There are often new members who come to the site with a plan to fortify their school. Those of us who have been here a while will spend time trying to persuade them that it is not a good idea.

It is understandable why this is so common. These new members are typically high schoolers. They spend most of their time gathered in this building. It is familiar ground. Trouble is, they haven't really looked logically at what they would need to do in order to survive.

First, there is the same problem addressed in The Panic: if it is your first thought, it will be everyone's first thought. Whilst not as bad as a WalMart Plan (most adults would rather face zombies than return to school) it is still a common one. Imagine that when the zombie outbreak is upon you, you turn up at the school only to find dozens or hundreds of other pupils with the same idea. Will you band together, or fight for supremacy as The Man With The Plan?

Think quite carefully about how most arguments are resolved in high school.

The second problem is one of logistics. Look at this floorplan.



There are THIRTEEN external doorways marked on this plan. And I am willing to bet there are a few more fire doors at the back of the stage (right hand side of the plan). That is thirteen entry points, before we even count windows. Even if you count one window per classroom, that is still another eighteen entry points.

And this is the most defensible plan I could find. All the others were sprawling, enormous buildings with multiple entry doors, huge windows and covering vast acres of space.

Which brings me to the the next issue. Look in the bottom left corner. 45,207 sf. That is the square footage of the building. A perimeter of roughly 850 feet. Thirteen external doors. How many people would you need to make sure the place was safe?

Well to clear a building, you need to do the following:

Establish a perimeter: Allow nothing to cross it. Typically this will mean putting people at each door, plus any breached window entry. Since nobody goes anywhere alone, you need two people per door or window.

Send people inside to sweep the rooms: Start as close to one corner of the building as you can. Move methodically, check every room, and maintain a line between those rooms you have cleared, and those you haven't. Zombies and other threats (panicky, hostile people) move, so you need to be certain that once a room is clear, it stays clear. Otherwise you risk having your people wandering around thinking it is safe, and being ambushed.

So for this floorplan, you need a minimum of ten groups for the perimeter. Three sets of doors are close enough to be guarded by one group each. So twenty people.

Then you need to start clearing. And even if you divide the floorplan into five areas and search methodically, you still need one group to keep each area clear until the whole building is clear. So that's five extra groups. Fifteen groups, a minimum of thirty people, just to be sure that the building isn't hiding a threat.

Once you are sure that the inside is safe, you then need to fortify every door and window before you can pull in those on the perimeter. So those five groups have to barricade all the entry points, except for your emergency escape routes.

Only once this is done, can you bring in your perimeter. But now you are safe, right?

Well yes, but for how long?

We are back to the old problems of food and water. You can forget taps and sinks, those will either have lost pressure already, or are due to soon. Vending machines might have some provisions, as will the canteen. But not as much as you think. Most vending machines are refilled at least once a week. High traffic ones are refilled every day. Canteens will keep some supplies in the freezers, some in the fridges. Those have the power issue. Dry goods, maybe a weeks worth.

The problem is that canteens have a large delivery every day. They don't need to stock up like squirrels in winter, because they get regular orders filled at the same time each day by the truck. So you may well be expecting piles of food just waiting to be eaten by you and your hungry survivors. But it's more likely you will find a few large tubs of instant potatoes, mayonnaise and some rapidly defrosting bags of chips. And that's it. Even less if school is closed for the holidays.

More to come, I'm just getting started.