In events of dramatic stress, the trappings of civilization are usually one of the first things to go, and with them go the safety blanket that
civilzation uses to blind us to the stark realities of survival. Soon, often within a few days, even in as little as a few hours, after the
event, surval becomes a matter of every man for himself. As soon as that line is crossed, what do you do?

The answer is, you scavenge.

The next question is: What do I need?

Priorities will shift, slightly, based on the number of people you are trying to keep alive, what you have on hand, and the envirement you are
trying to survive in, but some things you should ALWAYS keep an eye out for, as they could be the difference between living like the Kings of
Yore for two weeks, and surviving to live comfortably enough to teach your grandchildren how to fight and survive in the world that you find
yourself in. Anyone should be able to figure out that finding a gun, or ammunition, is good, and should be taken along with you. Likewise, any
parts for a project you are working on will already be part of your search criteria.

1.Medicine. Any medicine that you find may be the last. Also, as it ages, it becomes less effective.

2.Many things will be helpful, even essential, in the short-term, but real long term survival requires knowledge. So, the first thing to be on
the look out for is any form of how-to manual you can find. If at all practical, take these with you. You never know when the information will
prove useful. At the least, there is a strong chance that these materials can be used as trade fodder down the road.

3.Hand tools. Electricity is a finite resorce, and often a fickle taskmaster. The less you have to depend on her, the fewer technical apparatus
you have to spend time, resources, and energy worrying over. While they require more physical exertion, and productivity output lessens, these
can be used anytime, and without any other equiptment being required for their opperation.

4.Optics. They make everything better. They take the almost blind, and give them the eyes of the hawk. They make an indistinct blur on the
horizon and help determine if it is a friend, or a foe to be best avoided. In an area bereft of such things, they will hold the value of a king’s ransom within their few onces of weight. They can even give you a permanent source of fire for as long as the sun hangs in the sky. Take any intact optics that you can carry.

5.Seed. All civilizations that last are either farming civilizations that master how to gain the most sustenance from the land with the fewest
variables, or warrior societities that control them. Either way, crop seeds and farmers to take care of them are the only long term method of
survival that works.

6.Premade clothing/cloth. Another staple of our civilization, most of us haven’t the first clue how to make them once ours wear through, or the
climate changes. Gather as much as you can into the safest place you can. We use cloth in all aspects of our daily routines, so having too much
is never going to last for long.

7.Footwear. Shoes are important enough to daily life to warrant a number instead of sub-text in the clothing section. Until the world gets put
back together as we know it, footwear will forever be less reliable and not nearly as long lasting. Footwear will be more highly valued the
longer we go without civilzation, so this will become a highly lucrative trade item any place that people have feet.

8.Wiring. In todays world, these tiny strips of metal hold our world together. The same will hold true for any trying to establish contact with
surviving outposts, or foreign powers that may come to heal or take advantage of the situation you find yourself in. Should you come across any
who are attempting to enact these ideals, wiring of all types will be among the most valuable trade items you can muster. Not to be overlooked
is the fact that is can be broken down into weaponry, or even decorations, both of which have held value since the dawn of our species. Some of
the greatest steel in the world for bladesmithing, known as Damascus, is forged specifically out of many strands of steel wire hammered into one
peice of steel again. Also usefull for snares.

9.PVC. Another staple of our day and age, we often fail to see the value of the plastic pipes that thread us together. Useful in everything from
plumbing and shelter making to being ready made blowguns and nonrusting armor.

One very important thing to keep in mind while you are out collecting, is that somebody else will need these things as much as you do. You will
have to fight for these things. The more you have, the better the target you will make. Zombies will not be the biggest threat here. It will be
the living that will go to any extremes to get their hands on what you have. Have a plan ready and in place before your scavenge begins, and be
prepared to kill or be killed over that last handfull of beans.

This article was written by Wheelgunner. Thanks for your contribution.

ZAC reviews the much anticipated sequel to the zombie cult hit Day by Day Armageddon.

Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile picks up right where it’s previous book left off. That is to say that if the two were to be put together than you could very well have a single book. To recap the first book Day by Day Armageddon was about a Navy Pilot who is trying his very damnest to survive the zombie apocalypse. It has everything a book that is about the zombie apocalypse should have, hordes of zombies, a main character who while has been trained by the military, and thusly gives himself credentials to being able to both handle a weapon as well as survive combat. He is also not a superman, black ops commando, who can stir a campfire with his dick while simultaneously beating two zombies together and crushing a third under his foot. He is in a very real sense, the everyman. A well educated, highly trained, and driven everyman, but an everyman nonetheless. During his trials he meets up with a few other survivors and they trek across country trying to find a place where they could survive and hold out until help arrives.

Day by Day Armageddon was a pretty good book, not great, but within the confines that the author wrote the book you would be hard pressed to ask for more. Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile, however, does not live up to the standard that the first book set. Perhaps I am remembering the first Day by Day Armageddon too fondly through clouded memories of it being one of the few zombie books I was able to get my hands from my local book store, but simply put Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile is not as good. The characters seem, I do not want to use the word shallow but there are no others that come to mind. The main character’s love interest is hardly characterized, which is easy to understand when the main character is expressing hardly any emotion at all. The lack of emotion hurts the story’s immersion and the at times clinically detached writing made me fell at times as if I was reading a bad book report about what Timmy did on his summer vacation and not a zombie horror book. Horror being something that is best experienced either very alone and scared or in a small group with the enemy nipping on your heels. The author seems to realize this because after a very mediocre first third the main character is dropped alone into the middle Hell’s rectum and force to survive with little more than his wits and luck.

During my read I can say that there was a single page after the main character is brought back to his roots and is fighting for his very life that I began to get attached to him. It quickly passed and I went back to reading in about how he survived this and that. The book, also, ends too quickly. The entire book is only a little more than 275 pages. Hardly long. A few hours read if it was good, but it took me a solid two weeks to slog through it because it simply did not grab me right away.

Now, for those who have made it this far, and through all of my complaints, let me make clear that Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile is not bad. It is not great, but it is not bad. I would say that it is solidly mediocre. It is far from a life changing and genre altering book, but is far from the horrible and poorly written stories that often times one comes across when looking for zombie stories. Compared to the screenplays of a most zombie movies it is fabulous, but compared to Feed by Mira Grant, it is falls far behind. Simply put, I expected the author to take and improve upon his first book and I feel that he did not do so.

In the end, if you absolutely loved Day by Day Armageddon then Beyond Exile is a book that you will too love. However, if you though Day by Day Armageddon was only okay then Beyond Exile will not likely be a book that you will swoon over.

On the ZAC book rating scale I get Beyond Exile One of Two Stumps up.

Mental Characteristics:
Increased ease of agitation
Inability to understand or to respond to verbal warning or threats
Increased capacity for violence

If you are armed and come in contact with a person who seems infected and will not comply with verbal commands or flee from you when warned or threatened, then you should evaluate your situation rationally and consider your options.

Here are your options:

1. Call the police while you have the suspected infected at gun point. Attempt to keep them a safe distance from you with more verbal threats while the emergency operator dispatches police to your location. Inform the operator that you are a legally armed civilian and have a violent suspect at gun point. Make sure that the operator also informs the police of this fact so that you are not disarmed when they arrive. Keep the operator on the line until police arrive. Once the police arrive, inform them of the suspected situation and withdraw so that they might deal with the possibly infected individual. Provide back up if necessary. If police insist that you drop your weapon, kindly inform them that you are the one on the phone with emergency services, you feel threatened and that you will lower and holster your weapon, but do not wish to be disarmed. Generally, police will understand this and not continue to yell at you to drop your weapon as they tend to do on television.

2. Do all of the above, but if you feel that your life is in danger before the police arrive, then you lawfully have reason to protect yourself. (A.K.A. Capping that fucking zombie.) If the allegedly infected person comes at you, a warning shot should be fired prior to a kill shot if you feel there is time.

We realize that there may not be time to phone the police, much less wait for them to arrive, if so, take what action you can to either incapacitate the indivdual or defend yourself.

IF you are unarmed:

1. Get to a safe location. If the person is truely infected, they will be hot on your heels or at least shuffling in your general direction. (Depending on the type of zombie.)
2. Find a weapon. (Baseball bat, golf club, gun, sword, ect.)
3. Call 911 and explain your situation. Although it is doubtful that police will respond to the report of a zombie beating on your door, they will respond to a report of someone attempting to break into your home. Stay on the phone with emergency services until the threat is resolved.
4. Defend yourself until police have arrived and dispatched the zombie(s).
4a. If the zombie gets inside, kill it, if it kills the police, report that the officers are down and that dispatch should send multiple units. Police will likely show up in force and shoot first and ask quetions later.

Although this article is written with current laws in mind, it shouldn not be taken as legal advice as what one should do in an encounter of this type. ZAC cannot be held liable for what you decide to do. However, self defense is legal in any state, but you should check with local law enforcement as to laws governing self defense in public, at home, and violent encounter situations.

When you need something that you can no longer scavenge or barter for, what will you do. The battery powered lighter in the picture represents the very best in human ingenuity. Would you have thought of that? Many people wouldn’t, and if you didn’t, its nothing to be ashamed of. There are common solutions to everyday problems that people never think of. This article will attempt to help you learn that only one tool is necessary for survival, your brain.

Most people think that the square block goes in the square hole, but thats not always true. Things always have more than one purpose, and the solutions to problem you face aren’t always going to be blatantly apparent.

Guns:
We’ll agree that firearms will be the primary weapon of defense against zombies and human marauders alike, but what if you don’t have a gun?
“Well, I’d go out and find one!” would be the most common response. Why spend days searching for a gun and risking your life if you can make a gun at home? Yes, thats right, make one at home. I’d have never believed this was truely possible if I hadn’t seen it for myself. (Besides a simple zip gun) A friend of mine made a muzzle loader from common household items.

Items needed:
3 foot section of 1/2 inch diameter steel pipe (the thicker the better)
1 end cap for 1/2 inch diameter pipe
3 foot section of 2×4
1 mouse trap
1 lead weight (1 oz.)
2 screw tightened hose clamps
Tools needed:
Hammer
Nail
Pliers
Pocket knife

He used the hammer and nail to make the hole in the pipe to accept the primers, then whittled a stock and channel in the 2×4 for the barrel, next he mounted the wire from the mouse trap to the 2×4, used the pliers to cut the tip off the nail, hammered it into the lead weight, used the pliers to squish the lead weight onto the wire from the mouse trap to form a striker(firing pin), inserted the barrel, and clamped it all together. Using black powder propellant and peat gravel, I watched this fool take out a turkey. He had fired the homemade shotgun several times with no ill effects to the barrel(pipe) at all. The only thing that he ever really needed to make it work were primers, which can be found in every kind of cartridge ammo on the planet. If you want, look up how to make black powder, I’ve already said too much about this.

Now that you have your weapon, it’ll work fine in the day light, but how will you see at night? Nightvision goggles are not going to be the norm, and fire can get a little out of hand sometimes, so what will you do? There are a LOT of ways to produce electricity that most people never think of. Think for a minute, how can you make electricity? One thing that will be in abundance after the apocalypse will be abandoned cars. How do cars get their electricity? Batteries that are recharged by an alternator. GASP! Car alternators can be used to create electricity! Sadly, car alternators produce direct current, which won’t power most of the things in your home, but with the help of a power inverter you can harness the electricity produced by the alternator to charge a battery, which can then run to the inverter, and be used to power home devices. Enough blabbering, lets look at some examples.

Steam power:
Used in the 1800s steam was a relatively easy way to power trains, and to help automate factories, but the average person had no idea how to create or employ a steam engine. Much the same can be said today. Building a boiler, and making a steam engine to turn your alternator is as simple as going to your local junk yard.

Materials needed:
1 car alternator, ones from large trucks are best
1 car air conditioner motor, ones from older cars are best, like the General Motors “Frigidaire” models for Buick’s and Cadillac’s.
1 55 gallon steel drum (the ones with the ends welded or seamed on, not with the lids that pop on and off)
3/4 inch fittings(Couplers, 90 degree elbows, and female to male adaptor)
3/4 inch steel pipe (Up to 10 feet, copper pipe can also be used)
about 40 concrete blocks
2 bags of quickcrete
general purpose automotive “V” belt
Water
Wood to build a mount for the alternator and AC motor
nails

Tools needed:
Trowel
pipe wrench
hammer
saw
metal saw(Hack saw)
shovel
pipe threader

The first thing you need to do is wash out your 55 gallon barrel and let it dry. Next, you’re going to level a spot in your compound and build a “U” shaped supporting wall that will suspend your boiler(55 gallon drum) over the ground. Use a level if you have one to make sure that you laid all of your blocks level, if you don’t have one, a string pulled tight between two sticks in the ground can be used as a guide. When building it, make sure you make it the complete length of the barrel, plus 1.5 feet. Make it tall enough and wide enough to hold the barrel about 1-1.5 feet off the ground, this will enable you to build a fire and have proper air circulation under your barrel/boiler. There should be 2 bung caps on the top of the barrel. One large and one small. The smaller one should be 3/4 inch in diameter. This is smaller hole will be your steam vent and should be located at the top dead center of the barrel when you mount it atop your fire bed. Fill the barrel about 1/4 of the way full as it lays horizontal atop the fire bed. Next you’ll want to build your table to mount the alternator and AC motor. After building it, mount your alternator and AC motor and run the “V” belt between them, making sure that the belt is tight as possible before you mount them permanently. Place your generator table as near to the boiler as you can, then measure and cut your pipes to join them. You’ll take your female to male adaptor and screw it into the small bung hole, then run it to your AC motor. The exhaust hole on the AC motor is where you want to pipe in your steam from the boiler, and what would normally be the “In” hole, will be your steam exhaust port. Pipe your exhaust steam away from the motor and alternator, or you can pipe it back to the top of the boiler via a return pipe into a sealed hole so its more efficient, but its not necessary. Also, you’ll have to engage the clutch on the motor so it will run in reverse, thus actually turning the motor, and turning the alternator, producing a current to charge a car battery bank. Link the battery bank to the inverter, and you can power your house by using extension cords and power strips.

Water power:
Used for centuries by lots of countries, water powered countless mills and other industry before electricity. You can also use it to produce electricity. You don’t need a dam, just a source of flowing water. Build a water wheel, and use it to turn a shaft with a pulley on the end, run the pulley from the wheel to the alternator with a belt and link it to a battery bank just like the steam powered engine used.

Human power:
Instead of the water wheel, build whats essentially a giant hamster wheel, use it to turn a shaft and you’ll have power just like the water wheel. Also, in a twist of fate, you can use zombies to your advantage if you enclose your hamster wheel with a zombie inside. Zombies don’t get tired, so you won’t have to worry about them stopping as long as you stay nearby, thus enticing them to move.

Just use your head, and you can come out on top of most any situation. Keep checking, there’s more to come in part 3!

 

While there is a large gap to bridge when it come to the choice of weaponry for those fighting zombies, there is also a gap in the technology in regard to the gizmos that people decide to mount on their weapons.

                While there is the argument by some for simplicity, a club, bat, or sword, there is just also the argument for more modern weapons such as the AR15/M4 variants and other firearms. While there are few options to add on to your sword other than a different sheath or grip, perhaps a new manner to keep an edge, there are literal tons of options for one to add to their favorite firearm. Here we will look at some of the more modern.

1. The flashlight: While there is no doubt the most here have at least one in their homes, perhaps even one close at hand as you read this, those that are designed at mount on weapons tend to be different from you everyday light. Firstly, those that are high quality(also high priced) tend to be vastly brighter than your average mag light, some reaching well beyond two or three hundred lumens. The flashlight is perhaps one of the most practical of the gadgets that one can mount since in low light environments it is mandatory that you be able to tell friend from foe, though run life for high end lights can leave something to be desired.

2. Red Dot Sight: This is perhaps the hottest of the items that people want to mount on their long guns in today’s world. There are a wide variety of makes, models, and manufactures with prices ranging from as low as twenty dollars to well north of seven hundred or more. While there can be no argument that they help a marksmen get onto target faster the large red dot can force accuracy to be lost in favor of speed, and they are not indestructible, regard what some may have seen or believe. While a well made sight is a great addition they are no replacement for old fashioned iron sights and proper marksmanship.

3.  Night vision/ Infrared: While the two, Night Vision and infrared, are two different things they try to accomplish the same thing, allowing one to see in low light or complete darkness without a visible light that may give them away. Some of the latest generations equipment have even gone so far as to combine the two in a kind of hybrid of the two to offer a better picture. However, while being able to see at night is an advantage they narrow the line of sight, are highly expensive and rare outside of military use, and eat batteries alive.

4. Laser Sight: In the writers opinion laser sights tend to have little use in combat, though they are not useless by any degree. They only hold a small bit of use outside of very specific applications. However, this only falls under the visible light lasers, those that are used in conjunctions with night vision have a vast amount of use in marking and aiding in aiming at night. Visible lasers, however, hold a very possible use against the undead since while a human may realize what the red dot being pointed at them is a zombie will not thus allowing for more precise aiming and possibly even a means of distraction.

While is article is only a brief exploration into a subject that could fill a book all of the above carry with them a very real problem. They all rely on batteries to work. Without them they become useless, not even making a good paper weight often enough. With the exception of some red dot sights, which can run from months to years on one set of batteries few of the other gadgets will run more than a day or two at most. While you can carry packs of batteries on you the weight and bulk that they take up can be used in other ways that can better help you survive. Also, with the exception of the red dot sight and to degrees to the laser sight, flashlight and night vision are used primarily for night excursions which should be avoided like the plague since the night gives the advantage to the undead.

No matter the level of preparation, no matter the thought behind your holdout the time will come when you must make a move to safer ground or push for a combined offensive with others to completely eradicate the threat.

        Firstly before you can move you must have a coordinated plan to go to a particular place, preferably two or more if your first destination is overrun or you loss communications with them during the move.  Secondly is to have enough supplies set aside and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Preferably have a place with multiple exits and redundant sets of gear to go so even if one zone is over run you sit have supplies and weapons to bug out with.

Also when on the move there are several things to consider, not the least is the need for rest. If you are a walking zombie then you will be of little use in a fight against them. Also those unrested may miss telltale signs that you are walking into to a zone that you may never walk away from.

1.       Try to sleep at night. The human body has adapted over millennia to sleep during the night. Regardless of the reason keep to relatively normal since the undead hold the night.

2.       Stay up high. Zeds can’t climb, and even if they do manage to get up towards you the racket should be enough to wake the dead. Also placing a few booby-trap to alert you and distract them.

3.       Also when resting noise discipline should be observed. Noise can attract unwanted attention, and at night they can travel even father then in the day.

4.       Also if you happen to be have fellow survivors with you then you should set up a watch system so that you can lessen the chance that you will become that evenings meal.

Since no two places will require the same gear and no two escapes will unfold the same, even if they end in the same place. The majority of pieces of equipment and supplies will be decided by those fleeing for safety. Nevertheless the most important piece of advice that I can afford is to plan for every possible contingency and be ready at a moment to run if the stakes fall out of your favor.

http://crazymonkeygames.com/Boxhead-The-Rooms.html

Since you fight like you train, any simulated experience with fighting the undead should be utilized.