Surviving Zombies 5

Skills needed to survive.

Medical: It is important to know how to patch up injuries, such as cuts, bruises, broken bones, and more. However, extreme caution should be taken around bite injuries.

Marksmanship: Whether your target is a deer for your group's supper, a roaming zombie, or a hostile human, marksmanship is important. Practice with the weapon you intend to use at least 30 minutes a day. Your main target is the head, as that will put the person, animal, or zombie down quickly (and without undue suffering).

Hand-to-hand combat: You need to know how to escape from zombies' grabs, and know how to kill enemy group leaders quickly, so you can stay alive.

Diplomacy: You might find this skill useful, whether you are dealing with difficult group members, or the leaders of other groups. The right words will mean the difference between your group staying together, or mutinying against you. They will also mean the difference between the people who are in the other group helping you, or shooting you.

Breaking-and-entering: If someone in your group knows how to break into a place, without doing any structural damage to the doors and windows, and without setting off any alarms, he/she will be quite valuable. Often times food, weapons, and other items can be found inside of houses, and other buildings. However, observe the signs, as it were. If a door is chained or nailed shut, there's a reason.

Hotwiring: Sometimes a quick getaway, or distraction, is needed. Just remember to check the backseat/undercarriage.

Cooking: Whether you're cooking canned green beans, or freshly killed deer, you have to know what you're doing. Undercooked meat can have nasty parasites, which could kill you in the long run. Canned food, which still has an intact seal, has been pre-cooked, and should be safe to eat as is. Don't waste the fluids.

Fire-making: There is nothing like a fire to lift your spirits. However, don't make your fire too big. While on the run, gather fire making material, such as dry dead grass, cattail tops, cotton, and so on. Also, gather matches, lighters, and some flint-and-steel. If you're a smoker, you might want to kick the habit, as that lighter will do more use in lighting fires, than your cigarettes, which will be hard to get.

Trapping: If you plan on staying in an area for a few days, you best set up some traps, preferably simple ones, such as dead-falls, snares, and a few other ones. Also, set up at least five. They might only get a squirrel or a rabbit, but they keep working, even when you aren't, and even a stringy squirrel is better than nothing.

Hunting: Work in teams of at least two people, and split up. One hunter (group) is to stay stationary, and the other pushes the animals towards them. Wear orange vests, if possible, so that others can see you clearly. Try to use quiet weapons, like crossbows or guns with silencers, so that the sound of you hunting doesn't bring zombies to your camp. Also, kill only what you intend to eat.

Gathering: You need to know what wild vegetation (fruits, vegetables, berries) are safe to eat, depending on the time of the year, age of the plant, and so on. After all, most food at the store will be "unusable".

Fishing: If you have a rod-and-reel with you, or know how to make one, and you're next to a body of freshwater, you can try to do some fishing. Most freshwater fish are safe to eat, especially after it is cooked.

Looting: When you break into a place, take only what is usable. That manual, hand-crank type of can opener is more valuable than the fancy electric one.  That can of Spam is better to take than the roast beef.  Things to take are food, clothing, bottled water, weapons and other such things. Just remember to have a melee weapon with you, such as a crowbar or machete. It is to be quiet while looting.

Ingenuity: Knowing how to use what you have, and know, to effect your survival is a must. You may have the tools, but if you don't know how to use them, you're dead.