Zombies - Possibility?

[AaronShadows]

Right, this is a discussion about the undead (Which I decided to make due to my morbid obsession with necromancy) You can rave about your opinions and thoughts on undead, as well as ways to survive in the event of an actual rising of the dead. (Not likely, but again, Possible! O_o)

Well I doubt there are any in the world right now, but it COULD be possible. If it hasn't been proven impossible, then it isn't, and no one has proven a dead body couldn't be reanimated yet.

Another thing is- Look at all the place myths of zombies originate? There are the voodoo zombie types, and the undead of european legends. Were did those come from?

My ideas for how to survive in the event of a plague:

For one, I'd need to recognise the weaknesses and strengths of the enemy. Here are some definites:

1: Zombies would be dead, and therefore in most cases, rotten. This would present a weakness. Muscles that might have held a lot of strength in life would be soft and mushy, and therefore of little use, whoever the zombie might still be mobile, depending on how long it has been dead.

Needless to say, if the undead was skeletal, it would not respond (If the cause of the zombies had to do with some sort of infection or otherwise) but skeleton undead may still be apparent if the cause was necromantic magic.

Depending on the cause, zombies may or may not regenerate after rebirth to some extent in order to become more mobile and more dangorous. That might represent either a weakness or strength

2: Infectiveness: If the cause was a virus, then the virus may or may not be directly spread from an infected to a clean target. If the cause was some malicious, crazy necromancer, then perhaps the necromancer in question will have a zombie who's killed someone carry the dead body back to them to be raised as another servant.

Ways to avoid infection may differ, but usually, the best way is to keep your distance and Not die XD

3: Weaknesses: zombies might have needs, or might not. Zombies might need to replenish their energy bye eating the matter (Or brains) of those they prey upon. Or they may have other ways of sustaining themselves, or may not even need to consume anything at all, ever.

4: Awareness: Zombies may be of very little intelligence and controlled bye their own basic instincts, or may be partially aware enough to plan, coordinate and work together to some extent. The worst case would be human-level intelligence in zombies who where still vicious and brutal.

Zombies may or may not be controlled bye a human; via means of implants in the zombies, Necrotic magic or the zombies may have a sort of collective intelligence or "Hive mind"

5: Physical power: Zombies may be slow and cumbersome with bad coordination, or they may be extremely fast with predatory reflexes and reaction speed. Depending on weather or not they still suffer from rigor mortis, they may or may not be able to bend their knees and elbows.

They also may or may not have superhuman strength, depending on the state and cause of the zombies in question.

*More in next post!*

[AaronShadows]

6: Social skills: Zombies may or may not be able to reason. If they cannot reason, they may or may not swarm in large groups. If the case is that zombies are solitary and do not form into crowds, then that is good.

If zombies CAN reason enough to know that a big group makes the chances of catching and eating humans better, then that's bad. Really bad. You may want to pack explosive or other harmful devices that can kill a whole load of targets at the same time.

Zombies who are semi-intelligent are a very, very bad thing, as they may be able to learn from experience. (Learn to open doors, use weaponry, take cover and so on) and work as a group, reminiscent of a pack of lions or wolves.

If the undead are of a hive mind, then they'd be controlled bye a great, central intelligence, probably not psychically but through hormones at the like being passed through the air, and so their coordination would be great as they wouldn't have any free will to disagree. Even with fully aware zombies, such coordination could not likely be achieved due to conflicting motives, wills and objectives, though these monsters could still work together to a better extent than semi-intelligent undead. If zombies are of a hive mind, the signal between the central consciousness and the zombie in question could be interrupted somehow (Perhaps bye destroying some master zombie, and therefore destroying the coordination of a large group of zombies, permanently or temporarily)

Zombies with human intelligence can be as variable as the humans they once where; therefore to fight these is something like battling uncivilised savages, perhaps. Basic militaristic tactics for use against organised undead I'll cover later.

7: Specific weaknesses/Immunities: Zombies might be immune or very weak to certain things such as fire, ice, water, silver, sunlight or specific methods of killing such as body, head or limb shots. You'd do well to pay attention to such difficulties and avoid attempting to destroy threats in those ways. That said, fire almost always works. Cuz it's FIRE. xD

8: Behaviour: Watch the way the undeads behave themselves. If they mostly stick to moaning and walking around while ignoring the living, it might be clever to herd them into some kind of containment just in case they turn vicious.

If they're already raving mad and out for blood and brains, Well, that's where we move on to defensive and offensive measures. I'll move on to those in my next post (Triple post blleeaaaghh)

[Silver_Wolf_Kitty]

Well, technically speaking, zombies of the walking dead variety are an impossibility. Something to do with needing blood flow to be mobile. I wouldn't know much, science has never been my forté.

I believe preparation is key. Buying yourself a nice island that is up on cliffs, with enough room to set up a purification facility and farm would be excellent. It would need to be well placed(probably a sea) in order to avoid major storms. On an island, the cliffs should prevent zombie assaults and would preferably be short enough to allow for fishing.

[AaronShadows]

DEFENSE: How to build a haven from the rotting demons who are intent on making a great big tea party of our world.

Location: Location is all important. Your position should be influenced bye several factors:

A: Existing resources. If the position has existing buildings, underground complexes or large amounts of building materials stored there, then it's OBVIOUSLY a good place to build yourself a fortress! Make sure to go looking for places like these as outposts after the construction of a main base if none are available quickly.

B: Defensibility. High ground is a good idea, but delivering resources would be problematic and so this may or may not be a good idea. If you find a position of high ground with existing resources, perhaps a military base stocked with ammo and vehicles waiting for you to take over, then grab it with both hands!

C: Accessibility: What you DON'T want is an iron hard position with only one way in when fighting mindless zombies, as they'll just press heavily on the one way in until they break through, and then you're doomed.

If you find a high ground position which would be impossible to reach bye climbing without equipment, with a few different ways up most undead could NOT interact with, (E.G, a lift or some kind of train) then that's ideal, especially if you had some sort of dropship handy (E.G, a helicopter) as you could build an initial camp on top and ferry supplies up carefully, and if the position came under very heavy siege you could either start to move people away using the helicopter, or move more and more supplies in with it, and either eventually return when the undead have left, or wait them out.

D: Options: Having as many options as possible is vital. Preferably multiple ways to escape in the event of your position falling, alternative bases to resort to should one be overrun, and ways to get in easily but that can also be defended without incredible difficulty.

E: A base should be located a reasonable distance from one time major population centers, as zombies of the former residents would probably throng there, it is important to stay a good distance away. But cities will also have large amounts of food and goods, and possibly some survivors in holdouts, and therefore it should be within attack distance.

Fortifications: Having the best position in the world is essentially worthless if you don't bother to fortify it.

*More of this in the next post*

[AaronShadows]

A: You need manpower. Once you've scouted the best location, go hunt down a few hundred others to help you built and with it. You need not take whiny crybabies who keep on b*tching about how you couldn't lead a couple of bounty hunters to a house, let alone an army. If you MUST be merciful, remember to keep a close eye on these fools and don't hesitate to jail, imprison or, in extreme cases, dump these from your base. Keep in mind it is YOUR base, you found it, you built it, you bloody own it! Remember; one fool with no idea how to run a community and is all for killing zombies until there aren't any left could be the death of everyone you've learned to work together with. Recklessness will be the death of you.

B: Keeping the zombies as far away as possible: This is open to creativity, but effective ways are to lay down lines of defensive thingys.
These lines should consist of pits, barricades, walls, land mines, barbed wires fences and automated or remotely controlled guns.
This is one good method to set up the lines in in a circle or ragged circle around your position:

The base in the center.

Around the base, walls topped with defensive guns and/or snipers. Towers ALWAYS a good thing. The only ways in through these solid walls would be heavy blast doors numbering about three or four. Any more might be inconvenient to defend.

A moat of some kind, filled with something nasty. Maybe acid, magma, scorching hot water, or oil which can be set alight to kill trapped zombies.

An area of flat ground, connected with the grounds behind the moat via retractable draw bridges, which should also be housed within small structures themselves so that intelligent zombies couldn't make a clear way across the moat for other zombies if they managed to get across.

After this, barricades. If the undead are stupid enough to impale themselves on sharpened or spiked barricades, then make the mentioned alterations to the barricades. If the undead are to cute for such things, don't waste your time.

Next, make a deep pit that could not be crossed via jumping. Depending on how evil you are, fill it with stakes. You may want to put in some sort of way of crossing this from inside or/and outside, like another set of retractable draw bridges. These would need to be controlled bye even heavier towers, with heavy doors, and helipads on top so that those manning them could be pulled back if the zombies where starting to break in.

the outermost layer should consist of land mines. Lots and lots of land mines. The more explosive the better!

While not strictly necessary, you could also add signs with things on them like "All ye' braindeads, welcome home to hades" or "BEWARE! Zombie hotel in that there city ahead. Zombies check in, they don't check out!" Or maybe just something informing humans of the defenses in place. If you feel bored you could string up some dead zombies with various horrible injuries too.

[AaronShadows]

Inner Fortifications: with the outer fortifications out of our way, it's time to worry about the city in the center.

A: Elevation exception!; if your base is to be built on top of a large mesa or mountain thing, then the top of the base elevation should be topped with walls as well. These should have towers equipped with extremely long rang weapons, anti air turrets (Just in case ^^; ) and telescopes and sensors of every kind so you can see what the problem is when the stupid alarm goes off for the tenth time that day.

If your fortress is on ground level with the outer fortifications, slap on an extra lair of walls with high towers topped with walkways and like I said before, anti air batteries.

The town: And on to the structuring of the city within. Build multiple levels if possible so that if the bottom floors fall your people can go up and lock the doors. The city should have carefully constructed roads so that locking of one might defend a large portion of the city. Use walls and heavy doors in abundance, and bridges.

A good chunk of your stronghold should be underground if it can be done. If you're on VERY high ground, you could have room for an underground power plant, a waste recycling facility, and perhaps hanger bays built into the side of the cliffs, if they're sheer enough. Tiered tunnels would also be valuable as a place to fall back to if the zombie managed to take over the top of your precious settlement (Not bloody likely if you've followed this guide! XD)
Be aware though, that a huge system of underground zones would be a wonderful place to hide an insurrection or a black market. While a black market wouldn't be much of a problem, an insurrection would be a very bad thing indeed, unless the leader has enough sense to carry it out in a clever way so that the inner fighting wouldn't have an impact on the business of keeping the braindead things out. Still not good though!! -.-

Supplies: No stronghold lasts long unless it has enough supplies to keep the people inside alive. This can be done a few ways.

A: Have brave people venture into infected towns and cities looking for supplies and goods.

B: If there's room above ground, build some kind of farm there. Forget the disagreements of various morons; they're all dead and not so very gone right now. GM food is the best way to keep up a good flow of food from inside. If you don't like the idea, remember the alternative; Starving and eventually having your rotting carcasses munched upon bye a load of walking dead bodies. if there weren't any such walking dead, you could possibly avoid it, but not right now

If there's no room above, you can construct a hall of sorts underground, with lighting to replicate sunlight, and a few meters of soil in the floor, and grow your stuff there.

Power: The electronics and stuff need ways to run. You can use wind power if you're up high enough to catch the wind, or just use spinning wheels to gather static electricity, or manufacture batteries. solar power is also a viable option if you have someone who can manufacture solar panels. forget nuclear power, it's too dangorous to place nuclear material in the middle of a dense population.

Communication: Use radio, or find some way to host your own personal wireless internet. Anything goes, as long as you can communicate. If you find a few survivors who are expert at communiations, you're ditto.

Bah, I'll write more tomorrow, about preserving human history and knowledge, what buildings and stuff to have in your town, and about schooling future generations to fill places left bye skilled people you might recruit once they're gone.

[Singergirl0911]

Ok, for the record, Aaron, I never want to go to war against you.

And another thing, wow...you've really taken the time to think this through (and I mean that in the nicest way!)