Storm Warning!

[jmfargo]

The snow reports I'm getting from my friends on Livejournal tell me that it's winter out there, that we have some light, drifting snow on top of heavy-packed snow that will quickly become icy, and that it's very very cold.

Fantastic! That means I don't have to worry so much about zombies.

See, I think I've said this before, but I can't find where, so I just wanted to reiterate: Winter cold is zombie bane. Now, they'll still be dangerous if you get too close, but if you're getting that close to a walking corpse it's your own damn fault that you're getting bitten by a half-frozen, barely moving, freezer-burned zombie.

Ice is a zombie killer, especially when mixed with the slowing effects of the cold. You'll want to fortify your building (you DO have a building that you're holed up in, right?) by melting down snow and getting a nice thick sheet of ice around key points (doors, walkways in, etc) outside of your fortification. Chances are that any zombies that do make it that far in will not have traction on the bottoms of their feet, will not have the control of their limbs necessary to keep themselves upright, and will be fodder for headshots, flailing around on the ground while you are safely perched somewhere nearby with your weapon of choice. I don't suggest going at these flailing monsters with a hand-held weapon, as their flailing can be unpredictable and could catch you unaware.

Places like Alaska, Northern Canada, and Siberia should be pretty safe most of the year. When it gets above freezing for the two or three days a year that this happens in those areas they might have a problem, but by then the zombies should have already been cleared out by the survivors. Also, in the very beginning the people in these areas will probably have just as much trouble as everyone else because the bodies are still being assimilated by the virus that causes zombism, but the survival rate is likely to be higher because this cold onset will come faster.

So listen, spend the warm months preparing for the cold months, but even when you're shivering because all you could find were a few blankets, and not enough wood to build a fire every day (you should have gotten more wood - you NEED heat), at least you'll know your biggest foe is the cold, and that it's actually helping you against your other foe, the Horde.

Now that you know that, though, make sure you've found a way to keep yourself warm if power and gas go out. Fires are good, in the proper environment, but not in a wooden house or a completely enclosed (airtight) area. Blankets, heavy clothing, dressing in layers, these are vitally important for those nights that are cold, but not yet freezing. The last thing you want is to draw the zombies down on you with a fire, without the benefit of their slowed reflexes and frozen joints to help you combat them. Light that fire on a 40 degree night, and when you look outside in the morning you may realize you've just killed everyone you're with.

So listen, stay warm, stay protected, and keep an eye out. Prepare for the worst, and you'll probably survive.

EDIT: For good ideas on keeping warm in inclement weather, zombies or no zombies, see akdidge's comment to this entry! It could save your life some day, especially when the zombie apocalypse comes.

Comments

Six helpful tips about survival in the winter

[akdidge.livejournal.com]

Places like Alaska, Northern Canada, and Siberia should be pretty safe most of the year. When it gets above freezing for the two or three days a year that this happens in those areas they might have a problem...

You know, we do have a summer up here, and yes it does last more than three days. I'll have you know we get a whopping two months of it. Yeah, so there.

By the way, since you're mentioning winter survival, let me key you in on some wonderful survival tips for the cold weather.

1) Get several packs of those little hand warmers that you snap and shake and then they heat up and stay warm for several hours. These things always come in handy, whether when you need to keep the fire down to ward off potential zombies or are just cold on an unzombieful day.

2) Myth - getting naked and rubbing up against someone when they have what you believe is hypothermia to help heat up their core (their chest). This is an old practice that they've discovered doesn't really help. The best thing you can do is get them out of any wet clothes, and into warm, dry clothes if at all possible. Next make sure they're in a warm environment, and/or out of the wind. Finally apply heat to the core and bundle them up in several blankets. However if the individual who is suffering from hypothermia is a beautiful person that you're smitten with, go with the naked thing. ;)

3) Get a good pair of ice grippers for your boots/shoes. They cost anywhere between $10-50, depending on how fancy you want them. You don't need fancy, but $10 now may be worth your live when trying to evade zombies on ice (my god that sounds like a show, 'Zombies, on Ice!').

4) Get a good pair of gloves/mittens. Nothing like losing circulation in your fingers on a cold day to cause your trigger finger to be a bit off from frostbite. Also remember to flex your hands from fingers out to fists every so often to help keep the blood circulating in your hands.

5) A hat is an excellent choice for keeping warm. If nothing else a great deal of heat is lost through your head, and by wearing a hat you can be out in the cold environment for longer periods.

6) If for some reason you find yourself in the middle of the woods and are forced to sleep outdoors (you stupid, stupid fool!), here's two things that will probably save your life. The first of which is useful regardless of the temperature. Cut down small limbs of a tree (preferably a spruce if you can find one) and stack them on the ground on top of one another. Not only does this give you a bit of a comfy bed of pine needles (yay!), but it keeps the ground from sucking the heat away from your body. This is one of the main reasons that if you go camping you should always put something between you and the ground. Otherwise you get colder quicker as the ground is leeching away your body heat. Second, if in a winter environment, and there's lots of snow. Dig down and make yourself a snowcave. Not only will the surrounding cave help keep you insulated and push the heat you generate back at you but you'll be out of the wind if there's any.

[draconid.livejournal.com]

Glad we're not the only ones who try to come up with solutions to the impending zombie problem!

How about setting up camp in the middle of an ice-rink?

As Rat said - the problems with areas like Alaska, etc, etc, is that it's also going to be hard to survive up there for a non-zombie.

We've got some nice lonely "mountains" near us that should be quite easy to clear of zombies. So assuming the zombies head towards the populated towns we're going to head out there. There are nearby farms too, where we can pick up some nice farm implements to use as weapons.

It's a shame we don't spend so much time planning what to do when the water rises by a few feet and half of the UK has disappeared under the sea!

[jfargo.livejournal.com]

It's a shame we don't spend so much time planning what to do when the water rises by a few feet and half of the UK has disappeared under the sea!

Well...going to the mountains near you still works pretty well for that, doesn't it?

Oh, and the problem with setting up in a lonely mountain is that if you get a good number of people, say 5 or more, you might begin having problems feeding yourselves. By holing up in a location somewhere in a big city, like here we have BJ's, which is a wholesale food/other stuff store, you will be able to feed a large amount of people for a long time, and theoretically such stores have agricultural supplies so you could grow new food on the roof of your building.

Yes, I think about this too much. It'll save my life some day. :)

[reverendfixxxer.livejournal.com]

The problem with a city area that you may not have considered is the water source. Assuming that the zombies don't manage to muck up the pumping system during the initial problems, you're still looking at a limited supply. The water towers can only hold so much, and they're likely to run dry fairly quickly, as you can expect plenty of faucets, bathtubs and hydrants to be left running when their operators rise from the dead.

However, that's not the big problem. The big problem with city water distribution systems is that many of them are fed from some type of reservoir or river. The water is pumped through pies until it reaches a filerting plant. Assuming the plant functions well on automated, you're still likely to get water delivered to the towers, but it only takes one infected body falling into the reservoir to contaminate the entire water supply.

Certainly, you can get by for quite a while if you have a large supply of bottled water stored up. Remember, though, that in addition to the average intakes of about 2 liters per day that you need ( minimum) to replace the water you lose through breathing, moving around, eating, urinating, etc, you're very probably going to be eating a lot of shelf-stable foods, which are generally dehydrated and will therefore require more water to digest. Even if you don't dehydrate, if you don't get enough water, your system can't flush toxins efficiently and you're likely to suffer muscle cramps and fatigue, both of which are potential killers in the face of a zombie epidemic.

Additionally, that supply of bottled water isn't going to be useful at all for your rooftop garden. Assuming moderate weather and other optimal conditions, you're going to need about a half gallon of water per day for each person's share of the food. Even if you have an entire closet of bottled water stored up, you'll probably need more than that to feed the plants long enough for them to bear edible results, and that's forgetting the fact that you also need to drink water for yourself.

There are a few ways to help with this problem. Today's water filtration systems are actually very good. A Brita water pitcher costs next to nothing and a single filter can take care of about 40 gallons of water. However, while charcoal filtration is good, a single filtering session probably won't be enough to remove all the toxis that will be responsable for zombification, so I think we can safely assume that you can filter 40 gallons of water for your garden or 10 gallons for yourself. The filters aren't horribly cheap (though they're hardly expensive), but they're small and you can store a lot of them.

All of this serves to help me make the points that when the zombie plague arrives, cities are going to be death traps. Assuming we go with a "small big city," we're looking at an average of about 5 million potential zombies in an area of just a few square miles. The one thing that a zombie has in spades is patience. If it has to keep beating on the door until its arms literally rot from its bodie, it'll do it. Imagine 5 million such creatures. Eventually, they're going to get through.

(continued below)

[reverendfixxxer.livejournal.com]

Compare that to a farmhouse in a rural area. Assuming that you're within a mile or two of a community, you're probably look at 5 or 6 hundred zombies at the most. The ratio of attainable firearms is much higer in a rural area per capita (In the city, most of the guns are in stores behind locked bar gates. In the country, they're hanging from a rack behind the salesman's head.), and you've probably got a higher per capita rate of people that actually know how to shoot. These things taken together point to more survivers killing more zombies quicker, which results in a much higher chance of establishing an organized community of survivers right off the bat.

Let's assume for a moment, however, that you would prefer to be a lone wolf. Just yourself and perhaps a few close friends or family members. Good call, there's no sense in providing a large target. Let's assume you're holed up in a lightly-fortified farmhouse (ala Night of the Living Dead). Given a strong back or two and a few days of relative calm to work, you could easily cut or burn down all the trees and unnecessary buildings immediately around the house, thus giving yourself a clear killing field. With the most basic of generators, you could power flashlamps to illuminte this field at night, giving you a much better chance of spotting the undead with plenty of time to react, day or night. You're already good on water, since your water source is almost certainly a well, which comes from the aquifer and can't be contaminated (if it ever does get contaminated, Earth can just kiss its ass bye-bye anyhow) and you have plenty of agricultural equipment and product around to maintain yourself and your little community of friends and family for many years.

Less zombies + more space + better survival equipment = A WINNER IS YOU!

[akdidge.livejournal.com]

And you wonder why I live where I do?

Yeah rural environments rule. :D