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Making your Fort
A good way to make your fort, is to think about building an entire new fort, rebuild your house, or enhance another already fortified structure.
It would be great if you had enough time to build a fort, but unless you already do, or have hundreds of others help building it, you won't be able to afford or have enough time when or before Z Day.
When remodeling your home, make sure you find what is going to be your base, otherwise zombies will run through your dry wall. I would say, build up concrete blocks around 6 feet high on the inside of your home. Then put something strong ex; steel, plaster on the outside. Also have a spot so you can get on top of your home when zombie's do get in. Also, as well as building your house up, try robbing a school bus, it holds supplies, probably made from steel. Hell, if you have a safe spot, and the time, get multiple buses, strip the siding from all but one, then put it on your home, plus bus.
When you are building up your bus, find where the fuel tank entrance is, and drill a hole through the floor. That way you have a spot to refuel without leaving. Also, as I get carried away, put a mesh wire, or more steel plating where the tires are. That way Bandits won't shoot out your tires. Make sure you board up most of your windows, just have a few exposed to shoot from. Also, to have a awesome bus, take out most of the seats, replace with fuel, small cots, and cut out horizontal (sideways) slits, about 6 inches long and maybe 2 inches high, this is where your bus becomes pimped. Stick chainsaws through the slits when driving through zombie infested land.
Back onto your house, if you have a one story house, you probably want to find another building. Where I live, it is 2-3 miles in between houses, heavily wooded around a square plot of field. (We live on the field with woods surrounding us.) We could get metal fences, and put those up as a partial barrier, to stop zombies IF they find us.
The city isn't always bad, if you find and apartment, great! Just destroy the stair case from floor 1 and 2, as well as the elevator. This allows you to be able to stay there, fill up tons of floors with supplies, then use a ladder to get up and down. This would go great with your pimped out bus. That is all until I think of more, get more questions, or someone else edits this page.
~Minidude
Ihave an idea I think has been unheard of there is a small subdivision up the road from me it is in a circle not connected to any other neighborhoods and on a hill with basic two story cookie cutter houses have a wall and fence going from house to house but also from roof top to roof top having a system of rope bridges connecting the commune even during a siege and allowing a lookout post and place for sharp shooters
-alphaone
When making your fort, take advantage of zombies' weaknesses. For example, they can't swim. So, take advantage of water and use it as a wall (like Alcatraz). Because zombies do not have the use of their logical brain, a simple puzzle can keep a lot of zombies from entering your fortress.
If you have the resources and a bit of money to make your own fortress from scratch, choose an easily defendable position that would be difficult for normal humans to assault. Concrete would be ideal for building the fort itself, as it is very cheap yet extremely strong, and 3 feet of concrete can stop bullets, explosions (eg. hand grenades and bombs) and cars. Use a concrete gate that can be lifted from inside. This should be unbreachable by zombies. For food and water, drill a bore in the ground to get groundwater and grow your food inside the fortress, so you can be completely self-dependent. This would be the perfect base to launch your anti-zombie campaign. All that you have to wait for is human error (Oh sorry, I needed the bathroom, I forgot to lower the gates) or the airborne disease to destroy you.
And, you can build it without everyone thinking you're a complete idiot, you can set up a storage/rent-a-vault company and use the concrete fortress for normal things.
|^| -_- [Quickrace89] -_- |^|
I got this plan. First, you need at least 4-story house and a car. To prevent the zombies from coming up, you need to do this: First of all, put explosives on the stairs and they can be launched while the zombies are walking over the explosives. Its suggested that you put something to make as cover like a table. The launcher should be something like you see in the movies. This could be done in every floor like: Their coming the first stairs, you blow em up, then the next story and so on. IF you have a elevator in your fortress, pack inside the elevator lots of explosives so that if the zombies somehow get the elevator moving, you could blow it up! Then as for the escape. Mark one of the windows as "Escape" so that remove the glass. Then make sure you have Ropeladders and the car under the window. When the zombies are "knocking on your door, just descend the Ropeladders and escape with you car. This should case no problem as when the zeds figure how to get to the top floor, all of the zeds will come there. They dont guard the flanks so your car will not get a scratch if you have a car that`s durability is non-existent.
-JerryHendrix
Site Selection: It would be easiest, overall, to select a building already in existence, but choose CAREFULLY; The entire first floor (to approximately 10 feet) must be entirely closed- Not even firing loops out. Therefore, shy away from building with LARGE WINDOWS AND DOORS (which will be difficult to secure) and many of them, such as a shop or office building.
Select a building with very low flammable exterior, such as brick, concrete, adobe, and stucco. (Internally, you want to avoid flammables as much as possible as well.) Try to cover all second-floor windows with fencing; Chain link, wrought-iron, picket, or cattle fencing doesn’t matter. Just a simple blockage to prevent skin jobs from gaining easy access.
LEAVE NO FIRST FLOOR ENTRANCE POINTS. In the example (below) the main entrance is, in fact, a retractable fire escape.
The building of a fortified perimeter is a time consuming process, best completed well in advance or saved until the initial outbreak is over; However, assuming such total social collapse occurs requiring such a construct, some thing should be kept in mind:
1. Create a temporary perimeter QUICKLY; Simpler perimeters can be thrown up, using portable fencing supported by simple stakes of fairly stiff tree limbs pounded into the ground. However, this is a time-intensive effort, and would require a heavy security detail. It is, however, a critical first step; While it won’t keep the skin jobs out, it will slow them long enough for you to evacuate and possibly kill a lot of them when you build the REAL fortifications.
2. Next, dig a trench around your designated perimeter (inside the temporary fence line). Pile some of the dirt on the outside to create a berm to make your trench harder to see by the skin jobs (said berm should be about 3 to 4 feet high). Fill it with every sort of sharpened nasties.
3. The vast majority of the dirt will go into sandbags; Build a wall of such bags about 4 to 5 feet high. You don’t want it higher than that unless you plan spending years here; In which case, you have years to build it. Outside the first wall, pound good, solid posts about 20 feet into the ground. Cover this with fencing (even temporary fencing can be suitable, though not ideal). This will stabilize the outside of your wall; Repeat the process a few feet beyond, with the fencing INSIDE the wall. Fill the void in between with yes, more dirt. You may wish to cap this with more sa
ndbags, if you intend to patrol this void area with people.
4. Build up the fenceline until it’s at least 10 feet high, covering the OUTSIDE edge or at least the outer perimeter with as much razor wire as you can lay hands on or manufacture.
5. At least two places per wall, establish a medium machinegun nest. Try to avoid using the guns until they skin jobs start to actually get past the motte. Then use it as little as possible just enough to thin them out. To actually dispatch them, have flamethrowers standing by in the “kill zone” overlooking the motte, then falling back to the inner fenceline; If the skin jobs get past that, fall back into your castle and cede, for the time being, your courtyard (you will have to take that back, but that can wait until tomorrow).
Note the image (right); BETWEEN the two fencelines, you will see blue lines. These are actually wire ropes, used to hold the two fencelines together and reducing the likelihood of them falling. Note also the grey lines going from the tops of the fencelines to the ground; These are supporting stanchions. While it will not prevent the skin jobs from tearing the fencelines down, it will stop or at least delay them from shoving them down (in theory, the wire ropes between them will delay them pulling the fencelines down).To expand your usable space, and to help protect upper floors, try using quick-drop strongbacks; Simply put the strongback on a hinge like a drop-down, single panel shutter. Be sure to shore it properly, or it will be useless to you.
All of this extensive motte, bailey, berm, and fenceline system should surround a building or complex, at minimum the ground floor of which should be concrete or brick (non-flammable and largely impenetrable). The “castle” can just as easily be one building (such as Alicestar’s concept) as 8 (as presented here) as 200 (such as a recovered city center). However, you would be well-profited, in a complex configuration, to have at least some walls between the outer perimeter buildings (not shown in this plan due to scale). In the town plan, you will note that all agricultural activity is beyond not only the fenceline, but even the outer berm; If you have to move your bulk crops inside the wire, you can’t defend it at all, it’s over, and the skin jobs will get inside. Best to sacrifice the crops, if necessary, and save the vill. You would not, however, be ill-profited to have a second fencline beyond the berm, around the crops, to protect them from animals and as a trip wire against approaching attack. The example here, a barbed wire entanglement, was a highly effective system used during both World Wars, and later on, as part of the defesive works for trench systems and other front-line positions. At the point where you’ve achieved this level of sophistication, however, the crisis should be completely over; Assuming it is not, you should consider moving the original portable fencing inside your perimeter and using them to cover second-floor windows. Also, don't install any exterior (outside) doors on your first floor; Instead, have on your SECOND floor, and use retractable ones (such as fire escapes).
There is no real need to build a whole new vill; You can just as easily use a single recovered building, or group of buildings, provided they are solid enough to survive the threat. Note the “Castle Ground Plan”, right. In this case, an old hotel was reinforced by closing off the courtyard with a few containers (probably taken directly from the yard). The open areas between building (if any) were closed off in some fashion as well, and it is likely the catwalks were as well, using whatever materials were available. If this hotel had a pool (unlikely, based on the floorplan presented), it would now be closed for swimming and used strictly for drinking water.
Eventually and inevitably, you will need FOOD; Far more food than you could ever hope to grow inside the wire.
Containing attacks during this phase of recovery will require special consideration; Along you primary access routes (the old roads and major foot paths), setting command-detonated land mines will disable attacking vehicles, and hopefully kill attacking raiders and skin jobs. M-18 Claymore landmines pointed UP and similar mines are ideal for this, but M-16 Bouncing Betties and related will not likely serve you well. (These would be minefields 1 and 2.) Alongside the road, to prevent attacks from simply diverting, setting in victim-initiated (pressure-activated) landmines mines are best; This can include Bouncing Betties and related (minefields 1a, 1b, 2a, and 2b). Far beyond that, around the crops, you will need landmines that you do not necessarily HAVE to attend to; Their purpose will be more to signal the approach of unfriendlies, than to necessarily kill or injure them. This could include every type of markers, even hand grenades in tin cans, such as the Viet Cong used in their war (minefields 3a and b), but using civilian firecrackers, rather than full-fledged grenades. At that distance, knowing what is approaching is far more important than dealing with it, and they themselves may not necessarily know YOU’RE out there; You would be well-cautioned NOT to start a war you don’t want.
However, around each of the main minefields (1 and 2 and their subordinate minefields) you WILL need to hang sings saying “WARNING- MINEFIELD” and around the secondary minefields (3a and b) hang simple fenses- Signs do you no harm, if the mines are, in fact, only signaling devices, and alerts the approached of “a” danger; They would then be well-cautioned to either go around, or signal their presence. (Perhaps they ARE friendlies, or want to be.) A consideration when setting up these types of traps, without lethal force, is to use smoke-producing flash-bang grenades; Though they won’t have nearly the kind of effect they would have had in a confined space, they still will have some effect and more importantly, the louder-than-average bang will get your attention.
Fire Escapes: Although counter-intuitive for a Human Being, ALL first floor opening (windows, doors, etc) should be permanently closed, and a retractable fire escape installed at one point on the second floor as the main castle entrance. If a skin job gets through the wire, then over the gate, and finally into your courtyard, retract the fire escape and let them holler. They may yet still get in, but then they’re simply charging, en masse, until the shear weight of so many bodies in such a limited area provides the ramp (which was how they got through the motte, and reversely how they got through the wire- Shear weight of numbers forced a section down, which the rest just ran through).
Bridge Walks: As time goes on, the village will, if successful, need to expand; If practicable, build fortified bridges between buildings at AT LEAST the second floor (higher if possible) to improve security- The skin jobs simply can not kill you if they can not REACH you.
Remember-
Nothing here will keep the skin jobs out if there’s enough of them. The only thing you can do is slow them, step by step, until you can systemically massacre them all. Worse, long after every last dirty damned skin job’s long dead and rotted away, there is the real possibility that other humans, disaffected by the collapse of social order (or possibly born into the disordered world), may well continue to operate in absence of government- In short, city-states and anarchy. While the end of the skin jobs ‘should’ end the need for these massive fortified cities, the reality is it will not, and it could be as much as 3 or 4 generations before order is fully restored.
I'm aiming to go in for Civil Engineering so I guess I'll find out if this will work then. I am still drawing it up, but, my fort will be easy enough for anyone to do. a 3 story high building made out of shipping crates. Entrance on the second floor, so no skinjobs entering. the whole of it will be reinforced with concrete and bricks. with solar panels on the roof. Now, If I can do it right, its also going to have an area inacesible from the outside, to grow crops on. and only way up floors is ladders.
feel free to message me with suggestions and hints.
Basic Plan for the base: (Note: There are actually floors halfway in the large gaps, all floors are 8.6ft tall)
Message me if you wish to see the origional, with writing clear
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Defensive Works:
Just putting up a few fences and dropping a few containers around ISN'T going to stop a sin job horde; You have to build smarter than that.
The Slaughter Slot: When you go to fortify your main entrance leave about 1/2 a foot slot open that is around shoulder level and cover absolutely everything else up. This narrow slot will allow you to deal with any threats on the outside whilst staying inside. If you have access to a fire-arm (preferably a shot gun) you can take down the attacker with only a few rounds. And if you don't have a gun? Use a hand made crude spear. Take just about any thing and sharpen one of the ends (or duct-tape a knife to the end if you must). Now poke and prod till they cant bash no more! Chainsaws will also work like a charm
Pungi Pits: Most of you already know what these are, if you don't then here is a short explanation. It is basically a trench or pit with large spikes placed at the bottom, the idea being that the zombie will fall in and get impaled. Now most of us wont have the time to dig an entire trench around our fortress and then install the spikes. So what you should think about doing is placing them at your entrances (be sure to also barricade these just in case). All windows and doors should have a Pungi Pit placed right in front of it to stop any and all attackers. This should save you a lot of time you can spend doing other things to further increase your survival chances.
Guard Towers/Sentry Posts: If you plan to build your own fortress then look no further. A guard tower will allow you to see for miles and can also be used as a beacon to signal other survivors of your where-about. Thinking of something a little more offensive? Why not mount it with a large ballista or mounted machine gun?
Sentry Posts are limitless, whether you build your own fortress or "commandeer" one. These are simply moderately safe places to put a civilian to watch for zombies or other survivors. Got a roof, balcony, or other structure that is safe from the reaching arms of those zombies? Good! Place someone or yourself up here and keep an eye on things. Additionally, unmaned outposts can be placed along likely approach routes (roads) using Closed-Curcuit TV sytem (see The Equipment Page).
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Temporary and Quick-Assembly Structures:
Several types of structures can help you immensely when the time comes to rebuild: Here are a few of the options available:
Q
uonset Hut: A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated steel having a semicircular cross section. The design was based on the Nissen hut developed by the British during World War I. The name comes from their site of first manufacture, Quonset Point, at the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Center in Davisville (a village located within the town of North Kingstown, Rhode Island).
In 1941 the United States Navy needed an all-purpose, lightweight building that could be shipped anywhere and assembled without skilled labor. The George A. Fuller construction company was selected to manufacture them. The first was produced within 60 days of contract award.
The original design was a 16 by 36 ft (5 by 11 m) structure framed with steel members with an 8 ft (2.4 m) radius. The sides were corrugated steel sheets. The two ends were covered with plywood, which had doors and windows. The interior was insulated and had pressed wood lining and a wood floor. The building could be placed on concrete, on pilings, or directly on the ground with a wood floor.
The most common design created a standard size of 20 by 48 ft (6 by 15 m) with 10 ft (3 m) radius, allowing 720 square feet (67 m²) of usable floor space, with optional four-foot overhangs at each end for protection of entrances from the weather. Other sizes were developed, including 20 by 40 ft (6 by 12 m) and 40 by 100 ft (12 by 30 m) warehouse models.
The flexible interior space was open, allowing for use as barracks, latrines, offices, medical and dental offices, isolation wards, housing, and bakeries.
Between 150,000-170,000 Quonset huts were manufactured during World War II. After the war, the U.S. military sold the surplus Quonset huts to the public for $1,000 each. Many are still standing throughout the United States, primarily used for commercial buildings (especially Army surplus stores).
Many were also used for temporary postwar housing, such as Rodger Young Village in Los Angeles, California and Michigan State University's Quonset Village in East Lansing, Michigan.
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Overprestigious And Overestimating Your Resources
Many of the above plans require immense ammounts of specific resources and large sophisticated machinery to construct. Asuming you build your fortress now, before the zombie apocalypse has begun, this is possible, but once the undead start roaming the streets, stacking shipping crates and making large concrete walls will be impossible.
Asuming you have to build a fortress after the apocalypse has begun, you only have the most basic resources. If your fortress is in a remote area, and if you half a brain it will be, resources are even more limited. Your fortess won't look like a medieval castle, it will look more like a typical army fort in WW2. Your building material will be what you have available. If your location is near a forest, you can use wood, but more likely your main construction material will be dirt. Your defenses won't be massive concrete walls, but several layers of earthworks.
Your earthworks will be simple, there is no need to use sandbags (though if you happen to have several thousand bags, that would be great). The best fortification against zombie is the simple trench, and WW1 will show you how quickly a system of trenches can be build with allmost no material. The difference is that you won't be inside the trench, the zeds will be. A zed trapped in the trench can easily be dispatched with a melee weapon such as a machette or a spear, saving your ammo.
Contructing The First Trenches
The key to succesfull defense is to always be safe. Start your defenses small, and work inside out. First, designate your fortess side. Right after setting up shelter, break out the shovel and dig a 5 foor deep, narrow trench. As a rule, dirt won't lie in a slope over 45 degree in the long run, but while fresh, this trench could have almost 90 degree walls. This trench is only the first layer of defense, to keep you safe while you build up more important things, like shelter, latrines, supply dumps, social areas, etc. etc.
Expanding Your Defenses
Now that your camp is done and you can survive for a medium ammount of time, you get to work on more permanent fortification. After a few days, you will have noticed that your first trench has collapsed, the sides are no longer as steep, it's collapsed. Your new, larger forification will be more permanent. It's another trench, but it's equiped with a retaining wall, of sorts. An ideal retaining wall consists of solid planks of wood, steel or some kind of plastic. Unfortunately, unless you happen to have brought a sawmill with you, you won't have a huge ammount of boards. A makeshift retaining wall will be made from anything that holds back the sand.
To build the retaining wall, dig a wide trench first, then hammer stick into the trench, on the side of your settlement. Behind the sticks, pack branches and small twigs, don't use leaves as they decay to quickly. Work in layers, put twigs behind the standing sticks, fill the area behind it with sand and repeat until untill you reach the top of your trench. One person can dig, reinforce and fill a 2 meter stretch of trench per hour and not be overly tired. This may not seem like much, but if there are two dozen people working, it's a very quick task, mainly because you can devide the work.
You can add as many layers of defense as you feel is required, but I advice using at least two reinforced trenches around your camp. These trenches require almost no maintenance, except when damaged by zeds in the trench, and are then easily repaired. Take all the dirt from these two trenches, and make a third layers of defenses, right around your camp, in the form of a large wall of dirt.
Food
You need food. And to have food, you need farms. Here comes some bad news for meat-lovers: you're going to be a vegetarian. There will be no room to hold inefficient cows, which you have to protect and feed. You might as well eat the cow feed.
You need to secure your farmland. Now, a zombie isn't interested in your grain, but it might wander into the field by accident. To prevent zombie attacks on farmers, you don't dig a trench. To feed hundreds, or even thousands of people, you need far to much farmland to properly defend. Digging a trench around it would be a long term project that'll take many months or even a year to complete.
Instead, simply use low crops and vegetables. A zombie can't hide in a potato field, or in waist-high crops. Don't plant 6 foot high rice plants, plant 4 foot high weats. Use only high-yield crops if possible.
However, this means that working the land is dangerous. Make several lookout posts, either treehuts or high mounds of dirt so that gunmen can keep watch over the farmers.
Bad Ideas
Using moats is a horrible idea, unless you're next to a flowing body of water, such as a river, canal or other stream. Stagnant water is very dangerous, it's a breading ground for disease spreading insects and will smell horrible. It also offers no aditional protection, as the zed will either refuse to enter, or get stuck at the bottom. A flowing moat will also erode quickly if not reinforced or maintained.
Pillboxes, foxholes, bunkers, sandbag defenses. They're all useless. Zeds don't use guns, you don't have to seek cover. If anything, build shooting hills and ramps, to give you a better view of your willing targets.
Minefields. While potentially an awesome defense, there are many problems. The most obvious being supply. Where are you going to find hundreds of mines? Who is going to deploy them? Are they even effective? Most mines don't kill people, merely injure them, which doesn't stop the zeds.
Doomforts. Some of the fortifications here can only be described as doomforts. While an ideal defense, they're just not feasible. Making a massive concrete structure is difficult even during normal days, it'll be neigh impossible after the zombie apocalypse.
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RELATED CONTENT:
It would be great if you had enough time to build a fort, but unless you already do, or have hundreds of others help building it, you won't be able to afford or have enough time when or before Z Day.
When remodeling your home, make sure you find what is going to be your base, otherwise zombies will run through your dry wall. I would say, build up concrete blocks around 6 feet high on the inside of your home. Then put something strong ex; steel, plaster on the outside. Also have a spot so you can get on top of your home when zombie's do get in. Also, as well as building your house up, try robbing a school bus, it holds supplies, probably made from steel. Hell, if you have a safe spot, and the time, get multiple buses, strip the siding from all but one, then put it on your home, plus bus.
When you are building up your bus, find where the fuel tank entrance is, and drill a hole through the floor. That way you have a spot to refuel without leaving. Also, as I get carried away, put a mesh wire, or more steel plating where the tires are. That way Bandits won't shoot out your tires. Make sure you board up most of your windows, just have a few exposed to shoot from. Also, to have a awesome bus, take out most of the seats, replace with fuel, small cots, and cut out horizontal (sideways) slits, about 6 inches long and maybe 2 inches high, this is where your bus becomes pimped. Stick chainsaws through the slits when driving through zombie infested land.
Back onto your house, if you have a one story house, you probably want to find another building. Where I live, it is 2-3 miles in between houses, heavily wooded around a square plot of field. (We live on the field with woods surrounding us.) We could get metal fences, and put those up as a partial barrier, to stop zombies IF they find us.
The city isn't always bad, if you find and apartment, great! Just destroy the stair case from floor 1 and 2, as well as the elevator. This allows you to be able to stay there, fill up tons of floors with supplies, then use a ladder to get up and down. This would go great with your pimped out bus. That is all until I think of more, get more questions, or someone else edits this page.
~Minidude
Ihave an idea I think has been unheard of there is a small subdivision up the road from me it is in a circle not connected to any other neighborhoods and on a hill with basic two story cookie cutter houses have a wall and fence going from house to house but also from roof top to roof top having a system of rope bridges connecting the commune even during a siege and allowing a lookout post and place for sharp shooters
-alphaone
When making your fort, take advantage of zombies' weaknesses. For example, they can't swim. So, take advantage of water and use it as a wall (like Alcatraz). Because zombies do not have the use of their logical brain, a simple puzzle can keep a lot of zombies from entering your fortress.
If you have the resources and a bit of money to make your own fortress from scratch, choose an easily defendable position that would be difficult for normal humans to assault. Concrete would be ideal for building the fort itself, as it is very cheap yet extremely strong, and 3 feet of concrete can stop bullets, explosions (eg. hand grenades and bombs) and cars. Use a concrete gate that can be lifted from inside. This should be unbreachable by zombies. For food and water, drill a bore in the ground to get groundwater and grow your food inside the fortress, so you can be completely self-dependent. This would be the perfect base to launch your anti-zombie campaign. All that you have to wait for is human error (Oh sorry, I needed the bathroom, I forgot to lower the gates) or the airborne disease to destroy you.
And, you can build it without everyone thinking you're a complete idiot, you can set up a storage/rent-a-vault company and use the concrete fortress for normal things.
|^| -_- [Quickrace89] -_- |^|
I got this plan. First, you need at least 4-story house and a car. To prevent the zombies from coming up, you need to do this: First of all, put explosives on the stairs and they can be launched while the zombies are walking over the explosives. Its suggested that you put something to make as cover like a table. The launcher should be something like you see in the movies. This could be done in every floor like: Their coming the first stairs, you blow em up, then the next story and so on. IF you have a elevator in your fortress, pack inside the elevator lots of explosives so that if the zombies somehow get the elevator moving, you could blow it up! Then as for the escape. Mark one of the windows as "Escape" so that remove the glass. Then make sure you have Ropeladders and the car under the window. When the zombies are "knocking on your door, just descend the Ropeladders and escape with you car. This should case no problem as when the zeds figure how to get to the top floor, all of the zeds will come there. They dont guard the flanks so your car will not get a scratch if you have a car that`s durability is non-existent.
-JerryHendrix
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Post Outbreak Recovery
No fortress can realistically be built by one person to any degree of security above a couple hundred²’; To build the kind of fortification you can depend upon to hold out months, years, possibly even decades (or forever), you will need to collect to yourself about a dozen people; Most sociologists over time have agreed that the SMALLEST self-sustaining population is at least 1,000 people (that is, to survive over one generation 1,000 people are needed). Site Selection: It would be easiest, overall, to select a building already in existence, but choose CAREFULLY; The entire first floor (to approximately 10 feet) must be entirely closed- Not even firing loops out. Therefore, shy away from building with LARGE WINDOWS AND DOORS (which will be difficult to secure) and many of them, such as a shop or office building.
Select a building with very low flammable exterior, such as brick, concrete, adobe, and stucco. (Internally, you want to avoid flammables as much as possible as well.) Try to cover all second-floor windows with fencing; Chain link, wrought-iron, picket, or cattle fencing doesn’t matter. Just a simple blockage to prevent skin jobs from gaining easy access.
LEAVE NO FIRST FLOOR ENTRANCE POINTS. In the example (below) the main entrance is, in fact, a retractable fire escape.
The building of a fortified perimeter is a time consuming process, best completed well in advance or saved until the initial outbreak is over; However, assuming such total social collapse occurs requiring such a construct, some thing should be kept in mind:
1. Create a temporary perimeter QUICKLY; Simpler perimeters can be thrown up, using portable fencing supported by simple stakes of fairly stiff tree limbs pounded into the ground. However, this is a time-intensive effort, and would require a heavy security detail. It is, however, a critical first step; While it won’t keep the skin jobs out, it will slow them long enough for you to evacuate and possibly kill a lot of them when you build the REAL fortifications.
2. Next, dig a trench around your designated perimeter (inside the temporary fence line). Pile some of the dirt on the outside to create a berm to make your trench harder to see by the skin jobs (said berm should be about 3 to 4 feet high). Fill it with every sort of sharpened nasties.
3. The vast majority of the dirt will go into sandbags; Build a wall of such bags about 4 to 5 feet high. You don’t want it higher than that unless you plan spending years here; In which case, you have years to build it. Outside the first wall, pound good, solid posts about 20 feet into the ground. Cover this with fencing (even temporary fencing can be suitable, though not ideal). This will stabilize the outside of your wall; Repeat the process a few feet beyond, with the fencing INSIDE the wall. Fill the void in between with yes, more dirt. You may wish to cap this with more sa
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| A diagram of a castle, bailey, motte, and berm system. Note that the outside of the castle to the outside of the berm is about 100 yards, well within machinegun fire range. | |
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| Strongback assembly you should have used during the initial outbreak. | An average suvivor village ground plan. Specific plans can vary extensively. |
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| A Full Village And Crops. Note the minefields. | |
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| A wicked barbed wire entanglement system. | |
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| Castle Ground Plan. Three semi-independant structures were joined, then fortified. In the village map (above, this building becomes that very large, easily noticed South-East structure. | |
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| A Fire Escape. Perfect for defense. | |
4. Build up the fenceline until it’s at least 10 feet high, covering the OUTSIDE edge or at least the outer perimeter with as much razor wire as you can lay hands on or manufacture.
5. At least two places per wall, establish a medium machinegun nest. Try to avoid using the guns until they skin jobs start to actually get past the motte. Then use it as little as possible just enough to thin them out. To actually dispatch them, have flamethrowers standing by in the “kill zone” overlooking the motte, then falling back to the inner fenceline; If the skin jobs get past that, fall back into your castle and cede, for the time being, your courtyard (you will have to take that back, but that can wait until tomorrow).
Note the image (right); BETWEEN the two fencelines, you will see blue lines. These are actually wire ropes, used to hold the two fencelines together and reducing the likelihood of them falling. Note also the grey lines going from the tops of the fencelines to the ground; These are supporting stanchions. While it will not prevent the skin jobs from tearing the fencelines down, it will stop or at least delay them from shoving them down (in theory, the wire ropes between them will delay them pulling the fencelines down).To expand your usable space, and to help protect upper floors, try using quick-drop strongbacks; Simply put the strongback on a hinge like a drop-down, single panel shutter. Be sure to shore it properly, or it will be useless to you.
All of this extensive motte, bailey, berm, and fenceline system should surround a building or complex, at minimum the ground floor of which should be concrete or brick (non-flammable and largely impenetrable). The “castle” can just as easily be one building (such as Alicestar’s concept) as 8 (as presented here) as 200 (such as a recovered city center). However, you would be well-profited, in a complex configuration, to have at least some walls between the outer perimeter buildings (not shown in this plan due to scale). In the town plan, you will note that all agricultural activity is beyond not only the fenceline, but even the outer berm; If you have to move your bulk crops inside the wire, you can’t defend it at all, it’s over, and the skin jobs will get inside. Best to sacrifice the crops, if necessary, and save the vill. You would not, however, be ill-profited to have a second fencline beyond the berm, around the crops, to protect them from animals and as a trip wire against approaching attack. The example here, a barbed wire entanglement, was a highly effective system used during both World Wars, and later on, as part of the defesive works for trench systems and other front-line positions. At the point where you’ve achieved this level of sophistication, however, the crisis should be completely over; Assuming it is not, you should consider moving the original portable fencing inside your perimeter and using them to cover second-floor windows. Also, don't install any exterior (outside) doors on your first floor; Instead, have on your SECOND floor, and use retractable ones (such as fire escapes).
There is no real need to build a whole new vill; You can just as easily use a single recovered building, or group of buildings, provided they are solid enough to survive the threat. Note the “Castle Ground Plan”, right. In this case, an old hotel was reinforced by closing off the courtyard with a few containers (probably taken directly from the yard). The open areas between building (if any) were closed off in some fashion as well, and it is likely the catwalks were as well, using whatever materials were available. If this hotel had a pool (unlikely, based on the floorplan presented), it would now be closed for swimming and used strictly for drinking water.
Eventually and inevitably, you will need FOOD; Far more food than you could ever hope to grow inside the wire.
Containing attacks during this phase of recovery will require special consideration; Along you primary access routes (the old roads and major foot paths), setting command-detonated land mines will disable attacking vehicles, and hopefully kill attacking raiders and skin jobs. M-18 Claymore landmines pointed UP and similar mines are ideal for this, but M-16 Bouncing Betties and related will not likely serve you well. (These would be minefields 1 and 2.) Alongside the road, to prevent attacks from simply diverting, setting in victim-initiated (pressure-activated) landmines mines are best; This can include Bouncing Betties and related (minefields 1a, 1b, 2a, and 2b). Far beyond that, around the crops, you will need landmines that you do not necessarily HAVE to attend to; Their purpose will be more to signal the approach of unfriendlies, than to necessarily kill or injure them. This could include every type of markers, even hand grenades in tin cans, such as the Viet Cong used in their war (minefields 3a and b), but using civilian firecrackers, rather than full-fledged grenades. At that distance, knowing what is approaching is far more important than dealing with it, and they themselves may not necessarily know YOU’RE out there; You would be well-cautioned NOT to start a war you don’t want.
However, around each of the main minefields (1 and 2 and their subordinate minefields) you WILL need to hang sings saying “WARNING- MINEFIELD” and around the secondary minefields (3a and b) hang simple fenses- Signs do you no harm, if the mines are, in fact, only signaling devices, and alerts the approached of “a” danger; They would then be well-cautioned to either go around, or signal their presence. (Perhaps they ARE friendlies, or want to be.) A consideration when setting up these types of traps, without lethal force, is to use smoke-producing flash-bang grenades; Though they won’t have nearly the kind of effect they would have had in a confined space, they still will have some effect and more importantly, the louder-than-average bang will get your attention.
Fire Escapes: Although counter-intuitive for a Human Being, ALL first floor opening (windows, doors, etc) should be permanently closed, and a retractable fire escape installed at one point on the second floor as the main castle entrance. If a skin job gets through the wire, then over the gate, and finally into your courtyard, retract the fire escape and let them holler. They may yet still get in, but then they’re simply charging, en masse, until the shear weight of so many bodies in such a limited area provides the ramp (which was how they got through the motte, and reversely how they got through the wire- Shear weight of numbers forced a section down, which the rest just ran through).
Bridge Walks: As time goes on, the village will, if successful, need to expand; If practicable, build fortified bridges between buildings at AT LEAST the second floor (higher if possible) to improve security- The skin jobs simply can not kill you if they can not REACH you.
Remember-
Nothing here will keep the skin jobs out if there’s enough of them. The only thing you can do is slow them, step by step, until you can systemically massacre them all. Worse, long after every last dirty damned skin job’s long dead and rotted away, there is the real possibility that other humans, disaffected by the collapse of social order (or possibly born into the disordered world), may well continue to operate in absence of government- In short, city-states and anarchy. While the end of the skin jobs ‘should’ end the need for these massive fortified cities, the reality is it will not, and it could be as much as 3 or 4 generations before order is fully restored.
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Jesden I'm aiming to go in for Civil Engineering so I guess I'll find out if this will work then. I am still drawing it up, but, my fort will be easy enough for anyone to do. a 3 story high building made out of shipping crates. Entrance on the second floor, so no skinjobs entering. the whole of it will be reinforced with concrete and bricks. with solar panels on the roof. Now, If I can do it right, its also going to have an area inacesible from the outside, to grow crops on. and only way up floors is ladders.
feel free to message me with suggestions and hints.
Basic Plan for the base: (Note: There are actually floors halfway in the large gaps, all floors are 8.6ft tall)
Message me if you wish to see the origional, with writing clear
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Defensive Works:
Just putting up a few fences and dropping a few containers around ISN'T going to stop a sin job horde; You have to build smarter than that.
The Slaughter Slot: When you go to fortify your main entrance leave about 1/2 a foot slot open that is around shoulder level and cover absolutely everything else up. This narrow slot will allow you to deal with any threats on the outside whilst staying inside. If you have access to a fire-arm (preferably a shot gun) you can take down the attacker with only a few rounds. And if you don't have a gun? Use a hand made crude spear. Take just about any thing and sharpen one of the ends (or duct-tape a knife to the end if you must). Now poke and prod till they cant bash no more! Chainsaws will also work like a charm
Pungi Pits: Most of you already know what these are, if you don't then here is a short explanation. It is basically a trench or pit with large spikes placed at the bottom, the idea being that the zombie will fall in and get impaled. Now most of us wont have the time to dig an entire trench around our fortress and then install the spikes. So what you should think about doing is placing them at your entrances (be sure to also barricade these just in case). All windows and doors should have a Pungi Pit placed right in front of it to stop any and all attackers. This should save you a lot of time you can spend doing other things to further increase your survival chances.
Guard Towers/Sentry Posts: If you plan to build your own fortress then look no further. A guard tower will allow you to see for miles and can also be used as a beacon to signal other survivors of your where-about. Thinking of something a little more offensive? Why not mount it with a large ballista or mounted machine gun?
Sentry Posts are limitless, whether you build your own fortress or "commandeer" one. These are simply moderately safe places to put a civilian to watch for zombies or other survivors. Got a roof, balcony, or other structure that is safe from the reaching arms of those zombies? Good! Place someone or yourself up here and keep an eye on things. Additionally, unmaned outposts can be placed along likely approach routes (roads) using Closed-Curcuit TV sytem (see The Equipment Page).
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Temporary and Quick-Assembly Structures:
Several types of structures can help you immensely when the time comes to rebuild: Here are a few of the options available:
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| A Quonset Hut Under Construction. |
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| A Quonset Hut Being Positioned. |
In 1941 the United States Navy needed an all-purpose, lightweight building that could be shipped anywhere and assembled without skilled labor. The George A. Fuller construction company was selected to manufacture them. The first was produced within 60 days of contract award.
The original design was a 16 by 36 ft (5 by 11 m) structure framed with steel members with an 8 ft (2.4 m) radius. The sides were corrugated steel sheets. The two ends were covered with plywood, which had doors and windows. The interior was insulated and had pressed wood lining and a wood floor. The building could be placed on concrete, on pilings, or directly on the ground with a wood floor.
The most common design created a standard size of 20 by 48 ft (6 by 15 m) with 10 ft (3 m) radius, allowing 720 square feet (67 m²) of usable floor space, with optional four-foot overhangs at each end for protection of entrances from the weather. Other sizes were developed, including 20 by 40 ft (6 by 12 m) and 40 by 100 ft (12 by 30 m) warehouse models.
The flexible interior space was open, allowing for use as barracks, latrines, offices, medical and dental offices, isolation wards, housing, and bakeries.
Between 150,000-170,000 Quonset huts were manufactured during World War II. After the war, the U.S. military sold the surplus Quonset huts to the public for $1,000 each. Many are still standing throughout the United States, primarily used for commercial buildings (especially Army surplus stores).
Many were also used for temporary postwar housing, such as Rodger Young Village in Los Angeles, California and Michigan State University's Quonset Village in East Lansing, Michigan.
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Overprestigious And Overestimating Your Resources
Many of the above plans require immense ammounts of specific resources and large sophisticated machinery to construct. Asuming you build your fortress now, before the zombie apocalypse has begun, this is possible, but once the undead start roaming the streets, stacking shipping crates and making large concrete walls will be impossible.
Asuming you have to build a fortress after the apocalypse has begun, you only have the most basic resources. If your fortress is in a remote area, and if you half a brain it will be, resources are even more limited. Your fortess won't look like a medieval castle, it will look more like a typical army fort in WW2. Your building material will be what you have available. If your location is near a forest, you can use wood, but more likely your main construction material will be dirt. Your defenses won't be massive concrete walls, but several layers of earthworks.
Your earthworks will be simple, there is no need to use sandbags (though if you happen to have several thousand bags, that would be great). The best fortification against zombie is the simple trench, and WW1 will show you how quickly a system of trenches can be build with allmost no material. The difference is that you won't be inside the trench, the zeds will be. A zed trapped in the trench can easily be dispatched with a melee weapon such as a machette or a spear, saving your ammo.
Contructing The First Trenches
The key to succesfull defense is to always be safe. Start your defenses small, and work inside out. First, designate your fortess side. Right after setting up shelter, break out the shovel and dig a 5 foor deep, narrow trench. As a rule, dirt won't lie in a slope over 45 degree in the long run, but while fresh, this trench could have almost 90 degree walls. This trench is only the first layer of defense, to keep you safe while you build up more important things, like shelter, latrines, supply dumps, social areas, etc. etc.
Expanding Your Defenses
Now that your camp is done and you can survive for a medium ammount of time, you get to work on more permanent fortification. After a few days, you will have noticed that your first trench has collapsed, the sides are no longer as steep, it's collapsed. Your new, larger forification will be more permanent. It's another trench, but it's equiped with a retaining wall, of sorts. An ideal retaining wall consists of solid planks of wood, steel or some kind of plastic. Unfortunately, unless you happen to have brought a sawmill with you, you won't have a huge ammount of boards. A makeshift retaining wall will be made from anything that holds back the sand.
To build the retaining wall, dig a wide trench first, then hammer stick into the trench, on the side of your settlement. Behind the sticks, pack branches and small twigs, don't use leaves as they decay to quickly. Work in layers, put twigs behind the standing sticks, fill the area behind it with sand and repeat until untill you reach the top of your trench. One person can dig, reinforce and fill a 2 meter stretch of trench per hour and not be overly tired. This may not seem like much, but if there are two dozen people working, it's a very quick task, mainly because you can devide the work.
You can add as many layers of defense as you feel is required, but I advice using at least two reinforced trenches around your camp. These trenches require almost no maintenance, except when damaged by zeds in the trench, and are then easily repaired. Take all the dirt from these two trenches, and make a third layers of defenses, right around your camp, in the form of a large wall of dirt.
Food
You need food. And to have food, you need farms. Here comes some bad news for meat-lovers: you're going to be a vegetarian. There will be no room to hold inefficient cows, which you have to protect and feed. You might as well eat the cow feed.
You need to secure your farmland. Now, a zombie isn't interested in your grain, but it might wander into the field by accident. To prevent zombie attacks on farmers, you don't dig a trench. To feed hundreds, or even thousands of people, you need far to much farmland to properly defend. Digging a trench around it would be a long term project that'll take many months or even a year to complete.
Instead, simply use low crops and vegetables. A zombie can't hide in a potato field, or in waist-high crops. Don't plant 6 foot high rice plants, plant 4 foot high weats. Use only high-yield crops if possible.
However, this means that working the land is dangerous. Make several lookout posts, either treehuts or high mounds of dirt so that gunmen can keep watch over the farmers.
Bad Ideas
Using moats is a horrible idea, unless you're next to a flowing body of water, such as a river, canal or other stream. Stagnant water is very dangerous, it's a breading ground for disease spreading insects and will smell horrible. It also offers no aditional protection, as the zed will either refuse to enter, or get stuck at the bottom. A flowing moat will also erode quickly if not reinforced or maintained.
Pillboxes, foxholes, bunkers, sandbag defenses. They're all useless. Zeds don't use guns, you don't have to seek cover. If anything, build shooting hills and ramps, to give you a better view of your willing targets.
Minefields. While potentially an awesome defense, there are many problems. The most obvious being supply. Where are you going to find hundreds of mines? Who is going to deploy them? Are they even effective? Most mines don't kill people, merely injure them, which doesn't stop the zeds.
Doomforts. Some of the fortifications here can only be described as doomforts. While an ideal defense, they're just not feasible. Making a massive concrete structure is difficult even during normal days, it'll be neigh impossible after the zombie apocalypse.
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | |
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| tacticalplanner | concrete wall | 2 | Today, 12:25 AM EDT by Andering_J_REDDSON | |
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Thread started: Jul 13 2008, 6:35 PM EDT
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no zombie can bust down a concrete wall. if you can get ahold of enough, you can fortify your town (or a small vil). to get all that concrete, go with a construction site and a semi (for the wieght)! you could even build a mold for a concrete pungi spike to implant into your wall.
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| Andering_J_REDDSON | Upload. | 0 | May 24 2008, 10:02 PM EDT by Andering_J_REDDSON | |
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Thread started: May 24 2008, 10:02 PM EDT
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Apparently there is an issue with uploading the pics for this article; I will try again tomorrow.
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| byates | Shipping containers | 1 | Jan 13 2008, 7:40 PM EST by wulfgar87 | |
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Thread started: Jan 13 2008, 7:26 PM EST
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What's not to like, big empty metal box, stack them, bolt them together, bury them. then outfit them however you want.
http://www.shipping-container-housing.com/ |
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