There is no one, I’m aware of, who has the intelligence, creativity, and outright chutzpa of Josh Whedon. I mean, the man took a failed TV show and turned into a cult following and, arguably, one of the greatest science fiction movies ever. He took a campy, low-budget movie (I mean, it had Rutger Hauer in it, and I respect him a lot, but he’s rarely in anything… Oscar worthy. Him and Bruce Campbell are kings of the B-movie.) and made it into a 7 season TV show, with one spin-off that ran for 4 seasons and several unwritten spin-0ffs and several comic book continuations. Oh, and he directed the third highest grossing film of all time.
So, when he speaks… I listen.
Beyond all the hyperbole and silliness, everything he says is dead on. Sad, but true.
OK, you heard it here first. These are my tips for the Zombie Apocalypse (and why do I always want to spell that Alpaca?)
Number 1
You’ve got a thousand strong horde of undead heading your way. If you reach for a shotgun, you deserve to get eaten. Let’s see, five rounds of buckshot… 1,000s of zombies… even an ID proponent could figure that out.
No, you need fire-power and lots of it. You should be using weapons that have “mm” in their caliber and nothing less than “12” in front of the mm. If you are not using belt-fed full auto-weapons, then you deserve to get eaten. A best bet weapon is the full-auto 40mm grenade launcher. Preferably loaded with a mix of high explosive and white-phosphorus.
Land mines are your friend. Who ever nails boards to a window deserves to get eaten. No, you want to surround your home with claymore anti-personnel mines. Preferably connected to a laser trip wire.
Lastly, people who drive around in trucks with rebar welded over the windows deserve to be eaten. No, you want something that is sealed against chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Preferably diesel powered, with the aforementioned large caliber autocannon mounted on it. The older US Bradley AFV or the more modern Stryker would work well. If you happen to live in Germany, you could probably save the world with this.
Where are you going to find fuel? I bet there’s lots of places that have lots and lots of diesel that the massive horde of dumb survivors haven’t found yet (and won’t think to look for). Hint, look for big yellow vehicles near construction sites.
Number 2
I hear this all the time, “You’re talking about an arsenal, where am I supposed to get that kind of firepower?” You have a phone book right? Look up “Military Reserve” or whatever they call the reserve army in your area. In the US, many cities have a military reserve base. There, depending on the type of reserve unit, you can find all kinds of useful equipment.
They should have light weapons, like the M249 squad machine gun, that will serve until you get some decent weapons. They should also have some form of “food” (and I use the term loosely) in the form of military rations. This will last you for a while, until you get more food and enough zombies removed to start farming… we’ll talk about that in a minute.
Some of the larger cities will have larger reserves with actual combat units and you might just find the odd tank lying around. Now a full-on main battle tank is overkill against zombies, but you take what you can get. If you can find them, a 105mm shot round should clear out the zombie hordes nicely.
If you are really lucky, then you live relatively close to military base (hopefully army or marines). Get a couple of other survivors and load up some AFVs with MREs, ammo, and claymores. If you have enough survivors, you might even load up a big military transport truck with supplies and guard it with the AFVs.
Number 3
You need electricity. The modern human society is built around electricity. If you are prepared and see the Zombie Apocalypse coming, then you can do some very useful things… like downloading a state or country wide phonebook. Don’t worry about the total of human knowledge on the internet, if the hard disks survive, then that can all be rebuilt. You need to focus on immediate survival and there’s lots to look up in phones books. For example, “Survival Food” and you might a warehouse of food for survivalists nearby. There’s several million calories stored there in a form that will last from 4 to 20 years. Go get it… all of it.
You can also look up “solar power panels”. While other survivors are living like savages, you can be king of the hill in your very own highrise building. Why a skyscraper? There’s a couple of reasons. First, they have a huge internal volume for the area that must be defended. Plus concrete walls aren’t hurt by claymores and serve to funnel the explosive force down, concentrating it for the undead.
Second, they have lots and lots of windows. Why is that important? Well, you need food. What’s easier to protect 70 floors of windows or 20 acres of flat farmland? You and your handful of doughty survivors aren’t going to be building Hadrian’s Wall around King Ranch.
Finally, you can hang solar panels and get all the juice you need… well, mostly. Throw in some RO filters and you and your new clan can live quite happily for a long, long time. Now, you’ll be limited to chickens and maybe pigs… besides, do you actually know anyone who knows how to butcher a large ungulate?
So, there you go, my tips for the end of the world. If you in Central Texas (or close enough) when the end comes, look me up, I can use someone to mind the chickens.
