If zombies existed and a family member became infected what would you do?

Question

I love zombie movies but ive always wondered if zombies did exist and a family member was bitten how would you react or what would you do? I

Answer 1

If a family member became infected, we would wait until they were near death and I, as a nurse, would give them enough of a painkiller to let them slip peacefully, painlessly into death, and I would have them lie down on a stout wooden bench where I would completely restrain them with stout leather bands. As soon as their vital signs ceased I would rise, lift the battle axe nearby, and decapitate them, or simply fire one shot through their skull.

I love watching horror movies, but nine out of ten times the heroes are woefully unprepared, and I sit there figuring out better ways to do things in order to survive. I tend to keep the same answer for any zombie-related question and cut, paste, and add to as needed because it's too much work to write this out over and over, so here goes:

1. As a nurse I can tell you that at for the first three days or so after death and reanimation, the zombies will be moving at near-regular speed, but after that as muscular decay and necrosis sets in they will get slower and clumsier. Within two weeks they would collapse in jellified heaps of rotting flesh and organs, so forget the "fast-movers" from Dawn of the Dead.

2. I wouldn't even try to get away, I have everything that I need at home. And really, where would I go? I live in West Virginia, in a small town away from large population centers. If I did have to clear out, I would be driving my Dodge Grand Caravan. It has enough room to take what I need and the size and weight to roll right over any undead in my way.

3. First thing I do is move my armor and weapons into the attic. (Never, ever take refuge in a basement or underground area - you are trapped, as there is only one way out, and if they get thru the door you are dead or worse.) I am in the SCA, and my armor (steel chainmail hauberk and thick aircraft aluminum plate armor - see my avatar or my 360 page for full pics) is built to take full strength hits at speed from baseball bat-like rattan swords, so no zombie even has a hope of scratching it. My weapons include several swords, all of which are full-tang construction and made of strong steel, and all of which I can use well. Guns are OK in a pinch, but require ammo and can jam at the worst times. Baseball bats, crowbars, and other bludgeoning weapons can do okay, but they are usually not balanced for combat and tend to be tip heavy, which throws you off-balance when you swing and makes the weapon difficult and unwieldy. An axe has incredible shearing power, but only has a small area of effective blade and again is incredibly tip-heavy. Machetes are thin, usually stamped out of rolled steel, and have little to no heat tempering. Lacking a "spine" - the thicker middle of a blade's cross-section, a machete tends to bend when it is used against thick bone structures. Fighting for almost twenty years in the SCA has taught me that the sword, well-balanced, (esp. the Japanese katana) has the quickest recovery time and allows the warrior to strike and defend multiple times while an axeman is delivering one or two attacks.

Once I am in the attic I would pull the stairs up after me and armor up. If any zombies were in the house I would drop the stairs and let them come up one at a time, because it is ridiculously easy to decapitate someone coming headfirst up a set of stairs. Fight in doorways as well in order to limit the number of attackers that can reach you at any given minute.

4. Never go for the headshot with a melee weapon - it can become lodged in the skull. Always swing for the neck to sever the spinal column, or take off hands and legs. A legless zombie can't chase you too well, and a handless one can't grab you. The only "vital" organ a zombie has is its brain, so you must either damage it to the point where it can no longer function i.e. send electrical impulses to the musculature, or separate it from the body completely i.e. decapitation. Attempting to thrust your weapon into a zombies body will do no real damage at all - instead concentrate on severing lower arm/hand areas, ankles, and of course, the neck.

Once the house was emptied of threats I would set about barricading doors and windows and inventorying how much canned food I had, filling up as many jerry cans and milk jugs as possible with water, and taking stock of my first aid supplies. You cannot assume that electric, gas, and water services will stay on long, so I would eat any perishable foodstuffs first and recharge any electric devices such as a power drill and a sportlight (mine is five million candlepower and can run for eight total hours on a full charge).

5. Any restaurants in the area would also suffer a loss of power and therefore their food would also spoil. Food in their freezers might last a few more days, but at one time I was a restaurant manager and I can tell you that nine out of ten times the freezer is locked. A better choice for raids is the supermarket canned goods aisle, as well as their pharmacy for antibiotics (I'm a nurse, I know what I'm looking for), but remember that you may also be in competition or conflict with other survivors for such resources, and they will be wanting to take what you have as well - you may be forced to defend yourself against other humans. Good food choices are all canned goods, Ramen noodles, presweetened Kool-aid packets, canned juices, hard candies, pudding cups, pop tarts, bottled water, and various other non-perishable, non-refrigerated foodstuffs. Stay away from bread and milk, as they spoil far too quickly. Concentrate instead on things that can be heated on a campstove or over a campfire, and reconstituted with water, like Ramen noodles. If you are using non-bottled water for cooking, boil it for five minutes to kill any bacteria.

6. Soon I would be reconnoitering the area to see how many people had survived uninfected, and eliminating any zombies around by drawing them out and engaging them in single combat or in twos and threes so as not to get surrounded. Always keep on the move and change your direction of travel often to prevent them cutting across your intended path or surrounding you. I don't live near a graveyard, so the only undead around would have to be the newly dead. Any corpse (human or animal) that has been dead for over three weeks or so probably would not reanimate simply because of the level of decay present. Because of this I might wait a few days before scouting in order to give any viable undead time to further decay. As their bodies start to decompose they would get slower and weaker, becoming easier to dispatch or dodge. Within two to three weeks the whole zombie plague would fall apart as they decay past any point of muscular viability. A fresh, newly dead zombie will be just as fast and strong as he was in life, but give it a few days and they decay.

7. "Blending in" with them is usually not an option, as they can smell your blood and sense your heart beating. Anyone trying to do so is committing suicide.

8. As for other "Hollywood" refuges, a'la Dawn of the Dead, I would never, ever, head for a mall or other large public area - far too undefendable. I would also not place my trust in river islands as a refuge unless the current was deep and fast: zombies cannot drown, so theoretically they can float to the island like so much deadwood (and as decay sets in they would be bloating with gases so they would most likely float) or walk across the bottom (as the pirate crew did in PotC:CotBP) to you if the water is slow. Ocean islands are better, but you must be sure they are uninhabited first, and never dock your boat initially - anchor it out a ways and row in with a canoe, that way if there are too many to fight at first you can pick off a few and then retreat to your boat, rinse and repeat until the beach is clear. For me it is a moot point - I am nowhere near the coast - but I do live 150 yards from a large, deep, fast-moving river. The Kanawha empties into the Ohio, the Ohio empties into the Mississippi, and the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico, but that is a journey of thousands of miles.

9. I would use the canoe as last-ditch transportation downriver if the Caravan was somehow rendered useless. If I was able to stay in one place I would make sure that it was easy to see that I was a survivor in order to avoid the fate of the guy in Night of the Living Dead - living thru the ordeal just to get mistaken for a zombie and headshot. I would exit the attic and set up "camp" on the roof, with radio, dome tent, and a big sign. So what if I attract a few zombies? Without any way of getting to me they would simply mill about on the ground until I snuck down the back of the house using our rope fire escape ladder (which I would keep on the roof) and decapitated a few at a time as they slowly came around the house. I do not believe that after three days any would have the ability or coordination to climb, but I would make it a priority to take out fast-movers first.

10. Various gear I have at hand right now that I would find useful:

Binoculars, Rope and Grappling hook, Coleman lantern, 5-cell Maglite, matches or lighters, can opener, battery operated perimeter alarms, canteen, mess kit, liquid fuel operated campstove, sleeping bag, backpack, handcuffs, armor repair kit, handaxe, whetstone and metal file, toiletries, flare gun, inflatable raft, and a canoe.

Answer 2

KILL! KILL! KILL!

Answer 3

Kill it...it would no longer be family.

Answer 4

Execute them without blinking, that's not your family anymore...

Answer 5

zombies dont exist (I HOPE SO IM AFRAID)

Answer 6

I would say I was really sry and I loved them and would shoot em in the head...

Answer 7

It wouldn't have happened Because My family is total Christian and God protects his Children.

Answer 8

It's simple in the words of Leon S. Kennedy from Resident Evil: Degeneration "Shoot them in the Head".

Answer 9

I would have to chop their heads off. Chop them into little pieces and burn them.  

Answer 10

Your loved one died already, its just a zombie that is going to attack you now. Maybe have them take sleeping pills and when they fall asleep, then kill them.

Answer 11

I would kill it because i know that it wouldn't be the same family that i loved and they would probably wish that i kill them too if they could tell me.

Answer 12

RUN AWAY!

Answer 13

i would let that family member turn me into a zombie, then we would create a vast army of zombies and take over the world!!!!!!!!!

Answer 14

Probably just isolate her/him or if theres no other way

"Boom headshot"

Answer 15

The Center for Disease Control has written a pamphet to educate the public how to handle just such an occurance.

It's called "She's not your Grandma anymore."

Answer 16

i would kill it before it kills me because that thing is no longer a member of my family.

Answer 17

I'd smack that zombie about with a shovel,after it was dead i'd bury it in cement so it couldn't get back out,then i'd put a grave stone up to honor the family member.On it i would write here lies my brother ,a zombie before he was bitten and more human after he was bitten but he had to be put down,beware do not open,may cause bit marks if disturbed.

Answer 18

I would let the zombie infect people, as many as I could. I have always wanted this to happen just to test my survivability. Then I would live on the edge surviving day to day struggling to stay alive... Sounds epic!

And once a sufficient number are infected I wouldn't hesitate to kill them all, whether its my worst enemy or my mother.