My wife and I have just finished watching the first season of The Walking Dead series, which isn’t that hard considering that it’s only six episodes. My interest was first piqued by Han’s mention of the series and I even downloaded some copies of the comic to check them out. But it would have been impossible to avoid the buzz on QT3 anyway. Not only is the series about zombies, but one prominent QT3 member, Gary Whitta, formerly editor of PC Gamer and currently a Hollywood screenwriter, appears in a cameo role as a zombie in the premiere episode. This led him to release photographs from the set before just about anywhere else on the net.

Six episodes is too little to go on to form much of an opinion but so far I’m impressed that they’ve mostly managed to avoid having the survivors get into trouble by making stupid mistakes. They make solid plans that take account of the zombies’ capabilities, place appropriate value on stocking up on firearms and ammunition, take care to kill zombies silently whenever feasible etc. One great example is when one sister cradles the corpse of the other sister, knowing full well it was going to be zombified. It would have been cringe-inducing if it had turned out to be just another cliched example of someone being too emotionally weak to do what was obviously necessary. But the tough sister turned out to have her shit together after all.

The biggest boo-hoo so far is the time that they had the group jogging back to camp after their vehicle was stolen instead of just hot-wiring another one. Not only was it stupid, but the sight of the main characters jogging along at dusk looked ridiculous. Almost as silly was how they more or less looked on while the zombies were breaking through into the department store they were in instead of doing something to barricade the entrance. Also, while I know from the comics that Andrea is supposed to become a crack shot later but starts out clueless at guns, I couldn’t buy that she didn’t even know how to turn off the pistol’s safety given that she should have been carrying the gun around for a while.

Anyway, I thought I’d use this post to list some of my own zombie apocalypse survival ideas, even though I agree with Cracked that zombies aren’t much of a threat even if they could somehow exist. Disclaimer: I’ve read Max Brooks’ World War Z but not The Zombie Survival Guide.

1. If you really need to organize an overland convoy, I suggest looking into some heavy-duty construction vehicles. Yeah, they have higher fuel consumption, but you don’t need very many of them. I’d armor up a wheel loader to use for zombie crushing / road clearing purposes, a fuel truck to make sure your convoy is well supplied and a dump truck for supplies. Once that’s covered, you could use an armored up bus for transporting people like in the comics and maybe a couple of off-road vehicles to use as scouts. That’s how I’d do it if I were playing an RPG anyway. The intent is to survive against both zombies and enemy humans.
2. If you can though, sea travel is clearly the way to go. You know what would make for a totally awesome base of operations? A galleon! They use wind power, have plenty of storage space and should in theory be maintainable and repairable with scavenged materials. The problem is that no one has the expertise to maintain and run them these days.
3. Some people favor emptying out a block of buildings and fortifying them, using perhaps the roofs for cultivation. But I think cities are death-traps. Even if you discount the zombies, all the corpses make the perfect breeding ground for all sorts of nasty diseases. Plus even brick walls can’t stand up to a crowd that’s big enough.
4. For the long-term, you’d want to cultivate your own food. This means either some kind of enclosed, defensible space or islands. Personally, I’d go with islands. Less zombie worries and using your ship as a base, you can easily run away when things get bad.
5. The crossbow used in the show is an excellent choice of weapon, being a ranged, silent weapon that uses reusable bolts. They will get lost and broken eventually though, and I’d bet he’s going to have a harder time finding replacement bolts than plain and simple bullets. You also can’t reload them in a hurry. One idea I haven’t seen much in zombie fiction are portable noisemaking distractions, like the sports car Glenn used. Perhaps you could jury-rig some fireworks on a fuse that you can launch somewhere far away to attract zombies away from you.
6. If you’re just a small family as opposed to a community, your resources will be more limited and you will have to be content with foraging out of a defensible and secluded base. It strikes me that, long-term, some place like the Solomon Islands won’t be too bad for this kind of existence. Between bananas, coconuts, crabs and fish, you can probably survive for a long while. I’d favor a network of treehouses for this, with rope access, since zombies can’t climb. If you’re ambitious, you could link treehouses with elevated walkways high above the ground!