Perhaps getting drunk is not smart but I guess it never is. It's quite soothing in stressing situations. They are out, I am in, I make a run to grab some stuff, get back, chill. Survival at it's prime.
You can't make molotov from bear,and the best ones are made from gasoline not alchohol. And still you would have to have a half empty bottle for that ( gulp gulp ). And molotovs are great for attacking buildings from outside, not vice versa. Chances are you'd torch down your house if defending from the inside..

I say that depends on your aim. I mean, if you got a nasty horde rushing towards the door of your building, you got a nice bottleneck that will burn em' up easily if you throw it out through a window upstairs. And I'm pretty sure that it's a bigger risk of burning down a house if you throw a molotov AT the house... just saying...

Thanks for the tip about gasoline being better than alcohol (did some research, apperently isopropyl will burn as crazy), but I'm not certain that the bottle needs to be half full. I mean, the more, the merrier, right?

PS. What would you do when the food runs out, or gets spoiled? DS.

Well, throwing a molotov at anything closer than 30 meters is a bad idea, since fire has a bitching habit of spreading. You wanna flush someone out of their house? Molotov them! wanna keep someone out? Make sure you throw far far away, you don't have a lawn, have a rifle to keep anyone who's burning runing into your house and try not to hit your window frame or such. I imagine that using molotov from a house ( a typical, American household ) would be REAL bad. And if bottle is full there is a greater chance nothing would happen, alcohol could actually put out the flame, therefore molotovs are not entirely full.and you know, alcohol doesn't burn as good as you might think. Ever tried to spill some whiskey and light it?

Yep. Had to call the fire department...

depends on the amount of liquid, ethyl concentration and such.

If I'm at home, I would stay there for a time before I am forced to find somewhere else. That's not my main plan though. I'm in school most of the time, specifically the engineering building. That is where I would stay if possible. It's got lots of sections that are easy to barricade, lots of heavy doors, people have food and/or alcohol stashed somewhere, it's close to the food court and the pharmacy, and you can build pretty much anything if you get into the right labs, or get access to the machine shop. There are lots of tools and equipment around, and plenty of smart people who know how to make stuff. Also, the building is old so the sub-basement is pretty much made of lead and could basically function as a bomb shelter. Seriously, I went wandering down there and there were signs that basically said "Don't touch anything! This shit is made of lead!" Not to mention the all the asbestos in the building (although it's being removed now). If you can get to the roof, it would be perfect for sniping zombies and keeping an eye out for survivors. The parking lot is not too far away, and the grocery store is a little bit down the road. The main disadvantage I see is that it's a highly populated area during the day, which would make the infection spread faster if people are caught unwawares. It wouldn't be as bad during the evening, most people either go home or go drinking.

Posted By CarlBreder on 08 Feb 2010 01:14 AM
lets just hope they decay fast enough so their muscle groups go all weak

also if you cut a zombies head off, it will die, how are the electric signals the brain sends out to different parts of the body going to get there if no head? thats how you move, thats how the zombie move, it might be a zombie, but it still need the nerve system to move that includes the main central, the brain.

There are still residual signals (from ions moving around, creating leakage currents). The body might twitch for a bit, but will eventually die. Same goes for the head. Heads cut off during the French Revolution sometimes blinked for a little bit before dying. Don't know if that would be enough to enable a disembodied, biting zombie head though.

um, did you just say exactly the same as i did?

No. I think I proved the opposite. After some searching on the head, it's the lack of oxygen that kills the brain, not its isolation from the body. They can function without each other for a short period of time.

short period of time as in a few seconds?

1. if you sever a head, the brain dies because it does not have oxygen, so your saying in theory, its possible to hold a head alive by supplying it with oxygen?

2. what about the body, after the head is gone, what is actually controlling it? when the brain is not the master console of our body, what give the commands?(also i would not call a body without a head, twisting or twitching "Alive")

Actually, the brain doesn't only require oxygen to survive; it needs a constant supply of glucose in order to stay alive.

well thats cool, but what do you need for the rest of the head to work?

Few decades ago couple of Russian doctors managed to maintain a severed dog's head alive by attaching to an artificial blood stream.The head was " alive " for a few days, but I imagine it wasn't that happy. Doggie didn't bark. And any body part that has been cut off in an instant could move and twitch for a sec or two as a result of residual neural impulses,an the brain could be working during that period, but it's way too short to have any point. On the other hand, who knows how zombies work.... as far as the medical science goes they shouldn't even be here man....

I would first off gather supplies at my own house, and my neighboures houses;
Check for guns,food,medicine and if there are any survivors. Then i would
take the fridge upstairs,also snatch every food that i have in house and bring it to
my room on the third floor. I would also fill the sink and bathtub with cold
water for a big but limited supply of drinking water( I live in Holland where the water out of the sink is
drinkable).
After that i would get a hammer and nails, barricade the front and only door
( i live on the second floor), and throw a wardrobe or 2 down the stairs so
the door would be totally blocked off by pieces of wood
and other stuff, that would mean that nothing can go through there.
After that i would barricade every window on the 2nd floor and make a final check
on every door & window.
Then i would move to the third floor with everyone, and check the food,weapons
and other supplies such as meds, but before that i would steadily barricade the
third floor, and put some wood,a hammer and nails for reinforcing next to the barricade, just in case.
I guess that after that i would just stay there and try to hold out as long as possible
I have acces to the roof, so just in case the zombies magically break through
the loads of barricades i ofcourse already have set up
We all could run to the roof and fight the zombies off up there. I think that that would be a lot easier, since you can just push them off the roof.
Depending on the weapons, and if the food gets low, we could send a few survivors to loot a shop. although the should climb out of a window on some kind of rope, because the way in and out is completely blocked off. I think this isn't a bad plan, especially if the zombies aren't fast but just slowpokes (There's the word again)
So what do you think?

Posted By CarlBreder on 08 Mar 2010 02:24 AM
short period of time as in a few seconds?

1. if you sever a head, the brain dies because it does not have oxygen, so your saying in theory, its possible to hold a head alive by supplying it with oxygen?

2. what about the body, after the head is gone, what is actually controlling it? when the brain is not the master console of our body, what give the commands?(also i would not call a body without a head, twisting or twitching "Alive")

Short period of time, as in around 10-13 seconds, which is the general consensus in the sources I have found.

1. Yes, in practice. The brain can still produce certain high-energy compounds without the help of oxygen, but tissues die without oxygen. I don't know if anybody has ever tried this on humans, but it has been performed on dogs by a scientist named Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov in the 1950's. He cut off a puppy's head and attached it to a living dog. The puppy head apparently survived a few days and kept a separate personality from the adult. More recently, it has been done on monkeys by Robert White, article at http://www.freetimes.com/stories/14...s-anatomy.

2. Ionic movement can produce some impulse propagation, not much of it though. This one I haven't really looked into. The body I would not consider alive, however, whether or not the head is still aware while decapitated (and if so, for how long), is still under debate.

well thats creepy xD

Sooo, decapitating a zombie is fine, as long as you dont decapitate the head towards you

I wasn't prepared for the creepiness of animal heads transplanted onto other animals when I looked into the issue. 0.0 Not surprised that it's possible, more surprised that someone decided to attempt such a thing. So now we know to keep the zombie head as far away from your person at all times.

I say that the smartest thing is to keep all zombies, as well as their body parts and blood, as far away from you as possible, at all times.

Last week I had a lab where we were playing with these frogs. They were brain dead (basically a lab tech stuck a rod into their skulls and killed them ahead of time), but the heart and all the other tissues were KEPT ALIVE. I believe it was some sort of solution that we had to keep it bathed in that kept them alive. Can't remember exactly what was in the solution. The rib cages were cut open so that we could see the heart beating. Which was kinda creepy at first, but I got used to it after a while. And one group had a frog that occasionally twitched in the leg. Our prof said it was probably some reflex. Although that group had a few other things wrong with their frog (I think their ECG was skipping a few heart beats, can't remember exactly what it was), so the twitching could have been connected to that.

I've come to realize that over my university career, I get to play with quite a few dead/close-to-dead things. I could be either well prepared or screwed when the zombies invade.

no more zombie stories? come on, this is really interesting stuff that people want to hear

ZOMBIE STORY Ps. I'm screwed
I live in Belgium, so no guns(nowhere). The first thing I would do is grab a hammer(wehavenocrowbar) and check for survivors(more ppl=less spending time). Close down the windows and go up and break the stairs(prevents them from comin). When prepaired, we would start scavanging supplies. There is NO rendevous point here. The only way to survive properly, is to round up and riot against the zombies. When you have an ally, you can easly defeat a zombie. When the numbers are 2>1 its unlikely to get infected. So, my plan is to round up as much as peeps (and of course arm them). HOWEVER, I'm just so freakin unlucky that there are so many fat ppl living in this land. I'm thinking suicidal!
Only good news is that I know sombody that has a WW1 rifle, he has an extremely good fort and a stach of chips, I mean food.

Zombie survival plans dont work and here is why.
It focuses too much on the zombie problem. Besides the zombies, an outbreak would be similar to any real-life pandemic. First there will be a panic. As soon as the news breaks out, people will buy everything and anything they think they will need to survive.

This list includes, food, clean bottled water, batteries, flashlights, blankets, etc and particularly for this case, Ammunition and guns and close quarters weapons. Within the first week all of those supplies will run out. Within days, there will be no more ammunition to buy.

People will try to run away, flights will be booked, there will be nation-wide traffic and horrendous accidents on the roads.
Some people will take advantage of this and loot/kill for things they want. This will be the leading cause of deaths in the early dawn of the pandemic.

Then, first thing to go is clean, running water. There will be no tap water, there will be no toilet water, everything will be septic and dirty. Then there will be no electricity.

The problem with most people's plan is they tend to fall within the known parametres of a catastrophe.
Many if not all of you will be one of the millions of people rushing for supplies. When the outbreak happens, there is no time to run, there is no time to stock up, there is no time to horde weaponsand defend yourself.


MY plan on the otherhand, I suspect at this point, the government will announce various fallout shelters. My first course of action would be to arm myself (Kitchen knife, baseball bat) and head there and make my stand with the trained soldiers and my fellow civilians.

ANOTHER viable plan is to create a bunker. Similar to those made during the cold war. I know specifically of such a bunker in Russia that was stripped of materials and closed down. I would use the now-public "blueprints" (Not an actual blueprint, but the information on how it was made is available) to create one for myself.

As a LAST RESORT: I would barricade myself in my house with whatever food/water I have and wait it out. I suspect that my "last resort" will be the "most likely outcome" for most of your plans. Eventually, you will run out of food/water/ammunition. And as for going North, what do you think your odds are of surviving in sub-zero temperatures? Where you are competing with other survivors for food in the already barren snowy lands? How well do you think are the communities up there are equipped to handle such a massive volume of "homeless victims" such as yourself?


Just some food for thought.

Posted By Odigo on 10-07-2010 02:04 AM
And as for going North, what do you think your odds are of surviving in sub-zero temperatures? Where you are competing with other survivors for food in the already barren snowy lands? How well do you think are the communities up there are equipped to handle such a massive volume of "homeless victims" such as yourself?
Just some food for thought.

Bah! what if you already live there(almost)!

i guess we will do best, already living in low populated area(11k)

AND with army posts close by AND a weapons factory close! i'd say i stand a chance.

Bah! what if you already live there(almost)!
i guess we will do best, already living in low populated area(11k)
AND with army posts close by AND a weapons factory close! i'd say i stand a chance.

UNTILL ZOMBIES USE WEAPONS!!! WE ALL DOOM!

seriously guys??? i mean cmon, ive been up and down all these posts, the only way to stay alive is to either grow your own food so you dont run out and also try to make your own bullets with home made things... copper... etc

yno lol find things also btw yano millitary camps and airports are really bad ideas because since they are big theres bound to be at least 1 zombie that has bin infected and running around infecting other ppl... bad things...

just stay near your nearest farm or large field in the middle of nowhere hahaha then youll be okay for a while until insanity kills you :L

Insanity only kills you if you let it!

my plan: get a melee weapon, get as much food as possible, go to the marina and steal a boat, moore myself 1KM offshore and wait it out, Zeds cant swim.

Posted By Mike Westen on 23-07-2010 05:23 PM
my plan: get a melee weapon, get as much food as possible, go to the marina and steal a boat, moore myself 1KM offshore and wait it out, Zeds cant swim.

maybe they cant swim but they can walk!!!!

even if they can walk underwater how are they going to swim upwards towards the boat?

I find real life Zombies every time I get on the road.