Zombie Apocalypse; Blog 4

How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse; Blog 4

In previous blogs I’ve stressed the importants of keeping your torso free of gear. Wearing too much gear on you does three things: First, you are broadcasting to everyone you have a lot of things to help you survive and more of a reason for them to attack you. Second, if another human or zombie attacks, you are going to be encumbered by all of that gear on. Lastly, it’s more things for someone else to grab onto in a confrontation. So where do you put all of your essential gear then? Simple. A backpack.

Backpack

Here is what a backpack should have: It needs to be super durable, have a large carrying capacity and, most importantly, it needs to look like a normal bag. Some people go a little crazy when it comes to bags and think they need to go military style… Bad Idea. It may not seem like a big idea if you are wearing normal clothing and keeping on the down low.  However, it will stick out like a sore thumb in a city if you are carrying around a camo military style backpack. Even more so if you ARE wearing normal clothes. It’s just one more thing that could separate you from the masses of survivors and make you a target… If you can ignore the risk altogether, do so by carrying a normal looking bag.

BDS Tactical 3-Day Pack

This is the kind of backpack I would carry. It has the shape of a normal school style bag but has a lot of awesome features. It has a capacity of 3100 cubic inches so it can fit a ton of items; it comes in colors that are NOT camo (black being my preferred choice), has a slot for a 100oz water bladder and it has MOLLE webbing so you can hang extra things on it. The waist strap is removable or you can tuck it in which is nice. Some people may argue the MOLLE webbing is military. True, but it doesn’t have near as much as most military bags and I think the normal shape and color off-sets it enough to justify having the extra storage/MOLLE option. http://www.bdstacticalgear.com/pd-bds-tactical-three-day-pack.cfm

On a side note: What is the obsession/logic behind camo? Seriously think about that. Camo is made to help whoever is wearing it blend into the environment similar to the camo pattern. It tricks the mind and blurs the human shape into the surroundings thus keeping you concealed. If you are in a city, which is made up of mostly concrete, brick, and metal…. How does wearing multicam or ACU prints help hide you? Even if you had on UDC (urban digital camo) or A-TACS, you will stand out walking amongst others and people will think you are Military/Police personnel, which is illegal like I mentioned in a previous blog if you are not. You will definitely stick out MORE wearing any other camo pattern in a city because you don’t match anything in your surroundings and are just drawing more attention to yourself. In an urban environment you should wear neutral colors that let you hide in plain sight; blend in with the people around you and make people pass over you. To me that makes more sense then looking like a tool wearing woodland camo in the middle of New York City.  That is unwanted and stupid attention that could have easily been avoided.

/Rant

Be Prepared. Be SMART. Be Incognito.

                                                (8bit) Brandt

Too Much Info Tuesday

“Teepee” Fire

This is the most common fire and the majority of people have seen it. Basic idea is to lean pieces of wood together in the shape of a teepee with the kindle in the center. Light the kindle, it catches the wood over it aflame and, boom, you have a fire. Pros: This fire is quick. Cons: This fire is quick. What I mean by that is this: The fire is easy to set up and get some flames started. The problem is that it burns out and loses heat quickly. This happens because of the shape/layout of the wood. Since it is teepee shaped and the wood is leaning against each other, it has to be perfectly balanced. When the wood burns the shape collapses. You have to constantly rebuild the teepee, poke the embers, and add more wood. This is a time consuming and wasteful process that doesn’t give you a fire that lasts through the night. When you need to make food, setup your tent, etc. you don’t have time to waste on a crappy fire.

The “Upside down” Fire

This fire layout is the way to go. For the same amount of wood used in the Teepee fire, it will burn longer, you will have to mess with it less and it will give off more heat. The key is in the layout of the wood. The upside down name comes from how it burns. In the teepee fire, the kindle is on the ground in the middle and burns the wood from the ground up. In the upside down fire, the kindle is set on top and burns the fire from the top to the bottom; hence the upside down idea. The other big difference is the wood layout itself. In the teepee, the smaller wood is in the center near the kindling and the larger pieces are leaning against each other on the outside. In upside down fire; the biggest pieces are on the bottom and each crisscrossed “layer” of wood gets a little smaller and a little closer together until you get to the kindling and tinder on the top. The benefits of the kindle being on top, the layers coming together at the top and the bigger wood on bottom are huge.

Benefits of Upside Down Fire

1)   For the same amount of wood used in a teepee fire, the upside down fire burns longer, burns hotter, and holds it shape.

2)   Burning hotter means it burns cleaner. This means there is less smoke so your fire isn’t as noticeable during the day due to heavy black smoke associated with lower temperature fires.

3)   Since you don’t have to mess with it and add wood as often, you have a fire that will burn longer through the night and you won’t have to worry about banking your fire to make it last until the morning.

4)   The layers burn through each other stopping all the wood from burning at once. The reason the layers get closer together at the top is so when one layer collapses, it falls on the slightly bigger one below and ignites that wood. That layer burns away and the pattern continues. By the time you get to the bottom layer, you have a huge pile of hot embers that ignite the logs at the bottom, which eventually make even more hot embers. These hot embers make it easy to start a quick fire in the morning to cook food or warm up.

Here is a video of a guy showing a perfect example of an upside down fire and how long it lasts. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing I’ll give you the summary. 3 layers with kindle and tinder on top, burned through the night and he was able to add some more logs to the embers in the morning to start another small fire. 10+ hours later he made ANOTHER fire. That’s legit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjBfzyz-xM8&feature=related Skip forward to about 1:00 to see him start building the fire.

Heat Reflection

Last thing I want to go over is how to get the most heat out of your fire. This is especially important if the temperature drops at nighttime to freezing or below freezing. Quick lesson on heat from a fire: They emit IR or infrared waves. Those waves hit us and we feel heat. However, some of the IR waves only hit the side of us facing the fire and a lot miss us completely. Something you can do to warm your backside is to hang a heat reflection blanket behind you. Heat reflection blankets have a foil like side that reflects radiant energy (body heat) back to the person it is wrapped around. You can use this to reflect the radiant energy from the fire as well. You can do this by hanging it from a tree or mounting it between poles/tree branches. This will reflect all of the IR waves back that missed you and it will hit your backside. You are now being warmed from both sides. This will also block the light from your fire a little bit more keeping your campsite from being seen from a distance as easily. You can build up rocks on the other side of the fire to reflect heat on that side back to you and shield the light some more. http://www.rei.com/product/407106/space-all-weather-blanket

Thank you for making it through the first TMIT.  Like most things that are over looked while preparing, this is a simple and intuitive idea, but it will save your life. Surviving an emergency situation isn’t all about having badass guns or crazy armor; It’s about being prepared for anything, including Mother Nature. If you can’t stay warm or feed yourself out in the wild… how do you plan on doing anything else?

Be Prepared. Be Smart. Be Incognito.

                                                (8bit) Brandt

An Intro on How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

Hey everybody, welcome to the first installment of my blog on the Zombie Apocalypse and how to not become a part of the walking dead.

I wanted to start with an introduction to let everyone know my standpoint or philosophy on how to survive in a world overrun by zombies. The basis of it is this: If you are prepared for a zombie outbreak, you are prepared for anything.  Everything I say; be it what to wear, how to not draw attention to yourself, or survival gear you should have, can be carried over to other scenarios. Natural disaster, power outage, and socio-breakdown (riot) preparations are all very similar to preparing for zombies.

That is one thing I want you guys to remember while reading my blog: I look at this as a realist. As humans IRL, we have certain restrictions and needs put upon us by our body and physics. We can’t carry 30 weapons at the same time like in GTA; we can only handle so much weight. We don’t have an infinite ammo cheat we can type in every time we run low. If we get hurt we need hours of rest and proper care; picking up a med kit and chilling in a safe room for 5 minutes won’t do any good.

So, if my weapons aren’t as badass as the chainsaw launcher or the machete with laser sight attachment you have envisioned, or as glorifying as your idea of sitting on top of a crane and sniping zombie faces off with a .50 cal… That’s because I don’t waste my time on things that won’t help me actually survive an emergency situation, including a zombie infestation. I will show you guys some awesome things, but they all serve a legitimate purpose. I go for tactical, not tacti”cool”. My goal is to pass on viable knowledge to my fellow zombie enthusiasts.

Physics and weight aside, there is one other thing that has had a huge impact on how I have prepared for an emergency situation. That thing is called the Grey Man Theory. Here is one of my favorite definitions; “The Grey Man NEVER draws attention to himself by word, dress, action, or mannerism” (http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2007/05/next-steps-grey-man.html).

If you take only one thing from my blog, let it be the Grey Man Theory. Here is my take on it: Don’t let on you are a badass. Pretty simple and is common sense if you think about it. If you were walking down the street in a shady part of town, you wouldn’t fan yourself with a stack of money. That is unwanted and suicidal attention. Same thing holds true in an emergency situation. If people are dying on the street after months of a zombie barrage and you are walking around in body armor and BDUs, proudly displaying your sawed off shotty and mountain of ammo, odds are people are going to want that and will try to take it by force. A Grey Man has all the weapons, knowledge, and supplies needed but looks just like any other person trying to survive. People think, for reasons beyond me, that the only issue they will face in a zombie apocalypse are zombies. No. Other starving, scared and/or crazy humans will be just as dangerous to you and your own. 

Real life example: The earthquake that hit Haiti. They had no home, no way out and had to resort to looting to get by until help arrived.

People walking around with guns ablazin’ were stopped by police. People with supplies in plain sight were beat or killed… It was chaos, it was real and it was recent. A zombie apocalypse will not be any different. People will do what they think they have to do to survive and you do not want to give them anymore of a reason for them to want to victimize you. Be prepared, be smart, be incognito.

So with that said, I hope you guys will enjoy the blogs to come. I know I’m going to have a blast writing them. I will talk about weapons, defensive gear, clothing, camping gear, how much a person should carry, bugging in, bugging out, fighting tactics, how to stay incognito, and much, much more. My goal is to pass on information to help you survive a zombie outbreak in the safest and most down-to-earth way possible. If you can prepare for zombies successfully, you can prepare for anything successfully.

Here’s to surviving.

Be Prepared. Be Smart. Be Incognito.

                                                (8bit) Brandt