11. CONSTRUCT DEFENSES: Nothing is more important than those structures that aid in your protection. Once you have established your group in a quiet corner of the wilderness, begin fortifying it immediately. You never know when the odd zombie will stumble into your camp, attracting others with its moans. Formulate detailed plans for your defense. The layout should be scouted and building materials either purchased or designated from the terrain. Everything, including building materials, tools, and supplies, should already be in place by the time you arrive, so there is nothing left to do but build. Remember: Your defenses must protect you not only from zombies but from bandits as well. Also remember that those human attackers will, at least in the beginning, possess firearms and perhaps explosives. If they succeed in breaching your defenses, always have a fallback position prepared. This secondary defense could be a fortified house, a cave, or even another wall. Keep it maintained and ready for action. A strong fallback position could be the turning point in an otherwise hopeless battle.
12. PLAN AN ESCAPE ROUTE: What if during an attack, your defenses are breached? Make sure everyone knows the escape route’s location and can get there on his or her own. Ensure that emergency supplies and weapons are packed and ready at all times. Designate a rally point for your fleeing group, a place to reassemble if scattered during an attack. Deserting your new “home” will not be psychologically or emotionally simple, especially after all the time and energy you have spent building it. People around the world who live in precarious situations will tell you how hard this can be. As attached as you may become to this place you now call home, it will always be better to cut and run than die defending it. An alternate location should also be chosen well before you land in your new home. It should be far enough away that zombies or raiders cannot track you from one place to another. It should also be close enough that an overland trek is possible under the harshest conditions (you never know when you might have to abandon your first base). Again, it must be chosenbefore the outbreak. Scouting for a new home or anything else after an outbreak won’t be easy (see following section).
13. BE ON GUARD: Once you are settled in, defenses built, dwellings erected, crops planted, labor divided, by no means should you ever truly relax. Lookouts should be posted at all times. Keep them camouflaged and equipped with a reliable way to alert the others. Make sure the means of alarm will not alert the attackers as well. Designate a secure perimeter outside your fixed defenses. Keep that perimeter patrolled both day and night. People venturing outside the compound should never do so alone, and never unarmed. Those within camp should always be within several seconds of the weapons locker, ready for battle in case of attack.
14. REMAIN CONCEALED: Although the topography of your location should minimize the chances of discovery, you never know when a zombie or raider will venture close to your camp. Make sure no lights can be seen at night. Make sure the smoke from your fires is extinguished before daybreak. If the area’s natural elements do not already camouflage your compound, do so artificially. Practice “noise discipline” at all hours of the day and night. Yell only when necessary. Insulate your communal buildings so that music, conversion, and other sounds will not escape. During new construction and day-to-day maintenance, post additional scouts at the outer limit of the potential noise range. Remember that the slightest sound may be carried on the wind and can betray your position. Always determine which way the wind is blowing, either in the direction of possible inhabitants (the direction you came from) or across a known safe area (a large body of water, deep desert, etc.). If your power source is noisy (e.g., a fossil-fuel generator), make sure it is insulated and used sparingly. Such a constant state of heightened vigilance will be difficult at first. As time goes by, it will become second nature. Life was lived in this fashion for centuries from medieval Europe to the steppes of central Asia. Most of humanity’s history has been the story of small islands of order in an ocean of chaos, people scratching to survive with the constant threat of invasion always hanging above their heads. If they could survive in this manner for countless generations, then, with a little practice, so can you.
15. REMAIN ISOLATED: Do not give in to curiosity under any circumstances. Even an expert scout, highly trained in the art of stealth, can accidentally lead armies of undead back to the compound. If your scout is captured and tortured by brigands, the bandits may learn of your location. Beyond the more dramatic threat of zombies or bandits, there is always the risk of your scout contracting some conventional disease and infecting the rest of the population (with few medicines at your disposal, an epidemic of any kind could be devastating). Staying put does not mean staying ignorant of the outside world. Dynamo- or solar-powered radios are a perfectly safe means of gathering information. But listen only! Transmitting will reveal your position to anyone with even the crudest direction-finding equipment. As much as you trust those in your group, it would not be a bad idea to keep all transmitters, flares, and other signaling devices under lock and key. A moment’s weakness could doom your entire existence. Your leadership training will be the best instruction on how to handle such a delicate matter.
TERRAIN TYPES
Examine a map of the world and find the best land and mildest climate. Overlay it with the densest population, and you will see a perfect match-up. Early humans knew what to look for when they began to build communities: moderate weather, fertile soil, plentiful fresh water, and a bounty of natural resources. These prime spots became the first centers of humanity, expanding outward into the modern population centers we know today. It is this way of thinking, this perfectly logical thought process, that you will have to completely abandon when choosing your new home. Back to the map. Say you find a place that looks immediately attractive. Chances are that several million people will be thinking the same thing when their time comes to flee. Combat this thinking with the slogan “harsher is safer,” and to be as safe as possible, you will have to find the harshest, most extreme places on Earth. You will have to find an area that looks so unattractive, so inhospitable, that the last thing you would ever want to do is call it home. The following list of environments is provided to aid you in making an informed choice. Supplementary texts will give you more detailed information concerning their exact weather patterns, available food, water, natural resources, and so on. What this section demonstrates is how they relate to all the factors associated with an undead world.
Second only to the polar regions, this is one of the harshest and, therefore, safest environments in the world. Despite what we see in movies, deserts are rarely oceans of sand. Rocks can easily be broken and shaped for building comfortable homes and, more important, defensive walls. The more remote your camp is, the greater chance it will have of avoiding raiders. These renegade scavengers will not be interested in riding across any deep desert where they know no major outposts exist. What would be the point? Even if some tried, the intense heat and lack of water would probably kill them off before they even reached your camp. Zombies, on the other hand, would not suffer from this problem. Heat and thirst are not part of the equation. The dry air would retard their already-slowed decomposition. If the chosen desert is situated between populated areas, such as those in the American Southwest, there will be a very real chance of some discovering your compound. Unless you build your fortification on top of a hill or large rock formation, the flat terrain will increase the need for artificial defenses.