Anti-Zombie Fortress (have you seen this?)

[mpokera]

Hmmm how would these work out as a zombie fortress? Any thoughts? well, I think they would "work" splendidly as a defense. Assuming you have some way of lowering small boats for escape/foraging etc. They dont look particularly comfy of course, and in my opionion you could be nearly as secure on a small island anyway with much more room to move about, less feeling confined (which adds to mental stress/breakdown issues) and much more survivability in storm/wave (depending on if you are in ocean or lake of course) and of course much more area for growing crops

[Wyldwraith]

As a resident (NOT native, thank you) of Florida, I have learned a couple things about the ocean. They are: 1) You do NOT want to live within five miles of the ocean, and preferably 10-12. Your house might be sturdy enough to withstand the most absurdly intense Category 5 winds (unlikely, but possible, depending on construction)...but unless its a hermetically sealed environment 24/7, you WILL get flooded the first tropical storm (or Northeaster/Nor'easter for our New England brethren) that comes through. Why? Two words. Storm. Surge. The storm itself might not have the wind strength to blow away a beachball by the time it makes landfall, but depending on coastal topography if the storm had that strength even a hundred MILES out from making landfall, you can STILL end up with 3 feet of water in your living room (and that's a pretty tame result. Houses and various types of infrastructure collapse before the onslaught of storm surge all the time. ) 2) In a world without ready access to modern medicine, a coastal environment is inherently more unsanitary/possessed of biological factors that can result in serious illness. Depending on whether you're on a very large lake, the ocean (and what part of the ocean's coastline)...you can count on anything from infected insect bites to septic cuts garnered while out foraging for food along your stretch of coast. Wade out to knee-depth at low tide after some shellfish beds? One wave can dump you on a barnacle-encrusted rock. No big deal if you've got antibiotic ointments, but if you don't? Not to mention the legions of swarming insects so dense in many areas in the summer months you have to wear something over your mouth and nose to keep from inhaling tons of em. The list goes on, but (with the exception of those well-versed in coastal life...and I DON'T mean having a summer house in some posh resort-type community) I don't believe that the gain outweighs the risks. It's funny. Remember the scene from 28 Days Later, where the guy in the riot gear and his daughter were having a rough time as the last residents in their apartment building? Was just recently reading an article about apartment-building communities in Japan working together to gain like 90% of what they need inside their building. Had one half of this absolutely huge roof layered with soil and were growing high-yield veggies (like green and string beans), and the other half had their water-catch system that automatically drained into a timed irrigation mechanism with nothing more advanced than a wind-up clock as part of it. Then they simply hung their solar panels in such a way that 2 guys could move the entire arrangement to adjust for the focus of the sunlight. Ie: Starting out on the side of the building that gets all the morning sun, and ending up where the rays of the setting sun are cast. In conjunction with the larger stationary panels on stilts between rows of vegetables, they provide ALL of their own electricity. Just goes to show, even in this modern age, people haven't lost the capacity to shape self-reliant lives for themselves and their community. A valuable trait if the dead ever rose, or in the far more likely instance of an extinction-level global disaster. Which, given the rock-solid and corroborated projections of sea-levels rising over the next 75 years, we should be thankful that spirit of innovation and self-reliant drive is still with us.

[Thorn]

Really cool story about Japan and how the apartment building is banding together. I love that.