Stocking up

Funds may be an issue for many survivors so it is worth mentioning some tips for stocking up on a budget.
First off too stock up you first need somewhere to put your stock. This can be tricky depending how much room you have. If you have a pantry or storage room then fill that up and your set. It also depends how much you plan on stocking. The more you have the better but don't go to extremes and fill the space under your kids' bed with canned food or toilet paper. Watch extreme couponing or hording for some good ideas on storing things, such as buying a can holder like some bulk stores have. Stores hundred of cans and easy access once you need them.
In Canada, no frills is the cheapest place to buy beans. And trust me, if you don't like beans, you need to aquire the taste. At .77 cents a can this is the easiest way to prepare yourself and beans are one of the healthiest foods for you. A can of beans virtually never goes bad and will provide the basics any person needs. One container can be spread to last but ideally a minimum of three cans per person per day is suggested. This combined with vitimins and the odd fruit or vegetables will be enoguh for a more Spartan exsistance until a consistant source of food is secured.
Eating healthy before the fall can be hard on a budget too. Try to find deals, buy chicken in bulk, or don't be afraid to try new things. Octopus and chicken hearts are a lot cheaper then crab or chicken breasts and are just as good for you. Search around for good deals on free range chicken. Try farmer's markets, if it costs even the same as in the store it's a better deal. But keep searching, it's not rare to find chicken for as much as $5 cheaper in a farmer's market then at your local Safeway.
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.

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.

The choice is yours

It's been a long time since I've seen a choose your own adventure book but I still go to websites where you can do them. So you can imagine my joy when I found a choose your own adventure zombie book, "Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?"

Can't say everything in the book plays out logically. Some stories are ultra realistic and others border on teenage wet dreams. The zombies however are always consistant and clear in their presentation.

The choices aren't what I would call the best. Some choices are down right stupid and the reader can see other options but only has two or three choices to go for. Usually the only time you are called on to even make a choice is when picking which weapon to use or which location to go to. The book does however display how good choices early on can make all the difference as some situations have no happy endings. Even most of the good endings in the book sit uneasy, they are not so much endings as temporary safety or escape, an end to that part of the story yes but I, for one, was left rather empty by many of the endings in which I wondered... so what happens now?

The brutality and pain of death is captured extremely well. As well as the simple math and unstoppable power of the undead forces. Watching one become two, become four, become eight. All a zombie has to do is get one bite in before someone kills it and the cycle continues.

Now I would like to go through some of the endings in more detail so you know, stay away if your scared of spoilers, I will try to avoid as much as I can but I am talking about the endings so...

So your first choice is made on page seven (7), cab (204), subway (205) or walk (22).
Now from that point on there are many more choice to make but the results are somewhat limited. Basically you can end up dead, escaping, in a safe house or at one of three strange endings. Now the death endings are pretty obvious and the most plentiful, some paths also lead to choices which only result in death. The escape endings are definately the weakest of the bunch as they end more or less like many zombie movies, with the hero or heroes sailing away on a boat or flying away on a helicopter. There is no real closure, nothing is fixed or established just temporary safety, which in most cases is all one can ask for I suppose. Then there are safe houses, these are my favorite endings. Where the hero has established a place where he can live out the rest of his days surviving the apocalypse. In most of these cases the safe house is somewhat reliable and would stand the test of time, other cases the safe house is dodgy at best but might keep the hero/heroes alive for some period of time. Finally are the three "other" endings. Two of these I feel are cop outs by the writter, forcing the reader to choose a more rash and "heroic" option, which in real life will often lead to death. These two endings basically result in the writter questioning the reader's manlihood and insulting his choice to take the safer option. While somewhat humorous, it does destroy the idea there being a safer choice. Finally we are left with "The End" as the writter calls it. The hero discovers the cause for the zombies but even then is left with a strange sort of open ending because he does not try to stop it, to either succeed or die trying as everything else in the book seems to focus on. The source of the zombies? Why it's George A. Romero of course! No wonder he backed out of Calgary Comic Con with this book diffulging his neffarious plans! Broken arm, a likely story!

I did keep track of all the endings and how to get to each but I thought putting that up would be to easy and take away the fun of the book for you. It is a book that can pass a lot of time. And provide much entertainment so long as you can stomache some of the more gruesome endings and put up with the unrealistic heroism or battles in others.

"Dear Calgary Expo Fans,

Sorry I can't be there with you this weekend. As luck would have it, I banged up my arm the other day and can't autograph. I was looking forward to seeing Calgary and meeting all of you. I hope you all have a great weekend, and I look forward to getting there next year. Thank you for your loyalty and understanding!"

Stay Scared!

George A. Romero"

Stay vigilant, may you make the right choices, and those close to you have the resolve to do what is needed should you be so mistaken, Mike D.

Free stuff!

Hello survivors, while I gather information for a series of reports on different locations across Canada (and two special locations outside of Canada) I have been tardy in my daily posting. I would like to share with you however, thanks to my favorite zombie forum two link to books you may enjoy.

The_Zombie_Survival_Guide_Download_Instructions.txt

How_To_Survive_Zombies_Download_Instructions.txt

I will be providing in depth studies of the survival advice and tactics provided in both of these books. So you may want to read them to have reference to what I'm saying or you may want to read my notes first before cementing any ideas in your mind. The advice in Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide will get many potential survivors killed. However some of the advice and information presented is quite useful.

Now and then I also like to play games. I believe they are a fundamental part of surviving in the world before or after the fall in order to keep sanity. To that end it is important to have a deck of cards or some dice in your survival kit and know a few games to play with them. Either on your own or if you run into others.

Here are a few online games I enjoy:

Zombie Lane
It's fun and easy and takes a long time. The routine of re-establishing one's house and family is an important one as is the regular upkeep of barricades, farming and slaying of zombies. All of these things the game instills while being light hearted and simple.

Zombie Slayer
A game a kin to Mafia Wars or any of those. Simply building a group of friends and killing zombies and zombie bosses around the world by clicking them to death.

Pandemic
Not necessarily a zombie game but this game does a surprisingly good job of depicting how a virus might spread. Through water and airports, infecting the entire world in a matter of days. Often wiping out entire countries before they have a chance to even start work on a cure.

Infectonator
This is a fun strategy game of sorts where you infect and destroy the world one city at a time. While the "game" aspects of it make everything more game-like and less real, some interesting parallels to real life can be made. Watching how the zombies naturally group together where there are more people. The people who hold up in a corner seem to last the longest but if they stay there too long they get over whelmed. The faster police and military are on the scene and recognize the threat the better chance of keeping the outbreak contained. The patterns of both the humans and zombies in this game can be watched and obvious mistakes leading to death or smart tactics leading to a single person surviving the horde can be observed.


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.

Poop burgers

Those with a weak stomach will not survive after the fall, get ready to hold it in and read on.

"It's being called the "poop burger". Japanese scientists have found a way to create artificial meat from sewage containing human feces.

Somehow this feels like a Vonnegut plotline: population boom equals food shortage. Solution? Synthesize food from human waste matter. Absurd yes, but Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.

Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.

The researchers then extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The researchers color the poop meat red with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.

Inhabitat notes that “the meatpacking industry causes 18 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions, mostly due to the release of methane from animals.” Livestock also consume huge amounts of resources and space in efforts to feed ourselves as well as the controversy over cruelty to animals. Ikeda’s recycled poop burger would reduce waste and emissions, not to mention obliterating Dante’s circle for gluttons.

The scientists hope to price it the same as actual meat, but at the moment the excrement steaks are ten to twenty times the price they should be thanks to the cost of research. Professor Ikeda understands the psychological barriers that need to be surmounted knowing that your food is made from human feces. They hope that once the research is complete, people will be able to overlook that ugly detail in favor of perks like environmental responsibility, cost and the fact that the meat will have fewer calories.

Waste not; want not."

What does this have to do with zombies? Well, I'm not sure on the details of this fake meat and how hard it is to make but with that high of protein content for lower then normal calories? This jumps to one of the healthiest things you can eat. It's fitness potential is obvious but depending how easy it is to put this into production it could make food shortages less of an issue. And trust that once the world has ended, after the world's food supplies run out and the animals have been killed of, survivors will be willing to eat anything, and if the process can be simplified and easily reproduced, food will become that much less of an issue. So to get ready for the possibility, I'm having a poop steak next time I go to Japan.

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.