Zombie Survival Guide 3

In the previous two lessons, (which can be reached here and here), Lina Friend, author of Nightmares of the Apocalypse and various hilarious webpages (like Devoid of Thought), kindly covered the aspects of surviving an insurmountable army of the undead, sub-genus: Zombie.
While many others who've played Whitewolf Games or AD&D claim that we should truly fear the Vampires, this is utter nonsense. Vampires can be killed THOUSANDS of ways, but zombies are the most tenacious of the undead genus.
Whassat? You don't believe me? You honestly think a vampire is more dangerous than a zombie?
Let me enlighten you to just a few ways vampires can be offed or rendered helpless.

Vampires:
1. Sunlight. (classic)
2. Holy cross jammed in their forehead or where the sun don't shine. (can't touch it and thus, can't remove it)
3. Holy water down the throat.
4. Punch their teeth out and cut off their hands. (can't bite you or effectively cut you, now can they?)
5. Destroy/sanctify their bural ground/coffin.
6. Take their home earth when they leave. (if they live where they 'lived', then this could take a while)
7. Sever their head, shove garlic in their mouth, burn both the body and head, scatter the body's ashes to the ocean and bury the head's ashes.
8. Burn them. (Fire 3 works nice, if you have Final Fantasy black magic)
9. Scatter thousands of mustard seeds on your doorstep. (this is from a legend that vampires loved to count)
10. Don't invite them inside. (they starve, end of problem)
11. Stake them through the heart.
12. Have every house and burial ground blessed, garlic wreaths hung from every light and every window sealed with duct tape. (just to be sure!)
13. Trick them into falling into a pit of acid. (easier than it sounds)
14. While they're sleeping, remove their brain. (in the event that there isn't anything wooden readily avaiable)
15. Gouge out their eyes and stab them repeatedly. (can't use their blood points to regenerate if they're out of blood, now can they?)

Zombies:
1. Cut their heads off.
2. Blow them to (expletive).
3. Burn them to nothing.
4. Pulverize their bones.
5. Cut off only one foot. (they walk in circles!)

Vampires: 15
Zombies: 5

Just in the number of ways I could think of off the top of my head, vampires can die three ways for every ONE that zombies can. Zombies, my friend, are the champs of the Undead Heap. And what a smelly one it is.

Now, Sun Tzu or Confusicus or Ghandi (one of those kung fu dudes) said that you should "Know thy enemy and the battle is won." or something all spiritual and crap like that.
So, taking that half-recalled wisdom to heart, we have to find out about the different kinds of zombies you might face.

Normal zombie - This is the easiest to deal with, because they're no better than robots shuffling along at the rate of a snail. Don't let the cameras fool you, it takes hours for them to cross a street. In fact, a lot of the deaths that these zombies cause are usually traffic accidents as impatient taxi drivers swerve to dodge them only to run into a Mack truck that had the same idea. Also, if they trip, they might fall on you and pin you while their buddies slowly shuffle over you, boring you to tears, then death with their monotonous moaning.

In fact, these types of zombies are usually too stupid and stiff to operate anything more complex than a low staircase, so putting a bunch of bricks on your doorstep will halt these guys. Hell, these guys don't even eat (lore says they eat brains, but this is a lie). They bludgeon, trample or bore people to death. Obviously, most of the zombies from this section were in middle management or cubicles. Don't want these guys overruning your city? Send a bunch of able-bodied workers out in advance to cut off one foot from each zombie. Then the zombies will simply turn in circles until they crumble to dust.

Flesh-Eating Zombie (Ghoul) - These guys are the ones that most movies feature. Actually, the appropriate term for these types of zombies is 'Ghoul'. Ghouls have a ravenous appetite and a taste for flesh (thus, you will never find a vegetarian in this group as they die trying to eat celery or lettuce or something). These guys move much faster than normal zombies and are the ones to watch out for.

Ghouls are usually best dealt with by severing their heads (and, if you're feeling brutal, their hands too). Ghouls don't show up in as great a quantity as most of their victims stay dead instead of rising as a fellow ghoul.

Stinky Flesh-Eating Zombie (Ghast) - Even more rare than the Ghoul is the Ghast. These guys are no different from ghouls except they died in a swamp/sewer, so they stink and they're more prone to exploding when exposed to flamethrowers (swamps and sewers are high in methane content, after all).

G/T/U/V/W/X/Y/Z-Virus Zombie - Probably the most annoying of type of zombie yet. These zombies apparently have a 'fear aura' as most military personnel who encounter them seem incapable of firing until it's practically too *@#$@#$% late and gun shop owners become so irrational in their terror that they believe that a stupid crossbow will hurt these zombies. (See Reference: Resident Evil)

The only way to deal with these zombies is to kill them fast and stab them six or seven times after they fall to the ground, just to be sure.

Fall-Apart Flesh-Eating Zombie - You're probably thinking "YES! A zombie that's easy to beat!" Think again, bucko. These zombies are by far some of the most difficult zombies to beat, mostly because they're filled with a magical green substance that allows them to move any severed (but mostly intact) limb to attack you. That's right, you need a head shot with a high-explosive and a lot of knives or a lot of grenades and bazookas.

Luckily, these zombies are usually backed by demons, so holy water works on them.

Mummy - Some say these guys aren't ipso-facto Zombies, but they're actually very similar. Some people might say that you can't fight a mummy. This is wrong. A mummy just needs to be annihiliated. This calls for big explosive weaponry and either acid or naplam. You don't want any part of this thing surviving, including those jars that hold it's organs.

Revenant - There are actually two forms of revenants. The first is powered by a demon/evil god, making them very difficult to beat without totally destroying the body. The second is one that was betrayed and then killed by you, and is generally powered by their own will. Either way, if you have a revenant hunting you, it will become apparent as they act like smarter zombies, but they'll try to strangle you to death. Just like the mummy, high explosives are a must have.

Lich - A lich is someone who, using a combination of necromancy and special ingredients to transfer their lifeforce into a vessel (such as a gem, staff or statue), has turned themselves into a member of the living-dead. Upon their actual demise, they rise again as a lich. This means that you're essentially dealing with a magic-user zombie. You can call them "Maggot Face" and they can't say a thing, 'cause it's true! But they will fireball your ass, so wearing asbestos underwear is a good idea.

The most effective way to kill a lich is to smash their skulls in, rip their jaws off or find the vessel of their lifeforce and smash it. Liches can't be too far from their lifeforce vessels without dying, so anything shiny or suspicious in the immediate area should be destroyed as a possible vessel.

Special Power Zombie - Often called 'Boss' Zombies, you can't predict these guys. They have anything from just the ability to be really big to having self-regeneration, with powers ranging from fireball wielding to driving hotrods (called 'Dragula'). These are ALWAYS made by either magic, heavy metal or by some new super science virus/nanomachine fusion.

Now that you know what you're up against, it's time to look at what you have to arm yourself with. Remember, go for versatility, since you don't know what kind of zombie you'll be facing, but don't be afraid to stock up on something that you know you'll wind up using.

Hand-To-Hand Weapons - This is one type of weapon you should ALWAYS have on hand. The easiest to find is a baseball bat or a lead pipe, but remember that these things are cheap, and thus are prone to being bent or broken.

I would go with a traditionally made two-hundred fold katana (or thousand fold, if you can find such a master). The process of making one requires some of your blood to be forged into the weapon and also numerous blessings. This takes a while to finish, but has the added bonus of being a Blood Weapon (+5 to morale and damage), but it's also officially a blessed weapon (+4 versus undead), which might come in extra handy if the zombies are demonic (or have a demon directly helping them).

Other good solid weapons are the axe and the hammer. You can pick up quality axes or hammers at your local Ren Fair (where you'll find the light stainless steel ones best suited for constant close-in fighting or for defense weapons for the kiddies) or at a hardware store.

A warning about sledgehammers and wood-chopping axes: They're pretty difficult for the young'uns to wield in a crisis (and trust me, zombie-fighting is already a crisis), so choose lighter ones. They're also easier to swing around for extended periods of time.

Guns - Contrary to popular belief, guns are actually pretty useless against undead of any kind, unless you happen to be using either incendiary, explosive or armor-piercing rounds. These rounds do more damage and are more likely to damage other nearby undead.

Why are guns useless? Because zombies don't care if their appendix or their spleen get shot out. It might cause them to fall down from the impact, but they'll get back up. Internal organs are about as useful for a zombie as a church organ would be for a military operation. Except for maybe signaling, synchronizing movements or dropping on the enemy, it's useless.

Rifles are even more useless, unless you have a sniper who can kneecap most of the undead, in which case, you can buy yourself some decent running time.

The only type of gun that'll be universally useful against undead are the full-automatic or semi-automatic guns. You'll find that, while you get crappy mileage out of a clip (Uzi clips rarely last more than a minute in a swarm of zombies and will hardly do much), they're great for those heroic last stands or the more frequent insane-with-fear panic mode.

Explosives - Explosives are MUCH better than guns. Not only are they easy to pack and (usually) easy to use, but they're also more likely to take out a whole cluster with much less effort. Grenades are your best friends in a zombie-infested town, so long as you always have cover when using them.

Construction Lot/Stockyard - Believe it or not, but some of the best makeshift weaponry you can get is at a construction lot. Bricks, cement, two-by-fours, iron girders, all of these can be used to cut the undead horde in half or quarter them (figuratively and literally). Cement is useful dry when in bags (easy to drop), or when wet, makes for a great slowing tactic or wash away if you can get an entire cement truck full. Bricks are easy to drop or throw. The boards can be used to hide pitfalls or plan teeter-totter based attacks. The girders are a bit harder to use, but there's always a crane for those, so you can use it to swing the girders like a mace/hammer, knock stockpiles of girders onto undead or drop it's own stock to clear an exit for the operator.

Secret Military Science Research Center - If you stumble on one of these, everyone is going to be dead, but that hardly means there's nothing of value. Places like this always have a few experimental projects that are just what the zombie-fighting witch doctor ordered. This could be anything from giant war machines of mass destruction to powersuits with flesh-rending lasers, from prototype combat androids to a special zombie-destroying antibody/explosive. Or maybe even a nuke.

Why are you staring at me like that?

Look, if you wanna die feeling like you're a buffet, it's your right, but I ain't going down as some dead guy's midnight snack.

Oh, you were wondering how you'd pilot the war machines or the powersuits? There's always a surviving-but-dying scientist who'll live long enough to give you instructions on how to pilot it. Just make sure the computer's AI doesn't get too uppity or else you'll be playing the part of Dave in 2001: A Zombie-Killing Odsessy.

Vehicles - Vehicles are, next to construction lots, Ren Fairs and Secret Military Science Research Centers, your next best chance at survival. However, you have to optimize your vehicular options. Or, in layman's terms, appropriately use the vehicles that you have at your disposal for the right tasks. You might be eager to jump into a porsche and take it for a spin, but FOCUS! There are zombies out there! Hit one at 240 MPH and it might splatter nice, but you'll have ruined that porsche!

If there's anything you should go zombie-mowing in, it's a nice tough tank. Unless the undead are of the Fall-Apart or Special Zombie categories, these puppies will take out at least a few hundred with it's treads alone. And it's main cannon will do some LOVELY damage to those clusters off in the distance...

The next selections are either SWAT police trucks or military ATVs (All Terrain Vehicles). Both of these have the added bonus of easy to use weaponry and can be used to ferry any refugees to better defensive points.

Believe it or not, but when the zombies come, you'll want an SUV. It doesn't matter if you're upset about their gas mileage or their offroad capability or their tendency to roll over, YOU'LL WANT AN SUV.

SUVs are some of the best expendable Horde Busters than you can get.
Need to clear a path for yourself with only an SUV? Plow right through.
Need a swath? Accelerate the SUV while charging the hordes, then turn the wheel sharply and leap out as the SUV begins it's tip.
Need a last resort? Just start the engine. It'll blow up REAL good soon enough!

Psychic Powers - If you can develop them spontaneously or through advanced technology (found in the Secret Military Science Research Center), you'll want something useful. Don't develop wussy powers like ESP or telepathy. You'll want either pyrokinesis (manipulation of fire), telekinesis (I've heard of this, but I'm guessing that it's manipulation of telephones or telephone poles), dinokinesis (the manipulation of dinosaurs) or, the much vaunted dietikinesis (manipulation of gods and other dieties).

Magic - This might be a stretch, but in the event of a massive zombie attack, chances are that magic will make a comeback. Make sure you have copies of many of the books of the Dark Arts, because while these talk about creating undead and demon-summoning, they also include instructions on how to BANISH said things.

If, for some reason, none of the types of magic work, try yelling out things at random. Sometimes, you'll stumble on a brand new 'Magic Word', and get something destructive. Add expletives, so the magic knows you're serious.

But should you wind up hurled through a dimension portal and end up in a traditional swords & sorcery world, and THIS is the locale of the zombie infestation, use Fire Magic. Undead are ALWAYS going to be weak to Fire Magic. Except ghosts, which may or may not be effected negatively.

Salt is said to bind the undead to the earth, so try flinging bags at the hordes. It'll do a passable missile weapon at the very least.

Kick-Ass Martial Arts - Yeah, I'm listing this as if you could go out and buy yourself some L33t N1nJ4 Sk33lz! Besides, technically, you _can_ buy martial arts skills. You can pay for kung fu classes at a community college, a high school, a mall or something. Don't bother going past late intermediate-early expert unless you're really into it. You're generally enough of a zombie-stopping badass by that point that you don't need any more classes.

Or, if you're stupi-er, unlucky enough to have the invansion of zombies occur before you can get to said level, you can always hope the Secret Military Science Research Center has an instant learning machine like they had in the Matrix.

1) Use things that require some form of fuel (gasoline or electricity) first. This way, should the power plants die down and all the available fuel run out, you can toss away whatever required said fuel without mourning over it. Chainsaws, no matter how efficient they look, fall into the expendable category, as do computers and vehicles.
2) Make sure to hold back on using area-effect weapons like bombs, bazookas or hand grenades unless there's an easy to hit cluster of zombies. This will maximize damage while minimizing your ammunition costs.
3) Wait until you're sure that you've got a good shot before flinging bricks. Since they're OH so non-aerodynamic, they'll have crappy accuracy unless you practice your brick throwing. (which you won't, you lazy bastard!) This at least saves up on your resources, so the chances that you'll have to go out and fetch those bricks that missed their target are much lower.
4) Remember, the more you take down sooner, the less likely there will be more to take down later. Just like vampires, the longer the zombies are around, the more likely you'll go insane or die or both.
5) When in an emergency, don't spare the ammo. Survive now, worry about ammo later. Chances are, if you check in any trash bin or toilet stall in the opposite gender's bathroom, you'll find all the ammo, clues and keys you need to get to the next sector-er, city.
6) When in doubt, HIT IT AGAIN. Don't wait for it to bite you on the ankle.

So concludes Lesson 3.
In our next lesson, we'll learn keywords to look out for when trying to avoid Zombie-infested areas and places not to go.
God bless Raccoon Cit-dammit, they nuked it again!