You wake up, it's in the early morning and you hear some movement outside your house. Then you hear groaning, a lot of it, coming down the street. You look out the window. There's someone in your yard! They are walking aimlessly like a drunken idiot, but with a limp. At a closer look at their silhouette you see their clothes are torn and they can't seem to stand up straight.
Beyond the yard you see a bunch of people like this limping down the streets, some are unable to stand and are just crawling across the road.
I live near a college town, so it would all just seem like every other morning, especially if it were a weekend.
Somebody just received a text with juicy gossip or a cat pic?
see someone running, a bunch of these ill-looking people chasing after them. They catch the person and... they start eating them alive, chewing off their flesh with their bare teeth like wild animals.
OK, I would start to get a clue, although I would still wonder if it were just a part of some fraternity pledge thing.
What's your plan? Where do you go? What do you do? What weapons will you bring with you or try to find along your way? What's your safehouse gonna be like? What's your endgame? Whatever else you can think of mentioning...
The only weapon I have handy these days is a pepper spray, so I would grab that and the sturdiest branch I could find and walk along the stream bed until I had to come up on the street (I could probably make it most of the way into town that way.
If I ran into any of the undead I would check the wind direction and then spray them in the face with the pepper spray, that way they wouldn't be able to see or smell me.
Once I got to the shopping center I would pick a store that had most of what I needed, probably the Costco, and find some way to get on the roof, hoping that the Costco had skylights. Assuming that it did, I would kick one in and climb down into the store (after checking to make sure there were no undead customers, cashiers or stock people), and start filling my shopping list:
--- a cpl of drones with cameras
--- a few pair of night vision googles
--- bolt cutters
--- rope (for getting on other roofs).
--- a cpl MP3 players with usb speakers
--- binoculars (preferably with night vision)
--- anything that would be an upgrade to my sturdy branch; an axe or hatchet or the biggest pipe wrench I could find.
--- full-body motorcycle riding leathers (or better yet kevlar) with boots, gloves, and helmet.
--- solar panels (I already have a few but a cpl more dedicated for specialized purposes would help)
--- a cpl cases of motor oil.
--- a lawn chair
--- a 6 pack of stevia sweetened rootbeer and a few protein bars.
I would take it all up to the roof and sit in the lawn chair drinking the root beer and eating power bars until it got dark. In the meantime I would check to see if the phones and internet were still working. If not, I would probably watch a few episodes of Vikings or The Walking Dead to get me in the mood for what came later.
Once it got dark, I would open the bottles of motor oil and figure out some way to attach them to the drones. Once I figured it out I would use the drones to lay down a wide spread of oil all around the Costco, especially by the entrance as sort of a slippery moot/barrier. I would also oil-up all the paths leading to the Costco for about 100 yards or so in every direction. The idea being that any zombies wandering over towards the Costco would wind of slipping and falling, which means they'd get oil all over their hands as well as they're feet, so not only wouldn't they be able to walk, run, or stand up very well, they also would have a hard time grabbing anything (like doorknobs, handrails, or me).
When that was done I would attach the MP3 players to the drones, turn the speakers up all the way, and use the drones to lead the zombies away from the store and the route I intended to take from the store. Hopefully I'd be able to get most of them out of the shopping mall altogether, at least long enough for me to grab everything else I needed.
Once I hit the road (I would wear rubber boots until I was clear of the oil) I would use the night vision googles instead of a flashlight: a light would attract the zombies, and also night vision would enable you to distinguish the zombies from other survivors, since the living would have a brighter heat signature.
First night would be about stocking up on essentials (although the Costco would already have most of what I needed), testing out my strategies to see how practical they would be, and trying to get a feel for what living and getting around in the new world would be like.
Once I was nice and comfy in castle Costco I would take a day or two to plan my next move and try to get in touch with other people.
Next move would be to find a police station. By this time I would have a bicycle with a small trailer full of whatever tools I needed to get through the door, walls, or roof as the case may be. Once I got close enough to scope out the station I would use the drones to clear out the area as best I could and break in and grab whatever weapons I could find.
If all that went well, next step would be to break into a fire station in order to get ahold of a map of all the remote fire and spotter stations up in the mountains: aside from being in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by wilderness, these buildings would also be well stocked with food, medical equipment, and everything else you could need. They would also have a shortwave radio, probably with instructions. Betting they would have solar too.
Something I thought about and I wonder if it's nearly flawless - if you are able to find a remote area, and are able to dig a deep and wide trench encircling it, then you got yourself a zombie trap. They're not coming up from there, much more reliable than a fence. You get enough bodies in there, you clean them out so it doesn't pile up and stink. As far as rain goes, I can't see it raining enough to flooding it entirely before it evaporates, especially if you're in a forest surrounded by trees. But even if it does I'm sure there are some ways to drain it, even if you have to resort to a bucket. Shouldn't be that difficult to maintain.
Kind of the same principle but I think a small island in the middle of a river with a strong current would be even better.
