perfidy

Er, well so long as we're going off the cliff then...

I agreed with your initial assessment of the 20 vs the 12. I didn't make that explicit. But I think you get plenty of ass downrange with a 20. A 20 gauge slug I would certainly hope would break a zombie's leg, but they're getting a bit close by that point and it's probably time to follow up on that escape route we recon-ed earlier.

What we'll just need to make sure of is we have enough variety of weaponry and ammo for some quick experiments. One scrape should make it clear what stops them.

And you might also pause for a moment and consider the appropriate melee weapon in case of dire emergency. For my money, I'm thinking aluminum baseball bat.

My first inclination would be for a hatchet, small enough to carry anywhere and useful for other stuff. But I worry about it getting snagged or hung up in suppurating or toughened flesh. Or what if that particular zombie has no flesh at all? What's your hatchet gonna do then?

Nope, bat.

Oops... I just saw that I advocated for 12-gauge. Totally agree on the 20, backed up by a .45 and an aluminum bat.

Of course, you'll need a hatchet too, but a machete would probably work as well and do better duty as an emergency weapon.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

What you need is an automatic shotgun. Like this. Ten round magazine, twelve gauge shells, and loose magazines can be used as landmines.

The M1911 .45 ACP is the handgun of choice for zombies and other goblins, live or undead. If you're feeling cheeky, a Thompson SMG is a great gun at close ranges, and uses the same ammo as the pistol.

And always have your baseball bat. And lots of ammo.

That's a cool weapon, to be sure. But I wonder about two things. First, the ideal weapon against zombies would have to be hard to kill (like the Marines and their beloved 30.06es), because Lord knows when you'll be able to make a repair. Second, I'm just not convinced that repeated firing of a twelve gauge is do-able for long periods of time. That's a lot of kick!

If the zombies are your slow moving types, a regular shotgun would do fine, is my argument. If they're the fast moving 28 days later type, I can definitely see the merits of emptying 10 rounds of buckshot in less than three seconds.

But then again I'm a big adherent of the rough-and-ready, hide like a rabbit school of survival.

TO: All Dork Contest Participants
FROM: Murdoc

You guys just plain creep me out. The contest is over. Let it drop for a bit. You're embarsasing those around you who, um, are sorta' similar to you in some ways.

Not me. A friend of mine.

Sorry, Murdoc- I was unavailable all yesterday doing real world stuff, this was on my mind, and I want to get it out:

In considering anti-zombie weaponry, I couldn't fault a .45. If we really wanted to get all hard-core about it, we might pick up a coupla the new(er) S&W .50 caliber revolvers, which I am confident would take off a zombie head at virtually any range. But my concern there is with availability of .50, the likelihood any of us will learn to re-load by the time we need to, and accessbility to both reloading equipment and either portability of same or a secure location to base it. .45ACP though is ubiquitous.

I doubly agree with B's opinion on a .45 sidearm with a Thompson for the interoperability factor. But, we can't count on finding a Thompson, or a "Grease Gun", or other mid-century designs that fire .45.

If we apply that thinking to the modern era, or Future Zombie Era (FZE), we might see the correlation to 9mm, as a round that is popular in submachineguns and common sidearms. We are awash in the weapons and the munition.

But, we shouldn'a rely on 9mm to be our primary defensive munition in the FZE. Its capabilities or shortcomings against robust mortal humans is heavily documented, but the essence of 9mm critique comes from Kim du Toit: "Euro-pellet".

So if interoperability between sidearm and primary weapon (should that primary be a submachinegun), is the cornerstone of our defense policy, and we agree that 9mm is not the way to go, we'll need to either consider a new round that is not .45 and not 9mm, or stock up on Thompson magazines now.

One final point: I propose that we not dismiss revolvers outright in favor of a .45 semi. If we went with a S&W model 66, 686, et al say, which fire both .357 or .38, we might double the reservoir of available ammo, and there are plenty of hollow-point rounds in those calibers for the extra ass we might need. Furthermore, revolvers don't suffer fail-to-feed or fail-to-extract problems.

As for magazine capacity, we can find 7-shot revolvers easily; many single-stack .45s are 6-7-8 rounds themselves, so we wouldn't be losing too too much.

I'm not shilling for S&W revolvers here, I just want to make sure we consider all our possibilities. There's only so much room in the Ministry bunker after all, so we need to choose which ammo to stock wisely.

I'm the cool one, second from the right.

WOO! I "WIN"! I "WIN!"

It pretty much looks like 4 snaps of the same guy.

I've looked like each of them at some point in my life. Just fatter, and without the aspirations to hipness.

And the dude in the back couldn't look more like Napoleon Dynamite if he tried.

I guess that dorkness is not the absence of cool, but a higher state of being in which coolness does not hold sway. Congratulations, Johno!

I must add that despite wearing the dorkish crown, Johno is an exceptionally cool cat.

All the competing ministers were dorks. Past tense. Today we're still kinda dorky, but in the general way that all grown-ups are.

We're well-adjusted enough to lead basically normal lives. We own what's important to us, we're not afraid to like what we like, and we show no reluctance in choosing our firearms purchases based on ballistics predictions of what they might do to the necrotic flesh of undead assailants.

See? Basically normal.

"firearms purchases based on ballistics predictions of what they might do to the necrotic flesh of undead assailants."

20-gauge all the way. 12-gauge if you've got the upper body for it, but a pump action 20 with a magazine and buckshot is your best bet to shred some zombie. Tho, hollowtips in a big handgun would work too. Rip off chunks of necrotic flesh; render the flesh-eaters immobile.

J,
In essence, 20 gauge gives you 75% of a 12 gauge's firepower with maybe half the recoil and less "bang". The last point comes in when firing in a tight space, like your living room after they break through the barricades, and you don't need to deafen your co-defenders.

I go back and forth about buckshot on the undead. I'm skeptical you would get the penetration for a brain-kill, or enough kinetic energy to break pelvis/femur for solid mobility kill. I'd ask B to weigh in on that issue.

But I certainly recognize the round's utility in defending against the roving biker gangs/drug thugs/brigands that will surely be out reaving and whatnot.

So yeah, basically normal.

I'm gonna go ahead and drive this bus right off the cliff, and you can keep your "basically normal"!

GL, I'm not sure that "brain kill" is an operative concept for zombies, so I feel it prudent to not waste time worrying about penetrating skulls dependably on the first shot. As for mobility kills, I take your point. Maybe the best combination would be a 12-gauge with no stock and a big magazine backed up by a big hand cannon in a conventional caliber (easier to loot ammo that way). You'd have stopping power and roomsweeping capability with the shotgun, and once the brain-eating horror is staggering you can line up for a good shot to the dome or pelvis.

As for the biker gangs etc., I prefer an out-of-sight out-of-mind approach to survival. Under the radar. Under the water. If that fails, I have a shotgun.