Strategies for Survival

It's 7 am on a Saturday morning and your alarm clock is going off. You're not going to work today, but you've forgotten to disable it.
Well hurry up and turn it off, because it's the Zombie Apocalypse.



 If this is you, you're in trouble. There's only one good way to improve your chances of survival in the scary new world: have a plan. There are three basic theories that make up any real zombie-survival plan:

Run: You keep moving, hopefully from a highly dangerous area to an area that is less highly dangerous. When you run, you leave the slow people behind; anyone who gets caught by a zombie will improve your odds of escape by distracting some of the hungry zombies chasing you. Grab what you can carry and move on; never sleep in the same spot twice or they'll probably be back there waiting for you the third time.

Hide: Avoid notice at any cost. If the zombies can't see you, they can't eat you. You might find yourself in a very low and remote part of the sewer, eating rats, or you and your family might be hiding in your attic, emerging only at night and then only to sneak to the convenience store for the last two cans of Spam. You know your area well, and if you have to you can usually find a bolt-hole to escape into, as long as the zombies don't see you go in and follow you. If your real hideout is ever discovered, everyone dies; better for you to be caught yourself than to betray your friends.

Fortify: Your survival depends on what you can find and how you use it to protect your life. You probably don't have a gun, so you make do with what you've got. Broken chair legs, an old shovel, cardboard cutouts of Chuck Norris. You trade up any time you find something better than what you already have - and if the owner doesn't want to share, that might end up being their problem. You have a gun, but you find a bigger gun - keep both, you can never have too many guns, and you can never have enough bullets. If you get more than you can carry, put some in the trunk of your car. You have a sedan, but you find a nice van. So you take the van and put huge metal spikes on the hood in case you have to run down some zombies and you don't want them breaking through the windshield. Fortifying is all about improving your odds of survival by gathering, developing, and protecting your resources.


Clearly, these are all viable strategies for short-term survival. Running is the only thing that can save you from being overrun by a horde of the undead; at a certain point, it's too late to hide, and you can't kill them all before they catch you. Better still for them never to see you, though, right? But no matter how or where you hide, eventually you'll be found, either in your lair or while you're out scavenging. You'll need to be able to defend yourself, but you'll also need to know when to pull up anchor and get out of Dodge.
These three basic strategies are the foundation on which most really good survival plans are built, but no good plan can rely on just one. Combine running and hiding: you're sneaky, moving at night and getting your meals on the go. Hiding + fortification is a powerful combo, building up a little compound that you can protect against the undead. Running and fortifying end up with a situation like Mad Max, where everyone is killing eachother for gasoline. Combine all three? You'll become a ninja, a force of invisible re-death that comes and goes with the wind; or if in a group, you're something more like an insurgent army, raiding for food and resources as you pass by, absorbing smaller groups you choose to encounter.
Whatever strategy you develop, be assured that there will be some people using any and all other possible strategies, and you're likely to encounter some of them. Plans for dealing with living humans are almost as important as your plans for dealing with the dead ones.


The best plan by far is to be prepared; if you're reading this after the Apocalypse, you're probably screwed. But you probably didn't expect it, did you? Surprises tend to come when you least expect them, and this was probably the biggest surprise of your life.
Not me, though. I'm ready, and I've been ready for a while. My compound is just about as zombie-proof as you can get; 90% underground, with enough dried and canned food to feed a small group for over a year. I also have plans for long-term survival beyond that time, of course, and you should too, but since you aren't prepared yet we'll start with today. It's 7 am, the world is as gone to hell as it's going to be. People are still dying out there, there's still a fair portion of humans around, but the scales have tipped and it's only a matter of days, even hours, before those simply unable to survive will be wiped out and all that's left will be small groups of survivors - survivors like you, if you're lucky. Your first goal is always to survive that day, that hour, that minute and second - whatever the cost, being alive is better than being dead, and being dead is better than being a zombie. The relative value of those three things will probably change depending on your mood, and you'll probably have to make some tough choices about what you have to do or sacrifice in order to live or die as you choose.

Your first middle- or long-term goal should be to find more people, preferably people who are better equipped for survival than you are. A lot of the skills that will be most essential to survival now will be the sort of things people learn in the armed forces - not just killing people who want to kill you, but also surviving in hostile conditions, raiding enemy territory, securing an area for survival, even making bullets. You probably didn't think about having to make bullets at any time in your life; you probably won't live long enough to need to, but eventually a lot of bullets will have been fired and a lot fewer will be available. Some army bases probably have the equipment necessary to make ammunition, and some army personnel have the knowledge of using that equipment. So now you've got your second goal: find some military types, they might have a secured base.
I would wait, though, before going after them. In a week or so, after the infection rate has peaked, you'll know that any base still manned by live humans is going to be secure enough, at least for a while. Any base that isn't that secure... well, you don't want to be there to find out, obviously.

Once you find them, you should come find me.

First, though, you need to get through your first day.