Zombie Survival -- RMA Recommended Training Video

Your survival may depend on being prepared, and understanding how to survive a zombie incursion. The kind researchers at Danger 50000 Volts have prepared this helpful video (in 3 parts) to help enhance your chances of surviving the outbreak:

Refugee Management Admin: Fence Data

Standards based on Refugee Management Administration data collected from camps 7, 15, 23-31, and 42

Barbed wire:

• #of active zombies: 6-10
  
• Time to penetrate: < 15 minutes.
  
• Note: 1-2 will often slip through prior to fence failure.

Wood plank from the outside (against flats and posts):

• #of active zombies: 15-20
  
• Time to penetrate: 8-12 hours
  
• Note: Once failure condition exists (individual flats destroyed), total failure occurs in < 1 hour.

Wood plank from the inside:

• #of active zombies: 2+
  
• Time to penetrate: < 15 minutes.
  
• Note: Active dead quickly dislodge individual flats.

Chain link from outside (against link and posts)

• #of active zombies: 50-100
  
• Time to penetrate: 48+ hours (governed by arrival rate)
  
• Note 1: this assumes proper installation of posts: 36” depth with 8” poured footer.
  
• Note 2: penetration results from mob topping fence (utilizing ramp formed of other zombies).

Chain link from inside (pushing link away from posts):

• #of active zombies: 15-20
  
• Time to penetrate: 12-16 hours
  
• Note: standard chainlink is mounted to the posts by wire or clips at a small number of points. These points break under modest pressures, causing failure by separation of chainlink from posts. RMA recommends reinforcement by 1/2 inch cable at 24 and 48 inches to prevent separation.

Wrought Iron Bars

• #of active zombies: 75-100
  
• Time to penetrate: 48+ hours (governed by arrival rate)
  
• Note 1: this assumes proper installation of posts: 36” depth with 8” poured footer.
  
• Note 2: penetration results from mob topping fence (utilizing ramp formed of other zombies).

Note that recommended fencing types and installation methods resist breakthrough, but not overtopping by large mobs of dead. RMA recommendation is to clear fence line daily.

Happy Anniversary

I started this book last year in July, so I am just past the 1-year mark. To celebrate, here is ZPF’s origin story:

It started innocently enough (excerpts from writing journal):

Zombies: Various thoughts
July 14, 2008 -- been on a zombie jag lately, reading some zombie stories and thinking about zombie home defense.

Ahh. Zombie home defense. Sadly, my wife does not take this as seriously as I do, so our home has many vulnerabilities--principally unprotected window wells and several ground level windows on the front porch. We also have a flimsy fence--it could keep a couple zeds out for a couple hours. After that they will probably be in the yard

Next, it evolved into this:

Zombie Proof Fence
July 20, 2008 -- still in the zombie theme
> A story making fun of the movie Rabbit Proof Fence, and of the concept--a long fence that will keep one region of Australia (or another nation) free of zombies.

Zombies remained on my brain, and I realized that human survival would be far easier if natural death did not result in zombieism. To this end:

Redactinase
July 20, 2008 -- still in the zombie theme
Redactol, redactase, redactinase, restorol, restorase -- a drug that can be used to treat the living so that they do not become zombies when they die. The problem is, if this drug is ingested by a zombie, that zombie becomes a super-zombie.

That ended up as Reverol in ZPF the book.

And the final straw:

The kid
>One of my thoughts is that zombies won’t actually win...they will be fairly easy to contain and deal with...the world will be different, but it will still function.
>Show a young kid, 4-6, working as zombie bait...luring them into a trap.
>Flash
>Kind of silly.
>Point: zombies are not that frightening.

The kid ended up being a 12 year-old refugee, but it took a few months for the character and her arc to solidify.

After this, more and more ideas popped out. As late as August 6th, I was still trying to whittle this story down to 1000 words for the Writer’s Bloc flash fiction challenge.

Then came World Con. The world science fiction convention was in Denver in 2008. So I went. And it blew my mind.

During the convention, the flash story grew into a short story outline, and about 6 pages of notes on the world. A new writer's series at the convention and chatting with several authors convinced me that I should tackle a book.

At some point in August (I did not capture the date), I set aside other projects and committed to writing this book. By September, I was passionately working on it.

Ever since, I’ve averaged 60 hours a month writing, and most of that has been on the book.

Why a Zombie Proof Fence?

Because you need one--at least if you expect to survive a zombie apocalypse. I personally recommend one that will stand up to zombies in ones and twos and threes and dozens and hundreds. This actually needs to be a wall unless you already live inside a walled compound, in which case an actual fence will work (in case a few strays slip inside the wall).

I got to thinking about this one day, for no particular reason, and started wondering about the design of such a fence (or wall). At the time, I was thinking more along the lines of how to protect my house from a few zombies and eventually started wondering how to protect larger areas--and how to cope with vast mobs...in the hundreds, even thousands.

The mobs are the real problem--if you have a wall or other passive obstacle, the mob will clump up until it makes living ramp of flesh allowing zombies to just walk right over the top a-la- Castle Roogna (though that may have been goblins, I forget). Once inside, these super mobs are nigh impossible to stop--you probably won’t have the kind of heavy weapons that would quickly stop them, and most people won’t have enough ammunition to make more than a dent in a super-mob. If you hole up, they can rip through barricades, pile up to reach second, even third stories of buildings and well, you get the idea: a fence just won’t do. Neither will a wall that’s just sitting there.

What you need is a high wall, carefully constructed, manned and maintained by an active security force. Integrated zombie disposal systems will make it even better by preventing the super mobs from building up. Such a wall could hold back hundreds, even thousands of the nasty things. This protection creates a zombie free area, a safe zone, a green zone where ordinary people can work and play.

As I whittled away at the engineering, another thought drifted into my head--wouldn’t it be easy to live with zombies? Not quite as carefree as what we have now, but certainly not as bad as most zombie movies make it out to be. In fact, it would be so easy that even little kids would be safe. To children who grew up like this, it would feel normal to live behind a wall while flesh-eating zombies roamed free and hungry on the other side. They would probably think it odd for dead to stay dead. This line of thinking led me to the principle characters in the story--kids who take zombies for granted, accepting them as a normal part of their lives.

This idea ultimately led to a novel, but I kept fence in the title since Zombie Proof Wall just doesn’t sound as good.

In scouring the web for other references to a zombie proof fence I found a miniatures game that looks pretty good: All Things Zombie by Two Hour Games. Also found Shelldrake, a guy here on blogger who does some great miniatures work. Here is a household/block kind of fence Shelldrake put together for the miniatures game: zombie proof fence.

-M

Why Zombies?

I never really liked zombies. They’re slow. They’re gross. But they’re not particularly frightening. Nor are they very dangerous, not unless they mob you or you do something particularly stupid. It can be argued that a sprinting crazy person (a fast zombie as in 28 days later) is dangerous, but let’s be honest here, those are not technically zombies--they’re still alive, that’s why they can run. Most zombie fiction seems to fall into one of three categories: cheesy, intentionally humorous or allegorical. None of these categories appeal to me (though I enjoy some of the allegories).

It all changed when I read World War Z. This was the first book I read in which zombies were treated seriously, with honest, insightful speculation into how the world would react if the dead rose up and tried to kill the living. It was also the first place I saw a zombie apocalypse addressed as a war, which, if you think about it, is exactly what it would be. World War Z also had an epic scope, spanning the first sign of outbreak, all the way through to final push against the zombies and the rebuilding afterward and it gave every step along the way serious thought. Great read.

After WWZ, I saw zombies as a serious speculative element instead of a farce. I started thinking about them and rather than just rolling my eyes whenever another zombie movie came out, I would watch it, analyzing the response portrayed in the film, the defenses and survival tactics used and the failure modes which inevitably doom the characters.

The inevitable conclusion of this thought process was my realization that a zombie apocalypse would be survivable (a conclusion Brooks reached years before when he started his Zombie Survival Guide), it would just be uncomfortable, require great sacrifices and would forever change our civilization. In short, it was a perfect backdrop for any number of serious stories.

WWZ Woke me up to the potential of zombies as a serious spec element and put me on the path to writing Zombie Proof Fence, but that story is for another time. So, thanks Max. As for the rest of you, if you have not read WWZ, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy.

ZPF Progress:
Wrote the first scene in the Crumble (making an official start on the second half), in which Kayla meets a scavenger kid and passes along Casey’s message about the Lowe Street Tunnel.

ZPF Soundtrack for today:
28 Days Later soundtrack
Tangerine Dream: Phaedra
Midnight Syndicate: Gates of Delirium

Introduction

Well, I'm writing a book titled "Zombie Proof Fence" and thought it might be interesting to blog about the experience. My goals for doing this and what I hope to accomplish are listed below, but my personal driver is just to try it out and see if blogging is something I enjoy and find valuable.

The Zombie Proof Fence Blog Charter:

• Share the creative process
• Share writing tips, tricks and anecdotes for other writers
• Share the experience of writing a book
• Provide content to interest readers in my writing
• Indulge in an occasional off-topic rant

It is NOT for:

• An online diary
• Posting about my family, friends or life outside of writing

So, if that seems interesting, read on.