, of course; just tough to be the only guy on the line who's hitting 30, 32, and the others are hitting 37, 38+

So my smart book might say that an M16A2 has a max effective range of 450m or whatever (it's been awhile, don't quote me on that), but I had to say that the max effective range when *I* was shooting it was more like 300m, even 250 consistently.

Which, to bring things back on point, should be fine if we're talking about defending against the shambling undead.

I can vouch for the fact that there isn't much ammo at your local armory. Also, Bram is correct on the arms vaults. It's gonna take some serious explosives, or a lot of time to get in. Not something to do while fighting off zombies. Better just to get what you can ahead of time, and store up. Best to just move out into the country, build up a good earth backed palisade, have some good optics, and a couple of dogs to warn you when they're coming. Each weapon should be a match for a competent shooter, maybe a couple of rigs for each. I got my wife an m-1 carbine, and myself a shotgun, .45, and .30-06 CZ 550 american. covered at all ranges, and common ammo. I have 20 boxes of buckshot, and lots of .45, and .30-06 at all times. It's just good policy for any eventuality, not just zombies.

Anyone who has qualified on the Marine KD course knows you can score hits at 500 yards with an M-16. However, the rifle has the be exactly zeroed. If you dissassemble or even drop the rifle afterward - you will need to re-zero.

You are better off getting a decent civilian rifle with a good scope if you want hits at 500+ yards.

Didn't you guys learn anything from playing doom/halflife/wolfenstein?

When you run out of ammo, a good machette works pretty well to take a head off. as well, a good broadsword, Axe, crowbar. You can use ensnaring tactics (nets, oil, barbedwire) to slow them down and make decapitating them easier too.

If you could line your zombies up along a fenceline, a flamethrower would also cook 'em down quickly. Nothing fancy, gasoline in a weed sprayer would work.

Getting into a guard armory isn't as hard as you think either. Remember, the guard gets into it. How hard could it be? Find the keys, use them. They are usually kept on site. But as long as you don't live in California or New York, you are better off going to a gun store/pawn shop.

Bonus if there is a gun show in town when the Zombies hatch.

Big combo lock on all the arms vaults I've seen recently. I'm more confident of ability to acquire what I need at a gun shop with a sledgehammer and bolt cutters.

Roci raises an interesting question.

Myself, I might prefer a machete to induce zombie-killing head trauma, but there is a significant risk.

Aside from the fact that you run the risk of getting an edged weapon hung up in tattered flesh, exposed bones, or necrotic cavities, you have to ask yourself how long you could chop and slash before you got tired.

Let's face it, an adult in relatively decent health (no heart condition, say, and not completely foreign to exercise) can only swing hard and high enough to re-kill the living dead for so long.

Unless the wielder was a lumberjack before the zombies came, I think most folks would have a hard time sustaining hack-n-slash for longer than a few minutes.

Which is more impetus, I think, to ensure not to put yourself in that position. At the very least, leave one in the pipe for yourself before you're devoured.

In "World War Z," the Marines traded in their e-tools for double-bladed battle-axes. They called it the "lobotomizer" - "lobo" for short.

Hey,

Someone beat me to it, but yeah, I think that were I to engage zombies in a built up area, the flamethrower would be a good choice, and back it up with a chainsaw.

If not the chain saw, maybe one of those mini chain saws on a pole that tree-trimmers use. that way you could reach out and saw someone at more than arm's length.....

Of course, if you are only dealing with one or two of them, you could always use the necklace trick that the African National Congress used to use... push a tire down over the head and shoulders, then set it on fire.

Nothing makes your day like seeing a couple of flaming undead Michelin men running down the boulevard... heh...

Respects,

Tim, the flamethrower is a nifty weapon, sure, but it has never been particularly handy, and fuel supply would be a problem. Sure, you could toast the first fity zombies, but what about the next fifty who come up while you're changing tanks?

I think GL has the right of it when it comes to the limits to hand-powered zombie fighting. Adding a chainsaw might not necessarily help, either, as they jam easily and are heavier than most swords or axes. A portable band saw, though...

Ammo supply really is the sticking point. You need a lot of it to run through the local supply of zombies. While Mrs. Buckethead has been understanding about getting weapons and some ammo for the Zombie survival kit, I don't think she'd appreciate me spending as much cash as it would take to lay in ten thousand rounds of ammo.

AW1 (and all),
Let's back up a second and make sure we are not confusing pain with injury. As Johno once said regarding attacks on zombies, "What care they for pain?"

What I'm getting at is, flamethrowers or other fire damage might look neat, and I'm sure dessicated zombies go up pretty readily, but remember: unless the brain is destroyed it's not final.

Sure you might sear away the flesh and even, say, you got all the musculature in the legs so it can't even shamble properly anymore. It's still gonna crawl after you, relentless and resolute.

If we are to consider fire damage, let's make sure that we can generate the heat we need to completely incinerate the fiend, or at least boil the brain in whatever filthy fluid flows within undead skulls.

Why bother fighting at all? Just hike to a secure location and wait a few weeks until they're too badly decomposed to shamble around any more.