Shelter cont.-Nate

The next logical step in this progression would be to talk about tents.  Some tents are no more than glorified ponchos with walls and others show the true evolution of technology.  Some things to think about when deciding on what style of tent to get is to look at your environment and how much weight and money you’re willing to invest in your tent.

  Let’s start with my personal environment, in the summers it’s hot and the bugs are plentiful, that means a bug net is a necessity and so is a light water proof roof for those random summer showers. Fall brings cooler temperatures but aside from that the same concerns as the summer, bugs and rain.  The winter is where you’re thrown a curve ball. There is lots of snow and lots of really cold nights.  Luckily the bugs aren’t an issue as the temps creep towards zero, but hypothermia is.  Keeping dry and keeping warm become your priorities and nothing does that like a waterproof synthetic teepee with a stove inside of it. Or if you’re not willing to shell out that kind of dough a small tent that can withstand the weight of the snow, a sleeping bag rated for at least 20*F and a sleeping pad to insulate your body from the snow will keep you alive in most situations.  When spring rolls around you will be more than glad to start slimming down your gear to a more friendly size and weight and happily accept those bugs back into your life because your lightweight bug net can easily keep them at bay.

  Now many tents will fit these requirements just fine but one thing they won’t do is protect you from the walking dead.  For protection from this menace you can employee the ever faithful hammock and tarp setup which I default to on all of my wilderness adventures.  Easy to set up, easy to take down, and you don’t even have to worry about accidentally setting up your tent in an area that may flood.  The water will just run underneath you leaving you dry and undisturbed in your hammock.  Now I have used my hammock in almost all temperatures and I hope to complete the colder spectrum of hammock camping this winter. 

Next post will probably be a pictorial review f my current setup of my sleep system so that we can start to get away from these walls of text.

Shelter- Nate

Be it a house, a sleeping bag or even the clothes on your back everyone needs shelter to stay alive.  That is why shelter is the second most important thing to have while being outside, trekking through zombie infested forests or otherwise.  In this section I’ll brief over a few different types of shelter for sleeping in and explain the pros and cons of each type.

• The clothes on your back.  While your clothes will be one of the most used and arguably most important pieces of shelter you will use, they will be the least likely to keep you comfortable through the night.  If your dressed for day time temperatures then you will be to cold at night if your dressed for night time temperatures you will be to warm during the day. Of course when I say dressed for night time temperatures I am referring to being able to sleep warm during the night.  If you plan to keep moving to wherever your destination may be then you won’t need as warm clothes because your body heat will keep you warm. In all reality what clothes your wearing should be your last line of defense against the elements, and should consist of primarily wool, wool blends, and synthetics.

• The simple waterproof poncho should be in any mans outdoor gear.  Packable and versatile I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t want one. Paired with a poncho liner it makes a great water resistant sleeping bag for milder temperatures. On its own it can be used as a ground cloth, a tarp, a rain jacket, and if you want to be creative a pretty good tent.

More to come later

Colin- Weapons continued

On top of your primary firearm, every survivor should have a side arm, and a melee weapon for when things get really bad. Side arms should probably be a good semi-auto handgun, preferably of the 9mm or .45 variety. Because use of this gun should be of last resort, you want to make sure that one well placed center mass shot will be enough to put the bodies to the floor in the event of catastrophe. You would want to make sure you have plenty of additional mag cartridges that you can keep loaded and on your person at all times, because with lots of ammo, and quick reload speeds, handguns are an invaluable tool in close quarters environments. They are light, compact, and maneuverable, and as such, they might be one of the best weapons to have at your disposal. I would have to do more research on varieties of modern handguns before i could make a good judgment on which ones are, and aren't good firearms, but so far as I'm concerned, most of the choice comes down to personal preference and which brand you support the most. Personally, I believe that most any Glock or Barretta would be a sound choice, as they are the primary side arms of law enforcement and military organizations, and have been for a good while.

If anybody in my party during the apocalypse shows up with anything like a .44 Magnum, I'm going to slap them... Guns like this are completely unnecessary, and are totally impractical. They are difficult to use, due to massive recoil, and only hold 6 rounds at a time. However, because of the simple mechanics of revolvers, they are probably more reliable, and you can keep your ammo topped off all the time. I myself wouldn't carry a revolver by itself, but it might be a good addition to a more modern handgun, adding to the versatility of your loadout.

Colin- Intro to weapons

I am now posting on here as a separate account so that Nate and I may have separate personae. Not really that important i suppose, but it seemed like a good idea.

Also, so far, the voting is showing that the topic of highest interest among the people who have viewed this page so far is weaponry. I guess i should appease the readers then, and make this post about weapons.
    To start off, I will discuss pros and cons of various firearms, as i assume most of you are most interested in those...

1. Shotguns- They are awesome. we all love them. I don't think there is a single person alive who doesnt want to watch things be shredded by the raw awesome power of a good old fashioned twelve-gauge pump.They perform very well in confined spaces, such as inside houses, offices, or most any other indoor space, especially ones with narrow hallways. The great thing about hitting a target with a 12-gauge slug is that its not going to keep running at you... in fact, there's a reasonable chance that limbs could be detached...      fuck yeah. They put things (in this case, zombies) down, and they go down hard and fast, regardless of where you hit them, so long as you're within relatively close range. Another nice feature is that you can top off your ammo after every shot if you feel the need. Personally, I think that the drawbacks of a pump shotgun out way the awesome power they have- first of all, you cant squeeze off multiple shots at multiple targets in a hurry if you are in the open with more than two or three Z's. Secondly, you dont have very high ammo capacity, as most civilian hunting shotguns only hold 4 shells in the mag tube, plus one in the chamber. On top of that, the gun itself is cumbersome and so is the ammo. you could carry 100+ .22 rounds in your cargo pockets, but good luck fitting more than 20 shotgun shells in any pocket on you. All of this isn't to say that a shotgun isn't a good tool to have- it would be good to have one of them on your team, but they are fairly limited in their abilities outside of door breaching. All considered, if I was alone, and i had to pick JUST ONE firearm, a pump shotgun would not be the one for me, mainly because of its lack of versatility, however, if you have some friends, it would be in your interest to keep one handy.
2. Rifles- This is really such a broad category that it should have an entire blog of its own, but i will try to be concise. For the purpose of zombie infection, I would prefer a compact, lightweight semi-automatic .22 of some sort. Something that fires a slightly larger bullet would be good though, because you wouldn't always need to get perfect headshots to drop Z's quickly. The semi-auto is of utmost importance however, and anything else is simply foolish. Anybody who thinks full auto firearms are a good idea in a zombie outbreak is going to die... fast. If you panic, you're probably going to start spraying bullets all over the place, and your accuracy is going to go to shit. Next thing you know, you're going to have no ammo, and probably haven't done much to stop the attacking infected. The only situation that would be acceptable to open fire with full auto guns would be if the zombies are packed shoulder to shoulder, and you had better hope you have a fucking chain gun at that point, because you're shafted if there's that many of them... A semi-auto gun requires you to aim properly- calm down, take your time, think about what you're situation is, and make a solid, informed decision, and a well placed shot.... hopefully. The only real big distinction to be made between most modern rifles is whether it shoots "big bullets" or "small bullets". While the 5.56mm (standard AR round, also referred to as .223) is a high velocity round with good penetration, it isnt very large, and might take a few shots to put a zombie down, especially since they don't feel fear, and are probably pumped up on all kinds of adrenaline. These are not to be dismissed as bad rounds however, because they are certainly plentiful, and you could carry a lot of them before they started to get heavy. The next common round is the 7.62x39mm (standard AK-47 round). This is probably the best bullet for stopping the human body. While it travels slower than the 5.56, it is much larger, and delivers a lot more energy upon impact. Because of it's size, weight, and slow speed, it has a lot more "stopping power" and will knock a human body on the floor in a hurry. It was based off of the German M-44 round, and was further refined by Russian developers to be the perfect man-stopper. The goal was to make a round light enough to carry more per soldier, and effective enough that a single center mass shot would deliver enough energy to cause enough impact shock to disable the target.   I personally would like to have an AK-47 in an apocalypse scenario, because while some AR barrel variations allow for shooting of the 7.62's, and are made from lighter alloys, an AK is one of the most reliable guns around. The AK might also have less effective range than some AR's due to accuracy, but anything outside the range of an AK isn't worth shooting at anyway. You would be better off not drawing the attention to yourself...

well, that's all I've got right now... I've calculus homework to do...

Colin- at school...

I'm sitting in the gifted learning room right now, and contemplating the possibility of the apocalypse starting while I'm here at my high school. That totally throws all kinds of wrenches in the gears. I'm not in the relative safety of my home, I don’t have immediate access to good weaponry, and I don’t have any survival camping supplies, water, or even a vehicle on this particular day.

What is one to do in such a circumstance? The parking lot is near impossible to navigate on a normal day when all 2000 students are trying to get out at once, and when everybody is panicking and freaking out about zombies, it’s only going to be worse...

Nate- Water

The average human needs about 64 oz (about 1.8 liters) of water each day. Having at least three days of water or the ability to procure three days worth of water is a minimum that all individuals planning to be outdoors for more than 12 hours should live by.    Now you may be thinking, “But Nate, three days of water at 1.8 liters each day comes out to what, like, twelve pounds?  You’re obviously insane, that’s too much water for one man to carry at once.” And you know what, I would agree with you.  I had to do it during a week of backpacking at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, and it sucked when we weren’t going to be coming across any water for more than a day, forcing us to fill up all our containers at once. That’s why now whenever I camp I collect any reasonable looking water I see and purify it, drinking my already clean water as I go.

Now for purification purposes I can vouch for a few products I’ve tried used before but the one that really takes the cake is Katadyn Micropure water purification tablets. I’ll do a more in depth review sometime later but these tablets allowed Colin and I to carry significantly less water than we needed while on a biking campout and purify water from the Missouri River as we needed it. This made the unreasonable 12 pounds of water to an extremely manageable two Nalgeans and a couple of sheets of purification tabs. A Human can die in three days without water, so you can take your chances banking on being back in time to get more clean water.  Or you can slip a way of purifying your water in your pocket and know you’re safe.

Nate- Top Five Things Needed to Survive

In any outdoor situation you will need five things, food, water, shelter, fire, and communication.  If you can have all of those things with you before you venture out into the great unknown then you will be able to survive most situations.  In order of importance, let’s break down what it means to be prepared in each of those sections. (I’ll try to finish up about one a day)

Colin- introduction continued

So, as this is the first of many posts, I wont go into too much detail, but I will say that most of my posts related to the apocalypse, (at least for the time being) will mostly be made with the assumption that the cataclysmic event should happen tomorrow, and that the weather is fair, and most circumstances are relatively agreeable... at least as good as they get in the collapse of humanity...

There is no way to see the apocalypse very far in advance, so most of the things I will be posting about are going to be under the assumption that it comes as a surprise, and you have no time to prepare any supplies other than what your already rampant paranoia has compelled you to stockpile ahead of time for no reason.

Hey, I'm Nate the slightly saner writer.

 Most of my posts will be focused on the self sufficiency and camping aspect of surviving the apocalypse, zombie or otherwise. From the cloths on your back to the best way to sleep you will be presented with some of the best information on how to survive.  Combined with Colin, our plethora of information will make you the most prepared person for the end of the world.

Hey, I'm Colin- I'm hella paranoid and I have a questionable obsession with the apocolypse.

My first post is going to be an introductory passage pertaining to survival in zombie, or other apocalypse scenarios. My role in this blog is focused more on the philosophy of the end of the world- where to hide, what to ride, which weapons you may want to carry, and which ones you should leave behind. I will be discussing logistics of travel, what supplies should be coveted the most, and the best ways to turn your home into an impregnable fortress.

Presently, I’m at school, so I will get back to you guys later. Until then, stay paranoid, be prepared!