Oh, and music, too. Maybe especially music; if we’re unlucky in how many of the zombie hordes surround our fortified hideout, we’ll want something to drown out the darned moaning. Which speaks to zombies being more of an undead terror weapon than undead army, if they were just silent far fewer survivors would have a chance….
Ahem. But back to rocks, and rolling.
When the world has gone insane, when there’s panic in the streets, when the dead have arisen and politicians have been revealed as so brainless even the zombies think twice about feeding on them… there’s still one bit of reality we can count on.
Gravity works.
Ammo runs out. Guns jam. Generators break. Minds can snap.
But gravity. Always. Works.
Wherever possible, take advantage of this.
Seriously. Gravity-fed water supplies, for one, are an excellent idea. Water is heavy. The less we have to physically carry from place to place, the better. And if it’s coming downhill, that means the water is coming from higher ground which we can control, hopefully making sure the water is clean and drinkable in the process.
(If you’re in a zpoc and you do not control the higher ground, please rethink your plans. The last thing any of us need is zombies falling inside the defensive perimeter. That’s just gross.)
And if we do have higher ground, why not stockpile rocks to roll, throw, or otherwise lob toward the living impaired? They’re cheap. They don’t have propellant to go bad. They can be used over and over again, without losing any of their lethality.
Granted, if we’re dealing with “shoot the brain” zombies, your average rock probably won’t be fatal on its own. Maybe. A well-aimed fastball can deliver a surprising amount of deadly force. Then again, zombie – might take a couple of hits to pulverize the brain enough.
Still, break some bones and we should at least immobilize the darn things. And if we’re dealing with a swarm – immobilize first, worry about total kills later.
Besides. When we’re under life or death stress, simple is better. Which would you rather rely on when you’re scared out of your mind – a gun with a safety you might forget to take off, or a rock?
…Frankly, I hope my survival group has both. But I adore overkill.
Let’s rock!
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
I’m a fan of having both the rocks and the guns. Also anything that works that your group has managed to collect.
Because when you are dealing with the evil undead, there is no overkill. There is only “open fire” and “I need to reload.”
And I like having a back-up in case Thing 1 doesn’t work, gets broken, needs more of X to work, etc. Never rely on Plan A working flawlessly. Have a Plan B (and Plan C).
High ground is generally a good strategic move. And hope that your survivor fort is good at keeping drinking water separate from . . . other water. Cholera and its friends are a very unpleasant way to die.
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Amen to that. Urgh.
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Proper placement of pit toilets is very important. And sanitation/filtration procedures plus rehydration measures are never bad either.
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There is no kill like overkill, I agree. Gravity is a great ally. That said, I personally prefer it’s relative Momentum, myself.
On an unrelated note, there’s this little thought that’s been giving me cackles for the past few days… Black powder. Specifically, the composition of, and the properties of said components.
See, there’s saltpeter- salt’s used to purify, both mystically and normally.
Charcoal is used to purify and neutralize, by the carbon bonding with whatever is available.
And then, sulfur. The thing that caught my attention, it’s smell is usually associated with Hell.
(They use it for everything, particularly health related uses, which surprised me, since I was told it was poisonous. Further search pinned it as another purifier, mystically. I have no idea what to think of it anymore…)
So you have a purifier, a neutralizer/binder, and a hell-fire/cleansing-fire precursor. How do black powder weapons not work on supernatural beasties?
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Interesting indeed….
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I like it, but it probably doesn’t work on the supernatural beasties because you’re using the black powder to throw small bits of metal at them. Whatever residue were left on your bullets might be too small to have any detrimental effect.
I bet it would work if it were thrown at them directly, though.
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That’s actually one of the reasons behind fireworks displays – they were supposed to purify areas and chase off evil spirits.
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If you drink mineral water with some sulfur in it, I guarantee that you will have your system purified. It’s not bad, actually, as long as you don’t mind a little smell.
West Virginia guys boosting their local mineral water”> say it’s good for you. And yup, it does get used in a lot of traditional medicine.
But sulfur is also something that a lot of would-be wizards, alchemists, and chemists tend to play with.
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Funnily enough, I was earlier analyzing the band possibility of the bunch I’m, among other things, dumping into a zpoc.
I’m also reminded of Ringo. I remember the playlists from the Posleen books, Dragonforce etc… from Claws that Catch, and the I get knocked down song from the Graveyard Sky books.
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Combine harvester. Y’know, the one that can eat a car? Or an eighteen wheeler tractor. I work roadside call centers, the only thing that’ll take those things down would be a moose (as long as it’s kept up on its maintenance.) Zombies would just go squish.
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I grew up on a farm and occasionally went to safety lectures where they used watermelons to demonstrate exactly what your average farm equipment can do to a human skull. Squish indeed.
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Meep. Better that melon than your own!
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No such thing as overkill, simply “I need to reload” and “Get the missile launcher”, LOL. XP Gravity is your best friend when everything goes wrong, except when you’re tossed out of a window and there happens to be a spiked fence where you’re going to land. So I suppose the best advice would be: Gravity. Use wisely and look before you leap. ^.^
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*Snrk*
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I think it depends on: how many zombies, and how strong are they? If they’re just shamblers, gravity could be a fantastic weapon: dig a moat. The fall might not kill them, but breaking their legs and impaling them on spikes lining the bottom of your moat would slow them down enough that they won’t be a threat and you can kill them at your leisure. I don’t care how undead it is, it’s not biting anyone if every bone in its body is broken. No weapons required! (Of course, you would need a way to make sure the moat didn’t fill up with water or zombies. And if you’ve got some designer Resident Evil-type nonsense, now they can dig UNDER your walls. Hopefully if it happens we get shamblers or rage monsters)
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If your spikes were metal you could probably clean them off periodically by judicious application of fire.
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RE is just scary. And makes you want to hunt down the heads of companies involved with malice aforethought.
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Maybe someone who knows both properties should set Saitoh on them. Through from what I understand about the RE universe, Kenshin probably wouldn’t too much issue with killing those guys either.
Or maybe I just have a thing for people who really really deserve it getting a quick (and lethal) encounter with the Wolf of Mibu and the Demon of Kyoto. A thing that certain people (Vathara) seem to have no problem with indulging semi-regularly. 😉
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*G* Aww.
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And for advanced gravity users there is the trebuchet.
*sales announcer voice*
Yes, the counterweight trebuchet, for your advanced zombie squishing needs. With it you can sling a one to two hundred pound projectile over three hundred yards down range three or even more times a minute with well trained and rotated firing crews. All with a minimal noise signature, so the undead are at worst attracted more to where your projectiles land than where they are fired from. Skilled users have reported if you take time to round the projectile enough to let it roll you can play zombie bowling and get multiple undead destroyed or disabled with each launch.
And all you need to ‘power’ one is a winch to drag down the arm, and a counterweight balance. In a pinch you can dispense with the winch and just get enough strong arms and a rope to haul it down. Due to the zombine apocalypse rendering the delivery of spare parts, difficult, such reliability and failure modes that leave the weapon functional are a vital bonus to any survivor settlement. Anything will do for the counterweight, gravel, sand, a dead engine block, or even hardbound copies of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. The manufacture does not recommend however using the bodies of the undead. In addition to being unsanitary their changing mass as they desiccate and decay will increase the difficulty of firing reliable shots.
The counterweight trebuchet, order today! Because while the hordes of the walking dead are always increasing, our stock of this item unfortunately is not. 🙂
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You might just make a killing with that sales pitch 😁
With regards to trebuchets, I always wondered why the ones at Minas Tirith (Jackson’s LOTR Movies, Return of the King) weren’t aimed to take out the frigging Siege Towers. You see‘em coming, turn the trebuchets juust so, and once they get in range, CRUNCH. One less mobile point of access for Mordors forces.
…Law of drama, yes, I know, but looking at that siege playing out, for Gondor to have retaken Osgiliath, the orcs must have been caught with their pants down.
I hate it if the good guys suddenly turn stupid for the sake of drama.
Good point about gravity in a zpoc, though. Any spare parts are going to be spare in a hurry, once civilization breaks down😉
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Pete Jackson never served in WWI. His background is in cinema, so we would expect him to have much more rule of cool per unit military logic compared to the source material.
Actually, this a good time of year to talk about Tolkein’s military service.
He’d arrived at the Somme in early July. October 27 1916, he came down with trench fever. November 8 1916, he was sent back to England.
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There are never enough spare parts. Never.
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The LotR and Hobbit films seem to give the bad guys better strategy and tactics. I’m sure the idea is to make them seem more of an actual threat, but do the protagonists and their armies have to be stupid? (In Battle of the Five Armies, it was bad enough I was wondering how the heroes won. Wasn’t sure whether to cry about bad tactics or ‘have you even read the books?’)
As for the medieval siege engines, that is a fantastic pitch. If you’re lucky, you might even have friends trained to operate them under (mock) battle conditions! (See Society of Creative Anachronism for details :P)
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Haven’t seen them, but sigh, not surprised. It’s hard to fight an intelligent battle.
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The LOTR book gives a decent amount of attention to how the baddies are holding off the goodies.
The movies? Faugh.
And yes, the stark comparison of Tolkien’s Battle of Five Armies to Jackson’s is enough to make anyone cry. Jackson’s battle just makes no sense. Five years old with Legos could do better.
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Ouch!
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*Thumbs up!*
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The mention of rocks reminded me of the Disney adaptation of Swiss Family Robinson, which I seem to recall having boulders and logs tumbling downhill as part of a defense setup. I suppose there are worse inspirations. 🙂
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I was actually thinking the same thing. And traps! Pit traps! If you are facing small groups not hordes. Then you apply fire vigerously and by the time you need to clean out the pit of bones you may juust dig another. Also i thought maybe the spike traps from Rambo clearly marked(assuming dumb zombies). Put those in your home territory so when/if you are being chased you can at least slow them down.
And if the opportunity arises….may i suggest making like roadrunner with cliffs and baiting the zombies off of them? Maybe using a zipline? It might be a bit tricky…
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It’s at least entertaining. And in a zpoc, you need that. 😉
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