Fortifying Your Home For The Zombie Apocalypse

Check out the 12 Houses That Will Get You Through A Zombie Apocalypse

I hope you guys are wondering how to fortify your home and make them defensible positions when the zombie invasion arrives. If not, good thing I’m reminding you now. Below I list a broad overview of what you can do to prepare your home for the Zombie Apocalypse. In the future, I’ll go into more detail about each recommendation. Let’s get to it, shall we?

Preparation and evaluation are critical to our success and therefore survival. If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. So get outside of your house and look for points of weakness and points of strength. If you were a marauding force, with limited technical capabilities, but an inexhaustible motivation for forward progress, what would you be capable of?

Windows

Windows are obviously always going to be a liability. We’ll need to shutter those with either plywood, or legitimate industrial grade burglar bars. The nice thing about really good burglar bars is that you can discharge your firearms between the gaps in the bars without affecting their structural integrity (unlike plywood, which you must either cut or shoot holes into). The same goes for any points of entry. Doors with sidelights are particularly problematic, because they present both a door AND set of windows to secure. Plywood inside and out works in a pinch, but again, industrial burglar bars are ideal for providing firing positions.

Home Levels

How many stories is your home? If it’s 2 or 3, that can be more defensible than 1 in that you have multiple levels of fall back contingency plans you can implement. In a multistory dwelling it is crucial to move all of your supplies to the topmost floor. This means food, water, ammo, first aid, water purifiers, everything. Once supplies have been secured to the upper floors, let’s fill any upstairs bathtubs, sinks or buckets to have additional backup water (this will obviously need to be treated before consuming in case of contamination).

If you’ve gone ahead and blockaded your downstairs points of access with plywood and are making your way to the upper floors, get your chainsaw and cut the stairs out behind you as you go up. This will effectively isolate you on the upper floors, but will also prevent anything dangerous from making its way up to you. You can then take up defensive positions at the upstairs windows and defend your ready-made fort. It is crucial that you make sure you’ve gotten all of your supplies upstairs before you cut them out behind you. You don’t want to sit back to relax and realize that all of the ammo is still in the downstairs closet and all you’ve got upstairs is peanut butter and an empty rifle! I previously wrote an post about NOT using fire on the undead and I’d like to touch on that notion again. DO NOT utilize fire in the defense of your home. Once you’ve blockaded yourself in and isolated yourself to the upper stories, the last thing you need is a bunch of slowly burning away zed heads staggering around the outside of your house, setting your new plywood fortifications alight.

Escape Route

With that being said, one last thing to make sure you have is an emergency escape route. A collapsible, or rope, ladder from the upper stories makes a great option. That way if things go well (or terribly wrong) you’ll have a way to come out of your fort and rejoin the living without having to jump down a missing flight of stairs.

It’s all about the planning. Think ahead, think outside of the box, make a plan and execute it. When things get bad, those who have thought ahead, planned, prepared and trained will be the ones who make it out alive.

What are you doing to your home to prepare it for a zombie invasion?