Me too, but rest comforted in this fact - if they are dumb enough to the point where their instincts don't go beyond basic survival and replication, then they certainly won't be any smarter than dogs.

Yes they will be able to climb trees and shit, but they can't develop tactics.
Think I Am Legend.

_______________________________

THE ULTIMATE PLAN




PART ONE - EARLY REALISATION

You have just realised that there has been a zombie outbreak. DO NOT head for military bases or strongholds or small towns. Why? Because everyone else who is not a zombie will be heading there. Do not ever assume you and your family are the only humans left. There is about a 0.00000000001% chance of that being true. Most likely, when you realise that there are zombies and they have spiralled out of control to the point where they are taking over the world, they will only be at about 5% of the human race. Mankind becoming zombies will most likely start out with an isolated area and spread. Think Resident Evil movies. At about that point you'll know mankind can't control that many zombies. 5% around this massive planet is too much to quarantine.
Don't wait until everyone around you is hunting for your brains.

Side note: There is a small chance it can hit over 50% of mankind at once. Say, a massive airborne virus that carries in the wind, and you and your family are somehow immune due to your genetic make-up. If this is the case, the plan still applies. You just need to act faster.




STEP TWO - GATHERING SUPPLIES

If you have 24 hours. Long list. Short list below.
If the outbreak starts small, you have time to go to the shops and spend your money in a civilised way. You'll have about 24 hours before it becomes critical, assuming that the zombie state takes several hours to reach... since decaying brain matter via viral outbreak is not instant. You need to stock up on the following:

• Personal Belongings - Take what is necessary. Photos, music, books that mean something.
• Legacy Items - If you're going to be the last of the human race, take 5000 pens and about 30 full boxes of photocopy paper, as well as other methods to chronicle your legacy.
• Survival Research - Go to a library and get lots of books on nautical navigation, survival (like THIS), natural medicine (herblore etc.), an atlas, sailing, fishing, farming, carpentry, farm animal care and breeding, hunting, camping, metal-making, PETROL-MAKING, (IMPORTANT), fabric-making, etc. Go to many libraries. Borrow, and don't worry about having to return them. Get enough books to fill a standard car boot. Knowledge is power. Also have a massive book on the place you are going. If possible, fill up your computer with this info - but DO NOT neglect the books in case your generator fails, or your computer fries. Have an encyclopedia set too just in case.
• Basic Supplies - A week's worth of clothes, durable ones. Compass, sextant, EPIC first aid kit, saws and all, tent, about 1000 lighters, mosquito net, magnifying glass, map of the place you are going to, place discussed in a later part. Flashlight with about 1000 rechargeable batteries and charger, flood protected powerboard, compass, ample rope, a water purifier and kettle, rain sheet, shitloads of sunscreen, sunglasses, firesteel, whistle, 50 feet of parachute cord, several dozen cartons of insect repellent. Fishing net and rod with tackle. Basic tools like saw, hammer, nails, glue, chisel, white paint, drill, shovel, bucket, pot, blade sharpener, machete. TWO GENERATORS - IMPORTANT. One as a backup in case the other one fucks up. Have a massive drum of petrol too.
• Renewable Sustainance - Saplings of fruit trees, herbs, seeds of many types of seeded vegetables that last more than a season, Dogs- enough to breed and keep on going. Minimum 7. Medium sized ones. They can protect you too. Lots of poultry - small and easy to transport, breed easily, make eggs. Have about 2 dozen. Rabbits are good. 1 dozen. They breed fast. Don't let them into the wild though when you get to your destination.
• Defense Mechanisms - Nothing that requires immediate clearance. In America it would be easy to get a gun. Elsewhere: knifes, baseball bats, swords, archery bows. They don't sell the lethal arrows. You have to make them yourselves. Bomb stuff. Petrol always works. Something for suicide in case you are cornered.
• Travel Gear - Hire a Budget rental truck. Don't expect to return it. Fill all your aforementioned shit into this epic truck. Keep the animals caged. Have extra fuel. If you have family and friends to bring, hire four wheel drives and keep them separate to the gear. BINOCULARS.
• Travel Food- 6 weeks worth of food, and a way to purify water. Lots of meal replacement shakes.
• A hand cart is you can get one. A hand wagon that can hold a decent amount of shit.

This supply gathering, assuming there are two of you, will take about 8 hours each. Hire the truck first and load as you go.

If you have little time, say 2 hours
If it is an epidemic and you don't have this much time, go to a camping store and get the following on credit. Don't expect to pay them back. If it is mass hysteria, loot.
The short time frame will not usually be the case since most epidemics take time to boil. You'll see it coming.

1. Tent
2. Firesteel
3. Flashlights and batteries
4. First aid
5. 2 sets of durable clothes.
6. Rope
7. Multipurpose swiss army knife.
8. Kettle/water treatment
9. As much food as you can load. Take meal replacement shakes. 6 weeks worth. You are able to live off them for a while.
10. BINOCULARS

Then head to the library and pick up one decent book on each of the following, in order of importance:

1. Nautical navigation
2. Atlas
3. Sailing
3. Basic survival
4. Camping
5. Steal an encyclopedia series

Go home and fill your boot with these things, and your personal belongings, then head out.

STEP THREE - ILLEGAL ESCAPE

Drive far away to a remote fishing village. Steal a commercial fishing ship. Hold up the owner of the ship if you must. Pick one with sails. DO NOT RELY ON PETROL ONES ONLY. A fishing ship is better because you can supply your own food. The plague will not have hit so badly in the remote area but watch out, the roads will be blocked. Try and look for off-road paths, like dirt roads. Do this before the government quarantines the roads. If quarantined, take your hand wagon. You're gonna have to walk through the forest. Take the shortlist of items mentioned above in that wagon.

Walk and camp your way up to that remote village. If you can't get a sail ship, take whatever you can, but be prepared to sail off the wind. A dinghy is better than nothing. Oh if you have a commercial fishing ship, it MUST have some lifeboats. The great thing about the commercial fishing ship is that you can LIVE on it.

Use your book on nautical navigation and your atlas, along with your compass and sextant (most ships should have inbuilt navigation anyway). Head to a very small uninhabited pacific island. There are thousands of tiny ones where nobody lives. Stay far away from continents. Head to the middle. If you can't find an island, you'll be fine on the boat, sailing without fuel. Save the fuel for epic chases in case of pirates who had the same idea of living on the sea. Use binoculars to spot them before they spot you. Pirates will usually have larger ships meaning they are faster, but you are smaller so less detectable.

In a zombie outbreak, it is survival of the fittest so don't think you are save out at sea. In fact, take only those you can trust. If they wouldn't die for you, they would probably compromise your life in a sticky spot. You would have to be prepared to die for any of the people you are taking too. I suggest sticking with family. No more than your direct family. Any more people might be too hard to sustain.

Living at sea is tough, so it is important to find that island and build yourself a shelter. A small island is better. One that can't be found on most atlases, and isn't named. It doesn't even need to have any animals. Just enough wood for you to make a shelter and fire.

Look for something like THIS. Maybe a little less beautiful since you don't want people to come and visit.

Don't worry about the navy at this stage. They'll be dealing with the zombie crisis.





STEP FOUR - SETTING UP BASE

You have found your island, after about 6 weeks, and you have your boat. That is all you need. Make a wooden shelter, but have a tent for the rainy nights. Grow your plants, keep your animals. You have a fishing boat. Fish are your new main diet. Build a cellar with your shovel and wood. It's easy. Make a massive hole, put a wooden cube in that hole with a hatch at the top. Fill the hole, and cover the cube just enough to let you access the hatch. Grow grass over it so foreign feet are less likely to identify it. Keep your valuables in there. You have limited petrol. Your generator, if you had enough time to get one, is only for emergencies. I'm not talking porn. I'm talking extracting information. When you are using your generator, milk it to the max. Your computer, once on, will tell you about the most efficient use of generators. You'll have downloaded shitloads of e-books beforehand, since you don't have an ISP. If for some reason you CAN connect to the internet via satellite or something, you are fucking lucky. Don't expect it. Make plans for what to do in case you spot another boat coming to land. Perhaps develop some sea tactics.

Make a farm. Do not keep large fires at night, they are easy to spot. Try to keep a fire going 24/7 and build it in the middle of the island. Keep it small so people can't see it from sea. When using fire, don't make it too large. If you burn all the trees you are fucked and need to find a new island.

This settlement is of course only half of your living. You can live on the boat too, and I suggest you do since it will be more comfortable. Try to make petrol or somehting that will run the generator. Generators can be rather fussy, but give it your best shot to use something they can run off. This is what your second generator is for. You can fuck it up. Also, keep half your supplies on the boat and half your supplies on the island. That way if one fucks up you have the other to go back to.

Your settlement should be made amoungst the trees, elevated if possible so as to deter wild animals if there are any. Most important to your survival is not being obvious. If someone comes, you can do fight or flight. This is what the bunker is for. Hide. If you can outnumber them, try and negotiate joint survival. If they don't co-operate you can drive them out with your weapons which are with you in the bunker. If zombies somehow come, they won't be smart enough to locate your hiding spot. You'll last a few days under there and you can her what's going on above you. (hopefully you will have made an airhole which comes out of a tree). Pick the zombies off slowly, following a plan you have followed. If it is a large group of pirates, stay in hiding. If they don't leave, you've got to surrender to them. Tough luck. Maybe they'll leave after they've looted your ship and settlement. If you are lucky, they won't discover the bunker, and assume you died or left on another boat. If you have to start with nothing, this is possible. You would have kept water treatment in your bunker, as well as a fish catching method. You'll be harder off, but you can do it.





STEP FIVE - LONG TERM SURVIVAL

You now have to think of the long term. Zombies probably can't breed. If they do, their humans will genetically be human, and be eaten by other zombies. If they are somehow zombies, they will eat everything into extinction anyway.

You will need to last for about three generations before the zombies die out. If in the rare case they flourish - highly unlikely, but in the case of I am Legend they may form communities. So be prepared.

If you find another family and you've threatened them, the first thing to do is breed with the woman. Once you've had a child, your families are bound together. They'll be less likely to kill you, unless of course you raped the woman. Be suave, and humanistic. Be hospitable after you've apologised for threatening them. Never trust them. Offer them stuff but watch yourselves. Until you've interbred, you're not family.

Set yourself up to keep going after you've died. Let your family keep going. It is your mission to seek out other humans. If you have not been so lucky, then you end the human race. Try not to let this happen. Negotiating with visitors is unlikely. There are the tiniest odds that a group of 3-4 people is going to land on your island. If it is someone, it will be pirates with weapons. If they do land, offer them everything you have and make them feel welcome to come back and restock at any time. Give them anything they ask.

"I want your shit"
If they ask that, you give it to them. Ask them if you may keep some to reproduce and repopulate so that you can sustain the island so they are welcome to come back and restock if they are passing by. That's the best you can do. Offer up what you have and hope for survival. Hopefully you can become friends and they'll stop bullying you for shit.

Anyway say the other thing has happened. You've established a community of survivors. Keep it expanding. Build a large wooden ship. Every decade or so (you'll need a calendar system) you'll need to travel to the nearest continent to see if the zombies have died out. If they have, SCOUT properly. It takes one zombie to start it all over again. If not, welcome back to civilisation. You inherit the buildings and knowledge. Re-establish culture. Assign your community to various aspects. Educate them along different roads using the existing research. Start by teaching mankind to restore electricity. Once you have that, continue breeding and learning and build back a community of several thousand people and then hit the hundreds of thousands, but don't repeat mankind's past mistakes, and overpopulate. It will take about 50 years, given the current written research, to get back to a similar way of life. We don't have to invent anything, because it's all there already. You just have to understand how it works so you can replicate it. Leave the invention for when mankind is back on track.

Take this opportunity to go and save relics from the pre-zombie era. You now have access to petrol and superhighways. Stroll into the Whitehouse and collect the top-secret documents and have a browse. Keep all the information of worth. After such neglect, the cities will be in disrepair.

Anyway I've gotten off track. Hopefully you'll see this in your lifetime. If not, you MUST set yourself up to last many generations. Once you're back, turn your island into a world wonder - the flicker of civilisation that survived.

Breeding is important. If you have the largest community, you have control.

________________________

And that, my friends, is the best possible solution to a zombie outbreak.
You don't head off the the military bases. Everyone will head there.
Don't head into the country. Zombies can travel on land too.
Don't head into the mountains. Other humans will kill you for their own survival.
Don't stay in the cities, that's for sure.
Don't make a travelling fleet on land. You'll bump into someone eventually.
 
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This.

Protect what is important.
 
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Thanks for all the responses guys.

Wow Lordy spent an entire hour writing it haha.
 
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Guardian from 4/20/09 to 8/4/09, then quit.
Back, Trial Guardian 6/12/11.


Proud To Have A Winddancir Original

Yeah um, this is why short posts fail.
Where exactly is a safe area, and what stops other zombies or humans from getting there In mass hysteria, you want to avoid other humans because they'll try to kill you for their own survival.
 
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I'm not sure I agree about the world's ecosystem being ruined, but you do bring up a good point: zombie animals.
Animals, especially packs of aggressive dogs, will combat zombies at some point during the outbreak. If the dogs can hold their own against the zombies, hopefully the virus (or whatever the cause) is not transmitable through ingestion. If that's the case, that would probably be a good reason to raise hunting packs. If the zombies win, and their virus has similar effects on other species, they will create zombie dogs... and, subsequently, zombie cats, birds, insects, etc. (follow the food chain) -- essentially, you are screwed.

I still think being athletic, or training to be athletic, is one of the most important factors to survival. Again, this is assuming the zombies can't keep up with you. Personally, I would look for steep hills or large trees (for tree houses/villages).

I did think about living on the sea. It was my first solution... But then it came back to the question of the zombies' physical abilites: Can they swim? Can they stay under water for extended periods of time?

I wouldn't want to be cornered on a boat or small island, if they can.


-- Also, logically, anything that can resist teeth - with a biting force not limited by pain - has to be heavy. While that sounds good, your movement will be more limited, and a crowd of zombies can easily pull on your limbs until they rip from your body.
 
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--------- 獅の炎 ----------

----------- 忍☯者 -----------

Way to go Sgt..lol jk.
 
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Guardian from 4/20/09 to 8/4/09, then quit.
Back, Trial Guardian 6/12/11.


Proud To Have A Winddancir Original

Yeah um, this is why short posts fail.
Where exactly is a safe area, and what stops other zombies or humans from getting there In mass hysteria, you want to avoid other humans because they'll try to kill you for their own survival.

There is no guarantee at all that they will try and kill you. Mass hysteria will set it, but there will be those who are intelligent enough to know what to do, and not be affected by the whole outbreak. Who is to say you yourself wouldn't be affected by the mass hysteria and lose your own mind anyhow.
 
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R.I.P. Lucy
!