Excerpt from "Weapons and Warfare in the Zombie Apocalypse"

A Note about the Apocalypse

This volume is dedicated to a study of weaponry and battle tactics as they specifically relate to an apocalyptic zombie outbreak.  What exactly do I mean by “Zombie Apocalypse?”  That's an interesting question.  Certainly the lessons learned from reading this volume could be applied to other sorts of zombie epidemics.  Locally, a large enough outbreak might even replicate many scenarios found in a true zombie apocalypse, even if society was elsewhere intact.  But the true intent of this book is to prepare readers for a world-wide zombie pandemic.  This specifically means a plague of zombies so large that nations around the world collapse and the living dead outnumber the living by a wide margin.  In the hypothetical situation this volume assumes, after the initial destruction and devastation caused by the breakdown of societies around the globe, as much as 99% (or even more) of the world's human population has fallen victim to zombies or the fallout of the breakdown of civilization.  The world inhabited by the relative handful of human survivors will be very different from that of the early twenty-first century that is our present.  This is especially true in the so-called First World nations, whose relatively privileged and well-off inhabitants have the longest way to fall as civilization world-wide takes on many of the trappings of our medieval or ancient pasts.  If you live in Africa with only minimal access to electricity and running water, the new world of the apocalypse isn't going to be so different.  Except for the ravenous walking corpses.  But for the denizens of the wealthy countries of Europe or the United States the fall will be shocking and dramatic.  It will also more than likely be the cause of greater loss of life, since the citizens of the First World mostly lack many of the basic survival skills that we've exchanged for our technologies and machines. 

Much of this volume's content is directed at the citizens of the modern US.  Certain sections, especially those related to firearms and ammunition, are designed to be of use by survivors who have access to the remnants of early twenty-first century America's gun culture.  In much of the rest of the world these sections will be of only partial value, given the differences in the rates of gun ownership and the prevalence of firearms and ammunition.  Other sections, such as those dealing with ancient or improvised weaponry, should be useful to survivors around the globe.  So the advice contained herein has some utility no matter where you find yourself at the dawn of the new world—the world of the zombie—even though some of the content is biased in favor of American survivors.  Fight well, and remember to always watch your back.

A Brief Introduction

When mankind stumbled upon agriculture at the end of the Neolithic period, it wasn't very long before he learned that taking things from others was easier than laboriously growing or making them himself.  Thus warfare was born, and quickly resulted in the invention of all sorts of sophisticated and specialized technologies such as weaponry and defensive fortifications.  Man is enormously inventive when it comes to figuring out how to kill his own kind (and members of pretty much every other species as well).  Combined with our inventions, our intellect makes us the deadliest predator to ever walk the earth. 

In the event of an apocalypse-level zombie epidemic, however, this may no longer hold true.  Outwitted by the inexorable force of a microscopic pathogen (or space dust or however zombies come into being, for the purpose of this volume it really makes no difference), most members of our species would succumb to a threat that we can't beat with arms or intelligence.  With the bulk of the human population transformed into ravenous automatons, the survivors will face a transformed world where most of the old patterns of existence no longer apply.  There are myriad dangers survivors would face in this new world, and zombies are only one of these.  The environment itself would quickly become an enemy as the electricity failed (if you live in the US you can thank all the people who don't want to pay taxes, because our tottering electrical grid is long overdue for a radical overhaul).  Even in countries with better infrastructure, without human controllers most power would quickly vanish, taking artificial light and heat with it.  Water supplies would become contaminated for the same reason, a situation exacerbated by the large numbers of unburied corpses that would be a feature of societal collapse.  Food supplies might be largely looted or destroyed during the initial stages of the outbreak, as human populations became increasingly panicked.  Food remaining in supermarkets would become prey to a variety of rodent and insect pests, while rotting vegetable and animal products would teem with bacteria, making the corner store a dangerous place.  Fire would be an enemy, rather than an ally, as unattended pilot lights led to infernos in cities and suburbs.  Reserves of pressurized natural gas could explode, further increasing the danger posed by fire.  Around the world, nuclear power plants would eventually become grave threats to the regions surrounding them: without humans to maintain the coolant levels, spent fuel rods would inevitably cause thermonuclear explosions, poisoning the countryside in all directions with lethal amounts of radiation.  Without modern medical technology, survivors would be suddenly thrust back in time to the medieval world, where otherwise minor illnesses or injuries could prove fatal.  Obviously, the world of the zombie apocalypse is a dangerous place, even discounting the hordes of the  walking dead. But there are a number of other manuals detailing these and other dangers, and the reader is encouraged to make every effort to seek them out.  Preparation is the key to survival.  This volume has a different, more specialized focus than the literature that currently exists on the subject of zombies and the potential breakdown of society that could occur following a world-wide zombie plague.  It is important to remember what this manual is not, in other words.  You will not find much information on food supplies or general scavenging here.  There is no discussion of interpersonal relations beyond the requirements of armed combat.  Absent is a conversation about long-term goals or travel or, for that matter, that much about zombies themselves.  This book is not concerned so much with what created zombies but rather with how to engage them in battle.  The focus here is warfare, from the point of view of a historian who has considerable knowledge of military history.  It is a knowledge that is useful to apocalyptic survivors, and so I share it here with you.  In the end I want you and yours not simply to survive—I want you go to war.

This book offers a discussion and analysis of weapons and warfare as these topics relate to surviving a world-wide outbreak of zombification.  In the modern world the concept of self defense is taken seriously by certain individuals, but in reality (at least in the developed world) the risk of violence is quite low.  Most people will go their entire lives without needing to defend themselves from violent attack.  In the post-apocalypse, both zombies and hostile surviving humans will make self-defense a necessity.  Everyone who lives past the end of the world will need to become a warrior.  This book is designed to offer some instruction on the nature of weapons and warfare in relation to the threats faced by survivors in a changed world.

There are two general sections (or books) contained within this volume.  The first contains a detailed overview of the tools needed to provide for personal safety in the event of a violent encounter with zombies (and to a lesser degree, other people).  The second, shorter section deals with a discussion of some of the tactics needed to survive actual combat.  Overall, this volume is designed as a supplement to the existing body of literature.  It is not an extensive how-to manual, but rather a focused discussion of the tools and techniques needed to survive battle, and not meet a greasy and terrifying end accompanied by the gnashing of decaying teeth.

Book I

Preparation

It might be self-evident, but it bears remembering that zombies are not people.  They might have once been people, but the creature they've become has a completely different set of capabilities and vulnerabilities.  As it specifically relates to combat, it is crucial to remember that psychology will only effect the reader, and not the zombie.  There are no psychological restraints for the zombie, and this is an advantage for it and a disadvantage for you.  You will be scared, even terrified when facing zombies, because your brain has the capacity to anticipate the future and dread what might happen to you if those decaying limbs manage to grasp your hair or clothing.  You can anticipate with horror what it might feel like, sound like, to have blackened, jagged teeth sink themselves into your flesh as you shriek and kick in a futile attempt to get away.  You have the capacity for fear, and that can complicate your attempts to resist zombie attackers.  In contrast, the zombie is incapable of fear.  It does not feel pain.  It cannot anticipate what might happen to it and react defensively.  The differing psychology between the living and the living dead is an important consideration that should not be taken lightly.

In the history of warfare, from the first stone arrowheads to the use of atomic weapons capable of leveling cities, fear is an incredibly powerful tool for an aggressor.  There is a reason that medieval warriors drank alcohol, screamed war cries, and even bit the rims of their shields like the Viking berserkers.  These behaviors are all responses to the very real fear that humans instinctively feel when confronted with violence and the possibility of bodily harm.  The conditioning and training of soldiers since ancient times is in part an attempt to control the response that people feel when confronted with danger.  In a confrontation with zombies you will be afraid.  They will not be.

The zombie's complete lack of fear changes how you approach the problem of defeating them in battle.  Assault rifles, for example, often have the capacity for fully automatic fire, that is, the weapon cycles after every shot and fires continuously until the ammunition supply is exhausted.  Soldiers in combat use this ability sparingly, because fully automatic fire would quickly run through the standard ammunition load carried by individual soldiers.  Automatic fire is mostly reserved for what is known as suppressing fire, i.e. firing lots of bullets in the direction of a hostile enemy in order to get them to duck and cease their own fire.  Obviously this is totally meaningless with zombies.  They can't be suppressed, because they can't feel fear.  Automatic fire should therefore be mostly discarded against undead foes, since all it would achieve is the squandering of ammunition reserves.

Zombies, being undead, cannot succumb to wounds as humans easily can.  For a human (especially considering the post-apocalyptic dearth of good medical care) a gunshot or stab wound is extremely dangerous.  Even a small-caliber bullet can easily sever major arteries, leading to loss of blood pressure, unconsciousness and death.  The same bullet hitting organs like the kidneys or liver would result in much the same thing.  Lungs can collapse.  Piercing wounds to the lower abdomen carry with them the risk of infection and contamination by the bacteria of the digestive tract.  Wounds to the heart are of course fatal, as are injuries blunt or otherwise to the brain or the spinal column.  Even normally minor wounds to the extremities can prove fatal in the absence of medical care.  The various types of gangrene are fatal if untreated, and offer a particularly gruesome fate.  In short, humans are fragile sacks of meat with lots of vulnerabilities.  Zombies have few of these limitations.

Zombies are immune to pain, which makes fighting one different from fighting a human.  You cannot inflict a painful wound on a zombie in order to gain time to escape, or create an opening for another attack, as you can with a human opponent.  You cannot debilitate a zombie through the use of pain.  Moreover, zombies will not fall victim to blood loss, as a human opponent might following a wound that is not immediately fatal.  Historically speaking, throughout human history most people killed on the field of battle were not killed outright: instead, they suffered one or more wounds that slowly killed them.  After the battle of Waterloo in 1815, for example, thousands of wounded soldiers continued to die from their injuries for several months after the one-day battle was over.  Zombies, in contrast to humans, cannot by definition be wounded, although their ability to function can be impaired if significant trauma is inflicted upon the body.  The point to remember is that a zombie will not stop unless major damage is inflicted to the brain.  Nothing else will completely stop them.  Thus combatants encountering zombies need to modify their techniques to take into consideration the difference between the living and the undead.

Firstly, it should be remembered that while zombies are essentially super-human (or perhaps non-human) when it comes to fear or pain, they do have some of the same limitations that humans are constrained by.  In terms of their physical structure they use the same musculature and skeletal system to provide for mobility.  Just because they can't feel pain doesn't make their bones or muscles less susceptible to damage.  This means that they can be slowed or crippled by damaging attacks to the extremities, which might be useful depending on the situation.  Severing the vulnerable spinal column by cutting through the neck, or smashing it with a blunt instrument or bullet is a good way to stop a zombie: their vestigial brains depend upon the spinal column to relay information to the rest of body just like yours does, so the spine is a prime target for your attacks. 

The main target, obviously, of any anti-zombie weapon is the brain that controls the creature's body.  Everything you do to strike at a zombie comes down to destroying the brain or severing its connection with the rest of the body, in order to eliminate the threat presented by that body (note that severed zombie heads, or heads attached to crushed spinal columns might still be able to bite, so watch your step).  Targeting the skull of a zombie, with the view of piercing through it to the vulnerable brain beneath is not as easy as it might appear.  Remember that the skull is designed by nature to defend the brain at all costs.  It is the hardest part of the human body for good reason.  Especially when considering the use of hand-held weapons keep in mind that breaking through the defense offered by the skull may not be easy.  You should always be prepared to strike again, until the creature stops moving.

This is obviously a brief overview of the biological constraints of zombies.  I stress again that the reader should refer to more detailed discussions of the anatomy and physical capabilities of zombies found in other works.  The survey above is meant as a sort of refresher course prior to the lengthier discussion of weaponry that commences below.  In any event, with the dead far outnumbering the living, where they came from or why isn't in the end very useful information.