Amusing Story

Someone sent me this, and I thought all you other zombie fans might appreciate it.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,484326,00.html

Not that it's a good idea to hack into the road signs. The article is right, they are there for a reason. But of all the crude or insulting things they could have posted, they decided to post something tasteful.

Besides, you never know, what if there were zombies up the road? It's the sort of thing that the commuters should know so they can plan their trip accordingly.

Zombie Defense Plan: By Travis Richardson

Here is the first of what I hope will become a continuous series of guest submissions. Our post is courtesy of Travis Richardson. This plan is not censored, and therefore does not reflect anyone's views but Mr. Richardson. Still, I think that it is well thought and informative. Hopefully my readers will find it useful in planning for their own zombie crisis.

Well, my friends and I have laid out our plan for the zombie apocalypse in full detail. My house located in the middle of the woods with access to fresh water from my pond and plentiful game animals to harvest will become our base of operations. When the zombie apocalypse occurs the first 24 hours are vital. We will all meet at my house with all our assortment of weapons from our own personal collections. This includes an assortment of weapons rifles, shotguns, handguns, and melee weapons.
We will then leave 50% of our force at my house to begin preparation for barricading the house as well as preparing wood for the stove and as well as clear trees around the house to provide a obstruction free killing zone. The other 50% percent will run to Richmond Indiana and with the like hood of mass looting being 100% will gather supplies of ammo, gas, can food, powdered milk, and anything useful we can get our hands on or if looting hasn’t begun run our charge cards buying the essentials. The alternative raiding city is Greenville if Richmond has fallen victim already to the zombie menace though if both have fallen we will raid a few small towns within 10 mile drive from my house we're maintaining safety while raiding is possible, if need be. Then once the raiding or buying is done the other 50% will return to the house now known as Alpha base.
Alpha base is a two story log house with logs spiked together with extremely thick walls. The trees around the house would've been cut down by the group left behind to provide a 20 yard kill zone. The preliminary boarding of all first floor windows and doors should have begun. The first floor should be completely boarded up accept for gun port to fire out if the need be. These task once complete are the first phase of occupying alpha base. We will then move all non important furniture to the pole barn to maximize space for which to store gear and deploy cots and beds. Thus, with these tasks complete the objective is survival by all means.
We will burn through our rations in a couple of months and then will begin to hunt for food. The hunts will take place with two groups heading in opposite directions and return six hours prior to sun set to field dress kills and prepare them to be cooked. They will stay in radio contact so that there isn't an over abundance of food, because the lack of refrigeration. We will also occasionally harvest fish from my pond located in front of alpha base and the one 1/2 a mile up the road. We will also take my neighbors chickens and continue to raise and butcher them as well as harvest their eggs. We will stave of cabin fever by rotating jobs and the once and a while scouting party to investigate towns.
The scouting parties will not go straight to their objective rather zig zag to it taking different roads there and different roads back to minimize the possibility of being followed by the undead or anyone else. We maintain these survival methods until relieved or taken out. The plan, if we're attacked by a large force of zombies is to load up in the vehicles if holding alpha base is impossibility regardless of the fortifications. We will then proceed to seek shelter at any alternative site to be determined by necessity, but most likely another log house located 20 miles away owned by friends. They will have already done all we have to this point and also have access to clean water and game.

Zombie Weapon: The Crossbow

No one can deny the efficiency and the effectiveness of firearms. They make excellent weapons against both zombies and humans. However, they also present an incredible risk to someone on the run. A single gunshot can alert every zombie for miles of your presence, causing them to converge on your position.
Melee weapons pose other risks. Obviously, hand to hand combat is risky, even if only against a single zombie. One false move and instead of a quick, clean decapitation you might find yourself fatally bitten. Less obvious is the zombie's moan. Zombies tend to moan when they sense prey, and this moan can alert other zombies just as effectively as a gunshot.

So, what's your average civilian, who would not have easy access to a sound suppressor, to do in such a situation? One possible solution is a crossbow.

A modern hunting crossbow is almost as effective at destroying a zombie as a rifle, while having the advantage of almost complete silence. They are as easy to fire as a rifle, allowing for a quick clean headshot without alerting anyone, zombie or human, to your presence. Their ammunition is also reusable, if you have the time to retrieve and clean the bolt.

However, the crossbow does have some rather severe limitations that make it ineffective as a primary weapon. First and foremost, each shot has to be individually loaded by hand, an arduous and time consuming process. Though very effective at dispatching a single zombie in silence, the process is very inefficient. Against multiple zombies you may well be forced into using firearms or melee weapons anyway.
Another issue is it's size. A hunting crossbow, though often made of lightweight materials, is still a large and bulky piece of equipment. It's awkward shape also makes it difficult to carry on a pack. The bolts (arrows) also take up much more room than a similar quantity of rifle ammo would, meaning that you can't easily carry as much ammunition. More importantly, a crossbow would have to be carried in addition to a standard firearm, since just a crossbow is not enough for a sizable zombie threat. That means that the crossbow, bolts, and all necessary accessories, are extra gear, and as any camper or backpacker will tell you, ever ounce you carry on your back matters.

Ideally, one member of a 5-7 person team should carry a crossbow or similar silenced weapon. Another member should carry the ammunition in an easily reachable location. That way the crossbow can be used as a team, if need be. One person shoots, the other feeds ammunition and spots, much like a pair of hunters or a military sniper team. This will help the shooter reload more efficiently, while having someone else to guard his back. This arrangement slightly reduces the encumbrance to individual members of the group and would slightly increase efficiency of use.

A crossbow's uses are somewhat limited, but it does have its niche. The simplest one is taking out a single zombie threat while maintaining stealth. If, for example, a group is moving through a city or town, and encounters a zombie, a gunshot might bring every zombie in the neighborhood down on them, quickly trapping them. They might use a single, well-aimed crossbow shot to kill the zombie before it notices them. Then, just as quickly, the move on.

Similarly, a group of zombie survivors hiding out for the night or laying low might need to dispose of a zombie that has wandered too close without giving themselves away and being forced to move.


A crossbow isn't the perfect weapon by any means. In fact, when on the move, it's often just a dead weight. Still, don't count it out. When the situation calls for a single, swift, silent kill, a good hunting crossbow can deliver.

Undead

Alas, if you're looking for a serious zombie horror movie, do not watch Undead. This Australian independent movie seems to have been made based on the idea that they can't afford to do something scary, so they'll just make it as over the top as possible and call it offbeat humor. At that task, it succeeds.

The plot is pretty traditional. A group of people from a little fishing town in Australia find their tiny town overrun with a plague of strange occurrences, among them meteors, steaming rain, beams of light taking bugs up into the sky, and of course, zombies.

Among them is a reluctant local beauty pageant winner, the pregnant women she beat for the crown and her husband, a foul-tempered and foul-mouthed sheriff and his squimish deputy, and Marion, the redneck gunstore owner who claims the whole thing is the product of a vast alien conspiracy that he knew was coming all along, even though no one believed him.

Naturally the acting and particularly the stunts are equally over the top. In one notable scene, Marion jumps off the back of a zombie and does a backflip, slamming his spurs into the plaster above a window. (He does not own a horse. The spurrs are a mystery.) He then proceeds to hang upside down and unload clip after clip from the seemingly endless supply of guns he carries in his overalls.

Even more eccentric is Marion's weapon of choice, a triple shotgun. No, not a shotgun with three barrels, this monstrocity is actually three individual shotguns attached to one another and fired from a single trigger. Just the look of the weapon is enough to make most people ask why.


Still, if you know what you're getting into, Undead is worth a watch. If you're looking for Dawn of the Dead you won't find it here. However, if you're looking for a movie where Aussies use aerosal cans and ballpoint pens to kill zombies and crazy people start to make sense, this is the movie for you.

Worth a watch. Two and a half Stars.

Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green

This is our first game review on ZAC, and probably one of the few that I will do personally. I hope to find a resident video game guru to review all the latest zombie games.


Road to Fiddler's Green is based on George Romero's Land of the Dead, but takes place before the movie. Your character is a rural farmer who finds a stranger on his property and naturally decides to shoot him in the head. From there the plot is fairly straightforward. It's one redneck farmer with whatever weapons he can find against an unending horde of zombies. However, once you make your way through a zombie infested city and arrive in safe territory, your troubles have only begun. You are hired to clear a high-rise apartment building of the zombie infestation, floor by floor.

I found the game very satisfying. You can play it through on easy, if you're a lightweight like me, or go at it on hard and be literally mobbed by zombies. Either way, the decent (if a little dated) graphics and creepy soundtrack are as adrenaline inspiring as the scariest zombie movie. You use more than once sense to play, as zombies will often moan as they come at you, and every footstep in the dark could be one of them. This game will suck you so far into its zombie plagued reality that your skin will crawl even after you've stopped playing.

Still, don't expect the latest game with bleeding edge graphics and radical gameplay. The style of play is the same thing they've been making since Doom, with your group of weapons arranged along the number keys. There are a limited number of zombie body types, so they do start to repeat after a while, but the ones they have are realistic and fairly gory. The envirement is creepy, dirty, dark, and authentic.

So, if you've ever wanted to star in a Romero movie, this is your opportunity. The game's a few years old, so you might have trouble finding it, but, on the plus side, it might be pretty cheap. It's definitely worth it.