Are You Prepared For The Zombie Apocalypse?

So what are we going to take out in the field with us? Well, it’s not going to be 500 pounds of bratwurst and a box of bandaids…that just won’t do. You’re going to need to take everything you’ll need to survive for at least several days while you prepare a camp, scout the area for fine dining possibilities and to make sure none of the living dead have set up shop in your area, lay out traps and snares, prepare a security perimeter, find a water source, gather fuel for fire, reinforce your shelter…

Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff to do.

“Ok, Rob, what do I need to know in order to survive when the zombie horde comes-a-carolin’?”

Well, I can’t cover all of it here but I can give you an idea of what kinds of things are the most important.

The first thing you need to keep in mind is “the rule of 3’s”. This rule tells us that we can live for 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food. Of course those numbers aren’t always 100% accurate but “the rule of 3’s” sounds a hell of a lot better than “the rule of how long you can live without air, water and food”. It’s also a good rule of thumb for telling us in which order we should prioritize our search for resources.

The air angle, we have covered…Fortunately there’s a ton of that, just laying around and you can simply walk over and do it up any time you need some (unless there’s a chemical attack or one of the hillbillies drops a beer-fart in your shelter but you DO have a gas mask right? RIGHT?)

The #2 most important thing is water. You must have clean, sanitary drinking water in order to survive. Chances are you’re not going to find an endless Evian cooler out in the middle of the wilderness so you’re going to need to figure out how to build up a nice supply so you don’t end up with a spine shattering case of the technicolor-farts and die from dysentery or crypto or some other repugnant shit you lapped up out of the same puddle the bears have been using as a slit-trench for 6 months.

The 3 most common methods of getting clean water are;

Boiling – The water must be brought to a rolling boil for 1 minute at sea level and an additional minute for every 300 meters of elevation. To be safe, most experts agree that 10 minutes is sufficient to kill off most bacteria and parasites at any elevation. I say go for 20 minutes. I don’t know about you but I’m hardly ever in the mood to piss my liver out of my ass because I drank from a mosquito infested parasite playground.

Chemical treatment – Using water purification tablets or tincture of iodine will allow you to make drinkable water. Unfortunately these methods also tend to make water taste like ‘possum piss and you’re eventually going to run out of chemical purifiers. These are best used when you’re either too drunk to make a fire or too stupid to collect the rain water that put the fire out.

Water filters – ceramic filters like the Katadyn Expedition will filter up to 100,000 liters of water (That’s 26,000 gallons) at a rate of up to 4 liters (1 gallon) per minute. There are other types of filters available, such as charcoal filters, but they are not nearly as efficient as the ceramic types. These guys are a bit on the pricey side BUT, when you are able to filter a large swimming pool worth of water at a fast enough rate to ensure you never go thirsty, dropping a couple hundred bucks isn’t that big of a deal and, believe me, you’re going to be drinking a LOT of water, since there’s no such thing as a slushy machine in the middle of the mountains.

For ultra purification in extreme emergencies, use all 3 methods. Not even an undead zombie tapeworm could survive all of that.

The next thing we need to work on is shelter. This is one of our top priorities because it’s what’s going to keep us from freezing to death in the middle of the night when it rains or ending up with heat stroke because we can’t get out of the sun for a rest. It’s also going to help keep the critters and bugs away from us while we sleep which adds to the immediate security level of our new home.

Now…A basic shelter is just that – basic. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant, it just needs to keep the elements away from you and, if possible, keep you up off of the ground and away from things that are intent on stinging and / or biting you. If you don’t know how to build a basic shelter, now is a good time to learn.

Once shelter is sorted out, it’s time to work on security. I’m not talking about hiring a bunch of rent-a-co…I mean “professional security officers” to stand around and eat bear cla…I mean “secure the area” from skateboa…I mean “zombies”, I’m talking about setting up early warning systems which will alert us that the undead have shown up to the party, just in case we don’t smell them over all the incense and perfume that’s bound to be wafting about in the middle of the woods.

If you have to do something makeshift, get the boys to save their beer-cans instead of smashing them on each other’s foreheads and string them up between trees and saplings, at about shin-level, with some good, strong fishing line and drop a couple of pebbles in each one. This age old trick will let you know if anything is attempting to enter your perimeter be it zombie or man-eating grizzly bear. Either way, you should have enough time to get to your weapons and start scrambling brains before it’s too late.

If you have a little time to prepare and some spare change laying around, you can run down to the store and buy a few small window alarms. They’re about the size of an egg and when the 2 halves of their magnetic sensors are separated, or a pin is pulled, they emit a piercing siren which will scare the unholy bejesus out of any wayward critters and will wake you up faster than a bucket of iced yak-wee. That benefit is also the problem, though. They’re loud…REALLY loud. You can expect that any marauders, bandits or dirty stinking flesh-eaters will know precisely where you are the very second one of them goes off so be prepared for a shit-storm.

I, for one, prefer the pebble in the can routine because I’m not a big fan of shit-storms.

Now we’ve got water, shelter and security worked out and it’s time to talk about the last part of the survival equation; FOOD. In an extreme survival situation you’re going to spend way more time eating bugs, grubs, mice and squirrels than you ever wanted to so you’d better get used to the idea now. You’re also going to want to find a book that covers all of the local plant life and read it cover to cover 100 times. A poisonous mushroom isn’t going to give the undead a moment’s pause but they can kill you in minutes so don’t be a moron and go around chewing on stuff you can’t identify. If you do, and your heart explodes, don’t blame me.

In order to secure meat, you’re going to have to know how to hunt, fish and trap. You’ll need to be able to build improvised snares, deadfall traps, and other types of devices designed to get you dinner with a minimum of effort. It’s also a good idea to put aside any qualms you have about shooting Bambi and Thumper and Alvin, Simon & Theodore because 1 varmint or fish can feed you for a couple of days and 1 deer can feed you and your friends for weeks if you preserve the meat properly. If you’re squeamish, get over it. Those zombies aren’t going to kill themselves and you’re damned sure not going to get the job done on an empty stomach so get used to having guts and brains all over you.

Also, you can make a damned fine soup bowl of a deer’s skull.