Poll: What weapons will you use in a zombie apocalypse?

[Dirty Hipsters]

In a zombie apocalype, you need to find a way to defend yourself with the materials that you can find. The two most popular styles seem to be getting up close and personal with a baseball bat or a fire ax or a sledge hammer and using that to kill the zombie. There are pros and cons to each.

Guns

Pros
- Much longer range
- A single heatshot is fatal
- larger guns can be used as makeshift clubs

Cons
- It is easy to miss without training or when you panic
- Ammunition will most likely be limited
- A gun can jam at a crucial moment
- Zombies feel no pain, so a shot to anywhere but the head will be a waste of ammo

One word - Shotgun.

Shotguns get rid of 3/4 of your cons. Don't have any training and prone to missing? Shotgun! You don't need pinpoint precision to kill something.

A shot anywhere but the head is a waste of ammo? Not with a SHOTGUN! Shotguns injure such a large area that you can easily destroy a zombie's leg to significantly slow it down, and you can do so while running and not aiming.

Guns jam in crucial moments huh? Have you EVER seen a shotgun jam? Sure, it happens every once in a while, but pump action shotguns are incredibly reliable, and if you properly maintain them can fire thousands of shots without ever jamming. The same goes with the vast majority of firearms. Clean them regularly and they'll almost never jam.

The only real problem is that ammunition will probably be limited, but even then shotgun ammo is fairly common, since shotguns are suck common home defense weapons.

 

[White_Lama]

Seeing as I live in Sweden and not some country were gun-toting crazed rednecks roam every streetcorner *cough* USA *cough* I would go for melee weapons.

Doesn't make any sounds when you kill which the won't attract every other zombie around, and doesn't need ammo. And pretty much everything is a melee weapon anyways, when my good old medieval war axe I got on my wall (made by a blacksmith, real deal, no "not combat ready" replicas here for me) finally breaks I could just as well pick up some rock and sharpen some sticks for defense, not harder than that.

EDIT: I also have a short-term and a long-term plan of survival which I won't write here as to keep other Swedes off my land!

 

[Dastardly]

snip

Melee against zombies. Guns against people.

Really, though, my weapons of choice?

1. Crowbar -- useful as tool and weapon. Why not an axe? I don't want to chop them (and risk the axe getting stuck). I want to move them out of my escape path.

2. .22 rifle and pistol, with subsonic rounds. Quiet, just effective enough for a close- to mid-range kill, ammo is light and plentiful, and both firearms use the same round.

3. Semi-automatic shotgun loaded with alternating buckshot and slugs, for use against hostile human targets.

Why no high-powered rifle? Up close, they're a waste of energy (punch right through the target, meaning kinetic energy lost). And if a target, human or zombie, is far enough away that I need that much power to reach it, it's too far away for me to want to draw its attention.

In any case, the weapon's job is simply to open an avenue of escape. In the zombie apocalypse, no one wins a fight. You just waste ammo and energy, make noise, and risk injuries you won't have the equipment or knowledge to treat.

Zombies are like water. If it's in your way, you use tools and tricks to get over, around, or through it. You don't try to fight water.

 

[Souleks]

Easy,Melee

Spoiler: put one of these bad boys in my hand and we are good to go.

And as how I am going to get one?
easy
I go to Japan(I saw Highschool of the Dead and trust me it will be exactly like that.)
they have them laying around all over the place right? that is accurate.

Captcha:Good Morning
Its 11:53PM hold your horses.

 

[Fijiman]

I would have to go with melee mostly because I have never fired an actual gun before and I don't exactly have a few of them lying around the house. Melee weapons, on the other hand, anyone knows how to use and I have at least half a dozen usable blunt objects just inside the same room that I'm typing this in and even more throughout the rest of the house. Not to mention that melee weapons are easy to find/replace just about anywhere you go.

 

[Jak23]

Wait. What weopons WILL I use?
In all serious though a mixture is best, although I would try to use melee the most.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Screw that, I'd take a goddamned TANK! Even if I run out of ammo I can still squish the zombies under my mighty treads.

You'd likely run out of fuel before ammo. You think those giant steel behemoths run on happy thoughts?

They get crappy gas mileage.

Yeah, but even so I'd like to see a zombie get into one.

 

[Kae]

I'm pretty sure I'd carry both if I had access to both, and which one I would use would be entirely situational, but considering both my aim and my abilities at CQC are downright awful, I'm pretty sure I'd just die, considering the fact that I must definitely won't run because I hate running away, not to mention I'd be going insane of how bad everything would smell and how filthy it would be, in fact I'd probably die from some disease before I even see a zombie now that I think about it.

 

[Terminate421]

Guns, I don't care if melee weapons never run out of ammo, guns can be effective clubs too. Also, I don't believe in the idea of one zombie hearing you from 7 miles away for firing one shot.

 

[Terminate421]

Screw that, I'd take a goddamned TANK! Even if I run out of ammo I can still squish the zombies under my mighty treads.

You'd likely run out of fuel before ammo. You think those giant steel behemoths run on happy thoughts?

They get crappy gas mileage.

Yeah, but even so I'd like to see a zombie get into one.

You could live in one, think about it. The only issue at all would be it may get hot in there.

 

[Starik20X6]

I don't really get a choice- guns aren't very common around Australia. At least, not where I am.

That said, my primary defence would be stealth. Better to get around unseen by both zombies and hostile survivors.

 

[Ashendarei]

Both, but primarially guns. I've got a .22 pistol (fun to plink with) and about 1500 rounds. I'm pretty sure if I managed to off even 750 of them personally (assuming 50% hit/fatality rate, which would be terrible for me) I could last quite awhile

 

[Nouw]

Anything I can get my hands on that I can effectively use. Remember, 'there is no such thing as dangerous weapons, only dangerous men.'

 

[Zeren]

My AR-15 and Glock 17. They take ammo that is easily available and I'm a pretty good shot with them. My AR can also go full auto due to a special stock I have, so I could hose down quite a few at once if I had to.

 

[karcentric]

My teeth and hands, since the chances of surviving in a zombie wonderland is probably next to none.

I'd dress up first so I'd stand out in the crowd, and maybe wear roller skates for added hilarity.

 

[King of Asgaard]

While guns are best, surely you'd want to have both, for every contingency. I mean, what if a zombie gets too close? That's when you whip out your trusty fire axe/katana/sledgehammer and own some zombies.

 

[NightHawk21]

I think you're forgetting one major problem with melee weapons (one that is overlooked in just about every zombie thread): melee weapons are fukin heavy. I honestly think this is probably just due to some sort of video game mentality, where the hero can swing a sword for 900 years and never tire, and there is hardly any difference between swinging a knife and a sledge hammer. I honestly think that a majority of people who say sledge hammer have never used one in their lives if you think you're gonna be swinging that around at head level more than a couple times.

The best case in these scenarios is always a gun. Honestly, even if you've never shot a gun before you'd be much better off picking one up and wasting 3 rounds to get the feel for it, than passing it up for a machete. Lets say you're the worst shot in the world, you can't hit anything more than 30 feet in front of you. Lets take a look at this from 2 scenarios, melee (for which we will assume a baseball bat since it is probably the least stupid choice and the most accessible) vs gun (for which we will assume a rifle since it is probably the most accessible).

Melee: The zombie is running at you and you got 1-3 seconds to prepare and line up a perfect swing to the head. Miss, you leave half your body open and you're dead. Hit and you either stun the zombie, giving you the time to line up a second hit or you kill it.

Gun: You shoot off a couple rounds. Lets say you hit 2 out of 5 at max range-30ft (both in the chest). You accomplish nothing but you stagger the zombie a little and its forced to slow down. It gets closer and by default your aim has to improve so it becomes very likely you hit it in the head (just due to the fact that the target becomes bigger and bigger the closer it gets) or further cause more injury elsewhere and maybe incapacitate an arm or something. Well you're not even in physical range of the zombie and already the zombie is moving slower and has lost an arm. At this point you have the capacity to either keep shooting an increasing easy target, or hit the zombie in the head with the rifle, which for all intents and purposes will be better at this job or slightly worse depending on how it hits.

The above scenarios hopefully illustrate why picking a melee weapon when you have a gun is stupid. There is a reason that melee has be pretty much completely eliminated in any sort of confrontation, and I have to wonder why anyone who has been given access to superior technology would turn it down to use antiqued weapons. I would really challenge anyone to give me three legitimate reasons why you pick a melee weapon over a firearm. I'm talking reasons that are exclusive to melee weapons (so no it can jam because that works both ways, you're hammer can break if you mistreat it as well), because the ones in the OP are nonsense.
Lets take a look:
Melee
Pros
- Can be used more often > Not if you haven't been swinging this stuff for a long time
- The blunt force is usually strong enough to break limbs, which can hamper a zombie's effectiveness and a single swing to the neck will most likely be fatal > Guns can do this too
- Are fairly easy to find > The only exclusive pro, but it assumes we aren't in America where almost every walmart carries some sort of firearm

Cons
-Require you to be close to the zombie to use > Which greatly increases the risk of being bitten or even transmission by blood in the eye or whatever
- Bladed weapons (such as an axe) can get stuck > They can also dull which will make them next to useless
- It is possible to break them > Depends on the weapon, but this is probably the weakest con since a decent weapon and proper maintenance and stuff shouldn't be breaking.

 

[chadachada123]

Both! I have a softball bat and my dad owns several guns. It'll be mostly firearms, though, unless they get too close.

 

[Flamezdudes]

Not sure if anyone ever thought about it, but how good are the zombie's senses? Because if they're average or lower.. I could blend in. Just tear my shirt up a bit, make an expression that fits right in with the zombies and follow them up in style. I could get anywhere and not draw attention to myself. However... if they're smart (how that is, I don't know) or have good senses, then-

I would have to go with my wooden samurai sword. Sure it's not the most effective killing tool, but it's not meant to kill. I'd bash their legs in, and trust me- a full thick wooden sword the strength of a tree trunk but more focus put into the force... could break a leg. Just cripple the zombies, and not try to kill them. See to me, trying to kill a zombie is good to limit their numbers but costs time. Just making your way through them by breaking their limbs makes it easier to escape within a faster time and the other survivors have a much better chance evading them too, or finishing them off.

You mean like this?

I don't have any guns as i'm living urban in the UK, so i'd have to use a lot of melee weapons.

 

[socialmenace42]

My Avatar.

Church-tank: the best offence and defence against any form of the undead