Making Pickles: more important than you think.

Think about it for a minute. Think about pickles.
Pickles are vegetables (we usually think of cucumbers) that have been preserved for long-term storage. Before we had canning, we had pickling. Pickling not only preserved our vegetables to last us through winters, it could give them new flavors and textures. Pickle some baby carrots with a couple hot peppers, and you've got a jar of some very tasty carrots. And of course, there's dill. Dill and cucumbers go together like peanut butter and jelly, or peanut butter and chocolate, or peanut butter and nacho cheese Doritos. It's too bad you can't pickle peanut butter, that would be something to accomplish.

Pickles have another key role in our culture, aside from being a great counterpart to greasy delicious hamburgers. It's said, though not generally true, that pregnant women tend to have a desperate craving at times for a good pickle, especially in combination with something confusing, like almond flavored ice cream or ricotta cheese.
Pickles do not last forever, though they might make a damn good effort at it. The biggest thing holding them back is their glass jars; they break easily, they're heavy, they just don't travel as well as aluminum cans. Pickles won't be a major part of your diet as you travel. Having children won't be a part of that either. But eventually, that will change.

The most basic way to make pickles is to boil some vinegar with a little salt, then pour it into a canning jar over your vegetables. The vinegar preserves the food, the heat kills bacteria, the seal keeps anything bad out. It's a good thing. I've used this method myself, with a variety of different recipes (look 'em up, it's fun and useful). Remember to label your jars; I pickled some green chili peppers and gave them to my mother, who thought they were green beans. Interesting thing about pickling: the liquid takes on the flavor of the thing you're pickling. That's why pickle juice tastes so good! Pickling strong-flavored items like those peppers makes the juice a food type in itself; that's what's going on with those little pepper sauce bottles with the tiny hot peppers inside, or those (mostly decorative) glass bottles shaped like chickens full of colorful peppers of all kinds. It goes great on cooked greens, green beans, various cooked vegetables.

There's also much older, more traditional pickling methods that actually ferment the food involved. This is a very good skill to master, it gives different flavors and textures and can even last longer than the "hot" pickling method. Many cultures have variations on it. Kimchee, for instance, is one such. Like most of these pickling methods, it requires being in one place for a long time. You can ferment some things on the move, but if you're going to be making long-term food plans like that it's much better to be doing it on the not-move-at-all.

On a related subject.

While you're on the move, darting from secure location to secure-able location, you should avoid sexual contact. There's the obvious reasons, like Zombie STDs, but the real problem is that it's hard as hell to travel safely while pregnant. Well zombie STDs would be a hell of a problem, but they're avoidable if you do the right kind of screening; as bad as STDs are, they require an infected human.The only thing that prevents both disease and potential pregnancy is not having sex. It's going to be hard, but necessary unless the woman involved has a good supply of her birth control or you're willing to carry boxes of condoms with you (they're light but they take up space, especially if you plan to get bizz-ay on a regular basis). If, if, you're going to be doing it, the condoms are worth the space you use for them.

We'll talk about the hazards of pregnancy another time. That's not the topic of the day, and if it's something you actually want to do, that's something you'll have to deal with yourself, really. But pregnancy, however dangerous it may be while you're mobile and unsecured, is actually vital to our long-term survival as a species.


You, me, and whoever else may survive, we'll all eventually die. That's a fact, and as long as I'm not killed by zombies I'll be fine with that. Or cannibals. Or someone I trust, but anyway, death is inevitable. But what do we hope to leave behind? Really, I don't care that much; I'm going to be dead after I die, so whatever happens to the rest of you isn't my problem. But I do want to live as long as I can, which means having an effective post-apocalypse plan in place. And as long as long as we're making a decent plan that should last the better part of one lifetime, it doesn't take much more to make it capable of lasting a good bit longer. It's even possible that I could, one day, have children of my own; I'd certainly want them to be safe, I think.

Once we have a secure, zombie-free location where we can produce our own food, the only adjustments will be expanding as the population increases. Let me tell you a little about what I have going. I'm not so vain or stupid as to think that I'm guaranteed to survive. Sure, if I'm already here when the outbreak hits, I'll be a lot better off than most people, but I think it's just a good idea to give you all the same guidelines I used to plan my own compound.Naturally, the strategies Run, Hide, and Fortify play a role.

We learned these fables for a reason, folks.

(used without permission; didn't even ask. Check out the source though, good stuff)

Layered perimeters. In submarines, there's an outer hull and an inner hull; that way, if the outer hull is breached it doesn't kill everyone inside. Do the same for any permanent location you settle in. I recommend at least three layers of defensible perimeter. The first is your inner home base, the building or dugout or whatever kind of structure you've managed. The next should encompass the majority of your useful area, everything you're cultivating or domesticating. You should be able to spend 80 or 90 percent of your time within this perimeter. Your outer perimeter should be beyond easy eyesight of the second, and the area between the two should be left mostly wild without any real sign of humanity; you can plant edible food in this area as well, but try not to make it look especially cultivated, and stick with things that do well without a lot of attention.

• Run: If you're outside the outer perimeter, you probably shouldn't be, but I'll allow that there are special occasions (like finding nearby survivors and guiding them inside). Should the sudden need to re-enter arise, you need to be able to do so while keeping any zombies out. If you have a fence, your gates should be somewhat disguised, but easy to get through and securely locked once inside. If you simply have a stone wall (a little more doable if you start building it after the Apocalypse, but the skill to build a real one might be tricky to find) the most secure means of entry might actually be a tunnel dug under the wall that can be blocked off from the inside (you'll need to leave someone guarding it or they might sneak in while you're gone). Other options might include ladders or easily climbed trees, though you should try and remember that zombies might be able to climb - probably not, since climbing is a more complicated motion than running, but there's no telling what they're capable of. Something similar will be needed on your main perimeter fence, since it's possible that your outer perimeter might be breached. 
• Hide: Your primary, inner perimeter should be beyond earshot of your compound. That's easy enough if you need lots of room for cultivated plants or grazing room for livestock (quite a feat if you manage to being in some livestock!). This keeps any zombies that may breach the outer perimeter from sensing life further inside. For the same reason, your outer perimeter should be beyond eyesight (and preferably earshot as well) of the inner perimeter; beyond your outer perimeter, the world is wild and full of zombies, and there's no telling when one might be near enough to hear sounds from inside. Well, there might be, actually. More on that in a minute.
• Fortify: Obviously, perimeter fences and walls keep the zombies out. You can make them more effective at doing so, with a little effort. For a stone wall, just stacking loose stones doesn't make a wall. You probably won't have a quarry or the people to work one, so you'll have to make do with the rocks under your own feet, which probably won't be big enough (unless you've chosen to live in a rocky, mountainous area, where the options may run a little larger, especially if you choose a site near or including a good source for those rocks). Check up on how the ancient Chinese built parts of the Great Wall of China. It's not all bricks and mortar; part of it was made from mud and straw, and it worked just as well as the rest for keeping the Mongols out. Layer after layer was added, then tamped down with logs to make it firm. You may have the same option, if you have the time.

Clearly, with perimeter fences, it may be best to find a site with the appropriate security measures already in place. There won't be many of those that also have the land you'll need to grow food, but if you can find one and clear it of zombies, you'll have the most important piece for creating a settlement.

An alternative plan, if you have the time to implement it, is a cellular structure. Instead of two layers of barriers, you have numerous contiguously connected cells, each with secure passes to each connected cell - or not, if you want it to be confusing, but zombies can't be confused because they don't think to begin with. This is much more secure than a simple perimeter; any one cell can be breached, but that gives the zombies access to only a limited area, and you have functional perimeters between them any any adjacent cells. I did not go with this option; it would be too much of a pain to implement and even more of a pain to travel in, never mind checking all the fences or walls or what have you.

Walls are the most ancient and effective form of fortification. Take them very seriously, because this primitive barrier is the best thing to have between you and a zombie. The building of stone walls for fortresses could be thought of as its own science and art form; people studied and experimented, not just with how to make the walls thicker but how the stones could be laid out to make the wall stronger. Zombies don't require 10-foot thick walls to be kept out; anything you can be sure they won't push over or break down with a simple press of bodies will be good enough. An ordinary chain link fence can keep a zombie out if he doesn't know you're on the other side (make it more effective with privacy slats - you can make your own, too!). Avoid notice, and you won't need anything more - but I recommend something a little beefier for your inner perimeter. If they find you and want in, you need to at least try to make it hard for them.


Moving on then.

Motion sensors and cameras: hunters, especially those who have their own land they can hunt on, often use motion-activated cameras mounted on trees to photograph deer in the area. Once the hunter is aware of the deer, he can go find it and maybe shoot it. Same goes for you, except replace "deer" with "abominable undead" and "find" with "kill". Put a bunch of these inside your intermediary perimeter area and check them any time you check your fences. Large animals like the deer these are intended for won't be able to enter your area, so the only thing to set them off will be yourself or a zombie.

• Run: These won't help you get away from a zombie, but they'll make you aware of the zombie that might be out there, so you'll be ready to run if you need to.
• Hide: These cameras use a flash if they're activated at night. That doesn't help keep them from being noticed, but if you secure them well enough they should be safe from damage by an angry zombie (who would want to be photographed looking like that? Not one of them.)
• Fortify: Information is as good as any number of weapons, and the more information you have the safer you can make yourself. 

  An underground lair:  Neat thing about being underground, it tends to stay pretty cool in the summer and relatively warm in the winter. Not much sunlight, though, so unless you're the fancy engineer type and build in all kinds of skylights and such, you'll want some kind of light source for your underground area - quite a trick if you don't have electricity or a ready source of candle wax, but there are alternatives, like flashlights or hand-crank generators you charge up any time you enter the room (if you can manage it, use LED or CFL bulbs in any lighting fixtures you install, since these will use less power). Notice that I didn't mention a gas-powered generator. That's because they're hellishly noisy, and you're trying to avoid notice. Not to mention that keeping its tank full will require regular trips outside to scavenge for gas.

If you don't have enough room underground, just keep digging.

• Run: At first, you might assume that being underground would make it harder to get away. That really depends on your lair, though. The main function will be as living space, storage, and as an emergency fallback position, but if you're smart you'll also have tunnels that lead well away from the main compound. In the most dire emergency, if your main compound is breached and you need to escape, these tunnels will need to take you away from the base before you come back above ground, hopefully far enough out that the zombies concentrating on your building won't be near enough to notice you unless they happen to turn around.
• Hide: Naturally, when you're underground, you can't be seen or heard by those above ground. A few feet of earth make an excellent soundproofing barrier. 
• Fortify: In addition to being a last-resort fallback position, extending your complex underground gives you temperature-stable storage and living space. That storage space might come in handy if your upper-level home base is ever breached; if there aren't too many zombies, and you're confident that you can eventually get rid of them, you can live off your stored food while working to reclaim the entirety of your base. Raid from your various alternative exits, or draw attention away from the base itself while a group inside kills off any stragglers that didn't go out after the distraction. So long as you have one secure location and food to survive, you have a chance of clearing out the invaders - so keep your cellar stocked.

One important thing to remember when digging out a new basement: Cave-ins are a bitch, especially when there's a house above you. Remember to place support wherever possible and don't dig one corridor directly under another one - that, I think, is the original definition of "undermining", and the result would be spectacular(ly bad for you). If you're really, and I mean really serious about being ready for the Zombie Apocalypse, I would make this a priority. Fences and walls are possible later, but the difference in quality you'll get by having your basement done professionally will be enormous; just keeping some of the damp out will mean you can store your dry goods down there without spoiling, and that's huge. Still do the fences, of course, but if the worst happens and you have to do some of that yourself, that's at least something you can manage.
The contractor might wonder why you want seven different tunnels going more than 200 feet away from your house. It might take a little cash to answer that to his satisfaction. But the tunnels don't have to be that well done, just safe from a cave-in; if you have to leave that to do yourself, that's OK.


Lastly, a word on barbed wire.

• Run: Barbed wire on top of fences makes it impossible to get over them quickly. Barbed wire on the ground, on the other hand, can trip a zombie chasing you. It can trip you too, so find a way to mark any trip wires you put up. The zombies won't know what your markings mean.
• Hide: Tripping zombies might decide to stick around a while; stimulation, you see. The ground hits them, they'll probably get angry about that and start looking for someone to kill. Keep your trip wires inside your outer perimeter. 
• Fortify: Making the zombie go slower is a good thing. If you haven't managed to keep them out altogether, tripping them makes them easier to kill. 

That's going to be it for now. Normally at this point I warn you what to expect next time. Not this time; even I don't know what I'm going to say next. Bananas! Moo! Ostrich party!

Seriously though, there will be a post next week, assuming that next week happens.