Alright, so many people have stated that they are going to find a nice defensible location, and let the zombies siege. Others have stated that they intend to keep on the move, and as such won't make any kind of fortress. However, even for those on-the-run types, you have to sleep somewhere. This article will cover suitable materials for barricading, fortifying locations, escape routes, and neat little tactics to keep the zombies at bay.

Common Sense

You will want to have a place with a second floor that only has a few entraces, that way you can barricade the bottom floors main door, maybe some side doors if you have a lot of lumber, and then get upstairs and get rid of the stairs with an axe, or a maul. We will assume that you (if on the run) will choose such a location to sleep, so you can be assured a safe nights rest. Zombies can't get up vertically if they don't have any stairs.

Barricades

Barricading is an essential part of being able to fortify a location. Many homes, complexes, and department stores have all manner of doors, corridors, and windows. Certain spots are desirable when not being sieged by the undead, such as living rooms with bay windows, however, these are less desirable when sieged as aforementioned. Now, first lets talk about what a barricade should do.

Ideally, a barricade will completely section off a desired location. For the purpose of our article, I will run a scenario called, "The Doorway". It is generic, but the doors are the more important ones to barricade, will windows are actually the more vulnerable, but we'll get to that later.



Taking these steps in most homes or apartments could easily help fortify your location, especially since you don't intend your house or apartment to be impenetrable, you intend for it to be safe for you! You see, when you leave, you will jump from a second floor window to an area where there are few zombies. Hit the ground rolling, and then have your allies send your stuff down, and follow! You will get away, and some of the zombies will have spilled in the bottom floor, allowing less to deal with in escape!

However, more defenses are required for complexes, communes, or just anywhere! Getting high up is good, but most people overlook a good perimeter defense!



Before the zombie menace appears, installing a fence around your lot could easily make your home or apartment a gold mine for defense! The more urban you are, the less chance for iron fences and such you get, because urban survival is pretty dependant on getting higher period, and destroy the stairs. However, suburban homes can usually have wooden fences, and country homes (being isolated) allow for large plots with large fences! However, smaller fences around a home would be suggested too.

Now, country homes, complexes, apartments, et cetera provide the best chance for perimeter defense! Get a shovel, some friends with shovels, and start digging a moat! Digging a ditch around your house outside a smaller fence or inside it would easily fortify your home! If you have a property spanning, some miles or mile long fence, dig the moat in nearer to the home, and make sure its small. In fact, smaller rings of the moat could mean you spent more time making it deeper, and the deeper the better! Zombies will fall in, and not be getting out.




Now, you would be able to make a ditch that deep, but you would be able to make that a zombie wouldnt get out of. Make the ditch around five feet deep, and then only make it like one or two feet wide. This is to insure that a zombie could easily trip and fall into it. Do not place ditches to close to the fortress, as you will have to kill the zombies at some point, and rotting carrion STINKS. If you have enough time to do this, make the ditch count.

More specialized fortress barricading

Many people utter the ultimate uberness of the mighty walmart/costco and the shopping mall! However, there are still some drawbacks but advantages. Shopping malls have many entrances, but you can choose the back offices as places to hang out, and then barricade the main entrances and your little HQ. This can be very effective. Also, it is note worthy, that in the original Dawn of the Dead, they park semis in front of the malls large glass doors. That would be an effective tactic, however, it is risky, and just like in the movie, they take risks and the one guy gets bitten. Do this only if you can have roof support from the mall to barricade the doors. Using the ventilation shafts in the movies can be good, but, unlike in the movies, you may want to turn off the AC before you go up, because if you go up there and theres giant spinning blades, obviously you'd want those off.

Stores like Walmart and Cost, require that you park cars in front of the main doors. There isn't much else to barricade with other the the metal shelves, but even those can't be fastened too well as barricades. The advantage, however, is the food, and the supplies, and the garden section, where you could possibly get supplies to grow food on the roof, but even then, shopping marts can be risky. Only go there if you got firepower, manpower, and nerves of steel. Unless, however, you are lucky, and your shopping mart happens to be connected to your mall. Most normal walmarts and costcos lack a back office to hide in, and the supplies to make barricades are limited, but the surplus of non perishables could last a couple months.

My only issue with Walmarts and Costcos

Costcos and Walmarts can be gold mines of food and supplies. However, everyone will know that, and also, I've stated that these stores have a lack of barricading supplies, and you need a lot of firepower to hold one. This is because, the vast majority of people roving around will want some of that gold, and unfortunately, lack of barricades...food...bandits...doesn't work out. They are, however great for temporary places to stay, thats considering there aren't already piles of people there, looting and trying to take over. Be advised, when trying to commandeer one of these big fuckers.


In preparation for the siege:
The first thing to do is lock your doors. Next, cover your windows with whatever is to hand; Shelves, entertainment centers, appliances, anything heavy or immobile.

As time permits, add to your defenses; First, cut sections of plywood, steel, or any plating you can find big enough to cover the entire window. Be sure to include viewing areas (such as a couple of exposed corners). When selecting materials, the stronger, the better is a general rule. This is especially important with big picture windows. Cannibalize housing material, even tearing down non-load bearing walls, to obtain material. Bed mattresses can be used, but are not preferable.

Strongback Construction Diagram: Blue is pre-disaster window. Brown is plywood or other large-area covering. Black is 2×4. Red is 4×4 (may consist of married 2×4’s).

Strongback these platings; To build a strongback, make two to four sections of 2×4 the same length as the platings are wide, then a section of wood, preferably 4×4 (2×4 can be used, but will not be as strong as you should prefer) as long as the top of the window is high off the ground Nail the short sections perpendicular to the long section (one nail will generally suffice), then lay the assembly against the sheeting. The boards MUST reach fully across the window for maximum effect, and should, resources permitting, reach fully across the sheeting. The upright also needs to reach all the way to the ground in order to help support itself.
The strongback ‘can’ be nailed to the wall to help hold it in place, but this should only be used to hold the strongback in place while construction, and not as a permanent measure. Shore up the strongback using furniture as a temporary measure, then time and circumstances permitting properly shore up the strongback; Taking sections of 4×4 or bigger (two sections of 2×4 can be married {joined side by side) if no 4×4 are available), cut one section long enough to reach from the middle of the window to approximately 4 to 5 feet behind it, then a second section long enough to reach from the top of the first 4×4 to the roof (2×4 is adequate for this, unless the second section is going to be extremely long). The shorings need to be anchored somehow; Against wooden floors, this is as simple as nailing the bottom sections in place. With concrete or dirt floors, an alternative must be found. One option in this direction is to simply pile heavy objects on it (such as furniture. However, in this event, if two sections of 2×4 are married, be sure to set the shoring so that the edges (the 2” sides) are facing UP, to discourage the boards from warping and possibly even breaking under the strain.

Temporary strongbacks can be improvised from pallets, and additionally the pallets can be cannibalized for materials for permanent strongbacks; However, these should not be used as permanent structures.

Once your windows are solidified, shore up your doors; Select one door, preferably out of sight of the street, with a viewing area that allows you to see out as far around as possible. All other doors should be locked, then strongbacked, then if possible nailed shut. This will be your entry/exit door to leave to forage and to search for other survivors, better accommodations (moving from a difficult to secure house to an easily secured warehouse, an abandoned police station, etc), and possibly to find help.
Behind your one selected door, place a couch with a lot of weight (piling debris, such as sheetrock torn down to obtain materials to fortify the windows and other doors). This is your exit/entry point. If alone, lock the door each time you leave; The likelihood that the average skin job being able to open the door are limited. Humans will get in, no matter what you do. If in a group, have your fellow survivors lock and barricade the door. Use a signaling method, such as a specific knock (a new one should be selected each time you go out), to signal when to open, and when not to. Be sure to establish a specified return time; This will increase your security (if you arrive early or late, this will be a sign to your fellow survivors that something is wrong).


I hope this article was helpful, I will add more things to it once I think of them :P

alicestar:
a few things you should keep in mind is that you don't want to be making a ton of noise in your garage making barricades during the first stages of an outbreak. I like to keep around about 20 wood palates that i collected from my local sams club. they are built out of strong material so that wal-mart industries can re-use them several times before they are scrapped out. they are also large enough to fit over just about any standard window, some windows will require 2 to completely cover. using these improvised pre-assembled barracades will allow you to better maintain your stealth and greatly improve your odds of survival because we all know that the first few days are going to be the worst untill the panic stricken human numbers start to decrease and the weak join the numbers of the undead.


Bobmcbobbertson:
My grandparents live on the coast and have storm shutters over all the doors and windows to protect against hurricanes. The shutters are essentially blinds made out of 1/2 inch thick steel that go on outside the door/window, and are lowered by a crank and pulley system from inside the house. When not lowered, they are stored in a steel box mounted above the door/window that's the width of the door/window and about a foot on each side. These would be an excellent zombie protection tool, except that you can't see through them. Also, their house is on stilts, raising it about 2 stories off the ground, with easily destroyable wooden
stairs leading up.

JerryHendrix:
Id favor local shop or some other boutique due they are small and easy to defend due the supplies in them, shelves, and in some stores, iron bars on the windows. And they usually got only two doors so disguising the rear door and blocking the front door would make an exellent forttress. Also if Zombies would break the windows, still they can get in cos of bars but you can still shoot at them. Its only con that if it fully surrounded there would be no escape cos some stores arent linked to the second floor.

Miller38:
I think you all have great plans but for the stairs why not just pry them up with the crow bar every one probably has. then you have fire wood our baricading materials if they do (and I heavily doubt they will) get up the gap with the massive amounts of dying if you peoples are thinking "Like hell am I gunna leave this sancuary when there i no housing for (insert distance here)" but still don't destroy the stair just pry up the suckers

Thrawn5:
A note about the Costco and Wal-Mart, these locations are reasonably defensable as long as you can get roof access from the inside and can CONTROLL that access from the roof, these two storews do have a good store of food and occasionally have shelters/tents that you can take to the roof and set up camp.
Almost all Costcos and Wal-Marts have those huge racks for displaying items, if you can dissasemble some of these shelves and then put them against doors/make 3 inch thick steel barricades you can block most if not all doors (neither of these stores have many doors or windows, this should only take a day or two with even 2 people).

Quickrace89: Just a thing that you should consider when choosing your fortress. The bigger a fortress is, the bigger the perimeter. The bigger the perimeter, the more people required to defend it. Unless you can make sure there are only 3 or so points of entry, you should go with a small fort, for safety.


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Building Your Fortification
Pre-Built Fortifications
In Defense; Your Village And You.