Starting a little late in the game

Jonathan Glazer, 25 September 2015

We have all seen movies where a threat to a town, the country or humanity in general causes the hero to open a weapons cache that would make any gun collector drool.  Belt fed machine guns, rocket launchers and Curios & Relics of all kinds come out of the subterranean vault ready for another shot at regaining their former glory.   There are those who do have a doomsday cache of weapons and gear which is not meant to see the light of day.  Then there are those who always thought it was a good idea and then suddenly find themselves in an environment which is not friendly to the accumulation of firepower.  What then?

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It’s what you do before the crisis that matters…

Jonathan Glazer, 11 September 2015

If we were part of the storied 1%, preparing for the outbreak would be relatively easy.  Money, storage space, transportation, manpower and even the legal climate would not pose issues for the rich and powerful to plan their survival.  Most have security personnel who are in charge of this planning, so all they do is write a check.  For the rest of us, planning is critical.  Every choice we make is a tradeoff and each of our decisions carries opportunity cost.  Every dollar spent on survival planning is one less dollar available to pay the cell phone bill or buy shoes for the children.  We must prioritize every single element and decide what to buy or prepare and how much to spend.

A huge underground bunker would be fantastic.  We could stockpile food, water, medicine, ammo, generators, fuel as well as all the creature comforts which would keep us happy until natural causes claimed us or the last zombie on earth keeled over and ceased being a threat.  Most of us do not have such a bunker.  We have to plan either to stay in our homes and defend it or be mobile and carry our essentials with us.  Even if we plan to stay in our homes, the possibility of needing to leave must be in our contingency plan.  This decision might be made for us due to powers beyond our control, such as civil authorities or natural disasters.  In that situation, you may have to grab what you can carry and run.

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How do you kill what’s already dead?

Jonathan Glazer, 28 August 2015

The last column touched briefly on how to end the career of a Zed.  Now I will get more granular and detailed.  It is too simple to say something like “shoot them in the head”.  If it were just that simple, this column would not be necessary.  In reality, we tend to get overwhelmed by biters very easily.  During an outbreak, their numbers swell quickly and one’s position can be overrun in a matter of moments.  The problem is that they do not have a sense of fear.  Suppressive fire from heavy weapons makes normal people want to get out of the way and hide, which allows a flanking force to maneuver closer, set up fire lanes and lay down their own volume of suppressive fire.  This allows the first team to move into place and the process continues until both fire teams achieve their objective.  This is known as “Fire and Maneuver”.   Walkers do not respond to suppressive fire.  They simply wander into the withering wall of bullets and fall over (hopefully) allowing the ones behind them to do the same.  The problem is that the machine gunners eventually have to reload, or change overheated barrels or have a snickers.  And the undead hordes keep on moving closer.

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