RANDOM THOUGHTS #85
Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself about the inevitable zombie apocalypse.
1. In the television show WALKING DEAD, they had an encounter with a patrol from another group. The other group demanded to know where the farm was, and as the conversation got more heated, drew their weapons. Drawing a gun on a sheriff who carries a gun for a living is never a good idea, and the good guys won, killing the two mean humans. Then a second patrol from the same group showed up, and in the firefight, one of the three mean humans was killed and another (badly wounded when he fell onto an iron picket fence) was captured. The third drove off in their vehicle. The prisoner was patched up, and a decision was made to take him somewhere and leave him.
That plan collapsed when the prisoner blurted out that he knew one of the women who lived a the farm (and where the farm was), so they brought him back and questioned him, then decided to kill him.
Now, I have some problems with this whole thing. Bringing in a prisoner from a mean bunch we bumped into a good thing if only because we can question him about the group. (Why didn't they question him right away?) Where are they? (Never seemed to get that out of the prisoner. I would get a map and discuss just where he's been for the last month.) How many are there? (He said 30 including women and kids, or 30 men plus a bunch of women and kids, it was never clear.) Are they friendly? (No. They attacked another small group, assaulting the man's two daughters. They are surviving by preying on the living as well as scavenging.)
Whatever we do with this prisoner (I vote to execute him because he's too much trouble to keep) we have a big problem with this large predatory group that is, apparently, camped somewhere within a few miles.
That group knows only that their patrol bumped into another group which killed three of their members and captured the fourth. They aren't sure if whoever they bumped into was a local group or a traveling group, or how big a group they are. What will they do?
What can we do? Looking for them is about as likely to lead them to us as to find them. What would we do if we found them? They obviously don't want to negotiate and they apparently are a much larger group that will happily kill all of us. The farm is not really defendable against an armed group of predatory humans. I think we need to prepare a plan for a final desperate gunbattle to go down fighting. As with burglars, if you make it too hard to get to us, maybe they'll go away.
2. OUR MOBILE GROUP: Steven Petrick and I were discussing how we would run a moving large group of nice humans who will from time to time bump into other groups.
First, we're moving for one of three reasons (and which one it is defines how we deal with other groups):
A. To some distant location which we think gives us an advantage (say, a fishing village where we can grab a boat and head for an island, or maybe a military base which we found out is still fighting). (In this case, we'd peacefully meet other groups, swap information, ask if they want to go with us, or perhaps see if some of our group want to stay with them instead of continuing to travel.)
B. To find a place to build a permanent bastion. (In that case, contacting a group that has a bastion becomes a matter of making a deal to join them. Contacting a moving group means we share info and maybe or maybe not join forces.)
C. We are operating from a bastion and we're just a patrol or expedition. (Finding another bastion means setting up contact and maybe trade, and agreeing on a border for our scavenging areas. Finding a moving group means deciding if we want to bring them into the fold.)
Second, we'd keep extensive records of where we went and what we found. By recording what towns have and have not been looted, we can identify any groups moving around (or based in) the general area. Or at least we can tell where not to bother sending scavenging expeditions. In any case, information is valuable trading material.
Third, we'd have worked out a plan to safely contact any group we bumped into. We need to find out if the new group is mean humans, nice humans who are willing to talk, or nice humans who are so paranoid we might as well not try to talk. When we bump into another group, we execute that protocol. We back off from a gunfight, and suggest a meeting the next day at someplace that doesn't smell like an ambush. (An open road with two hills a mile apart might work.)
The point of such contact is to see if we can trade anything (information, odd-caliber ammo, supplies), and if we want to join them or recruit them or just mutually agree to stay out of each other's way. I'd rather avoid going to war with other groups as this will burn up ammunition and get our own people hurt even if we win.
3. If I win the lottery, I might decide to build a zombie bastion (which would also work for any number of other end of the civilization scenarios such as financial collapse or a Yellowstone volcano). I'd look for some land that is a few miles from the highway, accessible by a couple of different all-weather roads, and out of sight (but where a nearby hill provides an observation post). I'd want to pick a place near a gas well so that in a post-apocalypse scenario I could tap in and have a steady fuel supply. Of course, we'd have wind turbines and solar panels, and our own well. I'd want to have a couple of acres behind solid chain link fences (since you can stab a zombie in the head through such fences) and have a redoubt inside that make up of cargo containers or brick walls or some combination. The gates would have to be well protected. I'd want to have a helipad (but not a helicopter) and have some small UAV photo-recon drones available. Fuel storage would have to be underground, and I'd need a year's food for my selected survival companions. I'd have to have somebody I trust live in the compound all the time so it's protected. We'd need lots of guns, of course.
4. The thing about the Zombie Apocalypse is that few of the movies ever say how it started. The key questions are: How did the first people get infected? (and can normal humans today suddenly get infected without coming into contact with zombies?) What percentage of the population is dead? (This defines the chances that some shred of government and of organized law and order still exists. It also indicates just how many survivors are competing for whatever supplies of canned food and unused ammo are still out there.) How fast did it go from TV reports that it was happening to the point of total collapse? (This defines how many reasonably intact grocery stores, drug stores, and gun stores are out there available to be harvested.)
1. In the television show WALKING DEAD, they had an encounter with a patrol from another group. The other group demanded to know where the farm was, and as the conversation got more heated, drew their weapons. Drawing a gun on a sheriff who carries a gun for a living is never a good idea, and the good guys won, killing the two mean humans. Then a second patrol from the same group showed up, and in the firefight, one of the three mean humans was killed and another (badly wounded when he fell onto an iron picket fence) was captured. The third drove off in their vehicle. The prisoner was patched up, and a decision was made to take him somewhere and leave him.
That plan collapsed when the prisoner blurted out that he knew one of the women who lived a the farm (and where the farm was), so they brought him back and questioned him, then decided to kill him.
Now, I have some problems with this whole thing. Bringing in a prisoner from a mean bunch we bumped into a good thing if only because we can question him about the group. (Why didn't they question him right away?) Where are they? (Never seemed to get that out of the prisoner. I would get a map and discuss just where he's been for the last month.) How many are there? (He said 30 including women and kids, or 30 men plus a bunch of women and kids, it was never clear.) Are they friendly? (No. They attacked another small group, assaulting the man's two daughters. They are surviving by preying on the living as well as scavenging.)
Whatever we do with this prisoner (I vote to execute him because he's too much trouble to keep) we have a big problem with this large predatory group that is, apparently, camped somewhere within a few miles.
That group knows only that their patrol bumped into another group which killed three of their members and captured the fourth. They aren't sure if whoever they bumped into was a local group or a traveling group, or how big a group they are. What will they do?
What can we do? Looking for them is about as likely to lead them to us as to find them. What would we do if we found them? They obviously don't want to negotiate and they apparently are a much larger group that will happily kill all of us. The farm is not really defendable against an armed group of predatory humans. I think we need to prepare a plan for a final desperate gunbattle to go down fighting. As with burglars, if you make it too hard to get to us, maybe they'll go away.
2. OUR MOBILE GROUP: Steven Petrick and I were discussing how we would run a moving large group of nice humans who will from time to time bump into other groups.
First, we're moving for one of three reasons (and which one it is defines how we deal with other groups):
A. To some distant location which we think gives us an advantage (say, a fishing village where we can grab a boat and head for an island, or maybe a military base which we found out is still fighting). (In this case, we'd peacefully meet other groups, swap information, ask if they want to go with us, or perhaps see if some of our group want to stay with them instead of continuing to travel.)
B. To find a place to build a permanent bastion. (In that case, contacting a group that has a bastion becomes a matter of making a deal to join them. Contacting a moving group means we share info and maybe or maybe not join forces.)
C. We are operating from a bastion and we're just a patrol or expedition. (Finding another bastion means setting up contact and maybe trade, and agreeing on a border for our scavenging areas. Finding a moving group means deciding if we want to bring them into the fold.)
Second, we'd keep extensive records of where we went and what we found. By recording what towns have and have not been looted, we can identify any groups moving around (or based in) the general area. Or at least we can tell where not to bother sending scavenging expeditions. In any case, information is valuable trading material.
Third, we'd have worked out a plan to safely contact any group we bumped into. We need to find out if the new group is mean humans, nice humans who are willing to talk, or nice humans who are so paranoid we might as well not try to talk. When we bump into another group, we execute that protocol. We back off from a gunfight, and suggest a meeting the next day at someplace that doesn't smell like an ambush. (An open road with two hills a mile apart might work.)
The point of such contact is to see if we can trade anything (information, odd-caliber ammo, supplies), and if we want to join them or recruit them or just mutually agree to stay out of each other's way. I'd rather avoid going to war with other groups as this will burn up ammunition and get our own people hurt even if we win.
3. If I win the lottery, I might decide to build a zombie bastion (which would also work for any number of other end of the civilization scenarios such as financial collapse or a Yellowstone volcano). I'd look for some land that is a few miles from the highway, accessible by a couple of different all-weather roads, and out of sight (but where a nearby hill provides an observation post). I'd want to pick a place near a gas well so that in a post-apocalypse scenario I could tap in and have a steady fuel supply. Of course, we'd have wind turbines and solar panels, and our own well. I'd want to have a couple of acres behind solid chain link fences (since you can stab a zombie in the head through such fences) and have a redoubt inside that make up of cargo containers or brick walls or some combination. The gates would have to be well protected. I'd want to have a helipad (but not a helicopter) and have some small UAV photo-recon drones available. Fuel storage would have to be underground, and I'd need a year's food for my selected survival companions. I'd have to have somebody I trust live in the compound all the time so it's protected. We'd need lots of guns, of course.
4. The thing about the Zombie Apocalypse is that few of the movies ever say how it started. The key questions are: How did the first people get infected? (and can normal humans today suddenly get infected without coming into contact with zombies?) What percentage of the population is dead? (This defines the chances that some shred of government and of organized law and order still exists. It also indicates just how many survivors are competing for whatever supplies of canned food and unused ammo are still out there.) How fast did it go from TV reports that it was happening to the point of total collapse? (This defines how many reasonably intact grocery stores, drug stores, and gun stores are out there available to be harvested.)
posted by Federation Commander at 6:58 AM
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