Zombie Cliche Lookout: The Night Attack
Zombies are pretty damn scary. They move unnaturally, the have grievous injuries, can’t communicate, and shamble after your with a stone-faced look of implacable focus. I’ll bet they smell really bad too. But you know what makes that even worse? When those undead bastards show up in the middle of the night.
Human beings are naturally adapted for daytime. Our primary sense – sight – suffers dramatically in reduced light, and a thousands of years of lessened dependance on our hearing and smell have caused those senses to atrophy a bit. Long story short, we’re out of our element at night. So naturally, the primitive parts of our brains tend to fear the darkness, and when there are a bunch of shambling, ambulatory corpses hanging out in the darkness, that natural fear is pretty damn justified.
About this Episode:
Believe it or not, I had a hell of a time getting Clark positioned half-way out of the tent. I wanted it to look like he was carefully peering outside, but that was a little easier said than done. Looking back now, I think I prefer the posing in the third frame, where he’s crawling out. I probably should have just done that earlier, then had him exit the tent sooner. Hindsight’s 20/20, right?
On the other hand, I’m quite happy with how all the foliage in the foreground is looking in these shots. My cattails – simple as they are – look pretty damn good to my eyes.
Discussion Question: In Clark’s Shoes
Put yourself in Clarks shoes: you awake, disoriented and unarmed, to find several zombies approaching your campsite. It’s the middle of the night. What do you do?
Me? I’d probably panic and tear-ass of in some random direction, plunging myself into the woods without any supplies or notions about which way I was heading.
POP! Goes the weisel, Clark finaly comes out
And if he sees his shadow, six more weeks of winter.
heh, or six more weeks of hiding in his tent with little food in a bitter winter, stupid dusk.
If he’s smart, he’s going to run away – NOW! If not, oh well – it was nice knowing your fate! 😀
Hah, we’ll see how smart Clark is. He sure seems to think he’s got things figured out.
For anyone near the Pacific Northwest? http://www.vancouversun.com/mobile/news/vancouver/Surrey+forest+turns+into+Zombie+Combat+Zone/7209060/story.html
If I’m camping, I’m likely with my family, siblings, their families, and my parents. I probably raise the alarm, knowing I have help around and also people I owe help to around.
Yet another reason to visit BC. I swear, I’m going to get out there one of these days.
I don’t know about running. I probably would have quietly armed myself and waited to see if any of them noticed the tent while carefully listening to see where they are.
That’s assuming you had something to arm yourself with in the first place. What would you do if your weapons were out of reach and the zombies are between them and you?
well, I for one, would “sneak” into the woods then come back from another direction, and get the weapon, preferably my hunting rifle…
Not a bad idea if you can manage it.
Why on Earth would you ever let yourself be completely unarmed in a world like that? If nothing else, keep a knife on your belt at all times and a bludgeon like a heavy stick or a bat just outside the tent.
this is presumably before you get back to town from your hunting trip and learn about the zombie apocalypse…
Yeah, in a zombie apocalypse, you’d want to be armed 24/7. Which begs the question, why isn’t Clark?
The question mark after the “Guh…” really made me laugh but… the question has to be asked; can zombies actually make interrogative moans?
I like to think so. Sort of a puzzled grunt.
I don’t believe in the no-win scenario. Unfortunately, this is pretty close to it. If Clark is completely unarmed, with at least four zombies to his front, and the unknown to his rear and flanks, he’ll likely have to choose the unknown. If they’re shamblers he can ditch them at a jog, lead them in a wide sweeping circle back to his camp or other cache. Ideally he could use his coordination to his advantage and lead them through thick brush, over a cliff, or through traps he set earlier (dead falls, snares, etc.); but if he didn’t have the sense to set tripwires at his perimeter before, he likely didn’t set lethal traps out, either.
I’d still rooting for Clark. It’s experiences like these that make one better, assuming you live through them the first time.
That or he can find a blunt object and go in between two large trees that would propose a difficulty for the zeds brain to go around. So he can funnel them through and dispatch each of them at a time. Even tripping the next few after the first. Giving him time to return and secure a weapon. Then again, that’s assuming there’s a large rock or a nice club anywhere around. There’s also the possibility of being ambushed from the back.
Stacking them up or funneling them through narrows is a good idea. I don’t know how easy it would be to bash a zombie in the gourd. I am sure even the shamblers are deceptively quick. Still, anything beats giving up. Definitely use all of the terrain to your advantage.
I call “trick question”. There ain’t no way I’m camping out in the zombie apocalypse without some sort of noisemaking perimeter security, at the very least. You should never be in his position, especially unarmed.
The zombie apocalypse shows up, I’m at least sleeping with a bat or a crowbar close to hand.
This is assuming you know about the zombies (admittedly, Clark does). What if you were just out camping. You wouldn’t setup alarms and keep a crowbar in your sleeping bag, would you?
Well, I’m not actually much of a one for camping. If the situation arises that I need to be spending the night out in the woods, chances are *something* has gone wrong already, and I’ll be on my guard.
It’s like on that show I Robot, “Stop cussing, and go home.”
I can’t say I’m familiar with that one.
i rented it, its a weird show
This is where I’d be trying as much as possible to be sleeping up on high ground.
Next to some big rocks you could roll downhill at the zombies?
But what we don’t realize, is that that mushroom will actually trigger 2 logs to come swinging down and crush there heads when they step on it.
That’s what this comic needs: booby traps.
HEH
well asumeing i did all the things not to do in a zombie outbreak I.E no warning system, sleeping unarmed, and general fucking up… well first things first don’t panic if you panic they win a level head wins the day but if were dealing with walkers i’d just move quickly off into the woods and lose them in the brush you could easily lose 4 zombies if there slow enought and you move eraticly enought. after that i would promptly return to my camp climb the nearest and sturdest tree and hide there until the morning then get down get my g.o.o.d bag and haul ass out of there
clarkes screwed i would run as fast as i can and hope to god tha i dont die
yea but now you just let zed win like i said just stay calm and think clearly. you only need a few seconds to awaken enought to get the basic idea of your problem and run if nessary but never just haul ass in some random direction at night unless you want to smash your face tripping on a rock you missed. again just lose them in the brush then hid up a tree zed is stupid and probably won’t notice you. even if he does he can’t climb so you just wait till morning jump to the ground and take off before he catches you.
Yeah, it’s probably best to have some idea where you’re going when you run away. That’s why a retreat is a complicated military maneuver, not just everyone tear-assing away from the enemy.
Well it would depend on the number of zombies. -10 I could take with an axe and my soon to be suppressed AR 15. More than that I would run.
Even a suppressor could still attract distant noises. You probably know that a can only makes the report quiet enough to shoot the weapon without damaging your ears (safe enough to shoot without ear protection), but still plenty loud enough to carry for some miles, especially at night and in the absence of noise pollution.
but Bo, there is noise pollution, i mean, what does the trees do with the sound? they distort it alot.
But a world without airplane and car traffic is a whole ‘nother animal. There are no places within the continental US where you can’t here the occasional car, airplane, or high voltage power line. With no man-made sounds at all, the world gets very quiet indeed.
Trees will distort the report of a rifle; but even suppressed it will carry for miles on a quiet night. One shot may not attract the zombies. Multiples will.
I live out in the country, and even if you go deep out into the woods where there’s no sound.. Only the life of the forest.. A dog’s bark from miles away will even carry. That’s not as loud as a gun.
I live out in the country, and even if you go deep out into the woods where there’s no sound.. Only the life of the forest.. A dog’s bark from miles away will even carry. That’s not as loud as a gun.
gut, I think the point here is you need to get subsonic rounds, and a lot of ’em
Even subsonic rounds are loud through a suppressor, just without the sonic boom. The goal of the suppressor is to reduce the report to the degree that one can safely shoot without ear protection. It’s not like in the movies.
the trees can distort is enough that all you hear from several miles away is just the general direction that the shot came from, not the exact spot, that is the assistance with sounds that trees give, echos might help some more, to confuse the undead, at least.
i know a few things about supressers, and sure, they can still make noise, but they’re pretty silent, id say a quarter of a mile is what would hear you, and unless you cant count, thats a ton less ammo to be wasted.
why cant clark just go out the back door of his tent? that might save him a ton of time and possibly his life
Perhaps this tent doesn’t have a back door?
perhaps i didnt think about that, but do you think that he might have his spear somewhere around in the tent? or did he just be stupid and run off with nothing but a knife?
We have no idea what Dave has in store for us next week; but I will bet there is a funny twist to the whole thing. We can guess and speculate about Clark’s character and not be sure of anything.
i guess… by the way, what ever happened to Gunny Bunny Bo?
I have about six avatars I can run through at any given moment. Just thought it was time for him to put his work clothes back on and go save some lives.
Now I’m thinking I need to update the ol’ avatar.
and what if clark ran into those looters? would they kill him? or let him on because he’s got no weapeon and running from a group of zombies? its still very improbible that its going to happen, but i think that the looters should be given a second chance in this comic
It’s hard to say what they’d do. If they still have than truck, they might just keep on driving.
i still would like to see those looters again, they could kill a couple quick comics
We probably haven’t seen the last of the looters.
Really? They have a truck, I figured they were a hundred miles away by this point.
Why didn’t he look out through the window? They’d be less likely to spot him through that little window than if he sticks his head out, right?
Question:
Exactly in Clark’s position? Well, there’s only four of them. I’d feel happier with a weapon but I might be able to take four without. That’d be suicide against four humans, but I figure it would be pretty easy to split up four zombies and take them one at a time. Especially if I can get to my weapon after all.