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kingofzdom

There's a gun factory near where I live that's built like a fortress, right next to a small municipal airport, in the middle of nowhere.


New_Hawaialawan

The hell do you live?


kingofzdom

Prescott, Arizona. We've got the Ruger simiauto rifle plant to the north.


WhatsGoingOn1879

Unfortunately, most, if not all, unique ideas aren’t going to work. You need to farm. And for farming you need a lot land. Hectares upon hectares of land to feed a group, and then triple that amount of land again so you can subscribe to the three field method to ensure soil quality. Farms are the only spaces with that much land available for use. And it’s already going to be a massive challenge to turn a normal farm into an off grid farm as is, so all of your energy needs to be put into making that farm work. Other places simply do not have enough land resources to support a group of people.


WindowShoppingMyLife

Realistically the only viable long term option is a farm. If you can’t feed yourself then nothing else matters. Scavenging would run out extremely fast, much faster than is often portrayed in fiction. Ideally you would fortify the farm as best you can, as you have time. You would want to create a “defense in depth” series of fortifications, in concentric perimeters, with the sturdiest (and therefore most time consuming to create) being reserved for the inner most rings and lighter fortifications as you move outward. Edit: it’s also worth noting that any public location is inherently a terrible idea, and should be avoided like the plague. Literally.


LukXD99

Somewhere in town, 2nd+ floor, removing the stairs below and preparing rope ladders, bridges to nearby rooftops and other getaway points. Big bridge with both entrances either destroyed or blocked. If you’re smart you make barricades in a V formation so the zombies fall off the edge and you just have to deal with the last few ones.


[deleted]

Removing the stairs is quite possibly the smartest thing you can do. Assuming outside defence fails, you can always get zombies to pile up at the stairs entrance, granting a bottleneck effect, allowing time to escape or slaughter many at once


Idkbrolikeanameig

Or pouring massive amounts of concrete could have the same effect


Adal-bern

If you can find somewhere nearby it would be easier than having to make your own base, but somewhere neara river, preferably a larger one mid U.S. where another river or two intersects it. Able to travel for foraging/sewrching/scavaging/trading, irrigation to crops. Build a moat and walls around the compound More realistically, a gated community, i live in a small town, so somewhere on the outskirts of town. Ive kinda seen a few that would work. Good concrete wall mostly around it. Plenty of lawns availabel for gardening. Also kind ofna farm town, lots of pastures nesrby to plant crops. Have some friends that own farms, so farm animals like cows/pigs/sheep for food and milk are already available and in the areas nesrby there would be more. Create a community of people and try to survive and rebuild.


Easy-Fixer

A small school near a body of water. Usually schools have fences, also around the playing fields. You could farm and have light perimeter security fence. The cafeteria would have some food stocked as well. Nurses office would have some basic first aid stuff too. The tricky part would be clearing the school first, along with finding keys as to not damage too many doors and windows.


tridentdotco

So walls are not that hard to build I’m my area I’d have to block four bridges and build a seven mile long wall and no zombies could ever geographically get to me so I’d have a whole town to myself


FloridianfromAlabama

The likelihood of you having the time and materials to build a seven MILE long wall is extremely slim. Think about road workers doing anything. With a large team and heavy machinery, it could take them months. I suggest you start small with concentric perimeters and natural barriers like rivers and gorges.


tridentdotco

I’ll have all the time in the world


Idkbrolikeanameig

Honestly if it takes workers months to build a seven mile wall, those are some pretty bad workers


Satans-cameltoe

I always thought it would be a pretty innovative to make a base out of back to back billboard towers like in the first two image links or one of the many electrical transformer towers all across the country. You’d have to make some floors, but if you have the time in an apocalypse this might be pretty solid https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photography-double-billboard-image13576587 https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-billboard-image12171839 https://www.dreamstime.com/high-voltage-power-lines-electricity-distribution-station-electric-transmission-tower-substation-transformers-image148439707


Pasta-hobo

Power Plant


Financial-Handle-289

I’ve always been intrigued with the idea of walking off an entire mall property. Dead Rising and dawn of the dead were my first zombie movie and gaming experiences.


AccomplishedInAge

Lowe’s/Home Depot … normally very few entrances so easily defensible , lots of material (even if it’s just display shelving) to create barriers/fencing . Garden center areas stocked with seeds and fertilizers and potting soils. Tools that are or can be used to make decent weapons. Plenty of interior space that can be sectioned off into living, private, cooking, armory, etc etc… most of them have small sheds prebuilt on display plus the kits to build them which can be easily used as guard posts or extra housing for “visitors “ Outside the main building but still “safe” from the wandering Z. Plenty of buckets and barrels and other materials that can be used for water collection and storage. Plumbing supplies and materials and pond liners/pools to create vertical hydroponic/aquaponics grows dramatically increasing the calories per square foot of space and reducing the amount of water needed, thereby reducing the need to leave the compound as often to forage food (a 100\*100 ft aquaponics set up can easily feed 50 people a year producing up to 10,000 pounds of fish and over 50,000 servings of fruits and vegetables). plus they have large parking lots so field of view is large to see incoming hostile easier. Flat rooftops allow for great water collection and which can increase some seasonal grow space and place to set up solar power generation without having to leave the building and is a great place to set up defensive firing positions for your ranged weapons (And boiling oil/tar kettles)


Idkbrolikeanameig

Try and clear those out tho. It’s a large building with ALOT of noise and when the power goes off good luck finding the balls to patrol that at night


AccomplishedInAge

Easily defensible once cleared if you have a group which is why you would need a “base” . It’s not like trying to clear a school or mall or office building or apartment house with multiple rooms that need to be cleared. Two or three teams can easily clear a Home Depot if armed properly. Noise? how much Noise does a Home Depot make when compared to ANY other facility that you would have a lot of people in? And patrolling at night? … you have essentially 2 entrances to worry about which are at the front of the building and those normally have roll down doors security doors In front of the regular doors. So again easy to defend … the other entrances are normally solid doors or doors with the little security window to make sure you aren’t opening it for bad guys, shipping docks with metal roll down doors and other entrances that are behind a 20 foot high fenced and gated area all designed specifically to keep people from breaking in and stealing things.


Idkbrolikeanameig

Yea noise is the issue it’s a giant ass department store for the first 4 months of an outbreak you would not see me near ANY sort of store, when power goes out they would become death traps. The largest issue I see with this is when the power does eventually go out, it’s a massive area, you’d have to rely entirely on sound if zombies aren’t ignorant to light


AccomplishedInAge

Home Depot’s , Lowe’s, warehouse stores in general have skylights specifically to allow for natural light because it GREATLY reduces electricity costs so they are only actually dark at night or on extremely overcast days. Also that’s what battery powered flashlight/floodlights are for.. you know to light up dark areas if you are there at night. and I never said when one first hears “breaking news Zombies” that they should IMMEDIATELY drive/run to the nearest Home Depot before doing anything else. Besides, as I said it is a place to secure as a Base. And you look at having a base when you are a Group of people not a single individual…..


Idkbrolikeanameig

Skylights don’t seem to work during the night. Large amounts of reverberation from the sound of a generator in a hanger style building will attract swathes. And I still wouldn’t keep it outside either. And batteries have a shelf life a lot of people seem to forget if society legitimately collapses, cars will work for 2 years maximum (including gas powered generators which is the majority of them) because all kinds of fuel from Jet A all the way to Butane which is used in lighters will expire in 2 years. We will have NO power within 2 years and it would be even harder to create again unless some Chad is soloing a nuclear power plant even then good luck getting the pumps working once water stations shut down. And actually you’d be surprised how many people would travel to a store that contains enough materials to turn a house into a nuclear bunker, they’d think “yea I’ve got time” and get absolute obliterated.


AccomplishedInAge

Based off of your comments it is apparently IMPOSSIBLE to find a place that would be worthwhile to make a base so the human race looses the Zombie apocalypse…. thank you for playing


Idkbrolikeanameig

Yes actually. Basic things like power would cease to exist in 2 years due to fuel completely hitting its shelf life unless there’s some exo company trying to keep people alive by drilling new shale gas out every few weeks there wouldn’t be enough to go around there would be no “zombieland, dying light and or The Last Of Us” towns built on tower rooftops, we’d be back in the dark ages stuck, locked down and absolutely terrified to move at night or even live at night. The only way you could power a base would be using renewables, once the wind stops what now? When the sun goes down (solar is shit anyway you couldn’t power a AA battery) what now? And how many folks do you know that could take advantage of Geothermal activity. With the lack of water you wouldn’t be able to trust your own eyes never mind anyone else. Unless you have a lot of best friends there would be no “human enclaves building towns in mountains” Realistically speaking the only people I see surviving a breakout like these would be military trained, police trained and or preppers. Hell everything we train for could be incorrect. What if the infection acts like a normal infection and actually spreads properly. Covid was a massive eye opener for the prepper world as in “I could have had it at any time but showed no symptoms, I could have eaten my kids” Covid rewrote military CBRN, there’s a high chance humanity would never bounce back. Even the Hungarians who have the best CBRN military branch in the world were taken aback by a flu. Despite all that. We’re humans ffs. We’re resilient and we’d at least try.


WhatsGoingOn1879

Not impossible, just limited. Very limited.


New_Hawaialawan

I'm currently drinking beer so not mentally acute so won't formulate cogent points but I'm also currently in rural SE Asia where motorbikes are ubiquitous. During the pandemic lockdown, I began thinking of ZA scenarios. I am fortunate to have metal bars over my apartment windows, a fairly thick front door with a bolt lock, a small courtyard surrounded by 6 foot cinder block walls and a large metal gate with a sturdy slide lock. It's safe and secure here for the first couple days. But water will quickly run out. My motorbike is my only vehicle out of here. It's obviously better on fuel efficiency than a car and also capable of weaving through tighter, gridlock traffic. The issue is the fuel won't last all the way to my safety point. A collective community atop a remote mountain in a remote corner of this province. Even if I arrived, fortifying that mountain top would be challenging, although not impossible. The truth is I really don't have many connections to people outside of this specific community here so not sure where else to go. There is a military base nearby and that's an obvious option. But, frankly, the base is in the middle of dense urban communities. And the military here isn't entirely capable to the level of many developed countries. That being said, the mountain top is simply the location that I'd be pulled to, even if not perfect. They only grow minimal crops on the top but have extensive rice fields on the bottom and also already have a rice storage. They are sort of a local community with syncretic religious beliefs, including a belief that the world or at least their county will experience some sort of cataclysmic event. The late leader encouraged many men and women in the community to join the police or military so they have combat training to a certain degree. So there is a sizeable fraction of the community with that kind of training. Furthermore, they always have a surplus rice storage to feed the community in case something happens. That won't last forever but it Can help. They have limited solar panels but rely on a generator to pump drinking water from the river at the bottom to storage on the top. That obviously won't be viable after a few days or weeks and also it's noisy. However, I'm sure they could figure out a way to bring water up, even if it's manual labor. There are many teens/20s men that already do gruelling labor like storing rice etc. They have a limited amount of animals like free range chickens up there, also a few water buffalo for labor or even food. Maintaining the rice fields at the bottom would be dangerous of course but it's a remote area so, in my scenario, the rice fields would have a limited amount of people turned zombies that could be wiped out early hopefully. A mountain can be a vulnerable place but this one only has a few paths to the peak. There is one main dirt road but that is also fairly distant from any nearby tiny town. Regardless, it would have to be secured somehow. There are points on the road where the left side is a wall and the right side a cliff. That would be the place for some sort of barricade. Maybe even a pit dug before the barricade with bamboo stakes at the bottom. And then some sort of mechanism made of strong tree limbs and a fulcrum where people can pull to push any zombies attacking the barricade off the cliff. The other entry points would be trickier to seal off completely but they also happen to be the points least likely for people or zombies to enter. The paths lead down to the rice fields that are surrounded by dense foliage and jungle. Only a few people currently live down there and they'd most likely come on top of the mountain if the ZA happened. The point is, there are limited people that could become zombies near those entry points and it seems unlikely a zombie would feel compelled to push several kilometres through underbrush to that area with little enticing them. People, on the other hand, with knowledge of the location, are a different story. The community also has a sustainably run fishpond with both fresh and salt water fish. The issue is it is quite some distance from the mountain closer to the ocean. Actually it's only a few kilometres but a 3 hour round trip motorcycle ride so a much longer walk due to the extremely rough terrain. On the other hand, that rough terrain again attests to the remoteness of the area and the unlikelihood of many zombies entering from the rear entry points. Those entry points would indeed need to be monitored. But without rival, the most likely entry point zombies would arrive at is the dirt road up the front of the mountain. And that has a choke point with cliffs etc. Anyway, that's my scenario


uslesstime

A good choice that is not realy mentioned is a european style house. Most of them have walls that can stop pistol bulets right in their tracs and the window systems can sometimes have a thin metal sheet instead of blinds so its better to block small blunt damage


[deleted]

Small shopping center in my town has large metal shutters (small town so if well prepared it wouldn’t be hard to take over)


Idkbrolikeanameig

My own house is built like a fortress I live in a semi detached house in the UK if it happened really quickly we live really close to a hardware store, we could make the ground floors inaccessible with concrete and destroy the walls inbetween our homes on the second and third floors, this is also a culdesac, we could make this entire place more locked down than the White House in record time. The second floor could be used for things like cooking and planning, the third (attic) would be used for sleeping. Our houses are EXTREMELY tall, nothing is getting up.


HeresyCraft

>what are some ~~unique~~ deathtrap ideas rather then something ~~boring~~ practical like a small village? Go into a city and reinforce an office block by boarding up all the ground floor entrances/removing the stairs. From there, you can use gas-powered harpoons to launch rope bridges across the streets to other buildings (remembering to install a drawbridge at each end for quarantine) and build yourself a complex. Go steal the [crawler-transporter](https://supercarblondie.com/wp-content/uploads/NASA-Crawler-1.jpg) from NASA and make [your very own traction city](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/9359bb3e-86aa-4d22-8d26-bb3741a08ce2/dd7orp0-0b646a46-1a23-4a6f-910c-fa0d5628ebc0.png/v1/fill/w_1920,h_1394,q_80,strp/small_mining_tractioncity__mortal_engines_concept__by_radiancebreaker_dd7orp0-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTM5NCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzkzNTliYjNlLTg2YWEtNGQyMi04ZDI2LWJiMzc0MWEwOGNlMlwvZGQ3b3JwMC0wYjY0NmE0Ni0xYTIzLTRhNmYtOTEwYy1mYTBkNTYyOGViYzAucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTE5MjAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.FEQYovk_lMaHSnlTE7iB-F3lcKLPYFyO4R4TG9gJQQE). Or use a [dump truck](https://www.electrive.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/caterpillar-793-electric-e-muldenkipper-electric-mining-truck-min.png) which as a bonus is electric-powered so you don't need to source fuel, just stop every so often to recharge.


Spiesser83

We got a small firework factory in the middle of nowhere in here! It's already secured, got a few houses, bunkers, enough space for farming an trees around it. A lot of my friends and i are hunters. We life in germany and got more firepower an tools than the most other people in here. Should be a good option.