Stuff you need to know chapter 2

There is a really bad misconception that when this goes down you will be able to hold out in your house, or that you and your friends will be able to hold up in a shopping mall aided by the military and kindly bikers. You will have plenty of room to keep all your stuff, and will have a bed and everything.

You are pretty much high.

You will need to carry your life on your back, or at least most of it. Do yourself a favor, and hop on your local Craig’s list, and get a jogging stroller. Best case, one with a wide wheel base and knobby tires (they call these sport utility strollers and yes, I did just throw up in my mouth a little).
Imagine you will be pushing this up a rough rocky dirt path. You don't want the kind with a free rotating cart wheel in front.  Welcome to your new home. Don't get too attached, you may need to ditch it. As such, this should only be for your third line gear, nothing super critical. This is not a good place to leave your asthma inhalers.

Once you rip the seats and all the BS mom law safety features out of this,
there is PLENTY of room for ammo. 

These things are almost always cheap; yuppies squirt babies and sell them to make room for jet skis. Don’t pay over $80. There will always be some drywall shanty dweller trying to get top dollar for these things, factory new plus the added bonus of being barfed on by little ‘Topher.  Fuck them. In fact, I encourage you to mod the shit out of this with heavy grade canvas and industrial grommets. If it’s beat up and sun bleached, all the better. Grind them on the price; use the money you save on ammo.

Their kid ain't using it...

Now I’m sorry, I got sidetracked. Let me explain why these are critical.

Put your hand up if you have ever been stuck in traffic.

Keep your hand up if you have ever been in “WTF haven’t moved a yard in over fifteen minutes, should I get out of the car and play hacky sack?” traffic.

The "well orchestrated" Hurricane Rita evacuation took several days.
The Katrina evacuation made this look like a summer jaunt.
This is Los Angeles on any weekday.

K put your hands down.

Now imagine that traffic is full of cars that are out of gas, stripped to the frame and/or full of dead families.

The apocalyptic freeway circle of life is as follows.

1. Craptastic traffic. Everybody is leaving town in stark naked fear.

2. Critical failure. Weather a simple breakdown or the people in front get eaten, the line stops for ever.

3. Disbelief. It will take up to 24 hours before people realize the road will never be open again.

4. Escape. Those who can, grab the dog and the water and hoof it.

5. Pillage. Days later, those leaving town on foot will loot what is left for supplies.

In the zombie scenario, you need to be ready for both hungry corpses and armed looters who know this is a choke point bonus round full of trapped people with the stuff they decided was important enough to bring with them. That stuff is a free resupply when the original owners are dead, one way or another.

Not all men with guns and uniforms are cops...

You can totally forget your fantasies of driving your armored pumped up 4x4 with KC jacklights through that mess. You will stop, and you will be a target. Most TANKS could not clear that. Motorcycles are nice, motorcycles are versatile, but they only rank a narrow third place in ways to escape for three reasons.

Please turn away if this will offend you...

1.     Cargo space. It’s limited to begin with, but the more you carry, the less versatile you become

2.     Road conditions, they will suck, there will be hunks of glass, metal and human-fuck-skull-chunk-knows-what-the-hell-else in random spots with sharp corners on them. Most county roads are a crappy thrill ride on a motorcycle, now imagine dodging the caltrop love fest that is about 20 car accidents of debris.

3.     They are loud. You can hear them for miles. They don't SEEM loud on the  freeway, but they are louder than cars, and make the distinct sound of an easy target.

If something has worked for several thousand years, why try to fix it?

Of course the number two place goes to horses, but since people who have horses tend to be in rural areas, and as such fall into the “probably should not evacuate” category (see below); the sport utility stroller is your best bet.

This leaves you splitting on foot, pushing your worldly possessions in the combat version of what used to push some soccer MILFs bundle of joy while she tried to run off her baby weight.

Speaking of weight, you will need to do some modifications to the standard “Sport Utility Stroller”.  Little ‘Topher,  a pumpkin mint  frappucino  (half caf, light foam skim milk) and two bottles of “vitamin water” only weigh about 40 lbs. This is ten pounds less than three days of ammo and food. Ultimately the frame can take more than the REI branded harness. The good ones boast a 70lb capacity, but with some canvas reinforcement and some creative tinkering you should be able to double that.

When the time comes. There is such thing as “too soon” to try to leave town, there is also “too late”.  

Do you think BART is still running on time?

If you live in an urban center, GTFO right away.

There is no better time than now. Hell if your neighbor is complaining of a headache MOVE. Between the other quarter million people trying to escape and the fact that the government won’t think twice about firebombing your neighborhood to contain “it”; you are pretty much boned. 

Unless you are this guy.

The other side of that, if your driveway is over a mile long, or  your neighbors call you over to help sheer sheep, stay put.  Extreme rural areas are difficult to invade, and the low population density makes them easy to defend. The chances are most of your neighbors have guns,  stored food, plenty of oil lamps, a generator or six, and everybody knows everybody else from church. Let’s just say somebody’s kid gets stuck in a corn husker and “turns”,  People who kill their own meat are way more likely to brainshoot the meat shell that used to be their kid than the lady you got the stroller from.  They are also ready for the Northface jacket community to roll into town at the first sign of disaster,  so if you don't have a native guide or the stickers of the local lumber mill on your truck, you better bring skills or goods to that party if you are immigrating from suburbia. If not you will be reenacting “Deliverance” for the rest of your short life.

"How many babies y'all got? What Chorch 'dya you go to?"

            The suburbs are the dangerous sweet spot. Leave too soon, you will run headlong into everybody else leaving, and the urban panic coming in. Leave too late, and you will face a horde of hungry zombies with few fresh human targets.

The good news is, as long as you hold out (after the mass exodus) there will be PLENTY of supplies. Suburbanites are notorious hoarders. The bad news is every lootable house will be a veritable “Let’s make a deal” of risk to benefit ratio. Will you find the former home of the mormon family who left behind barrels of flower and rice? Will the door reveal a lonely nerd with a .357 who lived off of Mc Donalds and has empty shelves?

How well do you REALLY know your neighbors?

 Much of the suburban pull-out program depends on your house and it’s location. If you are in the middle of a block within a series of dead ends, this makes a great location. If you are on the edge of a neighborhood near an arterial road, across from a high school, you are more vulnerable. Remember you need to be digging in against marauders and zombies. Zombies will go after any food target, so they may hit targets that would be off the beaten path, and will have no perception of tactical or monetary value.  Marauders will hit targets with easy access, that seem to be high yield low risk. Good general rules but it takes only one exception to kill you.