Sporting hot new Parkour-friendly shoes and pants does you no good if they’re only there to make you look pretty. Mobility, speed and an overall high level of fitness will really make all the difference, and put your gear to good use. Parkourpedia is loaded with tons of useful information about this spirit or philosophy that incorporates “a method of moving within your environment and approaching obstacles of any kind, be they physical or mental.” As well as various techniques and conditioning exercises to give you all the tools and attributes you may need to stay one step, leap or vault ahead of the groping zombie masses. I think the icing on the top has to be a great article about how to choose the proper shoes for highly mobile ways.
Sitting around waiting for the Zombpocalypse isn’t always a fun and productive way of passing the time. The good folks at Valve know this very well, so they brought another installment of their excellent zombie survival trainer, Left 4 Dead 2. Co-op zombie slayer action brings new friends, new weapons and a new setting to your training sessions. 20 new weapons, including more than 10 melee weapons gives you more tools to practice with in the virtual ZApocalypse. The new AI Director 2.0 will ensure that you never grow complacent with your training sessions, keeping you on your toes in the digital world, so you don’t find your self falling back on your heels in the real world. Grab three friends that you would like to have in your real world survival group, fire up your game platform of choice, and send the relentless undead hordes to their final resting place.
If Zombies looked like silhouette cutouts with a bunch of concentric circles, I’m sure we’d all have no problem with head shots with enough practice. Unfortunately, they tend to look human with a bit of nastiness thrown in for good measure. That’s why when we go practice shooting, rather then regular old targets, we use the Zombie Targets from Law Enforcement Targets, Inc.. These realistic targets help train you’re eyes in getting used to the sight of the Undead and always aiming for the head. They even have a separate target for the brain showing how it’s positioned based on the Zombies pose. Cheap and available in several designs options, these targets make the ultimate companion for you pre-Zday shooting practice. I like to practice with the Hans target myself, as it feels pretty good letting loose on a Zombie Axis officer.
If you live in the U.K. or are willing to travel there, I’d suggests spending some time on one of the ‘True Ways’ Survival Courses. There are plenty of other worthy training programs, probably closer to you than this one, but any course with SAS member and survival author Lofty Wiseman as member of the instructional team is worth checking out.
This 5 day course will definitely run you through the ringer. You may go in a rookie, but you’ll come out with survival skills perfectly suited for the Zombie Outbreak: Shelter Building, Fire Staring, Site Selection, Food Gathering, Fishing, Navigation, Finding Plants for Medicine, just to name a few. Sure, you could spend your time visiting the Big Ben and checking out the Crown Jewels, but those won’t help you on Z-Day.
Also available are 2 and 3 day courses if it suits you better.
You never know what kind of Zombies the Apocalypse will throw at you. They could be fast, intelligent, indestructible, or even (as this video shows) gay. Of all the possibilities, this one seems the least daunting.
Palladium Books released a new product in their RPG line covering one of the most important genres for Zprepared readers…The Zombie Apocalypse. Sure Dead Reign is packaged as a role playing game so you and your friends can gather around and have fun pretending to kill zombies during the apocalypse, but this is probably one of the most valuable ways to test various tactics and train new survivors in your crew. A skilled “Game Master” can easily help people create “characters” that accurately portray each member’s various attributes and skills, so he can run them through a plethora training scenarios teaching them the value of teamwork and solid tactics.
Of course Dead Reign is also a valuable tool to review missions to see what went wrong, and how to rectify the weaknesses in your team tactics. This game uses the Palladium® game system, allowing you to test your tactics in the other game lines in Palladium’s Megaverse®.
I know this is something Baehr Manley does with his kids every weekend, but most parents aren’t really thinking about how to prepare their children for an outbreak. This video does a great job highlighting how important it is to have a plan and the ability to execute it in critical moments. Even though the their plan fell apart in the middle, the little boy does a great job compensating. I’m sure next time it happens, they’ll be prepared.
The second most powerful tool against Zombies, apart from your brain, is your body. A sharp mind and unlimited supplies will get you nowhere if your body is frail and weak. Gym memberships and personal trainers are all well and good, but making that appointment at your local Gold’s would probably be unwise when just getting there requires a mad dash thru shambling hordes the Undead. That’s why it’s important to have a viable option that is both versatile, and space saving. The Bowflex Revolution® XP Home Gym is a great solution. Its compact size makes it a good choice for those who choose the stockpile and wait strategy of surviving. It offers a total body workout with targeted workouts for the upper body, lower body and core/abs. It also has an optional lat tower, Ab back pad, and is up-gradable to 280lbs if the 200lbs resistance is not enough for you. Did I mention that it’s the same technology used on the International Space Station, so you’ll know you’re not getting some fly-by-night infomercial machine. I would suggest getting in shape before Z-Day because no matter how hard it is to find time now, it will much more difficult later.
So they’re trying to pass this off as some type of “game” or tech demo, but the folks at the Georia Tech Augmented Environments Lab and the Savannah College of Art and Design- Atlanta have really created pure Undead survivalist gold. Everyone knows at one point during a the apocalypse, there’s going to be a need to shoot Zombies from a helicopter to save helpless civilians: this may be the only chance to practice hovering at 500 feet, picking off brain munchers that you’ll get besides experiencing the actual thing. When your group ask “Has anyone every tried a daring survivor helicopter rescue?” you can proudly raise your hand and volunteer.
