Military tactics

A couple of days ago I put out a post with a link to two zombie survival guides. One of these is "How to Survive Zombies" by Dave Johnson. The book starts out with a brief explaination of one possible cause for zombies and goes into a little detail on theories. Most of the book seems to treat zombies as if they react like normal humans -more on this later- but this stems from the explaination of zombies given in the book where by the infection causes a coma, the person either dies during this time or awaken from the coma as a zombie. The flaws with this theory are evident, zombies are dead. The "coma" state is in fact death, and re-animation is 100% if the body has been infected.

Now survivors, I believe you will be smart enough to see through this but I will state it just on principle. While organizations like FEMA, CDC and WHO may try different tactics such as Zombie Feeding stations to keep the zombies controlled; these will not work. Zombies feed on the closest fresh meat. The amount of fresh (read "live" food) to keep even a small number of zombies in one location would be vast. Although this could be used as a strategy to coral the zombies and lock them away until the time and resources exsist to eliminate them.

Looking past the fluff there are a couple of good survival tips in here. Make friends with the socially awkward guy who believes every apocolypse story and has a stock pile ready to go in an instant. This person can probably teach you a few things about preparedness and if they end up turning during the fall you can always take advantage of their preparedness.

Knowing the location of the nearest hardware store is also very important. While you may be able to buy/put together everything you need, eventually you will need to resupply or things will come up that you didn't think of and you will need more wood for barricades, quick cement for windows or walls, and tools.

What is not good advice is trying to make it to the nearest Costco or Wal-Mart. Why? Because every would-be-survivor will be grabbing his pawnshop katana, army surplus combats and heading for the nearest Wal-Mart or Costco. In addition to the people who will already be there. In addition to the people who will be desperately rushing there to get last minute supplies. All-in-all, stay away from these places until things have calmed down a bit.

Run or Hide. Good tip for the begining. Only fight the undead you have to. Trying to be a hero during the first couple of days will only get you killed or in a jail cell. Neither of these are ideal.

There are a few other good bits of information in here. One of which I constantly push, invest in a real leather jacket. If you can't bite through it, neither can a zombie.

But all of that is just the basics, some general survival tips every survivor can tell you. The meat and potatos of this book actually has nothing to do with zombies. It's copied from the US Marines handbook, Battle Drill handbook and US Army Field Manual, how to move, on your own or in formations. Very basics of hunting and fishing. How to use hand signals and even how to opperate a military radio. If this useful information? Absolutely! But not for the reasons Dave writes. Zombie do not opperate like humans but humans do. Eventually you will come across hostile humans, raiders, bandits, looters, other survivors or even military units. It is against these humans the knowledge presented will prove of use to you. While not vital to your survival, every advantage you can get over an opposing force is an advantage worth taking.

The final section of the book is more entertainment then survival guide but is worth reading and taking in with a grain of salt. The one thing I will argue about this section is the note about shotguns. Everyone tends to think of shotguns as a close range weapon because of video games and movies. If you have no weapons training, take a shotgun over an assualt rifle. With a shotgun you just have to aim around the head to get a hit (or the chest if you can't hold the recoil.) With an assualt rifle you have to get a head shot, perfect aim on a moving target, every time. With no training and the target moving in to EAT you, most people will not be able to do this. Most shotguns are accurate out to about one hundred meters (330 feet), a range at which anyone not trained will have a very hard time getting a head shot. Once the target closes to thirty meters (33 feet) I suggest switching to your sidearm. This will give better control, aim and speed. Three things that will be vitally important once the infected get that close.

Stay vigilant, may the infection never reach you, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so unfortunate, Mike D.