Long Range Weapons

Armaments used at this distance fall into one of two categories: Obstructive or destructive:

Obstructive weapons - this category is defined by the fact that it would be very difficult to deliver a killing blow with the weapon, given its weight, length, and physical structure. Although they are long (six feet or more) they lack an offensive fixture (a blade, axehead, or sharpened tip) to realistically neutralize an attacker. As such, fighting techniques are meant largely to delay or obstruct the undead. The obstructive category generally encompasses one type of long-range weapon: the staff.

Destructive weapons - All other weapons in long-range combat fall under the destructive category, as they have the sufficient properties (mass, weight, structure) to deliver vicious blows to the undead. They will have some form of offensive attachment, typically made of iron or steel, that has the ability, given sufficient training by the bearer, to eliminate an attacker from a safe distance. Although engaging in long distance warfare with a ghoul is a relatively safe engagement, using weapons in this class requires more skill and training than any other undead combat range.

Techniques

“War’s a brain splattering, windpipe-slitting art.” - Lord Byron

CAUTION!

The methods and techniques described herein are meant solely for human v. zombie combat. Under no circumstances should they be used or attempted against other human beings.

Such action would not only be illegal and immoral, but ineffective, as these techniques take advantage of traits, behaviors, and vulnerabilities exhibited only by the living dead.

Our analysis of techniques covers the following areas:

• Long Range Combat - 4-6 feet (1.2-1.8 meters)
• Melee Range Combat - 2-3 feet (.6-.9 meters)
• Close Quarters Combat - 1 foot or less (.3 meters)
• Multiple Attackers
• Unarmed Combat

Mental Preparation

Many warriors have acknowledged that the most difficult part of preparing for and winning in battle is not the physical, but the mental factor. Nowhere is this truer than when fighting the undead.

Not only must you overcome the psychological lunacy of defending yourself against a walking corpse, but you may face the unfortunate situation of having to do so against a ghoul that was once someone to whom you had a personal connection.

As a result, it has often been stated that in order to survive in a zombie-infested world, you have to become somewhat of a zombie yourself. It is critical that you detach your feelings and emotions from the threat you face.

Zombies are not friends, not family, not Zen-like otherworldly creatures. The only thing the undead represent is a threat to your life and the lives of the remaining humans in your care. You cannot afford the time or the luxury of waxing philosophic about the zombie in your proximity: who they were, how they were infected, how they ended up in front of you. Your only objective should be to either evade or eliminate the threat.

Long Range Combat

Safety level of engagement: High

Combat skill required at this distance: Moderate-High

Percent chance of infection at this range: 2-5%

Long-range combat is defined in this manual as combat with an undead attacker at a distance of four to six feet (1.2 to 1.8 meters) between opponents.

Long-range combat affords you the greatest level of personal safety to fight the living dead. Studies have shown, however, that it is also the most difficult range to engage and eliminate your attacker quickly. It takes substantial skill wield a long-range weapon and consistently deliver destructive blows, so weapon selection, training, and practice are essential if you are frequently engaging undead combat at this distance.

Welcome to the Club

This site seeks to accomplish a singular goal - to provide the scientific, technical and combative knowledge to destroy the threat of the living dead, perhaps seconds from ending your life and that of your loved ones, using nothing but hand-to-hand combat weapons and techniques.

There will be no discussion of fortifications, firearms, supply rationing, or modes of transport. There are other noteworthy works and organizations that cover these subjects in detail. The focus of our work is simple: to develop you into an effective warrior against the living dead. This site is not meant for the trained soldier or elite martial artist, although they can certainly benefit from the information. It was created for you, the regular civilian, with minimal prior knowledge or skill in the combat arts.

The knowledge provided herein, however, should not be construed as either endorsement or encouragement to engage in unnecessary hand-to-hand combat with the undead. The safest method to neutralize a zombie still remains to destroy its brain via a long-distance ballistic weapon, such as a firearm or crossbow.

The fact is, however, that during a zombie outbreak there is nearly a 100% chance you will have to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Perhaps you reside in a state where possession of a firearm is a legally difficult process. Perhaps the sound of a discharged firearm will draw more undead attackers to your position. Perhaps you’ve run out of ammunition. For those times when the only path to safety depends on the strength in your arms and the weapon in your hand, the knowledge in this work will prove most useful.

If you’re reading this site because you find yourself in the midst of an undead infestation and/or imminent attack, then heed these words carefully. The information contained within can be put to immediate use for your safety. If you’re reading this during a time of relative peace and safety, good for you. You’ve taken the first step in obeying one of the earliest rules of combat: “In times of peace, prepare for war.” Learn the lessons in these pages well; it is our hope you will never have to use them.

HQ

Melee Weapons

At melee combat range, you will engage with your attacker at a modestly safe distance, and most likely employ a weapon that falls into one of two categories:

Bludgeons: weapons in this category include any object that can be used to cause a depressive fracture on the skull and penetrate the brain cavity.  They include, but are not limited to formal weapons such as maces, war hammers, and cudgels, in addition to any number of improvised blunt trauma tools.

Blades: any weapon two to three feet in length with a single or double sharpened edge falls into this armament class, and includes swords, machetes, hand axes, and tomahawks.

Bladed weapons of sufficient weight can be used to strike and penetrate the skull. Lighter edged weapons made of thinner steel that may have difficulty penetrating the cranium should focus attacks on the soft tissue of the neck.

Combat Exercises

Disregard specialized “bodybuilding” workouts that overdevelop particular muscle groups, as well as exercises that require any unwieldy or complicated equipment. Your fitness routine should replicate the functional movements you may be required to accomplish during evasion or defense against the living dead. Your exercise regimen should be borne not out of vanity, but of necessity and survival.

Consider what you may have to do in a given day during an outbreak. You may have to:

• run from attacking ghoul mobs
• climb over abandoned vehicles
• crawl under fencing
• reinforce your fortification
• gather supplies
• dispatch a group of zombies with several skull-crushing blows.

It’s no surprise that research has shown individuals with the highest survival rate have been those employed in traditional “blue-collar” positions that require a high degree of manual labor, working their muscles almost daily in practical applications.

Most of the large muscle groups are stressed during a zombie attack:

• Deltoids (shoulders), Pectorals (chest) - pushing attackers, thrusting swords or spears.
• Latissimus Dorsi (back) - pulling/extracting weapons, swinging bludgeons.
• Quadriceps (thighs), Hamstrings (back of legs) - running, climbing, kicking and stomping.
• Abdominals (stomach), Obliques (sides of the stomach), overall core - almost every action listed previously (swinging, thrusting, pushing, pulling) engages your core muscles in some capacity.

These are the muscle groups on which you should focus in your exercise routine. You should also employ movements that require coordination of several muscles groups in unison. Simple, practical movements should be emphasized. Disregard movements that concentrate on small muscles, such as calf raises, concentration curls, and triceps extensions. Stress the large muscle roups aggressively, and the smaller ones will take care of themselves.

Additionally, you need to be able to accomplish your routine with no equipment, (weights, mats, DVD player) silently (given your particular security situation), and in a confined area. This will replicate a possible scenario during a zombie outbreak where you must remain quiet in a small space. Even running becomes a luxury during the course of an undead siege.

Thus, focusing on calisthenics and bodyweight exercises are ideal. Done with regularity at an appropriate intensity level, you will be fit enough to defend yourself quite effectively for a significant duration.

Base Level of Fitness

What is considered a base level of fitness? At the minimum, an individual should be able accomplish the following sequence in its entirety without feeling considerably spent:

• Jog five miles without cessation (12 minutes per mile or less)
• 35 consecutive pushups (standard straight-leg version) or 45 pushups (alternative knee version)
• 5 unassisted pull-ups or 10 assisted pull-ups
• 50 jumping jacks

There is a significant difference, however, between “base” and “combat-ready” fitness. Without a sufficient level of stamina, having to fend off multiple undead attacks during a full blown outbreak will reduce an unprepared individual to an exhausted shell of a human being within hours. To be a truly effective warrior against the undead, regular, sustained exercise must be maintained.

Joseph Gartner, Orthodontist

7th Combat Sciences Group, McLean, Virginia.

A secretary seats me in a conference room on the floor of the Biological Analysis Division, where I’m to meet Joseph Gartner, Director of the Combat Sciences Group. She explains that, as is typical of his scheduling, Mr. Gartner is running late. When he arrives fifteen minutes later carrying a thick manila folder, he apologizes profusely, explaining that he was gathering the file in his hands for our discussion. “Not sure how geeked you wanted to get with this interview,” Gartner says. He is an unassuming man, balding, and wears thick, dark-rimmed glasses. His demeanor is gentle, with an underlying hint of sadness in his voice.

To tell the truth, I ignored the email when I first received it. This was when the Internet was still functioning on a sporadic basis, and I assumed it was either a joke from one of my associates or some new Nigerian spam circulating the Web. Even though the age-modified draft had been in effect for over four months, I thought my specialization would keep me 4F, and well, you can see that I’m hardly built for the front line effort.

Gartner pats his paunchy belly.

It was only after receiving the certified letter that read “Failure to appear constitutes a violation of the War Powers Act, and will result in immediate incarceration and termination of medical licenses,” that I figured I should show up. Still, I couldn’t believe that I would be of any use to them, given my specialty.

And what was your specialty?

Pediatrics. One week I was knee deep in cavities and overbites and extracting chewing gum from braces, the next I’m sitting in front of the Surgeon General, the Assistant Defense Secretary, and the Director of the CDC, discussing this new division of the Combat Sciences Group. I’d heard of the CSG from what I read in the papers, mostly about the work done to analyze the virus’ pathology and it’s neurological pathways, but the more the ADS discussed the concept of the new group, the more it made sense.

He unfolds the manila envelope, and removes several x-rays.

Working with the teeth of children, you’re privy to the evolution of their dental history - how the molars are forming, anomalies arising from new growth, how the bicuspids are developing. One of the things the team realized with the virus was that once a human was first infected, the brain wasn’t the only thing that underwent an evolution. The same way Z’s can freeze rock solid in the winter, and return in the spring like the cherry blossoms, the fundamental cellular composition of an undead specimen was altered after infection, including the teeth. See here, this is the dental x-ray of a normal non-infected adult. Now take a look at this one a human, six hours after infection. Here…

He pulls out a magnifying glass and holds it over x-ray base of the upper jawline.

See these tiny protrusions at the root of each tooth? Amazing. What do they look like to you?

Tiny spikes?

Correct! Or anchors, if you will. Even before the victim has fully turned, this is already taking place. What this also doesn’t show you is the level of enamel on his maxillaries, which is significantly thicker than a typical human. Can you fathom the implications of this discovery? We realized that whatever this virus does, it isn’t as simplistic as bringing a dead body back to life. It alters the infected’s anatomy to withstand cellular destruction in freezing cold, resist salt water decomposition at sea, and reinforce its fundamental weapon, it’s teeth. Whether out of lack of interest, resources, or funding, no other group, government or NGO, took full advantage of this data. It is for this reason that our division was formed, to determine if we could approach the battle from a different angle, by fighting the enemy’s primary means of attack and infection.

What ideas were you expected to develop?

What weren’t we expected to develop! If I could tell you some of the esoteric, exotic, and straight up crazy ideas we kicked around, I tell you, feeding them candy wasn’t too far off the mark. Our marching orders were to attempt to do the opposite of what I was trained to do, and have done all my life. Instead of protecting and nurturing enamel and dentin, we were now attempting to reverse engineer and potentially accelerate their decay.

So, the government wanted to rot zombies’ teeth?

Don’t laugh, it isn’t as crazy as it sounds. At the point our group was developed, infections were reported on five continents, briefs were coming in that showed for every one zombie that was killed, four were created. The brass thought if we really get our heads underwater on eliminating them outright, is there any way to slow the rate of infection. This was just one of many tactics.

At first, it was all about analysis; what happens two hours, six hours, 12 hours after infection. After we determined that post-reanimation, cellular evolution seems to cease, we went on the offensive. We worked closely with the chemical weapons division at first, on what was called “Operation Methuselah.” We worked for months to develop an airborne accelerant could be that could be airdropped on a hot zone that would ‘defang’ nests within 30 days. We never really got it to work effectively - either the gas would be ineffective, or the dispersal agent wouldn’t dissipate, and would drift into neighboring safe zones. Plus, any isolated humans in the area would also be affected. That’s when the brass drew the line. “Fighting the undead is bad enough, but having to do it toothless is too much for anyone to bear,” is what the SG said. The only compound we created that seemed to work was a topical agent that caused extremely rapid decay within 48 hours. The Infected Subjects Research division used it for awhile on their cases. I hate to think of the poor intern whose job it was to brush those bastards’ teeth with the stuff. This is before we developed the “Tommy.”

The Tommy?

A nickname the team came up with for the TME, or Tactical Mandible Extractor. Once the higher-ups put the thumb screws to us about our “unacceptable failure rate” on chemical initiatives, our department head decided to change direction and have us work closer with the Manufacturing and Engineering Division. In hindsight, it was the right move, particularly because of the extensive use of tools like the Tommy. It’s probably easier if I just show you.

We walk down the corridor from his office through a set of double doors that opens up to a hallway with a thick glass partition, separating us from a large open examination room. In it, five zombies stand several feet apart, a steel cable runs from an eyehook in the wall and connects to a carabiner lashed to a leather belt around their waists.

Here, put these on.

He hands me a set of Tyvek coveralls, a face shield, and nose clips. We enter the room and Gartner picks up a long fiberglass staff with what looks like a miniature bear trap on one end, and pruning shears on the other.

The trickiest part is getting the timing right.

As Gartner steps closer to one of the subjects, it extends its arms and moans. He uses the shears end of the device and snaps off all four fingers of the creature’s left hand. The digits scatter to the ground like bloated caterpillars. With another snap, the fingers on the right hand fall to the floor. Finally, as the ghoul continues to moan, Gartner jams the trap end of the device into its mouth. He pulls a lever on the handle, which releases a spike through bottom of its jaw. With a single yank, Gartner pulls the ghoul’s jawbone clean off the skull. It skitters across the floor. Gartner casually picks it up, along with its fingers, using the trap end and tosses them into a red, plastic-lined bin marked “Biohazard.” I look back at the creature. What remains of its tongue now lolls out of its mouth, quivering back and forth.

No muss, no fuss.

Who uses this tool?

Research groups, mostly - any division of the armed forces that conducts regular experimentation on ambulatory subjects. I also heard that SF uses it when they want to conduct some realistic live-fire, CQB, or mob control exercises. There was a plan at one point to start air-dropping them into semi-safe zones for the defending population. I guess the logic was if they can’t eliminate the threat, can they make them less hazardous. I couldn’t imagine how that would work - people walking around town, going about their normal, every-day lives, with fingerless, jawless ghouls meandering about. That idea got nixed pretty quickly, but some of the Tommy’s did make it into civilian hands through some black market and backwoods channels.

He sighs.

My wife put me through medical school. Worked as an executive secretary for this private equity asshole for years while I finished my residency. If she were alive to see this, I don’t know what she’d think. I was supposed to help, not hurt, even if it is these damned souls. I know what I’ve done has been valuable to the effort, but still…

They tell me I’ll be cycled out soon, that given the declaration in the States and all, and that they’ll call me back if additional projects “require my expertise.” But at this point, I’m not sure what I’ll be going back to. I guess there’s my practice. But I have to wonder, what are the people in town going to benefit from more: my skills working with children, or my experience with the living dead?

The Zombie Skull

Although most people are aware that destruction of the zombie brain is the only known method to terminate an undead attacker, the public at large is confused as how to actually go about accomplishing this task. Many people mistakenly believe that it is ‘just like cracking an egg.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Many victims have engaged in undead combat believing that destroying the brain would only require a rap on the head, only to have the attacking ghoul finish the battle.

The protective case known as the human skull is one of the hardiest structures on the human body, and can withstand a significant amount of abuse. The hair, muscles and scalp covering the skull provide an additional cushion for the brain, which is itself covered by a fibrous, protective layer known as the dura mater. It is also unknown at this time whether the infection and subsequent reanimation alters the skeletal or pericranial composition of the ghoul, making its skull hardier or more impervious to blunt force trauma.

Nevertheless, the skull is the zombie’s primary area of vulnerability, and a sufficient blow will immediately neutralize the threat. In order to inflict a wound severe enough to stop a zombie its undead tracks, you need to literally “bash in the skull.” This act, however, is much easier said than done.

Not only must you fracture the skull, your blow needs to cause a severe depressed or compound fracture, where shattered pieces of bone are driven into the brain. Ideally, your strike should be forceful enough that your weapon fractures the skull, penetrates the dura mater, and enters the brain cavity. Such a wound may still require a follow-up blow to ensure adequate brain trauma.

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