place to hold up

[04]

how does this sound? close to where i live is a 200 acre field way out in the woods with only one road going to it. there aren't many people around here, 2500 at most spread out over the whloe county and its a big ass county. anyway this place has a brick house, good farmland and is close enough to the river to use it but not be flooded out by it as well as being surrounded by woods. my plan is that if the day comes to pack my gear and head to this place and use some of the equipment already there to dig a type of moat out away from the house atleast 12 to 15 feet deep with some type of fence at the top. this should be enough to stay safe from walkers but as we all know nothing can stop a determined living person from getting in somewhere. open to suggestions or questions about anything i left out.

[sandrock74]

You're going to dig a moat 10-15 feet deep all by yourself?? Good luck!

[04]

no i actually have a few buddies that have thought this out as well and i did say there was equipment there that are used to do such things as dig ditches and such. its really not as hard as it might sound as long as you know how to run equipment.

[FoodFight]

Sound travels. During a crisis I wouldn't want to be drawing attention to myself and adding stress to an already stressful situation. Best to have the defenses prepared ahead of time.

[Wyldwraith]

Agreed,
When we're talking about creatures solely dedicated to the location and consumption of warm human flesh any unnecessary sound is a sound too many. If you've ever been around several men that are working hard you know it isn't a really quiet business. Grunts of exertion, involuntary exclamations of pain when a wrong movement twists/pulls a muscle/other body part, shovels striking rocks...multiply by the number of individuals working.

Then there's the scent factor. Zombies as depicted by GAR, Savini and Snyder among others seem to possess an uncanny ability to home in on a few human beings scattered throughout a wide area. It's logical, or at least prudent to assume that ghouls utilize every sense at their disposal to locate prey, including smell. A group of men doing hard manual labor will be sweating like pigs. An unlucky wind could carry the scent for some distance.

A moat isn't a bad idea, but it's definitely the sort of task you want finished before the feces hit the fan. Or at least while you have others on guard duty to secure the area while you work.

There are quicker ways to fence off the perimeter of the structure you're holed up in. The same manpower you'd need for a moat could build a cinderblock wall much more quickly. Reinforced with rebar and concrete, it could serve as an equally effective barrier, without exposing the workers to dangers such as being down in a ditch well over their heads when several zombies stagger into the area and tumble into the ditch with them. In an extremely confining environment, with no way out but to try and climb a steep wall of dirt that's almost certainly soft because of the excavation all the advantages would belong to the zombies.

Now, if you had an earth-moving machine like a backhoe, and someone proficient in its use I could see a moat or spike trench being viable. Otherwise...

[EvilNed]

Sounds like it could actually be the very beginning of a new society that springs to life. As more and more survivors survive you could work on building new adobes and expanding said wall.

Of course, this is never going to happen, because the dead are never going to rise. But still. Kinda like the idea. Almost as if it should be done regardless. This world sucks anyway.

[AcesandEights]

Both a wall and a moat figure prominently in my zombie-apocalypse dream home. This, of course, is under the assumption I don't have access to a subterranean compound of a major sort.

Realize, however, that my zombie-apocalypse dream home would need one resource even more important than money or any building supplies: time :eek: So, assuming I didn't have it built ahead of time (and why would I?), I'd have to make do with something easier or on-hand to survive in, were I to still try and bunker down in such circumstances, that is.

[Trin]

I like the remote farmland location and brick house. However, I do not see moats working.

You have to connect your moat to the river to feed it. Being any distance off the river will cause several things.

One, you will be highly unlikely to keep your moat full year round. Spring swells rivers and summer dries them out. You won't want to rely on pumping machinery to keep the level constant and mother nature will only work against you.

Two, you will have stagnant water. That probably won't act as a foolproof zombie deterrent. In my mind rivers only deter zombies if you assume a current. Zombies can probably cross a moat of non-moving water. And if they can't what happens? They all stack up on the bottom? Eventually they'd get out on one side or the other.

Stagnant water is also disease prone and bug prone. Especially if you have zombies lying on the bottom of it. Bleck...

Another, smaller concern is that you also have to maintain some sort of bridge to get in/out, and that has to be stable and secure.

You don't even know if the river could feed your moat due to ground rises/falls. And digging the trench to the river would be a labor of its own.

I figure a better start is to use barbed wire. Easily attained and erected in short order with low manpower. It doesn't serve as a barrier so much as an entanglement - they get caught up in it. It stops small groups long enough to dispatch them. It gives you the time to build a larger cinder block wall inside your barbed wire fence.

[04]

sorry i didnt type this very clear in my first post. the equipment thats there already that i would us is a trackhoe. since i run trackhoes,backhoes and the like for a living im pretty sure it wouldn't take me a great deal of time to dig a ditch maybe close to the house at first then after we set up a base of operations move it out further away. u right moats are a bad idea i should have said a ditch with drains. as for what to do with any zombies that get into it we could either just set them on fire since they can't get out and burn them down to little of nothing or shoot them in the head then burn them, that way they don't build up so high that they could climb in.

[Crappingbear]

Is this place abandoned? If not, the owners might take umbrage to you showing up and claiming their farm. :)

[04]

naw its not abandoned but i do know the owners because this is a very small town, but they could be out of town when it hits the fan and cant get back or maybe they get chewed on. then again i could be gone too so we have to just play that by ear.

[SRP76]

Moats and trenches are great for getting people killed, because they think those things will work.

Put just one person in a ditch with sheer walls, and watch what happens after 5 short minutes of clawing at it. Dirt falling, dirt falling...BAM! Undermining the top causes the damn thing to cave in, sending down a waterfall of dirt. Then what do you have? Not a sheer wall; you have a nice slope that ghouls can easily crawl up. Now imagine how fast that will happen with, say, a dozen zombies clawing at the walls of your moat. They'll be up and out on your side pretty damn quick. And the best part is that you can't do a thing about it, since you're not going to jump in with them to dig the fallen dirt away (unless you're suicidal, anyway).

Add in the fact that most people are "secure" enough to turn their backs on the moat and assume it's nice and safe once they dig it, and you've got the perfect recipe for being bitten right on the ass.

[Mike70]

Sound travels. During a crisis I wouldn't want to be drawing attention to myself and adding stress to an already stressful situation. Best to have the defenses prepared ahead of time.

indeed the sound aspect is why i tend to laugh when people think that dogs would be a good idea. dogs are noisy ass animals and i would think given zombies known penchant for association that they'd be drawn to the sound of dogs barking. somewhere in their dim little brains they'd still remember that wherever dogs are there are humans too.

[04]

valid point about a trench being a bad idea by itself but what if as said before you were to use a trench and a wall together. like i said before i could dig a trench pretty fast and use it as a quick and fairly easy fix until i could build a proper wall with maybe a tower on each corner. i know this couldn't be done if there was a large number of dead walking but just givin the location and theres not many people for miles it would take some time for a large number of dead to lay seige to our new town. keep in mind that is being planned as if there were other people with me that werent totally useless

[AcesandEights]

Put just one person in a ditch with sheer walls, and watch what happens after 5 short minutes of clawing at it. Dirt falling, dirt falling...BAM! Undermining the top causes the damn thing to cave in, sending down a waterfall of dirt. Then what do you have? Not a sheer wall; you have a nice slope that ghouls can easily crawl up.

My zombie apocalypse dream house comes with a concrete lined moat that is well drained.

No, seriously. If I have to have an above ground dwelling and I had time (which I wouldn't), it would have a moat and a wall among other things.

[Trin]

The ditch has several advantages for quickly securing a perimeter. One, (assuming you have the backhoe thingy) it requires no tools or consumable materials - you're probably not running to the hardward store to buy fence posts in a zombie outbreak. Two, it would be pretty fast if you knew what you were doing.

Disadvantages - if you were forced into the ditch you're just as trapped as the zombies. If the ditch is too close to your permanent wall it might erode the support for the wall. A simple rainstorm could wreck your ditch wall.

For longer term my feeling is that if you are in a relatively isolated location where you're not likely to get assaulted by more than a handful of ghouls at a time your best bet is to create a fence - chain link or barbed wire - which allows you to dispatch the ghouls through the barrier. Either with guns, bows/arrows, or with something as simple as a pole with a trench spike on the end (which is quiet and requires no ammo). The barrier doesn't have to hold back a thousand zombies for years. It has to hold back a half dozen long enough for you to dispatch them.

Part of my reasoning is that you're going to be expanding this perimeter almost as fasts as you create it. You're going to need to secure access to the river and enclose croplands, outbuildings, etc. That's going to result in some huge areas.

Also, in the isolated location mobility is more valuable than defense. A perfectly reasonable strategy if your base is invaded is to run away. You have nothing but space. Setup a few outposts of food and ammo in the surrounding areas and you can fall back easily. In that scenario a cinderblock wall or ditch is just as big a barrier to you as it is to the zombies. While a chain link fence can be climbed by any relatively mobile adult (or even most children). And isn't that a HUGE advantage? You have a barrier that stops zombies but not you?

[04]

your right about a ditch being a trap as well as life saving defense but birbed wire might be hard to find. i think using some of the timber there to set up a wall may be the only choice. the area is large enough to place small outpost around the main center as fall back points or just places for people to go if the pop. gets to big. also by the river there is a high place that usually stays above water when the river floods every year that might be a good place to base river operations out of.