Zombie Cliche Lookout: Slow and Steady
Zombies, it is known, will pursue their prey doggedly. Unburdened by the needs of the living like sleeping and eating, the zombie can continue along ceaselessly. When fleeing from zombies, survivors count on two very important advantages. First, the average person is significantly faster than a zombie. True, they cannot continue on without pausing, but they can quickly outpace their pursuit to find a place to hide or some strong place to make a stand. Second, the zombie isn’t so single-minded that it will chase only the first living thing it sees. It will continue after you, surely, but if it spies some other prey that can perhaps be gotten to more easily, it will turn aside.
About this Episode:
Is that gray zombie on the left bare-ass naked, or is he simply wearing light gray pants of some sort? I’ll let you be the judge of that.
Otherwise, I have to say that I’m quite happy with how that first frame came out. I took about a dozen different shots of the group walking away, with both high and low angles, and I think this shot is the best of the bunch.
Other Stuff:
Don’t forget, we’ve added some new stuff recently:
- “The Pilot” – A short story by Bryan James
- Zombies: An Illustrated History – A history of the evolution of our favorite monster, with brilliant MOCs by Greg (Yatkuu)
Discussion Question: Post Apocalyptic Career Day
Once the zombies show up and start chowing down on civilization, a lot of people’s careers are going to be completely obviated. Myself, for instance. I do web design and manage a team of tech and content support people for a web development company. Something tells me that there won’t be a lot of demand for people of my skillset in the post-apocalyptic hellscape that will remain after the zombies show up. So what do you do? What, in a manner of speaking, do you want to do when you grown up and the world ends?
I work as a pharmacy technician. That will obviously be a somewhat less savory field after the rise of the undead. As for what I would like to be when I have “grown up and the world ends”, I am looking into purchasing firearms and exercising with an aim toward military style and martial arts related work-outs. So, in the event of a zombie uprising in the next few years, perhaps I shall be headshotting zeds with an AK-47, Mosin Nagant, Colt .45, Tokarev, and maybe a Lee-Enfield musket. Why that last you ask? ‘Cause I can. Ideally I will also be supplementing this with ringen (German wrestling) and my oft-mentioned mace.
Oh well, nice pipe-dream anywho…
P.S. Last update I mentioned a movie that featured a guy hanging himself after the rise of the zombies and his body rising as well, to chow down on his son. That movie was “Land of the Dead.” See here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418819/
I think we’d still have a need for chemists, Bob. Finding supplies might be a challenge.
Oh god, I hated Land of the Dead. I do recall that part now. One of the few better moments (like the Shaun and Ed cameo).
It’s a nice thought, but to be honest I’m a glorified cashier/secretary. If you wanted me to be able to diagonse and treat illnesses I’d be little better than your average First Responder.
Yeah, but your average first responder is still worlds better than someone with no training whatsoever.
Typo alert: Missing word in “About this episode”, second paragraph, last part of sentence “and i thin the is the best of the bunch” The what? The who? The where? Definitely needs fixing! 😀
Also, the typo where I misspelled “think” is where “the” is missing the object. 😀
Oops, fixed. Thank you, sir.
Most work I’ve done is all physical labor.. Taking a few shacks apart to scavenge the metal and wood (Depression era shacks), a few building projects (and a lot of measuring out for ones we didn’t do), a shit-ton-tastic amount of heavy lifting, and doing a lot of small tasks.
I also take a computer repair and maintenance at a vo-tech, but I could imagine the most that training is going to apply is cabling and wires. Which is actually one of my favorite things to do when it comes to computers, as well as the thing I’m best at.
Construction is a hell of an important skill, as would be scavenging from leftover stuff.
Eh’ I’m really just a jack of all trades far from being good at any of them. You can give me a tool and an order then I can do my job. I do have memorization problems for some reason I’ll forget something I was just told.
Hah, I work with a lot of people with that same problem. With them, it’s usually just a question of focus, or – more accurately – lack therof.
Everyone wants to be the enforcer or mercenary when the world ends, like some kind of new-age samurai. What most folks fail to consider is that food doesn’t come from the grocery store. It comes from farms and ranches. When the balloon does go up, I am turning to farming.
I’m a home health nurse in a fairly large city. My short-term goal is to find a job in the university hospital, use the tuition reimbursement program to pay for nurse practitioner school and get out of the city. Within the next five to seven years I want to have a decent chunk of land in a climate temperate enough for subsistence farming.
When the Crunch does hit it is going to catch a lot of people flat-footed. All I can do is hope it doesn’t happen on December 21, 2112…
Food is going to be a huge one. Knowing how to get it (hunting, gathering, farming, tending animals) is going to be pretty damn important. I think we’d end up being a lot of subsistence farmers for a while.
During the Depression there were huge areas where large game completely disappeared. I know a lot of places have a glut of dear right now (including Michigan); but about six months after the balloon goes up, those deer will be gone. Too many folks will take to the hills for easy meat.
I recommend small animals that are easy to keep and defend against the MZB’s. Goats for milk, meat, and wool. Chickens and guinea fowl for eggs and meat. Rabbits for fur and meat. Then grow whatever your climate allows. I am thinking beans, a hearty corn (not sweet corn), squash/zucchini, and greens (turnips, kale, collards). Supplement it with trotlines or jug fishing if possible.
A setup like this would take effort to get started; but it shouldn’t take all of one’s effort to watch. You’d need guards to keep the looters out beggars out; but you should have time to learn other skills.
I recall reading about large game being hunted to disappearance.
Regarding keeping small animals, that sounds like a damn good idea. I’ve never done it myself, but I imagine most of those animals would be fairly heart. Rabbit is good eating too.
My family kept rabbits when I was a kid. My aunt actually used them as a major part of her diet (she lived largely off-grid for a while). You can’t live on rabbit though. Google “Rabbit starvation”. It’s bad news. If it was only one of your sources of protein you’d likely do well. That’s why I mentioned trotlines and jug fishing. Check your lines twice a day and harvest your catch. Plus fish heads and guts make outstanding fertilizer.
Yes, I’ve known about the “rabbit starvation.” Gotta make sure you’ve got your greens and other sources of food for proper nutrition.
I can believe that populations of big game animals in North America suffered greatly during the Great Depression. As an avid hunter I have noticed that even during times of recession in my area that deer populations suffer as the result of increased poaching as people try to supplement their pantry with game meat. But the notion that large game populations would be depleted during the ZA doesn’t pass the “math” test. In Michigan for example, the deer hunting season stretches from Oct 1st though Jan 1st. (That’s archery, firearm, and muzelloader seasons combined) Approximately 750,000 hunters participate in some or all of these season and they harvest approximately 1/3 of the deer herd in the state That means about 250,000-300,000 animals killed each season. Every spring the overall herd recovers as the new fawns drop. To put it simply, we can kill 1/3 of the population a year and still maintain the same overall level of animals. I don’t know what anyone would consider realistic survival number for the ZA, but by my experience an adult deer will yield about 60lbs of edible meat. That should feed a person for well over a month if that’s all they eat. Even if every survivor consumes 12 deer a year the population could still support about 20,000-25,000 people in Michigan without a problem. If you also consider squirrels, possums, raccoons, and even rats, these still a hell of a lot of food to hunt. Dont even get me started on fish.
@Bo – Yeah, I remember hearing about rabbit starvation on Survivorman. Very interesting.
@Damage – I think you have to bear two things in mind as far as deer harvests go:
1. Many people won’t know how to preserve meat. Sure, they might get 60+ pounds of meat, but if they don’t know how to keep it, most with spoil before it gets eaten, and then will need to be replaced.
2. We would also be dealing with a lot of hunters who had no idea what they were doing, which means more deer than usual getting shot and never recovered, or hunters taking more animals than they can reasonably use.
Food is indeed one of the skills I’ve been focusing on the most. My teacher has been teaching me in the finding of natural foods. The forest alone carries so much food in it that it should hold just long enough for the land to be bountiful.
Admittedly most of my family has indeed been share farmers, and cotton pickers. But we have also always been soldiers and fighters.. Going back deep into family history the legacy still remains the same in both.
Though of course even if a person is a farmer you’d also have to make sure you can protect what is yours…. Right?
Yes indeed. That’s old school homesteading right there.
That’s something that always makes me laugh when I watch some preppers on TV talking about how they’re going to grab their bug-out bag and never fired Glock and go live off the land.
First off, reading a couple of books and buying a handgun (but never going to the range or God forbid, going hunting) doesn’t make you much better off than the average couch potato, and secondly, if you live in an area like I do, everyone other household has a hunter or two in it. I’d have to go out a hundred+ miles before I’d be anything resembling alone.
If and when shit gets real, I think I’m better off trying to hold my present position for as long as possible, then moving out as necessary after all the really crazy people have shot each other. I’m poorly equipped for either roption really, but better off than most. There’s a fair amount of food and such squirreled away, I’ve had some wilderness survival training, basic first aid and martial arts practice, do not suffer from any illnesses or need medications to survive, I’m fairly fit and able to run, jump, climb, etc, etc. The average person I run into on the street around here is exactly none of those things.
I’ve been watching a bit of that Doomsday Preppers lately, and it seems like a lot of people are like that. Survival means a stockpile of food, water, guns, and ammunition, but no real know-how. So when their food preps run out, they’re going to struggle to replace them.
I waited half the week for this!? I’m actually getting kinda used to it.
Am I to assume you are dissatisfied with this episode, and the comic in general?
Way to derail the conversation, AC…
im not unsatisfied, im fine with getting a new episode though.
and is that a nude zombie? i saw the message at the top, but I might even use abullet to shoot him in the “Freaky” spot
What, per tell, is the “freaky” spot? It’s genitals?
The funny thing is even though this is a comic, the site does demand a certain level of maturity to interact with the community.
That you do, Bo, that you do.
i dont want to tlak about freaky spots right now actually
Look man, you’re the one that brought it up.
also, the carrer i want is a post apocoliptiv wasteland, is something that will keep me busy, but not all night, so I’d probibly want to work at the hospital or shovel (grind) up dead bodies with a harvester.
“shovel (grind) up dead bodies with a harvester.”
That sounds like the worst job ever.
I imagine I will turn to scavenging from the new ruins and probably turning my knowledge of herbs to use. What’s edible, what’s poisonous, what’s needed for medicine. I’m sure any surviving doctors may appreciate a source of someone who can provide when the pharmacies and their stocks are gone.
Damn good knowledge to have, Fox.
Great Comic Absolutley Awesome Hey Are Those Brick Arms Weapons?
Thanks Random. Some BrickArms, but also BrickForge, Brick Warriors, and a few others.
There is something I have never really liked about groups of minifigs, when you try to have them walking/running away from something, they always seem uniform and robotic.
Tend to agree with you… the first frame of this comic displays what you are talking about… looks like they are pretty much standing there… however, the fourth frame has same number of figs, and it really portrays movement well.
I guess it is just the set up of the figs and the technique you use to photograph them… Dave has done really well on the fourth frame to get “motion” into the shot.
yeah, I get more of a feeling of nonchalance in the first frame. But in the 4th one, it displays more of the “franticness” in a zombie’s attempts to chew your eyes out of your eye sockets.
The zombies tend to be a little easier to pose. Because they’re awkward and uncoordinated, I try to exaggerate their movement to make them look more spastic.
And that is one of the things that puts your comic apart from others, in others they will just pose them as shambling, arms in the air, cartoon zombies. You add a sense of realism with your posing.
Thanks! That means a lot.
Your welcome, really, the only thing that would make it better is if someone made zombie arms and legs that looked broken/torn apart.
Hmm, looks like they’ve got a bit of space between them and the zombies. As long as they can avoid some stupid “engine won’t start” cliche, they should be fine.
Question:
Well, I’m an engineer, so in addition to my time on guard duty, I’d probably be helping with construction.