Serious danger
Everyone,
Last night, my girlfriend and I watched I Am Legend. Afterwards we were talking about infestations, which inevitably led to a conversation about zombies in general. She wanted to discuss how to handle such a situation. Feeling well versed on the subject matter, I started describing preparation at the immediate outbreak, and then I realized that I am in serious danger. China is a very different climate, and I am worried for my life in a zombie outbreak.
I need help preparing for a zombie attack. Here are my problems:
1. Most homes do not have bathtubs. Filling up on water would be extremely difficult, even considering that tap water is unsuitable for drinking in most circumstances.
2. Hundreds of millions of people own cell phones. The networks have issues handling the flux of people using them, such as on Chinese New Years. Many places do not use land lines, so communication may be difficult in the event of an outbreak
3. Civilians can not own firearms. I can't buy guns. The only bladed weapons I can feasibly come by are kitchen butchers knives. Swords sold here are strictly ornamental. Even then, I don't know how to fight with a sword. If I had to, I would, but inexperience would cause me to fatigue quickly, or make a fatal mistake. I suppose I could learn.
4. I live in a city of over 6 million people. That's a lot of zombies. Obviously, I need to get out of the city, but the infrastructure can barely handle rush hour traffic, much less a fear based exodus. I could be trapped.
Right now, things do not look promising. But I know The Orange Belt is considered home to many of the leading authorities in zombie knowledge, zombie combat, and zombie infestation survival.
Preparation is the key to survival. Let's figure this out.
Last night, my girlfriend and I watched I Am Legend. Afterwards we were talking about infestations, which inevitably led to a conversation about zombies in general. She wanted to discuss how to handle such a situation. Feeling well versed on the subject matter, I started describing preparation at the immediate outbreak, and then I realized that I am in serious danger. China is a very different climate, and I am worried for my life in a zombie outbreak.
I need help preparing for a zombie attack. Here are my problems:
1. Most homes do not have bathtubs. Filling up on water would be extremely difficult, even considering that tap water is unsuitable for drinking in most circumstances.
2. Hundreds of millions of people own cell phones. The networks have issues handling the flux of people using them, such as on Chinese New Years. Many places do not use land lines, so communication may be difficult in the event of an outbreak
3. Civilians can not own firearms. I can't buy guns. The only bladed weapons I can feasibly come by are kitchen butchers knives. Swords sold here are strictly ornamental. Even then, I don't know how to fight with a sword. If I had to, I would, but inexperience would cause me to fatigue quickly, or make a fatal mistake. I suppose I could learn.
4. I live in a city of over 6 million people. That's a lot of zombies. Obviously, I need to get out of the city, but the infrastructure can barely handle rush hour traffic, much less a fear based exodus. I could be trapped.
Right now, things do not look promising. But I know The Orange Belt is considered home to many of the leading authorities in zombie knowledge, zombie combat, and zombie infestation survival.
Preparation is the key to survival. Let's figure this out.
Comments
At the first opportunity grab yourself a shitload of weapons and supplies, load up an APC (or a tank) and drive over everything else on your way to somewhere remote.
Failing that you could go the 'mole-man' route. Start digging out a survival bunker for now, and when that's complete start tunneling to large shopping malls (for easy foraging access) and, if you have the time, right out of the major population districts.
Or you could go the SCIENCE! route and build yourself a decent anti-bite armour suit (or go the whole hog and build yourself a powered exo-skeleton. With flamethrowers!) and simply stroll through the encroaching zombie hordes. The only drawback to the plan being that whilst being bite proof, that wouldn't stop zombies from just piling on top of you until you couldn't move and then starving to death underneath a pile of rotting corpses. Which would be a pretty shitty way to go.
ETA: Hot-air balloon would work for escape too. Just don't rely on too much accuracy on where you end up.
Or an obscenely complex network of flying foxes charting an escape route across the whole city. It'd be stylish, but probably a lot more work than is strictly necessary.
http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/03/05/must-watch-i-am-legends-original-ending-this-is-amazing/
This is the real ending. Or at least, it should be!
Second. arrange the use of a helicopter or similar air vehicle if you can. When the hungry dead are shambling around the streets it wont matter if it's stolen or what. this is super key since, as you said, congestion is such a problem in China
If getting a heli is impossible, pretty much in most cases, and you feel it's best to get the hell out of dodge then you should hop on a bike and make your way out of the city as quickly as possible. Bikes offer a lot of advantages over cars in that they don't run out of fuel, and are fairly portable, especially the cool folding bikes they have over there.
Third. Prepare a weapon (I myself have a a metal bat handy if things should take a turn for the worse). A bat or some similar blunt object has the same advantage as a bike in that it won't ever run out of ammo, they're simple and they get the job done, the biggest disadvantage being that you have a very limted range. Consider purchasing a hunting crossbow or something.
Fourth. If you are really, really stuck in the city, take advantage of the crowding and utilize a high rise apartment (they have a lot of those in China right?). make ground access impossible by any means. Barricade entrances, destroy stairs, whatever. Just make sure that nothing can get up to your sky-top fortress.
I hope that helps a bit.
There's huge disadvantage to bikes, though. The fact that you have no protection at all. Any random zombie could bite you while you're trying to cycle through the city, not to mention the lack of force that comes from a bike (that is, unless, you have unbelievably powerful calves). Not only is running a zombie over with a bicycle rather impossible, it could even cause more problems, since it'd slow you down while you're trying to get your bike upright and back in riding position. Although, as you stated, it'd probably be more effective to keep a melee weapon on hand for biking. Still, even with the gas problem, a bicycle seems more like a last resort vehicle than anything else.
I know biking seems terribly exposed, but I can't think of any other vehicle that doesn't have a serious, serious flaw when it comes to a zombie outbreak.
Build rain-collection setups and a farm plot on the roof. Over time, expand to nearby buildings with homemade bridges. I was hoping for an urban Castaway with zombie vampires. I was disappointed.
And I'd say that clearing out an apartment building/general high-rise would only be a worthwhile plan if you got it fortified very early in the apocalypse. Clearing out a building filled with a thousand or so flesh-eating zombies could take a while.
You might want to start making a list of other people you know that you think could survive. Setup meeting points and build yourself a decent team of survivors. Remember - in the apocalypse there is no room for passengers.
I like the idea of setting up a team of survivors. I am also going to start looking into building an exoskeleton. What the exoskeleton needs is about 50 high pressure compressed springs all over it, so that if I get toppled by a horde of burning death zombies, I can activate the springs and bounce everything, including myself, away.
[size=+4]Let's do that.[/size]
Mine was a male, though.
So it was like "Shadow of the Colossus"?
I was using an online Chinese map to find a zoo, and look what I found in the goddamn outskirts of the city!
It's Umbrella.
I'm totally screwed.
Edit: NoLonger, that map is really awesome, and I find it better than Google. It's a 3D map set up for every major city in the country. You can hover the mouse over any building, and it will tell you what the building is and what its address is. Thousands of people submit photos too, so many locations have photos you can see so you know for certain what you're looking for. It also has comprehensive bus transportation data along with visible routes to see where they go. It's pretty awesome software.
Note that you will probably never have the opportunity to open that front door again, so make sure you have some other means of leaving the building (like a fire escape with a retractable ladder; you don't want to give the zombies another method of entry in the process). Though it is likely that this will be your home for the foreseeable future, a contingency escape plan should always be available. If possible, rent out a storage facility and keep a vehicle there with a full tank of gas. Make sure the facility can be accessed with a key, and not an electronic locking system (we have to assume that the city will lose power without an infrastructure of living humans to maintain things). Don't get anything too large, a nice fuel-efficient two-seater will mean less refueling in a time when the ability to refuel may be very scarce indeed. But it should be able to accommodate whatever you need to carry with you. Mostly the vehicle is a means to quickly reach one destination (say, the last human stronghold?), rather than something to depend on for months at a time.
Get a battery-powered radio, in case the government starts issuing official instructions on how civilians should proceed (take their advice or leave it, you've got a killer fort). Consider also purchasing a CB radio, so as to attempt communication with the outside world; the infrastructure necessary to run CB radio will probably last far longer than the hard phone lines and the cell towers, though you should also keep a cell phone on you just in case you can get a signal.