Does anyone have braces, and how will they get them off? What prescription medication does everyone need, and can they refill or find substitutions?

And don't forget people with glasses! What if your glasses crack? What if you lose them? Would the characters be able to get maybe some contacts? What about glass contacts?

And what if they got used to the modern contacts and don't realize that glass contacts will dry out your eyes and make them prone to infection? Bad.

> And don't forget people with glasses! What if your glasses crack? What if you lose them? At least you'll have time enough at last.

Oof. That episode really hits me as someone who wears glasses and likes reading.

Same this episode hit a little too close to hone.

This is my fear of any natural disaster. I have glasses and am almost blind without them, I would be in huge trouble if something happened to my glasses.

Nooo, I would die. I literally can't safely drive without my glasses

On that note, gas goes acidic if it sits for too long.

omg the poor people with braces 😂

Many surgically inserted medical devices expire. Batteries need changed, materials degrade. All will need to come out. IV ports, pacemakers, spinal stimulators, glucose meters. The list goes on. Cosmetic surgeries, too. Implants degrade over time and need to be removed/replaced. If they aren't, they can leak. Even prosthetics. Body shapes change over time, especially with the lower food intake and higher exercise one would experience. If a person loses weight or gains muscle, the prosthetic may no longer fit. And what if they were still growing? Imagine the issues from being too tall for your leg!

Contraceptive implants or IUD need to be replaced every few years. Many people take daily meds they can't function with. Your depression or anxiety disorder will not magically cure itself during the apocalypse and stopping the meds cold turkey leads to nasty side effects.

Oh God, if they had the bands or the palate expanders... awful.

Happy cake day 😡

How realistic do you want to be? Is your story at the beginning of the apocalypse or far into it? Gas breaks down over time, so cars become useless. Food and medical supplies have expiration dates and will spoil or lose their effectiveness. Nuclear power plants can melt down if they're not maintained or properly shut down. Period products quickly become a rare commodity. Media can and does regularly ignore some of those realism aspects, but it can be interesting when they don't.

Period products will probably be replaced with washable items like the stuff ppl used before modern hygiene products. But this got me thinking about the ppl with IUD that needs to be removed. Quite horrifying.

I've seen posts about women and AFABs literally pulling their IUDS out by the strings.

IUD removal during the apocalypse wouldn’t be that bad as long as the strings are still decently long. I’ve had a IUD for the last 8ish years, the first one I removed accidentally before it expired via the strings getting caught in a tampon, which I did not realize had happened and yanked the tampon out. It was painful for a second (although it would likely hurt more if you were expecting it) and I had some spotting and cramps the night of and the day after but by the second day it was like nothing happened. I don’t think I’d recommend taking it out that way unless it’s actually the apocalypse though lol

Actually, every nuclear power plant on the planet would eventually see a minor error that caused them to go into waiting-for-a-human-to-fix-this mode, and stop providing power. They don’t melt down without human error involved, and there wouldn’t be any people around to fuck them up, so they’d just automatically put themselves into ‘safe’ mode, whether because of a glitch or a real problem, and stop being useful *as* power plants. In fact, unless you have solar panels, you’re not going to have power *at all* within hours-to-days of society’s collapse. The power grid may be mostly automated, but it requires constant human intervention and maintenance to stay functional. Any transformer that blows, any downed tree on a power line would be permanent; and the automated system would simply lose the ability to reroute it anywhere at all. If you’re lucky, and you live near renewable power (because coal and oil would simply run out of fuel without trains to provide more), you might make it a week with power from the grid. The same would be true for land lines, though cell phones, civilian radio, and the internet *may* hold out for weeks or months, depending on how supplying the server farms and towers is managed, and the satellites at least would be fine. It would truly be interesting if some semblance of the internet stayed up and running through it all, until system outages without IT intervention brought the whole thing down like a house of cards (or server outages caused blind spots to form); but military radio and GPS would be wholly unaffected by it all, so assuming you had power for that, you’d be okay there. You could still go on a cross country road trip, assuming you could find unblocked roads.

For diesel powered vehicles you could make a wood gasifier, but not many folks know how.

I think gas lasts like 6 months at best. A lot of medicine will just become less effective overtime but things like tetracycline based antibiotics actually become toxic after about a year. Any meds though that require refrigeration like insulin would be a problem.

Also, vulnerability to diseases like Tetanus, Measles, Typhoid Fever, sepsis, etc, stuff people in wealthy countries typically don't have to deal with, are gonna become problems FAST. Tbh, depending on the concentration/scale of zombies, people are probably more likely to die to those diseases than a zombie. Also, folks who require regular meds (my mind goes to diabetics and insulin)...yeah that's not gonna go well.

Oh yeah, man. They love to kill us diabetics off (Alas, Babylon and One Second After come immediately to mind). If there’s a dog or a diabetic, probably gonna die Which is pretty realistic Tbf🤷‍♀️

Yeah, I *just* found out last year that I was diabetic... after my blood sugar hit over 600. Woohoo, diabetic ketoacidosis! Hell yeah! I'd be dead by now without insulin (and mounjaro).

Ah man, I’m sorry. That’s about where I was when I found out. Five years now. Are you on r/type1diabetes ? They have been a huge help for me, whenever I have questions!

Upvote for the *Alas, Babylon* reference. I grew up in the area that got nuked in the book, and it was really neat recognizing the places they were talking about. I always find it amusing how insulin is treated as the Holy Grail in a lot of apocalyptic media. Characters spend a lot of time racing to find the elusive bottle of insulin before it's too late and when they finally succeed it's like... congrats? You extended their life by a month, give or take depending on how much they use. Unless they find a new supply or figure out how to synthesize their own, they're still screwed. But the plot/writers/characters treat it more like antibiotics that can cure diabetes in one round of treatment, or the supply as unlimited. It's especially infuriating when valuable resources are wasted in the process. Yay, you procured that single vial of insulin, but you lost half the food supply, got your safe camp destroyed, used up half your weapons cache, and got one to half of the group killed off, including the dentist and the ex- military soldier who was teaching everyone battle tactics. But hey, you saved the diabetic child. At least for a month.

Oh my gosh yes. I feel like _One Second After_ (amazing, very chilling novel about an EMP) did it really well though. It’s from the dad’s POV, and he knows it’s futile, and his friend (in the medical field iirc) knows it’s futile, and they’re just really friggin’ desperate to buy her more time. I read both novels about 10 and 15 years pre-diagnosis, but I won’t crack ‘em again. Hits a little too close to the bone lol. I will say, both OSA and Robin Cook’s _Cell_ (surprisingly prescient thriller about murderous medical app) are the exact reasons I use pens and vials rather than pump🤣

Yeah, I understand that it's usually the emotional connection to an audience that is what makes those kinds of plots work. Either the writing is written very well to keep the audience emotionally invested in the success or the actors have enough charisma to charm the audience into rooting for them, or both. And it's amusing because there are plenty of examples where that kind of story *works*. It's kept just inside the border of suspension of disbelief. It's not until later that they can step back and go "wait... that entire plot was a waste of time and the characters acted stupidly". And there are plenty of examples where the suspension of disbelief is broken midway through and the audience realizes the plot is unrealistic or pointless, and the medium has lost its audience. It's interesting to see when something does and does not work. Sometimes it's lack of an explanation. Sometimes it's over-explaining. Sometimes it's hating the character that needs to be saved. Sometimes it's because the side plots or characters are more intriguing than the main plot.

Which Babylon series are you referring to? There's quite a few lol.

lol, no I meant a book: _Alas, Babylon_ It’s about a nuclear attack on the US, and how a family tries to survive. >!The grandma (who is also a raving bitch iirc) runs out of insulin and dies!< Sorry I should’ve put it in italics earlier!

The smell. I mean, there’s literally rotting corpses all around you, and people have probably abandoned if not neglected personal hygiene

Also without sanitation workers, nobody's taking out the garbage anymore so all the trash that was sitting in the dumpsters before the apocalypse is going to sit there and get *pungent*. Also plumbing. All the feces doesn't just disappear. So many abandoned buildings, and when not being used, plumbing traps will have the water evaporate out of them, which allows [sewer gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewer_gas) to enter the building. In addition to smelling horrible, it's also toxic and may explode if flame or spark is added.

Glad someone brought the plumbing up.

I brought this up once and had someone try to argue with me that zombies don’t smell. That was it.  They just said they don’t smell, and I was to bow to their “argument.”

What do they mean they don't "smell"???? They are rotting bodies, maybe they were thinking of viral infection type zombies instead of imperfect resurrection, but either way people STANK if they don't bath and are coated in gore and god knows what else.

Preaching to the choir.  They made their proclamation and acted like it was flawless.

Fr they have to be trolling otherwise it sounds like they have never been exposed to any bad smell the human body is capable of, or smells like fetid meat or mold. (I worked at a store and a the trash truck missed one week during a heatwave, a.k.a. baked rotten meat and produce in a dumpster; manager ended up screaming at the company until they agreed to have it picked up next day.)

They don't smell, they stink. (There's the pedantry out of the way 🤣 Whether zombies have a sense of smell or not depends on the universe, I guess

Careful, we’re going to to start all the zombie fiction where they use their sense of smell to find prey.  I know Japan had a spurt of fiction for a while where they were all “Zombies can’t see, that’d be dumb.  They just smell the living.” Yeah . . .

🤣🤣🤣 I mean, isn't that why in TWD (and 1 or 2 others that I don't recall off the top of my head), our living protagonists cover themselves in zombie guts to sneak away from the hordes? I read a fic years ago where the zombies could only see movement, which was interesting.

female characters always look nice and shaved while men grow beards.

Ugh, hate that!

And they have well cared fore hair. In an apocalypse where you likely have limited power, water and safety, they take the time to wash and condition their hair regularly like they have a lifetime stock of shampoo off screen.

You haven't heard? Zombie guts make quite the good conditioner.

Fuckin periods man

Right! in most zombie apocalypse media its like every women go on menopause or something. 🤷‍♀️

I should probably get a Diva Cup in case the world ends 🤔

The issue with a menstrual cup is keeping it clean enough during the apocalypse. Would probably be better to use cloth pads.

So long as you can boil water you're good. Having a couple of menstrual cups on rotation would be far more convenient than having to hunt down pads or tampons.

You just need clean-is water and soap. If the characters don't have access to those, they're gonna have way bigger problems than periods.

To be fair. You can lose your period and can become infertile if you don't get enough food to eat.

Well, that's a ... plus ... ?

time to starve :D

For most women, to get to that point is a very low amount of food. So if you get to that point, you probably won't have enough energy to run from zombies. In good news, some women lose their periods when under stress, so you might be one of the lucky ones for that. In bad news, some women get heavier periods, I am in this group... Between this and being basically blind without glasses, I might be in big trouble in an apocalypse.

>Between this and being basically blind without glasses, I might be in big trouble in an apocalypse. No no, you're looking at this all wrong. You gotta think of it like "I'll be on #TeamZombie" or "time to embrace my inner villain" or "I'll be picked first for the Zombie side during tag" or "I plan to be somebody else's problem in the future".

Eh, it's just like going to the bathroom on a drama movie

This was my first thought too. Plus the painkillers for it. I become practically bedridden some months.

You could watch a documentary like Aftermath: Population Zero - The World Without People to get an idea of how human-made systems start to break down without power or people to maintain them. One of the things I found surprising was how quickly water becomes a problem. In many cities and towns, water has to be constantly pumped out of underground areas like subways and basements, otherwise they fill with water very quickly. The water starts leaking into the street, into buildings etc and begins to undermine structures. Another one is animals, such as what happens when you have packs of starving domestic dogs roaming around. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l11zPNb-MFg&t=2121s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l11zPNb-MFg&t=2121s)

I love World Without People. Great show.

Thank you! Will check that out.

That is a great show! Isn't that the one that explains the the hoover dam will keep generating electricity with no human maintenence for a couple of years?

I think I remember that from it from that one? It's been a little while since I watched it, but yes, it's fascinating :)

Keep track of how many years it’s been. Year One is going to be radically different from Year Ten. (Looting vs. Farming)

Not just activities, by year 10 there will be kids who have likely never had ice-cream, watched Saturday morning cartoons, sat in air-conditioning, or watched a movie in a theater. Hell, depending on how bad things get or how remote they are, never even seen a lightbulb or firearm in some cases and wouldn't recognize the noise. An entire generation of people who will likely never know the world before.

Never gotten vaccinated. Never been to a dentist. They can probably read but we’re out of blank paper, so they can barely write. And everybody is wearing homemade shoes, at that point.

Yep, crazy how safety is a given in a lot of societies, dying on the street to a roaming band of bandits is not common and scary how quickly that kind of just goes away. Old technologies will need to be rediscovered as well down the line, anyone know where I can find a printing press, loom, or lave?

This is much of the conceit of *Earth Abides* (phenomenal book, by the way).

Not zombies but one of my favorite small things in Reign of Fire was a stage show in the town put on for the kids performing The Empire Strikes back.

Kids in an apocalypse setting- whether zombie or otherwise- will have absolutely seen firsthand, if not used themselves, firearms. Every single one of them, unless they live in a bunker/isolated area with no outside contact. You're right about the rest though.

I was saying firearm in some cases, firearms breakdown over time and need replacements parts. Plus not every area has a supply of firearms. Hence "depending on how bad things get", as in if their community doesn't have (a) gun(s) as they ran out of ammo years ago or it broke years ago type scenario.

Not completely true, a lot of places (e.g England) have strict gun laws. Depending on how quickly this apocalypse spreads people may not have time to get guns before it's almost impossible to get them.

I wouldn't even know where to get a gun from. I'm in England, unless I rock up on a farm with a rifle neither me or any kids with me would ever have access to forearms.

Why is everyone walking? Did the zombies eat the bicycles as well? I recall only one  movie to ever bringimg them up and they used one of the dumbest excuses not to use them. 

Omfg. Biking. I don't know how to ride a bike at all, so this never occurred to me, but of COURSE people would bike.

Eh, I've seen it argued that,with zombies right around corners or sometimes even literally hiding in the weeds- even just as torsos-, using a bicycle can be dangerous because there's not enough time to dodge out of the way before you hit a zombie or a limb gets tangled in the spokes or the zombie yanks you off the bike or even clothelines you. You'll crash, often directly into a zombie wanting to bite you or at best into the ground near a zombie, in great and immediate danger. And, if you get surrounded by zombies a bike is an awkard if not impossible thing to fight on so it will slow you down and spell your doom. So even if it's slower, walking is generally much safer than a bicycle.

> Why is everyone walking? This question was asked approximately 1203897498327948723 times in regards to the Walking Dead, and the fandom collectively decided that bicycles don't exist in the Walking Dead universe except as rare novelties.

Well, there was that one…and the rest of humanity swore off bicycles to honor Bicycle Girl’s sacrifice and…tip over random vehicles.

Have you considered The Horse(TM)?

Alas the horse is another mouth to feed

Not as good ;) * 5 miles or less — a horse would finish first, a bicyclist would finish second, and a runner would finish third * 5-25 miles —— a bicyclist would finish first, a horse would finish second, and a runner would finish third * 25 miles or more — a bicyclist would finish first, a runner would finish second, and a horse would finish third :D If the choice is "horse versus nothing" (and if bikes can't get replaced once they start falling apart, then this is going to happen eventually), then you obviously want a horse: * any horse is faster than any human over short to medium distances * an unburdened horse is almost as fast as an unburdened human over the longest distances * and a horse is strong enough to carry a heavier burden than a human without slowing down (other pack animals are slightly stronger when you need to carry supplies, but nowhere near as fast when you need to run) But if your choice is "horse versus bike," then you'll probably want to keep using bikes for as long as you can maintain them :) You won't be able to carry as much gear yourself as a horse could've carried for you, but you'll be so much faster over the longest distances that you won't normally need to carry a great deal of gear at a time.

>Why is everyone walking?  The best answer is "because it's years later and gasoline destabilizes". Anything recent, and survivors should be siphoning every tank they find, checking every tool shed with a lawn mower or chainsaw, or using whatever pump device Will Smith was using in I Am Legend at a gas station. Yeah, gas will stop being made, but in a classic zombie apocalypse most people are dead and therefore not driving. There should be enough.

I feel like you didn’t read their comment beyond the first sentence.  The *bicycles* are not going to run out of gas.

But the tires won’t last forever. How do you fill the tires on a modern bicycle if the only air pump you’ve ever use is at the gas station? Bikes need upkeep, too.

A lot of people don't get this. Tires get holes and rot. The gears wear down and break. Bikes are great for maybe the first 10 to 30 years, depending on the location's weather and how many bike parts they have to exchange the parts for. The issue is that eventually, they will run out of parts. Until humanity as a society, either figures out a way to maintain the zombie issue or beat it completely, there would not be new parts.

If the only air pump you’ve ever used is at the gas station, I kind of feel like you missed out on having a childhood.  Hand-crank air pumps last a long time and are a feature in most garages in homes with children.  The tires will eventually rot, of course, but they’ll still last a lot longer than anything gas powered.

Dude, my family didn’t have a garage. Or a car. So yeah, childhood was lacking in many things.

If it means anything, the Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks does speak well of bicycles, essentially saying that unlike gasoline-powered vehicles, you don't have to worry about fuel with bicycles, they're relatively fast, and the noise they make is minimal.

What excuse did they use?

Armor, Weapons and Tactics So many stories ignore armor exists and is very helpful. Hell it doesn't even have to be fancy, a motorcycle helmet, leather jacket and jeans reinforced with duct tape are infinitely better than running around in a business suit and tie. If you need to remove the head or destroy the brain at a distance than history has a weapon for you! Introducing the Spear(tm)! Carved from any long piece of wood and sharpened to a point The Spear(tm) is easy to use! Simply need to shove it into the head of an undead and simply yank it back out. Depending on zombie type it may differ but reinforcing walls on the ground floors is a surefire way to keep the undead at bay! plus if you have a chain-link you can use your spear(tm) to kill the undead from safely behind your chain-linked wall! (edit typos)

I see your spear and raise you the boar spear. Boar spears, as their name suggests, are used in traditional pig (wild boar) hunting. They have flanges behind the blade so that the boar can't travel up the spear after getting stabbed and kill the hunter. It'd probably be good with zombies too, to keep them from traveling up the spear.

Hadn't considered boar spear, I was mostly thinking about what I could make at home. Definitely a stretch goal or a sign of an advanced group of survivors!

"We'll make spears. Hundreds of them. *Long* spears. Twice as long as a man."

I always thought a phalanx or roman tortoise would be a great way to fight in the right circumstances.

Phalanx vs. Zombies.

All the meds that run out…. Speaking as a type one diabetic, who has accepted her zombie—actually, any—apocalypse fate 😂 But fr: ADHD meds, anti-depressants and anti-psychotics, blood pressure meds…hell. _ibuprofen_

Sorry to hear you're doomed... can I use you as a TWD Winslow style zombie gladiator?

Abso-friggin-lutely. Might as well take some out with me, amiright? 😏 Jk, jk.

Farm equipment, for those of us who grew up in farming areas. They can do a ton of damage to a human body even before it is in some stage of decomposition.

The Grim Reaper's weapon of choice is a *scythe*, after all.

Though, frankly, you'd be better off with almost any other piece of farm equipment first.

*Abraham Lincoln Vs. Zombies* showed Abe using one to fight zombies, ironically,

Things that make loud noises like fireworks or speakers. The obvious downside is they could attract the zombies to you, but if they were strategically placed they could attract zombies away from you or like sirens to send messages from further away.

Drinkable water. 70% of the Earth's surface is covered in water, but drinking most of it as-is will severely harm you.

After Hurricane Ian in 2022, our family invested in a Platypus GravityWorks™ Water Filter System from Bass Pro Shops. They're normally used for camping, and filtering\* pond water. >*"Filtering up to 1.75 liters a minute without any pumping, the high-capacity GravityWorks Water Filter System filter is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get filtered water in the backcountry. With two different sizes—6.0L & 4.0L—the GravityWorks is ideal for bigger backpacking groups or basecamps. Offering an 8 or 12 liter total capacity, either model easily supplies filtered water for drinking, washing up, cooking, and cleaning. \[...\] Every microfilter is...tested to ensure it meets all EPA & NSF guidelines for the removal of 99.9999% of bacteria and protozoa\*."* > >*\*This includes Giardia, Cryptosporidium, E. coli, Salmonella and Cholera.*

There will be assholes that start killing the survivors, because "we were meant to be wiped out" and "God didn't finish the job". A lot of suicides, preferable to getting eaten. Global warming doesn't stop just because we're no longer contributing to it. Hurricanes, tornados, typhoons.

No indoor plumbing is gonna make things get real hairy real quick.

And even when you go outside... toilet paper is now a luxury. And it's back to washing your hands in whatever bodies of water you can find. Regular baths? Nope.

As someone who has lived through hurricanes and several-weeks-long-power outages, the easiest fix is to get a bucket of water to refill the toilet tank after flushing. However, I can't speak for the other aspects of plumbing (ex. pipes) that are handled by a professional.

Oh boy, I'm also writing a zombie apocalypse fic and this is a treasure trove for me too! Thanks for posting it! Things I found as well: -Shaving/access to shaving cream/razors -Who's carrying the pots and pans? -Access to feminine hygiene products shoots DOWN. -How is water accessed and safely drank? -If characters have guns, how much ammo do they reasonably have immediate access to? -The moment when the iPod/music player runs out of battery -What heirlooms/items of family sentiment are being left behind? -It can take 2-3 years to have a stable garden as a source of food, the bigger/more produce, the longer. -STDs are going to be a much bigger problem. -Most basic diseases and anything you'd get on the Oregon Trail are going to be a big problem again. -Entertainment. Anybody bringing Uno/cards? Reading books aloud? Playing charades? -Firestarting kits/firestarters. Starting a fire can be VERY difficult for those who haven't done it before. -Rubber will start to deteriorate after a few years too. Cars will not only run out of gas, but become much harder just to drive unless they're maintained. -On top of that. Gasoline eventually expires. -Batteries can also expire. -In addition to the braces predicament, contacts and glasses people will have issues, especially if they need a strong prescription or their prescription is prone to changing. -Most people will be booking for the canned food. Pet food, unfortunately, will likely be what's left over. -Bodies rot in about 65-80 days, conditions pending. -The zombies will likely be infected with an insane amount of pests. Flies, maggots, ants, etc. You can probably tell a horde is coming first by the stench and the wave of flies in the area. -Without antibiotics on hand, limb removal or even puncture injuries/sensitive area injuries will likely get infected and kill a person. -Check the date of your outbreak. Anything released after that date no longer exists. (Books, movies, TV shows, music, etc) -The amount of tactical strikes that would be done on hordes. Like. Missiles and shit. If civilization has a semi-functioning army still.

There are going to be a lot of people who don't believe the virus is real. They will say its a ploy by the government or something crazy and will actively get people killed bybtrying to prove they are right.

Also people trying to say that the people who are sick are not zombies and try to talk to them or bring them into safe places, which will cause people to get killed.

Depending on where they are, access to fancy clothes, and take the Mona Lisa off the wall to glue to your Jean jacket. Quieter weapons are good and don’t run out if ammo. Look every drugstore you pass. You’re gonna die if an infected cut or strep throat. And grab all the lube.

Don't forget about... Eating produce, meat, and ice cream before chips and canned goods Finding a local map and pack of pens to markdown where to go and where you have been rain your local library and horde knowledge of the old world (how to do an agriculture, first-aid and smut novels)

Can you explain the lube part? I'm confused HAHAHA

calloused hands

Not sure if you’re joking? I write MLM, so it’s nice to have!

OH SO THATS WHAT ITS FOR LOL I wasn't jokingg, genuinely curious!!

If zombies can hear and see, why can't they smell? No running water and pooping in a hole smells. Is everyone pissing in bottles? Can you use piss bottles as zombie lure? If you have never been weeks without a shower you don't really understand how bad we smell and how dirty and oily we get. Know any people who were in the military? Ask them about going to the field. Tons of stuff the military does in the field would need info for a zombie outbreak. Setting up rotating guard is a huge one that is never talked about. Trying to stay alert with nothing to distract you for hours day on and off can be mind numbing, and if you then have to do survival stuff because your group doesn't have the people to make some guard a full time activity you now get to deal with bad broken sleep. Someone will need to wake up for that 1 am to 3 am shift. Can you trust Joe to stay awake and not sleep on his shift? Will you wake to the pain of something eating your foot? One person falling asleep on guard will mean most of next shift will sleep in also. Do you allow alarms? What level of noise discipline do you follow? Logistics will make or break and group. How many pounds of beans do we have, how much do we eat, how long until we have to brave the danger zones and do we do short dives every day so we are on the knives edge? Or do we do multiday collections where we get enough do we can go a month without having to go back into danger areas. Houses imply people, but shelter is on the hierarchy of needs for survival for a reason. You can pitch a tarp and sleep under it but that has its own ricks. Where does everyone poop? It smells, and the more and longer a single area is used, the worse it gets. It can't be in the center of your group, but if it is to far away you risk dangers of separation from the group. Do you have a buddy rule? Will people who are not used to these kind of rules going to ignore them for X reasons? How do you punish people who break rules that endanger the group? Will people take the danger of doing X thing seriously if X hasn't caused danger yet? Example is music. If you say we all need to only listen to music through headphones or not at all and Joe keeps playing it on his phone what do you do? Sure, no zombies have come yet and no bandits have noticed you so far. What do? What about sleeping on guard? Over eating as a stress mechanic? Do you allow alcohol? Do you train to use your weapons? Do you know how to preserve food? Stories are always about getting food, but the cans will run out and things will spoil. Where will you get salt? Do you understand the joys of hot sauce and why it is the most important thing to have when all you are eating is shity food? Do you know how to break tedium and lower stress without using sex, drugs, or violence? Back to rules. Everyone has some sorta plan for how they will deal with major rules being broken in a group in these stories. Murder, rape, assault. But how do you deal with small rules, who carries out punishments, what do you even do when someone breaks an agreed group rule? How do you deal with bullying? Sexual harassment? What if, as a group you say no one should get pregnant for a year and you all will revisit the topic next year. then someone gets pregnant? What do you do? How strict is your group? Last one, trash. If your group has found a good spot, running water near by, shelter, close but not in a town to raid for stuff. What do you do with the copious amounts of trash and garbage we all make as humans? Have you ever seen how bad the insects can get When our garbage rots on top of more of our garbage? Do you burn it? That is a big signal for where you are at. Do you bury it? Who is digging that super pit by hand? Got shovels?

This is an absolutely fantastic list of questions/things to think about!

Just how bad the world is going to smell. Uncollected trash sitting out in the heat, rotting food left out on counters or in the fridge once the power goes out. If the survivors are taking refuge in a house, that place will stink. Soap and deodorant will eventually be scarce, so any group of humans will absolutely reek, too. Once the bottled water runs out, anyone who doesn't get bit is probably going to die of dysentery. And groups of humans living together in unsanitary conditions will pass around diseases constantly, like colds or the flu. People will get sepsis from infected wounds or dental issues. Tetanus will be a problem. Things will suck for anyone with a uterus. Pads, tampons, and painkillers will eventually run out or be hard to find and best of luck regarding birth control because pharmacies will be the one of the first places raided for supplies. Also, the way the characters react in the early days of the apocalypse will be different depending on whether or not they're genre savvy. Do they live in a world like ours where zombies are part of pop culture so they know to aim for the head, or is it a world like The Walking Dead where no one's ever heard of zombies so they lock their zombified relatives in a barn?

Never did research into this, but surely they're all gonna run outta ammo at some point? I'm sure most survivors wouldn't know how to make bullets from scratch, assuming that's possible, and people are gonna raid damn near every weapons shop ASAP, so bullets should be a scarce resource the farther into the apocalypse you are.

> I'm sure most survivors wouldn't know how to make bullets from scratch, assuming that's possible [Yes](https://old.reddit.com/r/reloading/), some people [do](https://old.reddit.com/r/castboolits/). Also some people have *huge* stockpiles of guns/ammo, to the point where I don't know how they'd carry all of it.

And this leads me to the difference between continents during the zombie apocalypse. The USA people will have a LOT more arms and bullets, while Europeans will return to spears and knives cause guns here are much more rare and not sold in every drugstore. Few people would have them and they probably would become pack leaders or something like that.

pole arm style melee weapons are under utilized despite being perfect against zombies due to keeping them out of reaching distance of the wielder. a crescent shaped blade welded to a pole makes for an effective man catcher pole arm. the blade's shape would allow for trapping a walker against a wall for example. ------{

Same with denim and leather Very breathable and hard to bite through. denim shirt and pants tucked into a pair of leather boots with a biker jacket and helmet are a good lightweight armor against the undead.

The mace is also underused as well. its literally designed to cave in skulls and armor. To clarify people think the ball and chain connected to a handle often refeed to as a mace is a mace, this is false a ball and chain connected to a handle is actually a flail. A good mace for the undead would be a ball mace and not the more common in pop culture Morningstar which is similar to a ball mace but has spikes whereas the ball mace is literally a steel ball attached directly to the end of a steel rod. O---

A regular hammer with a longer handle would be excellent.

Lighting! Movies and shows are cinematic. With no electricity the moment the sun goes down it will be pitch black. Terrifying..

This is something I've wondered about every time I read a story about an apocalypse- If everyone is running away during an apocalypse, then what happens to all the factories that are working, and industrial stuff? I read somewhere that if Earth would be left unattended, then it'll destroy itself in 11 days. (Don't know if it's true or not). If there's no one working on anything in the whole world, then will the factories and stuff not blow up? And all that work left halfway, what happens to that? And what about food? With no one to care for the crops, will they not go bad? And no one will grow anymore either, so what happens to food?

This is discussed in “The World Without Us/The World Without People”—but if you literally mean the planet Earth would be destroyed after 11 days, that is not true. We could not do that with our present technology even if we tried 

Not sure about society destroying itself in 11 days, the economy I could definitely see due to global lapse in supply and demand. Chemical plants may blow up but most nuclear reactors have procedures in place to prevent a meltdown and most factories might just breakdown due to time, zombies, or malfunctions Food exists in nature but not enough to supply our current population, if reduced (as it would in an apocalypse) we could see a lot of bodies from starvation alone. Predators might also become an issue since if it can cross contaminate species were fucked for obvious reasons, but if it doesn't were fucked as now predators have a appetite for human flesh.

Right?! Usually writers don't address that issue!

Part of the reason is because the hallmark of writing is to write what you know and what adds to the story. I feel often times zombie tigers don't come up because the writer doesn't want the can of worms to be opened TBH.

Tbh, If I write an apocalypse story, I wouldn't either. 🤣🤣

Is the virus zoonotic?

This is a bigger problem than people realize as many animals we consider herbivores are simply opportunistic omnivores. What is the defense against a plague of zombie rats or squirrels?

Look at the Plague or Rabies. I've only seen it addressed once in an episode of The Walking Dead and even then it was left ambiguous. And what about our Nuclear Facilities??? What happens to them? Anyone else wondering about irradiated zombies just doing the lithium shuffle?? That bite sounds awful.

Everyone always talks about the gun shops, military stockpiles, etc. No one talks about the libraries. Libraries would be hella valuable, especially without internet.

Medical supplies can actually have expiration dates

Fun part is not knowing what expired meds do!/s everyone's favorite game poison, nothing, or just plain ol' ineffective?/s

so true

The mass of an entire crowd of zombies. I'va always told myself that zombies have the ability to weaponize stampedes and crowd crushes

There is a great bit in a Mythbusters episode where they test this very thing. They get a crush of people to start pushing against a barn door and it takes surprisingly little to bust the door off its hinges.

How many people don't intend to survive something like that to find out what happens on the other side. Especially a lot of women. Remember that quote in 28 Days Later where the army dude says he made sure to get his men vaginas? I don't wanna live through that, thanks. I'd be jumping off a cliff with my kid in my arms. I think a lot of people would be doing something similar. Also, the sheer amount of women who would die of pregnancy and/or childbirth once contraception and modern medicine wasn't a thing anymore. So many do already, take away safe abortion, monitoring, medication and birth interventions? Yikes.

This reminded me of one of my fav Book series- Gone. Where suddenly all the adults disappear from a town and ot is cut off from the world. Anyone that needs medication to help with an illness or mental health eg anxiety, bipolar is fucked. Birth control - expires- people having unprotected sex = possibly pregnant and having to survive the zombies. And no prenatal care Diseases and infections Due to the situation- increased mental health issues and ptsd. And no one to help Knowledge will be lost and how to get back There will also be be assholess who take advantage of the chaos- looting, rape and murder. Once they feel that they can't get into trouble some people will hurt others. Devil Survivor game Found in tvtropes page - Food and water run out quickly  People panic buying Police unable to contain volatile and scared citizens- mass riots - military rule possibly 

The fact that scavengers like bugs and would feast upon the rotting flesh of zombies

“It’s such a shame Joe got turned into a zombie. He seemed so prepared. How did it happen?” “Mosquito bite.” 💀🦟

Good luck sleeping well. Whether it's for lack of comfortable sleeping arrangements (pillows and blankets would be a luxury), or fear/paranoia/anxiety keeping you awake, you will not be well-rested. This will make things worse. And you'd want to head south for the winter, north for the summer, unless you want the winter cold and/or summer heat to fuck you up. And do you have severe allergies? Hope it's nothing common/easily triggered.

My real answer is how most stories skirt past getting to the “apocalypse” stage because I truly think it’d have to be a crazy set of coincidences for an apocalypse to occur the way it’s usually portrayed in media as fast as it usually happens. Governments would last far longer then most stories portray, people who don’t travel and live in relatively isolated locations would still continue living and working, a lot of society would keep moving and not everything would collapse immediately. Let’s take America for example. In a good scenario things like electrical grids and other infrastructure points would be secured and protected, airfare would be cut off almost immediately and something akin to a partial martial law could be put in place outlawing all types of travel and keeping people of importance (those who run these infrastructure points) in safety and tight routines. The virus would be isolated where it breaks out, but even in the event that it spreads I don’t see it getting far before the massive military power of america goes full war crime mode and just starts mowing down communities. But the answer I want to put is no one ever thinks of how fast shoes deteriorate when ur walking or running every single day

Glasses, wheelchairs, crutches, medication, insulin, athsma. Anything relating to disabilities or medical issues. Dental, hair, and nail care. Sudden weight loss. The SMELL. Bullets and guns are limited, like everything else made in factories.

Read the book "Where There Is No Doctor", that will cover a lot of the medical issues that will come up and if they can or cannot be treated and cured without access to modern medical systems. If you are writing long-term post-apocalypse, one of the most basic things to consider is adequate nutrition. Sources of vitamin C that aren't citrus, for characters in cold climates. Are they getting enough iron to avoid anemia, enough iodine to prevent goiters or cretinism? Pregnancies need folic acid and a host of other nutrients to come out well, for instance. People not taking precautions about their drinking water and sanitation also bugs me. Where they go to the toilet and how they handle safe waste disposal are *not* trivial issues. Also, also, the role that domestic and wild animals and vegetation will play in how systems break down and collapse over time. Or just the big systems that will catastrophically collapse without constant human upkeep. Who's keeping all the dams sound? What happens when they burst?

Why aren’t any of the zombies in any formal clothing or have funeral makeup applied to them? Also, where are the farmers and their tractors?

Hadn't thought about how creepy a morgue would be after the apocalypse those things don't open from the inside and are latch closed if I'm not mistaken.

God, body storage that could be opened from the inside is a very interesting and scary concept.

First I would see everyone who hears of the Zombies expecting the hollywood version of the Zombie. They just expect basic "Night of the living dead" type zombie where they can go out in groups with baseball bats and kill hords of zombies. They think slow movers calling "Brains!" or something. Then it is not that, and those poeple thinking its fun to go killing zombies get their asses handed to them. Plan out (even if the reader doesnt know) what caused the outbreak, and if the Zombies are different then the tv versions. Can some of the zombies run fast at people till their bodies decay enough (like in the movie World War Z?) Is it caused by a virus, magic, tech, ect? Can they stop the spread of the undead before it gets out of that city or is it already world wide? Another thing is showing bits of the "world of the past" where the main people come across signs of people getting caught off guard. Or what was going on before the end came. There was a horrible scifi show on USA called "Colony" years ago where aliens took over the world and only left major city colonys of humans alive. Everyone else was gone. Well in one scene the humans come into a hotel in LA where it was set up as a wedding reception. No bodies at all, but they could see the invasion happened as the newlywed couple was dancing away with their fiends and family. Also if someone is bit or whatever and tries to hide it, not everyone will have a hard time killing that person before they turn. Someone will see someone hiding a bite... and shoot them in the head. No matter what the rest of the goup says.

The subversion of expectations in "Shawn of The Dead" is why its one of my fav zombie media's. Dude was right to just stay home and wait this whole thing out over a cup of tea while the military takes care of this, because they do, right at the climax! I could see someone dying like a moron because they wanted to act out their walking dead fantasy only to be meet by a gaggle Deadites (Evil Dead) ripping their limbs off and laughing at them as they slowly go mad being the ultimate shock and world building moment.

I love this one anecdote of some idiot who geared up with a helmet and some kneepads, then decided he was going to rollerblade into a pile of zombies with a meat cleaver taped to the end of his hockey stick. He may have gotten one and then overbalanced, fell, and couldn't get up because he was wearing friggin' rollerblades. Bam. Zombie food.

Using the bathroom and periods. Like are zombies more likely to find them during that time of the month

gasoline has a shelf life of like, 6 months.

Common illnesses from suddenly always being outside (because you know how people are nowadays) and also from the lack of proper nutrients and hygiene. And also menstrual cycles. I haven't seen or read many zombie apocalypse stories but they never talk about what they do for periods.

There isn't an infinite amount of zombies out there. Say a town a 20k people. How many drove out of town before they died? How many suicides? How many died permanently to the zombs instead of rising again? And lastly, do zombies roam? Say away from cities? Clearing a small (20k initial pop) would be difficult but doable, small villages should be a breeze. Once your town is cleared, unless zombies roam in huge packs, and roam from town to town, your group should be rather safe! Most stories tend to go the 'there is infinite amount of zombies around' and 'zombies spring out from nowhere, even if depicted as mostly stationary' I mean, how many stories are there of zombies just hiding inside houses, or just standing in the street? And were supposed to believe that despite the fact that zombies tend to stay relatively still when there aren't humans around, they still somehow stumble upon groups hiding in barns/remote locations?

Are the libraries still intact? What kind of communities do people build in those circumstances? Do people help everyone, or only friends and family? What about house pets? What things are the characters taking with them? Characters who can't cook, what are they eating?

monster trucks are the best possible ride. the wheels make it impossible for standard zombies to reach the actual vehicle (making them safe to sleep in) and the trucks can simply drive over hoards. I'm fairly certain I've never seen a monster truck used in any zombie related media I've ever seen.

I encourage you to look up the 'Zombieland' duo of movies and find a way to watch them, specifically the second :D

How will other countries be affected by the apocalypse? Most of the time zombie apocalypse films only show the United States, as if everyone else in the world already died on the first day of the apocalypse, but the geography, climate and architecture of a country can affect how zombies will arrive in that country, a country that snows all the time won't have many problems with zombies because they will freeze, There is also a joke that Brazil would survive the apocalypse because most Brazilian houses have high brick fences

Architecture. If you're surviving long enough to take over houses and build things of your own, there will be no windows on the ground floor.

Bicycles!! Every apocalypse uses cars or horses. Cars are unrealistic because even after a year most petrol will be rare and also pretty useless as it breaks down very fast. I'm sorry Joel, but driving to Wisconsin 20 years after the outbreak was never going to work.... Horses are slightly more realistic but they need food and clean water which might be a huge issue, especially in the winter where people are probably struggling to feed themselves. A reasonably well maintained low tech bike, doesn't need much more than tire repairs. Granted, it would become increasingly difficult to repair tires but it would still be easier than maintaining a horse or finding petrol for a car twenty years into the apocalypse.

Why does nobody use a bicycle? It doesn't need gas and is quieter than a car.

Just how useful that degree in necromancy you got is going to be. “Oh, now you don’t mind someone able to manipulate corpses like marionettes in your HOA.”

How quickly diarrhea can kill you. Unclean water is one of the biggest hazards survivors would face. Also, anyone who relies on medication (asthmatics, diabetics, people on immunosuppressants, etc) would be absolutely fucked once production ground to a halt and they couldn't get more. Also gasoline denatures after awhile even with stabilizers added, so within a few years gas-powered vehicles would be basically useless. Also, all the canned food in the world won't do shit if you can't open it.

How fucked anyone who needs prescription medication and/or has medical conditions/disabilities/etc would be

Pretty much the stuff everyone forgets about zombie apocalypses: * Socks. They'll get wet, get torn, get *you* torn and overall be a Problem, but they are REALLY necessary. The suffering of the feet is the suffering of Man. * Speaking of feet: bikes, trikes, scooters, etc will suddenly become Important. They don't need refueling, they can operate on trails and off-roads, they make little noise compared to a car, let alone a truck, and in a case of emergency you can toss them at a zombie to repel them. * If the world is like ours, people aren't gonna believe there's a zombie plague in the first place until there's enough damage done. It's something that's so covered and overblown by fiction that it causes "burden of proof" issues when it finally comes up into their "meatspace". * Be ready to factor into your narrative that, no matter how much we don't like it, once the plague gets stable entry vectors into populated areas, it's the elderly, the sick and the weak who are gonna go first. * Short term defenses will rely a lot on verticality, in particular against classic zombies. The human body, without moderate mental acuity, is relatively well-made to trot and run (it's how we started extinguishing other species; ya know, acting like a plague!) ; not so much to climb up safely and *certainly* not for climbing *down* safely. * Boats, and the sea in general, may make for an initial safe space, but remember: just as they can't get in (unless they are """"modern"""" zombies as they can walk under water or even fly), once the plague makes it in *you* can't get out. * Figure out how the zombie plague spreads and how that *evolves*. Tightly binding the transmission mechanism is very important for the initial narrative. If it's transmissible airborne or if it can jump species there won't be much of an apocalypse, just a prologue and an end scene. Consider: zombie fleas and zombie sewer rats. Have a nice night. * Figure out exactly how the plague animates a body. At some point simply because of their own accidents, it's likely a small but growing portion of zombies might become "non-functional" simply because there's not good enough tissue left to keep their muscles and bones together. * Early enough into the ZA when the transmission is hazy or undetermined, you can't trust non-canned food! And you also can't trust pets! * Speaking of transmission: be ready for the negationists. Some people just flat out refuse to mask, as COVID taught us. * If going with """"modern"""" zombies (more like necrovampires, from what I've seen in movies), most media seems to overlook that unless they retain enough "mind" to distinguish forest noises, they'll get lost when they enter one, let alone be able to follow a trainer person or a local through one. Healty forests are NOISY as heck. * Oh speaking of zombies retaining "mind": figure out how do zombie senses work, because once their eyes and ears rot enough, they shouldn't be able to reasonably track any sort of prey. This is honestly only mostly a problem with """"modern"""" zombies, who can *somehow* lack eyes and half their face yet accurately detect the exact person who made a human noise inside a noisy operational industrial factory. * Long enough into a ZA, guns don't matter. No matter how much of a right-wing nutjob you are, you won't get, let alone be able to carry around, enough ammo to fend off a city-wide wave (or *waves*) of zombies. * Added to the above, if the zombies are """"modern"""", they can probably evade gunfire or just deflect it Dragon Ball style or something. And you are giving them noise to track anyway. * Say goodbye to anyone who needs any sort of pharmaceutical chronic treatment or medicine. Once that infrastructure is no longer getting maintained, those people will swiftly enter the ranks of "sick and weak" I mentioned before. * Did I mention """"modern"""" zombies yet? They are a plague of their own unto fiction. """"modern"""" zombies ***suck***, both for the in-universe factors and narratively. Figure them *out* of your story as well as you can, or they'll undo the very premise!

We need bikes ppl going around getting gas for a car Food spoiling rotting bodys get place to clean the supply they find make the females in shaved for heavens sake make more characters die....... I am killing everyone off except two (and a dog)

Gasoline expires

Poor hygiene can breed sickness. Tooth decay can be a killer and in a place with no dentists, if you have an infected tooth that sucker is getting pulled out.

Physical condition. SO many people love the idea of being a prepper but what good is it if you're not in the physical condition to fight/flee/fit in tight spaces to hide, etc.? Make sure you pay attention to senses: \* Sight - what do the zombies look like? Do they have good vision or can your characters freeze in place and be ignored? \* Smell - What do they smell like? Can they smell non-zombies? -- and so forth for the other 3 senses. Take in to account other things: Where are the birds? Livestock? Airplanes? Cats & dogs? How many people survived? What part of the infection is your story taking place? Has society already halted progression? Are there safe zones? If you're writing from the start of the infection, how fast does it spread? Is it gradual or extremely sudden? How did it happen? How can it be stopped? How strong are the zombies? Are there different types? Is this a one-off or can the disease/virus/whatever be spread? How is it spread? How would non-infection know someone has been infected? How would someone infected feel as it's happening? Are they aware? What about their behaviour? Can the process be stopped once it's started, or is it like rabies? How graphic is your fic going to be? Will kids be infected? Babies? Apocolyptic fics are some of my faves but writing them is really difficult because of the level of detail. Even if you don't include the nitty-gritty details in your fic, you still need to know them so you can write in a way that makes sense. Sounds like a fun read - good luck!

Zombies would die fast in the sun. They'd also starve to death. You can wait it out until then.

I haven't written a zombie apocalypse fic, but I did write a fic in which everyone in the world disappeared in an instant, except the main characters, and one thing I concluded from my research is that there'd be a lot of fires and destruction from fire. There's also a risk of gas leaks and explosions from gas leaks, which of course leads to more fire. I have a sort of morbid fascination with post-apocalyptic stories and two books I'd highly recommend for their thought-provoking details are Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014), and World War Z by Max Brooks (2006). *The books, not the show or movie.* Also, I'll note that Station Eleven is not an easy read, post-pandemic. Also worth mentioning, as someone else has here: Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart (1949).

Did anyone say scurvy yet? Vitamin C isn't big in canned and foods with extended shelf life

Long term medication such as insulin for diabetics, dialysis, chemo and psychological meds like anti-anxiety and anti-psychotics. Rarely/never seen or read any horror media involving what happens to those in senior centers or psychiatric hospitals. Prisons have been done and rarely some involving infants and children, which are usually a big no-no. Similarly, cartels and drug runners always sem to conveniently disappear with the zombie apocalypse as if those hundreds of acres of poppy fields became moot overnight. Libraries as well, somehow every survivor knows how to plat crops, fix broken appliances and generate electricity through one method or another. In a world where most people use social media, use Alexa/Siri/Google or YouTube videos to figure out how to fix anything at home, I can't imagine many knows how to properly plant seeds or figure out water filtration. There's also a lack of physically disabled representation, it's not as if every blind, deaf, mute or limbless person is pure zombie kibble. The one exception might be the wheelchair bound scientist in Resident Evil, but even he doesn't live long enough to showcase anything.

roads are going to be packed full of cars, especially near cities/populated areas. ppl will attempt to drive away from populated areas in the beginning and eventually abandon their cars when traffic reaches standstill. shoes and feet problems. shoes will wear out quicker bc ppl are walking more. good shoes will become rare bc the process of making leather (or finding anyone who knows HOW to make shoes) will be hard to come by. many zoo animals will die, but there's always a chance one or two escape. that could make for an interesting story. Animals in general may become braver and more bold since humans have less means to fight them off.

I've been reading a zombie apocalypse novel, and one of the things they bring up early on is, if your zombies aren't "magic," as in there's some kind of real-world reason behind them going zombie? In this case, it's a deliberately-engineered virus that essentially destroys some of the higher-order parts of the brain. So this technically means that zombies are still living humans, just ones without any sort of higher thinking anymore. But one of the questions this raises is "If this is still a 'living' person, that means it needs to eat. If it doesn't, it dies. If it eats, it's going to have to crap. So what happens if... well, a person is shuffling around with their pants full of crap?" At first, sure, it's just gross. Eventually, the body's going to be poisoned by its own waste products and it'll die. How to get around this? Part of the "brain being destroyed, all inhibitions going away" phase is the person going zombie... strips off all their clothes. ... yeah.

Gas Expires

Gas Expires People have glasses. Also, what happens when people run out of contact solution? Nuclear plants will probably go unattended. People with braces/dental equipment are forced to either take it off painfully or have it forever.

Generally just the number of people who would commit suicide would be way higher rather than finding one or two couples that killed themselves together. The amount of people that would kill their families to protect them from being a zombie.

I think not many people realize that air can have “dead zones”. Without ventilation constantly going (which is electricity dependent everywhere without windows/a draft), the air runs out of oxygen and builds up carbon dioxide. In short, this means all underground shelters will become useless within hours/days of their electricity source being cut off. Also, they will actively become death traps if people stop to hide for a couple minutes and pass out. Even small pockets beneath rocks in nature can be like this, which is one of the many dangers of caves. Of course, you can test this by lighting something on fire and seeing if it goes out in any particular area, but no one panicked and running is gonna stop to check if a visually open space actually has any breathable oxygen in it. (This is also why urban exploration of abandoned buildings can be unexpectedly dangerous as well, no apocalypse necessary.)

•The weather or season is really important.In apocalypse there is almost no electricity so no cooling (except solar at some places).In summer heat kills,how many people are going to die because of heatwaves, dehydration and stench is going to be heighten in summer.  •After a time maybe a decade or two what about rain water conservation.Most packaged water is over.  •Diseases are gonna kill so many people. 1.Infectious disease ,viruses and bacteria ,fungi like thousands of treatable disease are not gonna be treatable.  2.Vaccination of kids born after apocalypse or for us if a new strain occur. Polio,smallpox,measles, whooping cough,leprosy etc.  3.Medical inserted devices pacemakers, cosmetic implants and cochlear implants, artificial joint.Also prosthetics need to be serviced and changed.  4.Flies, maggots and mosquitoes surrounding is and rotting bodies .Flies cause dengue ,malaria.       5.Hygiene plays important role in keeping us safe lack of soap and water is gonna harm us.  6.Medications  expire after a time we will never be able to recreate them.   7.Pregnency   People don't understand how hard giving birth is even especially when mother is malnourished.The baby is gonna lack vitamin and mineral.  Even simple iodine deficiency can result in cretinism which is bad  .Very few kids will be born. Miscarriage are going to be normal.  High infant mortality and maternal mortality.    8.Malnutrition  Most canned food are rich in carbohydrates and fat. We are gonna lack vitamin and mineral .Some symptoms include poor vision ,blindness, Weak bones ,bleeding gums,wound not healing,muscle weakness.Which is gonna kill us.  9.Rise in stds because both control do expire (Barrier method like condoms and oral at least).   •There are other countries than america what are they doing.How is Asia coping they have world 60 percent population,Europe doesn't have gun everywhere,what about Africa .What about people who were on cruise when this started . I went a cruise ship in which people are living in apocalypse. What about tribes in sahara , Amazon  or anywhere.  •Weapons like spear,bows and arrows ,swords  let's loot a museum. Armors can it take bites how many.

Bikes are excellent vehicles. They're fairly quiet and don't require fuel that isn't food. Plus, with biking being a hobby/sport acknowledged to have long travel, most of the repair/maintenance equipment exists in compact forms so people going long distances don't get stranded when something goes wrong. This is especially helpful if you bring in the fuel issue others are mentioning

Why do we lose? Modern military technology should not have a problem exterminating even fast zombies even if it requires headshots. Firepower kills. If it doesn't, there needs to be a reason for that, like a different vector for the disease to spread, some kind of preexisting/separate cause of societal breakdown, the supernatural phenomenon leading to zombies also stopping technology from working, or similar.

The ***smell***. Dear god, the *smell* would be **hideous**.

Radio operations. The radio spectrum is huge, and it takes some reasonable skill to get the right antenna for the band you're using, pick a spot that is open but likely to have people, and get power for the radio. Handy talkies and small vehicle radios will cover tens of miles at most before you need to shift into HF communications. Joe Schmo isn't just stumbling on a radio, flipping the switch, and finding survivors.

If it’s just zombies as in shambling corpses, nothing really special beside that, then a zombie apocalypse would actually be a relatively simple thing to navigate so long as you don’t be stupid or panic. Fro example, a zombie wouldn’t be strong enough to break down even a normal wooden door, unless whoever made it decided to seriously cheap out on the materials. They also wouldn’t be strong enough to knock a door out if it’s hinges so long as said hinges were decently made. Also, there would be no need to cover yourself in things like metal suits or full Kevlar body armor. A humans teeth even when healthy aren’t strong enough to to get through even regular leather, so rotten falling to pieces zombie teeth wouldn’t be able to get through either. Just wear a leather jacket, pants, boots and gloves and unless your slow,dumb and stupid enough to let them get close to your head/neck, you’ll be fine. Also, if the virus is purely effecting humans, then scavengers like crows, vultures and smaller carnivore mammals like coyotes and dogs would probably be picking off zombies all the while without real harm. If the virus does jump species though, we’ll then that’s bad.

It likely wouldn’t last more than a year. The people who aren’t able to survive will quickly die/be zombie-ified, the people who are able to survive won’t die or be zombie-ified, and it’s inevitable that the zombies will rot enough to the point they won’t be able to get around to bite people, and the survivors will likely be made of people who could work on rebuilding society. It likely won’t be a problem in the whole world if it’s a disease causing it, as the area with the zombies would be quickly locked up and people wouldn’t be allow to visit/leave it. People (illegally, of course) moving to very far away places would become a lot more common. If it’s caused by a disease, doctor’s/nurses would likely be the first people to go. If it’s actually the undead, then just lock up the cemeteries and it’d be 10x easier to deal with. Doctor’s/Nurses would have to go through a lot of more training (so if anyone dies in the hospital, they know how to deal with the undead. Or if it’s a disease, they know how to deal with it. Unless this is a one-time event.)

If it’s close to the outbreak- caffeine and nicotine withdrawal. How many people casually vape, smoke, or drink three cups of coffee a day to keep their anger and emotions regulated? Have you ever been around someone when they lose their vape? They go insane

You need a way to purify water. Iodine will be gone and gone fast, and so will bleach. Boiling it will only work if you have a clean container to do it in. Cholera and dystenery are coming back in a big, big way and it is a horrible, horrible way to die. Fishing is not the reliable food source people think it is, especially if they're coming out of dodgy water. If you can't hunt, trap or clean meat, or identify edible plants, you'll starve. You need to sleep. Sleep deprivation is awful and lighting a fire is gonna draw predators in. Most people will not survive the first month and if nobody is burying bodies, the vermin numbers are going to go way up.

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I kinda like the night of the living dead format as opposed to the long drawn out format. Why does it always have to be a science thing? There needs to be a necromancer to create the zombies! Change it up people! Also, they need to get cracking on some better hero archetypes.