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5 things I'd like to see in the Zombie Apocalypse


With Fear the Walking Dead premiering this month, everyone has to be wondering what new plot twists we’re going to see. Same Zombie Apocalypse, but a new story in a new setting. How will people with different resources adapt?

This is a list of things that I’d like to see as the Zombie Apocalypse grinds on.

Modern locomotives are hybrid and use mostly electric batteries, so fuel is less of a problem than with cars. You wouldn’t have to worry about blocked tracks, since a train can push cars out of the way at a crossing, or push a whole other train ahead of it. Freight cars are bound to contain lots of stuff you might need, empty ones can haul lots of people to safety - and best of all, you’re high up - walkers can’t get at you. With a makeshift cow-catcher, you could even keep them from piling up under the wheels.

I can’t believe nobody on The Walking Dead has ridden a bike yet. They don’t need gas, you can lay them down in tall weeds and they’re hidden, you can carry stuff on them, and they’re much faster than walkers. They’re not perfect - one of the tropes of the zombie genre (we’ll all wait while those of you who think fast zombies are cooler than slow zombies look up the unfamiliar words) is that any time you’re running away from zombies, you never know if there are more zombies lurking ahead, and if you run into a herd of walkers on a bike, your options are limited - but a bike still beats walking.

These handy-dandy little devices are small enough to fit in your pocket, but are engineered to break a car window or windshield, even when swung in a very short arc - such as when you’re trapped in a car. This would make it an excellent close-range melee weapon, since it could probably smash a walker’s skull even when there’s hardly any room to swing it. And it has a nifty safety blade at the other end for cutting ropes and stuff.

Viewers don’t seem to know much about guns, and neither do the writers. The most common long gun used by characters in The Walking Dead is the .223 AR - and like everyone else on TV, they never seem to run out of ammo. A little .22, the first gun a lot of kids own, is not a good tactical choice against living humans who shoot back, but it’s great for hunting small game, it’s nowhere near as loud as an AR, and it’s powerful enough to drop a zombie from a couple hundred feet away. Ammo is usually plentiful, and you can carry a lot more rounds.

I would make the creators of The Walking Dead comic sorry they ever came up with this idea. It’s awkward, but since it works, it ought to be used a lot more often.

When Team Grimes made their trek from Richmond to Alexandria, each person should have been leading a mule train of Michonne-Customized WAlkers (MCW’s), roped together at the neck or waist, and loaded down with anything a walker can carry - food, water, ammo, Judith - and then, when they made camp for the night, they should have circled the MCW’s around them like wagons.

Similarly, any permanent shelter - The Prison, Woodbury, Alexandria - should have a crowd of MCW’s tied up just outside the entrance, to keep roamers away and to screen people who are leaving and coming back from runs.


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