Choosing Your Fortress

Choosing Your Fortress

"It won't hold much longer!" I hollered across the house as I pushed all of my weight against the front door. The locks weren't going to hold by themselves and we hadn't the time to move furniture before they were pounding and scraping, putting out the maximum physical exertion just to get in. "The garage now! Get the kids in the car! HURRY!"

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Selecting the right place to fortify and defend will be a pivotal decision that could make or break your life during and after (if you make it so far) the Zombie Apocalypse. Poor foresight at this time will result in your ass on a silver plate for an unsavory group of creatures (and they don't use sporks).

Buildings after the collapse of society should be looked at in two different ways - a potential fortress or a potential supply stop. "Casing the joint" is now something done by survivors and not necessarily heathens. Sometimes these two categories will overlap but not always. If you are in an area you are familiar with, you should already know where some of the bigger, more defensible buildings are and hopefully you have some knowledge about where some supply buildings would be located as well, especially if you (like me) constantly put yourself in the shoes of someone escaping zombies. To determine whether or not a building is good to defend - not just from zombies, from hostile survivors as well - there are a few key characteristics to consider.

1. Accessibility. A structure that has limited windows and only a few doors would be easy to fortify because there are less ways a zombie could enter. Furthermore, multiple floors increases your initial work load (clearing all threats - see Taking Control of Your Fortress) but that increase in space gives you so much more room to work with after things start to settle down (oh yes, eventually we will settle down - this is a survival guide ffs).

2. Roof Access. It is important to get to the roof of any building you are holding down. You need to make your hideout known to helicopters and planes that may be searching for survivors. You will need the space and sun light on the roof to grow plants and collect rain water (if you make it this far, we’ll come back to this concept in a future post). Also the "high ground" is a strategic location to control if you find your building under siege. Consider as well how funny it would be to pee off the roof onto the zombies below.

3. Contents. Most buildings will have SOMETHING useful, but some buildings are a higher priority than others. If your local grocery store fits the characteristics you are looking for in a fortress, locking it down will hopefully give you an immediate supply of food, bottled water, and (in some places) alcohol. If you need to know something - anything - a library or book store are solid places to check out. Sometimes you will find that a building with awesome contents is not defensible. In this instance, don't even bother to try to defend it. Make a note of where this place is and get on with finding a fortress - supply runs after your new home is established will raid local buildings for the supplies within. Trying to make a building a fortress when it is not cut out to be one will result in a demotion from survivor to fodder instantly.

You will have to be planning in advance with any building that you lock down. How long are you going to stay here if nobody comes to rescue you? How long are you going to have before you need to make a run for supplies somewhere? Is there a large enough local population to expect that other survivors are out there and may possibly make their way here as well?

Some of us though will be unfortunate enough to be somewhere they are unfamiliar with when the Zombie Apocalypse breaks out. If you are advanced enough to be able to identify a defensible building in a town you are unfamiliar with, kudos. For those of you who are not this advanced or who don‘t feel confident in ANY building around, you may want to consider the option Run Like Hell.

Some key buildings you are DEFINITELY going to want to find are:

1. Grocery Store. Food. Bottled water. Some over the counter medicine. Alcohol (to help clean cuts that were NOT inflicted by zombies). A grocery store is AT LEAST worthy of being noted as a potential supply stop.

2. Super Center. Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Costco. Anything with lots of stuff and a variety of merchandise. In some areas, these types of stores are more plentiful than gun shops and thus could possibly quench your desire for weapon ammunition. These buildings also expand on everything listed in the grocery store section above. While probably too big to hold down as a fortress, these buildings are worth consideration - but definitely prove their worth as supply stops.

3. Library. Once you get settled in you are going to need to learn things you never needed to know before. Libraries are full of information. Endless knowledge for those who can read. Plus they have maps!  Big ups for the library!!!

4. Police Station / Army Depot. Here we may have weapons and/or bad ass survivors. Either of these constitutes an upgrade to your team and the possibility of either being present makes this building a MUST VISIT at least as a supply stop.

5. Hardware Store. Great place to score building materials, seeds for plants, tools (for tool purposes or weapons purposes), and sometimes even hunting gear and guns!  A good hardware store is a sleeper building not oft thought of but critical to the Long Term Survival of anybody serious about surviving in a post Zombie Apocalypse world.

6. Hospital / Pharmacy. Yes, it is a big “no-no” to go to a hospital.  But for long term medicinal needs it is a very real possibility that you will have to get to a hospital to get medical supplies or a pharmacy to get medicine.

7.  Gas Stations. Any place where you could get some gas could be worth a stop. Gas is critical to running a lot of machinery and will become a much MORE limited commodity in this world.

8. Liquor Store. Yep.

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